Scattered Notes from the end of the year

The holidays flew by, but here’s a quick look at how we spent part of it — amazingly, we almost all got together at one point or another. It’s been way too long! Right before everyone arrived home, Hiba reviews the t-shirt project … already changed again from the image above.

Rosina and Hiba took another look at the t-shirt phrasing, while simultaneously pulling together a small window installation.

Also, we made our first full-size work from the drafts we did a few weeks back.

We can’t wait to do some more of these! Above, Hiba lays the vinyl over the black background.

Bunting installation at the window.

Holidays.

Call to resolve, made with our little bunting app.

Call to resolve: Participate and Be Patient.

You saw our bunting app, right? This was a first draft of the little graphic.

Also, working on the installation for an upcoming show. Hardware.

Then, the holiday party!

Then, back to the studio, working on hardware for the hearts.

Michelle and Sara.

Karlyn, back from the west, and Hiba.

Josh Babcock + JB Weld.

Michelle’s adventures at the hardware store.

New vinyl.

Planning.

Hardware assembly.

It failed, the first time.

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Second try, with acrylic.

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The gap.

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Scars.

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Notes for a form. We’re finalizing things for this t-shirt project. You’re going to participate, right?!

 

Acrylic and Aluminum Laser Cuts & Drift V2 ready for review, plus notes on AJAX problems + solutions

One of the best things ever is receiving a bunch of laser cut material in the mail. That means, today wound down with one of these best things. We’ve ordered through Ponoko in the past and we’re continually surprised with how an Illustrator drawing can turn into a physical object so easily. Yes, above that is laser cut aluminum.

Sharp edges! Remember these mock-ups we did a few weeks ago? Well, these are a lot bigger! The aluminum is also really scratched. Hadn’t realized it would be like that, but also not a big deal for our purposes. I guess there wasn’t any kind of protective sheeting like the acrylic, I’m sure that has something to do with it.

And we also cut mirrored acrylic — so mirrory under that protective sheet! Really excited to peel the entire thing.

The acrylic was also etched from behind.

I can’t give away the entire thing in full scale just yet … but soon. And of course, this all comes just in time for a cold snap here in Windsor.

Also, I’ve been putting in some time to try and get Drift v2 up and running. See that new icon…?

And now, a new loading screen too. But, of course, that’s not all. This update fixes some major stability issues and adds sharing functions for Twitter (so you can tweet each step in your Drift) and email export (so you can get your Drift ready to repost on your blog of choice!). These extra functions are made possible through the fantastic set of plugins for Phonegap / Cordova.

Here’s something worth noting, in case someone as confused as I was stumbles across this page as they’re struggling to make their Phonegap / Cordova + Javascript + HTML app work. I’m not sure why this broke, or if in fact it was a combination of other webkit changes in iOS 6, but something was definitely causing Drift to cache queries and returned data. This created a mess for trying to do just about anything in the app.

While I was working to try to get the Twitter and Email composer plugins working, I realized this caching issue may have been happening on a far more frequent basis than I had imagined. So, after some digging (and unfortunately I’ve lost track of exactly where I found it), but it seemed like the jQuery ajax function was caching the ajax call. So, below, please note the cache : false settings. As per the jQuery manual, this forces requested pages not to be cached by the browser. Setting cache to false also appends a query string parameter, “_=[TIMESTAMP]”, to the URL.

And, just for the record, I updated all ajax calls in Drift (which is basically the entire core functionality, with these ajax calls connecting with a bunch of php scripts and classes), as below:

$.ajax({
type: 'GET',
url: '',
cache : false,
data: data,
beforeSend:function(){
},

The good news is that after four days of trying to pick up where I left off with Drift earlier in the summer and another update to iOS and Xcode, here’s the payoff…

Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 8.22.14 PM

I also had to revoke certificates, as the updates to Xcode and my own screw-ups along the way of starting a new Xcode project and initially renaming the app (adding a -v2 to the end of the bundle name), but finally, it comes together.

Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 8.22.31 PM

Drift being uploaded for review…

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And now, we wait!

Also, I’m very excited to get back to CIVIC SPACE, it’s been a busy five days. Monday night we wrapped up with the last All Tomorrow’s Problems for the year … and here’s the gist of what we came up with:

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Anyone check out Skills for Good(s) with Arturo tonight?!

Laser Cut Acrylic Extraction Process & Lunch Time French Lesson

Hiba started working with the laser cut acrylic, pulling apart the excess that we won’t need when we make the cast.

We’ll be creating a rubber mould from the positive of the acrylic.

The excess, the negative.

Hiba carefully placing some letters pulled off their base.

Careful work.

Then, Kiki came by to give us a French lesson, or maybe a lesson in Quebec politics.

This might be my most favourite way to learn French ever.

Kiki showed us some really interesting examples of the play on words that have shaped some of the discussions around the Red Square movement in Quebec.

Some of the vocabulary we learned today. We’re going to do this again later this week, and hopefully convince Kiki to offer a short course here at CIVIC SPACE by the end of it.

Currently, Josh and Hiba sit across from me, we’re going to go play now.

Some Laser Cut Acrylic for New Project (unboxing)

Just unboxed our laser cut acrylic from Ponoko for a new project we’ll be working on over the summer. We started some really early brainstorming on this over six months ago, so it feels really great to finally be moving it forward. Above, the back of the piece of acrylic.

The front, with the protecting masking tape-like cover (which also holds it together).

Turn around time wasn’t too bad, probably a couple of weeks from order to arrival. Very impressed with the quality though, as I was a little worried about the details potentially getting lost in the smaller text, but as far as I can tell, all the details are there!

Maybe we’ll start on the next phase of this project next week?