http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog web design, viral animation and game development - based in Scotland Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:00:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Soon after baby Ewan was born I thought it would be fun to design a custom skateboard for him.  I've been into skateboards since I was 14 and always thought it would be fun to come up with my own design.  Ewan gave me the inspiration for a design, so ... http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog/index.php/2010/02/10/babys-first-skateboard/ About six months ago (best man) Scott gave me an LCD projector that he had spare.  It's a 3M MP8640 - a big, heavy office projector that originally cost about £3,500 when it was made back in early 2000.   Ten years on it still does a pretty good job, so ... http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog/index.php/2010/01/02/diary-of-a-new-garage-part-6/ With winter on the way, one thing I really had to sort out was heating for the garage, especially on the summer house side.  The insulation in the walls and ceiling is working well, but with outdoor temperatures dropping to single digits I really needed something to raise the temperature ... http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog/index.php/2009/10/19/diary-of-a-new-garage-part-5/ At 2pm on Monday we took heraldscotland.com out of public beta and directed all of our traffic from www.theherald.co.uk and www.sundayherald.com to the new site. We ran the beta for just over a month during which time approx 10% of our regular online readership switched over to the new site.  This ... http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog/index.php/2009/09/10/heraldscotlandcom-loses-beta-badge-goes-fully-public/ I took a few photos of the garage last night.  All the photos below are clickable to a larger high-res version. The summer house side View from the sofa The garage side As you can see, organising everything on the garage side is still an ongoing project, but at least everything is now undercover ... http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog/index.php/2009/08/19/diary-of-a-new-garage-part-4/ It's been a while since the last update, but a lot has happened in that time.   We now have power, insulation, flooring and even some guttering. Picking up from where I was last time, the electrician came out and fitted a consumer unit to power the ring main and lighting circuits.  ... http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog/index.php/2009/08/18/diary-of-a-new-garage-part-3/ I've recently completed a new IT exhibit for Glasgow Science Centre called The Animator.   The exhibit allows visitors to create their own Wallace & Gromit style stop-motion animations using a built-in camera and a simple touch-screen interface.   The key with this one was absolute simplicity.  All commercial stop-motion applications have tons of features ... http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog/index.php/2009/08/18/new-exhibit-the-animator/ We finally flicked the switch tonight on our first Polopoly-powered site!  Heraldscotland.com is now officially a public beta, running in parallel with the main Herald and Sunday Herald sites for the next couple of weeks while we train everyone up on the new system. More details to follow when I have ... http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog/index.php/2009/07/28/new-site-launch-heraldscotlandcom/ Today is erection day!  The site for the garage was cleared just over a week ago and today - bang on schedule - the new garage turned up on the back of a flatbed truck.   The company brought a team of five guys to nail it together and by noon they had finished the ... http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog/index.php/2009/07/01/diary-of-a-new-garage-part-2/ When we bought our house back in 2003 it had a fairly typical wood & concrete garage.   It was old and shabby, but we put in some shelving and worktop to make it more useful.  Then, in the Winter of 2007/08, it finally started to give in to the elements ... http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/blog/index.php/2009/06/20/diary-of-a-new-garage-part-1/