Simon Heys

An easy way to interact with any Ethereum-compatible blockchain using TypeScript and Node.js.

All new version of Word Clock for Mac is now available. Completely re-written from scratch with new, smoother animation. No more Flash…

When I first got my iPad I thought it would be brilliant for showing my portfolio or presenting work to clients. I couldn’t find any apps that were simple enough or worked the way I wanted, so I made one myself. It’s called Minimal Folio.

Automated PostScript drawing created with home brew video tracking software I’m working on. This uses footage of birds in flight, shot on an iPhone.

So I’ve spent my spare moments over the past year-and-a-bit working on Word Clock for iPhone (link opens iTunes). This uses the same languages as the screensaver and features linear and rotary versions with full typographic control. You can pinch and zoom and animate between the two versions. I’ve also set up a simple dedicated …

As promised ages ago, I have posted the source code I am using to wrap the Mac Flash screensaver version of Word Clock.

A newly tweaked version of the droplet. This one allows you to set the JPEG compression quality by changing the number in the filename – just make as many copies as you need. MakeJpeg download page

Two big improvements in this new alpha version: first it’s much less processor-intensive (now uses OpenGL), and second it stores the screen between sessions so it doesn’t have to start with an empty screen each time. Go to the new page to download. Please let me know by email if you have any problems.

I am working on building a physical version of Word Clock, from scratch, with electronics components. Here’s the first working circuit:

A small tutorial on how to create bouncing balls with ActionScript source code. A couple of years back I was creating some interactive sites using bouncing balls as navigation. These needed to behave in a believable manner so I spent some time looking at rigid body dynamics code.

Word Clock has moved. Go to the new page where you can download and read more.

If you’re a print designer who regularly receives batches of digital artwork from various sources then this might save you a bit of time.

Most designers and programmers whose paths I’ve crossed have heard of PostScript but don’t know much about it. I think it’s a hidden gem. Not only is it a fascinating programming language which can be used to create generative drawings and save you hours of time through automation, but you can also use it as …

Decided to redesign the site so the blog areas are on a white background. I’m planning to write a few tutorials over the next couple of weeks and this design will make them much easier to read. Portfolio and Archive will be receiving some attention soon too.

Heart-felt thanks to the heroic Ole Zorn who volunteered to translate the clock into German, not realising that he was about to experience a grueling 3-day schedule of testing and round-the-clock correspondence. Thanks Ole!

To use: draw a simple ‘S’ shape on the left-hand panel. Then experiment. Note that it’s fairly crude and only renders convex surfaces properly. This was a quick mockup I made at the end of last year to try out an idea for a Christmas Card. It was originally …

I’ve been making blue-prints / cyanotypes of various kinds for quite a while. The appeal has always been to make photos without using lenses or carefully controlled photographic processes. I’ve never been a big fan of photography; the equipment and techniques are now so honed and precise leading the majority of photographs to appear somewhat…

I’ve decided to start releasing bits and pieces of source code just for fun. The first one is the Vector Field demo I wrote ages ago. First, the source code Download Vector Field source code It’s easy to change the size, colour and ‘splat’ graphics. This is totally free for non-commercial use, but I …

One of the problems I had when writing Flash Screensavr was sharing preferences between two separate and different SWF files – the Preferences panel and the Screensaver itself. Obviously a job for SharedObject. However there is a trick to creating a SharedObject that behaves how you’d expect.

Screensavr has been Approved by the Authorities and is available on Yahoo Apps. Does this mean I’m now a fully qualified geek?

Having recently parted with my aging G4 PowerBook and upgraded to an entry-level MacBook, I couldn’t resist the temptation to install Windows XP (spit!). Well, it’s good for games at least. I was also excited to discover a free version of Visual Studio called Visual Studio Express. Have only played with the tutorials but have…

I once did a quick experiment into creating drawings from nothing but code, but based on natural phenomena. The first thing I tried was gravity and it gave some results which I really liked. Here are the PostScript drawings it made. As I’m on a bit of a Cocoa Screensaver mission at the moment I…

So here it is, one month on: the first Mac-native Cocoa version. Built on ObjectiveFlickr. Download for Mac (Universal)

New version, Mac native code this time. Thanks to Andy and Jay for suggestions: now you can choose your own colours and font. Not that there was anything wrong with my choices. Planning to add finer typographic control in future, but for now… enjoy playing with the leading. Visit Word Clock’s permanent home

So I have reach a dead-end in Flash. I now have a Screensavr that works perfectly, honouring all image proportions. Looks great, but runs slowly in Flash as it can’t handle so many individual images as the bitmap processing isn’t sophisticated enough; had to make it so that each row is a series of MovieClips …

This is impressive work. “An open-source Flex library for browser URL control via deep linking which I have developed in collaboration with Todd Rein of Adobe.” I’ve recently written something similar for Flash 8 (we’re yet to have clients that are ready for Flash 9 / Flex). I discovered this afterwards: it produces automatically generated…

I just packed up the new version of Screensavr which I hacked together yesterday. Now automatically fills the screen, does different image proportions and can also read Groups. Next stage is to get it to honour all image proportions and handle different sized images. Then it shall be complete.

So while I build up the energy to sort out the flickr Screensavr, I thought I’d upload the screen saver version of Word Clock. Nothing to configure here – just download and install.Download Word Clock installer for Mac

So here it is. More fiddly than I was anticipating. You must first enter your flickr user-name into the control panel. Download Mac installer 0.0.2alpha No Windows version, I don’t have the power. Or the inclination. Image courtesy of jaypeg.

Hah! See what I did there? It’s a flickr-based screensaver. This is some old slideshow code I had lying around, a nice way to view a stream of images as they scroll by. In these new days of the internet it seemed appropriate for it to read a flickr photostream. It will be available on…

The site using the magnetic code is now live…at last! The magnetic code sits at the core of a structurally complex site which was built by the rest of the Tonic Flash crew. They implemented full browser history, bookmarking and deep-linking which is a joy to use. www.thejunglegroup.com

At tonic I was recently working on a project for a client where we wanted to get across the idea of different teams working on individual projects. I came up with the idea of magnetic navigation, which attracts a different group of people appropriate to the selected project. There were a few ways of achieving…

Vector field proof of concept in Flash 8. Uses displacement map as a ‘cheap’ vector field – providing you’re not expecting miracles it works quite well. The colours mix together naturally which is a nice side effect of the filter.

Very basic elastic collision-based rigid body dynamics.

Flash 6 Spirograph. An old spirograph drawing thing, based on some of the machines in the Science Museum. A Flash 8/9 version would be much faster.

Typographic clock using words rather than digits. First appeared on Tonic homepage, subsequently shown on BD4D and at the Science Museum. Physical version is in progress…