Corfizz

DefaultTiddlers

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:00:00 GMT

Update

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:59:00 GMT

This website is due for a major redesign. Said major redesign will involve hats. Please be excited.

Hello

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:59:00 GMT

This is a place for my completed projects. There is, unfortunately, not much of a unifying principle behind the various projects you'll find on this site except that they are all made by the same person. The most significant, of those that are completed, are:

Visitors to the Temple, an album of instrumental/orchestral music
My three science-fiction/fantasy novels
FerrousRing - an experimental, philosophical text adventure
WorldConquest - a text-based RPG
TheBibleRetold - more text adventures
Physics Lightning Tour video
Some music that I have composed
Grammar references for Spanish, German, Turkish, French and Italian.

If you want to find out what's new on this site, click on the link on the right-hand side that says "Tags and tiddlers". A timeline should pop up, showing when each page was last updated. Therefrom I sense niftiness!

Green screening

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:59:00 GMT

Most people on the web are probably familiar with 'Photoshopped' images, where an element of one image has been cut out and placed onto another image. Achieving this effect with moving images, however, is not quite so easy, because you'd need to cut out the desired element(s) from each and every frame. What you need is a consistent way of knowing which are the elements you want and which are the bits you want to cut out, and the best way of doing that is to have the desired elements (usually actors) performing in front of a plain colour background. All you have to do then is get the computer to detect that particular colour and make it transparent, and then have the new background (which could be a video itself) placed behind. This technique is called chroma keying.

You can achieve a wide range of effects and solve quite diverse problems using chroma keying. You can make actors appear to be at places that you can't practically visit; you can show news footage or weather maps behind them; you can make them appear to be flying or falling; you can have two or more clones of an actor side by side; and you can create complex 'composites' by layering various elements together, which were shot separately.

There are several complications, however. Since one particular colour is going to be removed, it won't do to have the actors wearing anything of that colour; it also won't do, ideally, to have slight variations in that colour - something which could come about through having shadows or even creases in the backdrop.

I did some testing with a green screen yesterday. I had some green muslin cloth stapled to the picture rail in my dining room; I opened the French doors to let in some daylight and then did some filming in front of it. The cloth was extremely creased and unevenly lit: the top of the screen was in more shadow than the bottom. I had no lighting equipment. Obviously, I wasn't expecting good results. I imported the footage into Final Cut Pro and used its chroma keying features to see what I could achieve. The results surprised me. Fiddling with the settings - widening the colour range and introducing a luma key - allowed me to get pretty good results despite the non-ideal conditions. There were a few difficulties: small amounts of shadowy green on the edges of me - but this can be rectified using the edge thin feature or with an extra 'matte choker' filter; an unusual 'shimmering' effect in the hair - which can be rectified by not keying on very dark luma; and the fact that I accidentally got the rest of the wall in shot (the bit above the picture rail) - but this can be solved with a so-called 'garbage matte'.

When we do green screening in the film, we will have soft box lighting so hopefully it will be even easier to get a good effect.

Audio

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:57:00 GMT

Ignore the incoherent ramblings listed below and check out my album, Visitors to the Temple.

These compositions were made mostly with GarageBand (i.e. a software MIDI synthesiser, rather than with real instruments).

Incomplete Revelation Suite
- Approaching Tribulation
- Tribulation and Wrath
Caprice
Extended Secret
Back in the Garden
Laughter by the Lakeshore
Jig Around the Fig
Sacred Pottery
A Major Problem. (Get it?)
Iridescence and the Prince's Revenge
Laughing With Terror
G Major Joy
The Learning Curve
Sin
Drop Down

I also acknowledge Ben Boldt, for his software instrument collections, which I believe are used in most of the pieces here.

Note that these pieces of music, as per the licence notice on the right-hand side, are all under the CC Attribution licence.

Visitors to the Temple

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:56:00 GMT

Finally. I have released a full length album on Jamendo, made almost entirely with software instruments on Logic Studio.

