Tarique Naseem

Rich Gibson, a fellow twitterer, overheard a conversation between two people. One of them stated that they had stopped using twitter as it made the smart people they knew sound stupid.

I thought it was an interesting point, but never thought much about it at the time. That is until I started to redesign my site. I decided to add a Twitter badge to my main page, displaying my latest tweets. However, within a few minutes of it going live, I clicked through my tweets and shockingly discovered that I did in fact come across as rather dull and sometimes just plain stupid! I have since removed it, you’ll be pleased to know.

This prompted me to analyse a number of tweets, not only from myself, but from my other contacts and, although it’s a great way to keep abreast of what they are thinking or doing, the banality of the majority of the posts is quite evident! In fact, one member of my family, who shall remain nameless, frequently twitters about being bored. I mean, how dull do you want to get?

My tweets are generally for the consumption of friends and family and, as I have a reputation for blurting out anything that enters my deranged mind, it’s a great way of playing to my audience, and good fun to boot! And that’s part of the problem; it’s like thinking aloud, and can become a little self-indulgent at times. As soon as something you deem to be interesting happens, you grab your phone and type away, with little thought about any consequences of what you’re saying. It’s far too easy and addictive.

However, as I have now acquired new followers, some of whom are business contacts, it’s forcing me to actually think before I twitter, in case I really do say something stupid! As such, some of my tweets are now work related (yawn), ironically making me sound even duller than before.

It makes you wonder though how your use of Twitter might affect your reputation with your contacts who barely know you. In fact, I wonder what opinion they have of me already? A worrying thought :)

If you really must, my twitter page is here.

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The Innovative Technologies Centre, the people behind the Wow Academy, approached me to develop a VR demonstrator that they could show off to their funding partners, which include Yorkshire Forward and the LSE. It was to be used as part of an overall demonstration to secure further funding for future projects.

After discussions with the client on the project specification, it was decided to base the demo on the Apollo 11 lunar landing, utilising immersive VR technology. This particular theme was chosen as it would be the first project to be fully developed should funding be secured.

The major challenge with the project was the tight time constraints imposed (3 weeks!). Within this time period I had to develop a basic game engine, create the 3D assets, and add in hardware support for various VR peripherals, amongst other tasks - A tall order for any developer!

Various open-source SDK’s were utilised in the development of the game engine, including the Ogre3D graphics SDK, the ODE physics library and the OpenAL audio API.

For the assets I decided to scour Turbosquid for suitable 3D models, and found a highly detailed pack designed by the excellent PerspectX. However, these high resolution models had to be converted for real-time use, as they were originally created for pre-rendered scenes. There was quite a bit of work with this alone, as it required polygon reduction and the re-working of the materials, utilising pixel and vertex shaders.

After 3 weeks of (very) hard work, the project was completed on time and budget. The client was delighted with the results, especially considering the short time scale. I celebrated by having a full nights sleep… and then some :)

You can view more screenshots of the project in the portfolio section.

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Those astute of you will have noticed that my site is undergoing some changes. It’s becoming more of a portfolio, as it’s time I re-branded myself. :)

It’s long overdue actually, as I’ve noticed some very prominent people starting to take an interest in me, so I need to tidy up around here and be all grown up - only a bit mind.

The site is still in a state of transition, and some sections will still be broken; so please bear with me for a little longer…

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