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Cell phone games and Walt Disney World: Team Possible at EPCOTAug-30-06, 11:17 am by Hanford | Read full postFile under: Video games, Disney I recently got back from a trip to Walt Disney World, where I was lucky enough to play a still-in-testing game that is unlike anything else I've ever experienced. The game is called Team Possible, and was at the EPCOT park at Walt Disney World. I was very impressed by the activities involved and the overall scope of the game. It's not really a cell phone game -- it's a game that uses a cell phone, in addition to many other physical devices, to create a real-world gaming environment hidden inside of a Disney park. I'll explain below. SPOILER ALERT: Below there are spoliers about the game. I'm not going to explain the game's plot-step by-step but I am going to discuss some of it, and talk about the effects used and the experiences I've had with the game. If you want to play Team Possible yourself and remain spoiler-free, don't read past this. Continued Where I've beenAug-24-06, 11:04 pm by Hanford | Read full postFile under: Misc. Just a quick update as to why I've not been blogging for a while: between a very cool project I'm contracting on, and my still-in-progress next game, I took some time off to travel the World (more on that later, though). I hope to have more blog posts soon. Thanks for hanging tight. Director: Better, faster great-looking image resamplingJul-12-06, 1:51 am by Hanford | Read full postFile under: Misc., Macromedia, Director, Adobe, Shockwave, Lingo A few months ago I was posted about how Director's scaling code looks great when shrinking something more than 50%, but for shrinking stuff less than 50%, the image gets jaggy. My solution at the time was to use some bilinear resampling code written for Lingo, which I modified from an existing function written by Josh Chunick. It worked like a charm, but it was pretty slow. Good for an occasional resample, but too slow to use in, say, a game. Continued Yahoo Maps vs Google Maps: Yahoo getting better and betterJun-7-06, 12:31 pm by Hanford | Read full postFile under: Yahoo, Google, maps, User Interface  A few months ago I wrote a little rant about how none of the map websites accepted a single paste a of multi-line address, and how lame that was. I followed up with writing my own little hack to make it possible with Google Maps and Yahoo Maps.
Shortly after writing these blog posts, I was asked to do a User Interface presentation at one of the major search/maps companies in Sillicon Valley Continued Photoshop CS2 Update: keyboard shortcut bugJun-1-06, 7:12 pm by Hanford | Read full postFile under: Adobe, Photoshop  I've done a bit more research on the Photoshop bug I mentioned in an older post, and I'm now sharing it here.
For many versions of Photoshop for Windows, pressing ALT+E,A,V and ALT+E,A,H have been the only way to do keyboard shortcuts for Edit > Transform > Vertical and Horizontal flip. I learned these keystrokes 10 years ago and have been using them ever since. I don't even think about it when I trigger them. When CS2 was released a new feature was added to the Edit menu called Adobe PDF Presets, and some wisenheimer at Adobe decided that it needed a shortcut and assigned 'A' to it. This broke the Transform menu shortcuts. Continued The future of television remotesMay-27-06, 12:33 pm by Hanford | Read full postFile under: Wii, DVR, User Interface, design, consoles, Video games  As a video game designer and a television user interface designer, I've been paying close attention to the Nintendo -Revolution- Wii with baited breath. And now that Nintendo has shown what they've got, I am confident that within the next five to 10 years Nintendo's controller concept will spill out of the video game arena and become the desired input style for TV-based UIs like televisions and set top boxes. ContinuedPhotoshop CS2 Update: first thoughtsMay-17-06, 2:43 pm by Hanford | Read full postFile under: Misc. I just got the Photoshop CS2 update installed (9.0.1) and so far it seems better than the original. I'm still not decided though because I've not really used it on a project yet, but I will soon! I'm now able to catch up with the rest of the civilized world who have been using Photoshop CS2 for over a year now. The original CS2 had an incompatibility with my video card that made the screen refresh unacceptablly slow. I'm glad to see Adobe patch it. but ... Continued Photoshop CS2 Update releasedMay-16-06, 10:53 am by Hanford | Read full postFile under: Adobe, Macromedia, Photoshop I've owned Photoshop CS2 since it was first available, but I've only used it about a dozen times becuase it was too slow. I had emailed Adobe about it but never got a straight answer. It's been about a year. But today I found out that Adobe has just released a dot-release for Photoshop CS2. I've not installed CS2 yet, but it sounds promising. Check out John Nack's blog for the details: John Nack -- Photoshop CS2 update 9.0.1 now available macromedia.com now redirects to adobe.comMay-1-06, 2:07 am by Hanford | Read full postFile under: Shockwave, Adobe, Director, Macromedia, Misc. ... and it feels a bit more like Macromedia than Adobe. In my book that's great. Check it out. How to design a UI that's ignored by everyoneApr-13-06, 5:37 pm by Hanford | Read full postFile under: web2.0, Bad User Interface AKA: I blame GoogleI've been using LinkedIn recently. LinkedIn is like Myspace for career networking, but it's got so many design problems that their various UI components battle each other gladiator-style for the honor of pissing me off.I was using it the other night, looking in vain for the the list of contacts that is displayed with most profiles. I knew it was there because I had seen it before. I was simply missing it. Finally, after perhaps 10 minutes of searching on the page and looking for options that might hide/show them, I saw it: Continued   |
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I make things. From consumer electronics, to video games, to theme park attractions. Perhaps I can make things for you! Check out my portfolio. When I'm not making things for other people, I'm usually experimenting.
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