Video

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:54:00 GMT

I have done some amateur video editing with Final Cut Studio. Don't think that means the videos are going to be good; it still depends on how the user uses the software, rather than the software itself.

Physics Lightning Tour - This video is far better than the maths one below.
Mathematics: Beyond Reality - This video is embarrassing. So laugh! Or just use it as a Final Cut Studio demo.
SavingTheWorld
Dreamrise
- See YouTube.
A Montage of Video Games - OK. So I'm not afraid to admit that I like computer games. But I do have high standards. Clips of some of my favourite games are in that video, but there are also clips from games I've never played but which I consider to have a good reputation.
The Corfizz Bubble Logo.
The Corfizz Space Logo (made with lots of stock Motion objects - except Jupiter and the logo itself).

Software

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:49:00 GMT

Here are some of my programming projects:

WorldConquest - two games in one, played on a political map of the world
FerrousRing - a very experimental text adventure
FollowingAStar - a text adventure that came 13th in 2010's IFComp
TheBreadAndTheFishes - a text adventure that came 21st in 2006's IFComp
Guide Dog for OpenOffice
KMathsTest
iXML
Elements Interface
Bilden - a flashcard program in Glulx!

TheBreadAndTheFishes

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:36:00 GMT

The first in TheBibleRetold series of text adventures, in which the player must gather the five loaves of bread and two fishes needed to feed a crowd of 5000 people. The game came 21st of 43 in IF Comp 2006 and was a finalist for Best Individual NPC in the 2006 XYZZY Awards (for God)!

Download:

TheBibleRetold

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:36:00 GMT

A series of text adventures based on classic Bible stories and written in a light-hearted but non-offensive manner. Made in collaboration with "Celestianpower".

FerrousRing

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:36:00 GMT

Ferrous Ring is an exceptionally experimental text adventure which received mixed reviews in the 2007 IFComp.

It is unfortunate that in the process of fixing some bugs prior to the competition, I accidentally introduced new ones, and this contributed to the negative points levelled at the game, especially since it was not obvious that the bugs actually were bugs. In the process of fixing these bugs, I unfortunately broke the game completely - this being a result of how extremely cumbersome and complex the interface became - but I managed to salvage it and get a new version together. This latest version hasn't had any beta testing, so please contact me with bug reports if you play it; unfortunately, I'm a bit reluctant to tinker with it anymore!

The game is strongly related to the content of my essay, Denying Individual Efficacy, so if you're wondering what it all means, you might like to read it.

FollowingAStar

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:35:00 GMT

TheBibleRetold: a Christmas special! This interactive fiction game follows the classic stories of the birth of Jesus. Play Balthasar, one of the Three Wise Men of the Orient, who has to ready the gifts for the newborn.

13th place in IFComp 2010.

Download the latest (post-comp) version
See the IFDB entry

With massive thanks to Tim Simmons for the excellent artwork below.

IFComp

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 10:34:00 GMT

The Interactive Fiction Competition is a competition for interactive fiction, surprisingly enough.

With Celestianpower, The Bible Retold came 21st (out of 43) in 2006.
FerrousRing came 11th (out of 27) in 2007.
FollowingAStar came 13th (out of 26) in 2010.

Tribulation and Wrath

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 14:30:00 GMT

A foray into some sort of symphonic metal choral electronica religious rock thing. It is based on the Christian eschatological concepts of the Tribulation and Wrath from the Book of Revelation, in which the anti-Christ rules the world while God destroys it in various fiery and torturous ways, culminating in the pouring of seven bowls of His wrath upon the scarred earth and the slaughtering of all surviving humans by Jesus Christ himself (using a sword that protrudeth from his mouth and with the help of an army of 200 million angels), whereupon the fowls feast on their flesh. Like the Book of Revelation, this piece has a weird looping structure and contains lots of things that make no sense. Unlike Revelation, however, it doesn't have any arcane numerical symbolism.

