Over the course of the last 20 years I’ve done a fair bit of game development. Starting in Asymetrix ToolBook in the early 1990s, I then moved onto Macromedia Flash, Adobe Flex and OpenCV as each of those platforms evolved to be the cutting-edge of high-quality, rapid app development. In that period I developed dozens of interactiveContinue reading “HTML5 Game Development: Tennent's Arcade”
Author Archives: Grant
Positively Scottish: solutions journalism that I'm proud to be part of
Earlier this week my friend and Herald ex-colleague Calum Macdonald launched Positively Scottish, a brand new site for Scotland focussing on positive news. Aside from the core concept of positive, actionable news which I wholeheartedly buy into, I also love that all of the contributing writers are being paid market rates for their content, giving aspiringContinue reading “Positively Scottish: solutions journalism that I'm proud to be part of”
Another set of awards for Bright Signals
Last night at the Marketing Society Star Awards in Edinburgh Bright Signals won another brace of awards. We scored a Bronze award in the Integrated Marketing category, Gold in the Advertising category (along with our partner agencies on Tennent’s) and a solo Gold for Digital Communication. It’s that last one I’m personally most proud of — aContinue reading “Another set of awards for Bright Signals”
My Raspberry Pi cameras at Sport Relief
For this year’s Sport Relief, the BBC created an epic 57-hour game of Five-a-Side football outside their MediaCity HQ in Salford. As our contribution to this charitable cause, Bright Signals offered to install the Raspberry Pi-powered camera system I’d recently designed. I wrote some custom software for the BBC system and designed a unique laser-cutContinue reading “My Raspberry Pi cameras at Sport Relief”
Slippery Email scales up – over 1,000,000 messages handled
In the summer of 2014 I started a side-project, Slippery Email. The aim was of the site was simple — to make the world’s fastest and easiest way to create a burner email box that could be used to avoid spam and keep your primary inbox clean. Over the course of winter 2014 I honedContinue reading “Slippery Email scales up – over 1,000,000 messages handled”
New host, fingers crossed!
After over a decade of hosting my site from home, I’ve decided to move it to Digital Ocean. Hosting from home has generally worked well for me over the years, but it’s a level of hassle that I can do without – especially when a virtual server costs just $5/month these days. So… today isContinue reading “New host, fingers crossed!”
Tennent's T5s is alive!
A couple of months ago I helped the guys at Bright Signals prototype a new automated video capture, edit and upload technology for amateur sports. The prototype worked really well and I’m pleased to see it already deployed at several five-a-side football pitches around Glasgow. Here’s a short piece from STV’s Riverside Show introducing theContinue reading “Tennent's T5s is alive!”
A little piracy can be a good thing: what regional press can learn from Hollywood
Earlier this month, Tom Thomson and I were invited to speak at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. It was a really interesting event with lots of great questions and participation from those attending. If anyone wants to hear it, the session is online at the University of Oxford site.
GoDaddy vs DigitalOcean: a real-world comparison of budget hosting
Four months ago I had an idea for a one-click, read-only burner email service that could be used for application testing, privacy, anti-spam, etc, etc. The Beta service is live at Slippery Email and you can read more about the thought process behind it here. Update 9th October 2014: An interesting wave of feedbackContinue reading “GoDaddy vs DigitalOcean: a real-world comparison of budget hosting”
Fisher Price Talking Chatter Smartphone
The Chatter Telephone is a classic Fisher Price toy that has been sold since 1962. The design has evolved over the years, but in 2010 the original ‘classic’ Chatter phone was brought back into the limelight in the Disney / Pixar film Toy Story 3 where the phone helped Woody escape from Sunnyside Daycare. ToContinue reading “Fisher Price Talking Chatter Smartphone”
Grant Gibson 