Projects

The following is a timeline of all the random projects I’ve been involved with.

MobileSword (2011-Present)

After university, I moved back to Bristol and fell (by chance) into iPhone development, working for Intelligenti. After a year, I decided to freelance under a company called MobileSword.

Accelormatix / TangibleFX (2010-Present)

Accelormatix (as it was originally known) came from a walk through Bristol, where Mr. Woodnote – a street performer, was making tunes as a 1-man-band using a bunch of effects pedals. This inspired an idea to make a full-bodied accelerometer suit for my final year thesis, attempting to emulate his set-up. I entered a new enterprise competition and came runner-up, winning £7,500 and a free patent.

At the same time my good friend Dan Newton conducted similar research into sensors and sound augmentation. His thesis was published in NIME magazine and he even flew out to sunny Portugal to collect a reward for his work.

The suit was a bit crazy, so after university, during the ‘what now?’ time, I simplified it into a musical baseball cap. After moving back to Bristol, a short demo with David May led me to meet Jonathan May – an electronics enthusiast and UK table football champion.

Once we became a team, Dan decided to change our name to something much better – TangibleFX.

After some enthusiastic pitches to the Horatio Investment Group and PMT Music, we decided to rethink the cap idea; some people thought it was a gimmick and others didn’t feel comfortable wearing it. We eventually refined the hat’s design into The TangibleFX MIDI-Moov.

And off we went.

Bill Fish (Late 2010)

I forged a cartoon about a curious little fish (christened Bill Fish) that can be seen everywhere throughout my final year university notes. I’m not really sure what it’s about, but you can check it out here. It seemed to stop dead after a good friend of mine decided to make a spoof aiming to kill him off – but is he dead? Time will only tell.

Lazee Student (2008-2010)

I attempted to make a website that sold custom pictures of people lazing around. I started drawing people in lectures who looked as hung over as me and eventually coined a style that looked kind of lazy. Eventually people could send in their pictures to get them drawn in this scribbly style for a fee. Again, I implemented Google checkout, but never really promoted it – it just stayed in cyberspace for a (long) while.

Eventually I made a portfolio and took it to various independent Bristol clothing shops. However, they didn’t like them, so I gave up with the whole becoming a world-famous fashion designer thing.

Lastly, I got the designs printed at a place called Niche and gave them to 1loveArt, an urban Bristol art shop. However, I don’t think they ever sold…

So now I just use Lazee Student as a dumping ground for my weird imagination.

The Crew Game (2008)

I attempted to make a massive online multi-player game with a university mate. We spent about a month coding the whole game in PHP, Javascript and HTML. It looked great and had potential, but university work eventually got the better of us, so we called it a day. The domain has since expired – life moves on.

Mizando (Late 2007)

I decided to take on Google by making a custom home page called Mizando. The idea was that you could add custom links on your home page without logging in by using some crazy cookie system coded rather horrifically. It was all an attempt to gain money using Google Ads, but it never really happened – I’m still waiting for the £60 Google cheque! However, some people did use it, much to the dismay of my  flatmate (whose mates kept banging on about it). The domain has since expired – life moves on.

UniHoodies (2007)

I attempted to make a company that sold custom designed hoodies and t-shirts. However, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing… Either way, I ended up learning how to make a website (hosted by a mate at Vurta), figured out how to use Google checkout and made some (sort-of) funky hoody designs. The domain has since expired – life moves on.