The Tribulation and Wrath are technically followed by a period called the Millennium and then by the new kingdom of God, which could be the subjects of further pieces, but I don't intend to rise to the challenge - hence the "Incomplete Revelation Suite".

I give credit to Bjorn Eriksson for the sounds of the twittering birds, from SoundTransit under the CC Attribution licence.

Download - but beware, the ending may be somewhat... ear-burning.

StyleSheet

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 14:27:00 GMT

.siteTitle {
display:block;
margin-left:40%;
}

.headerForeground {
display:none;
}

.headerShadow {
padding: 1em 0em 0.5em 0.5em;
}

.selected .tagging, .selected .tagged {
color:#000;
}

displayArea {
margin-top:-10px;
margin-left:14%;
width:65%;
}

mainMenu {
width:10%;
}

sidebar {
left:80%;
}

sidebarTabs {
width:20em;
}

sidebarOptions {
color:#fff;
width:10em;
}

sidebarOptions .sliderPanel a {
color:#fff;
}

sidebarOptions .sliderPanel a:hover {
color:#000;
background:#8bf;
text-decoration:underline;
}

.sliderPanel a:hover {
text-decoration:underline;
background: #fff;
}

a {
color:#fff;
text-decoration:underline;
}

a:hover {
background:#8bf;
text-decoration:underline;
}

.popup {
background:fff;
}

p, div {
font-size:104%;
}

commandPanel {
background-color:#3344ff;
}

img { padding:5px; }

Extended Secret

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 14:11:00 GMT

Intentionally quirky.

Download

Caprice

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 14:04:00 GMT

Short and faintly jazzy.

Download

The Great Widescreen Swindle

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 10:26:00 GMT

Consider the following mathematical problem.

For the two rectangles as shown, you are given the following:

You are given also that the length of the diagonal, d, of the two rectangles is the same. The question is, which of the rectangles has the larger area?

We can restate this by observing that the length of the wider rectangle is 8p and the height 5p, since this expresses the fact that the ratio of the length to the height is 8:5. Similarly, the other rectangle has length 4q and height 3q.

By Pythagoras, (4q)²+(3q)² = 25q² = d²
and (8p)² + (5p)² = 89p² = d²

The area of the wider rectangle, xy, is 40p² and the other's, ab, is 12q².

Since p² = d² / 89, xy = 40d² / 89
Similarly, ab = 12d² / 25

We can now express ab in terms of xy:
ab = 267xy / 250

Thus, the area of a 4:3 rectangle with diagonal length d is always 17/250 (about 7%) larger than a 16:10 rectangle of the same diagonal length d. In other words, a d-inch widescreen screen is always smaller than a d-inch non-widescreen screen.

This, of course, allows laptop manufacturers to cut the cost of the LCD screen while making it sound as though there is no loss to the consumer because the diagonal length is the same. In fact, it might even sound better to the consumer because of the chic factor associated with the word 'widescreen', attributable to its use in modern cinema.

(Some screens have an aspect ratio of 16:9. For a given diagonal, they have an area 12% lower than their 4:3 counterparts.)

But this is not the only issue here. With a net loss of area for a given diagonal, widescreens give you slightly more width at the expense of height. Having used a widescreen monitor on my 17" iMac for some time now, I consider this to be less inefficient for many purposes. This website, like most websites, for example, is designed to be viewed as a vertical column. In fact, all printed written documents are designed as vertical columns*. Imagine a block of text that stretches across a widescreen or a landscape piece of paper: when you get to the end of a line you'd have to move your gaze a long distance to get right the way back to the beginning of the next line, and it wouldn't be particularly comfortable. Indeed, I have noticed that when viewing web pages or documents on my widescreen, the content is in a strip in the middle and a large amount of the screen (often 60% or more) is utterly wasted, and you have to scroll down more often. Anything involving the reading or writing of textual content - web browsing, e-mails, word-processing, programming etc. - will be better off with a smaller width and a bigger height, so widescreen screens aren't as good for these purposes.

The main reason I got the iMac was to do video editing. Since video editing software has a horizontal timeline, and since video nowadays is often shot in a widescreen format, widescreen is arguably more useful. And obviously widescreens are better for watching widescreen movies.

For any other purposes, such as image manipulation, desktop publishing, gaming, spreadsheets etc. it would appear (from scanning various blog/forum posts, if you want to be specific) that opinions differ. Some people prefer widescreen and some people don't. Some people point out that widescreen laptops have a larger footprint, and may be less comfortable on one's lap.

What is the Great Widescreen Swindle? It is the fact that, flying in the face of the foregoing, every single model of laptop nowadays is widescreen. Non-widescreen laptops have been completely phased out. I would have expected there to be a choice - you know, "consumer choice" - between wide and non-wide, based on the kind of usage considerations outlined above. But no - by using marketing ploys suggesting that widescreen is bigger and better, they have managed to cut their costs across the board and eliminate one aspect (get it?) of genuine choice.

The situation becomes almost laughable when you look at the situation with so-called netbooks. The name netbook suggests that their primary use is supposed to be for browsing the net. So, widescreen isn't really suitable is it? But again, we find that there is currently no netbook on the market that isn't widescreen (this one having been discontinued). The funny thing is - as could have been expected - people were very sceptical about the usability of the first wave of 7" netbooks, championed by the Asus Eee PC. Netbook makers responded by releasing ones with bigger screens - 9" and 10". I speculate that if they had merely made a 4:3 screen of 7" then the usability would have been much better received, and, ironically enough, they would have saved money! (I can also confirm this from my experience, having used both a widescreen and non-widescreen netbook both with screen diagonals of 7".)

Here's an example of a marketing statement I saw in relation to a widescreen Acer laptop:
"A wide-aspect 15.4" screen provides 30 percent more viewing area than traditional 4:3 XGA displays, for additional space and more windows"
This statement is technically true, but only because they specify that the 4:3 display they are comparing with is XGA. XGA refers to the screen resolution: 1024x768, and indeed, the widescreen version of XGA called WXGA has a resolution roughly 30% greater than 1024x768. So: although a 15.4" widescreen screen is actually smaller than a 4:3 one, it can give you greater space if they use a higher resolution. But equally, they could just use a higher resolution on a 4:3 screen too.

[In the past, 15" screens on laptops did have 1024x768 resolutions, but then they started using resolutions of 1400x1050 and even 1600x1200 at the more expensive end of the spectrum. So, these older laptops often had higher resolutions than the newer ones, for which 1280x800 seems to be the most popular. In fact, 1280x800 seems to be the most popular resolution for screens sizes of 13.3", 14", 15" and even 16". Some 15" laptops nowadays sport a resolution of 1366x768 (which is an aspect ratio of 16:9) and some have a resolution of 1440x900. 17" laptops tend to have a resolution of 1440x900 at the cheaper end and 1920x1200 at the most expensive end. Let's compare the areas. The following chart shows the percentage area difference relative to the widescreen formats:

As we can see, the 4:3 resolution of 1600x1200 is more spacious than all but the most expensive widescreen resolution, which is only available on (heavier) 17" models, whereas 1600x1200 used to be available on 15" screens.]

What about scripts that are written in columns from top to bottom (e.g. Japanese or traditional Mongolian)?

Approaching Tribulation

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:07:00 GMT

Strings, a harp, a piano, a double bass, a choir... drums and an electric guitar! This is part of the 'Incomplete Revelation Suite'; the sequel is Tribulation and Wrath.

Download

Corfizz

DefaultTiddlers

Update

Hello

Green screening

Audio

Visitors to the Temple

Video

Software

TheBreadAndTheFishes

TheBibleRetold

FerrousRing

FollowingAStar

IFComp

Links

Tribulation and Wrath

StyleSheet

Extended Secret

Caprice

The Great Widescreen Swindle

Approaching Tribulation