And my conclusion: CANVAS IS AMAZING! Seriously.

I wrote a simple game in canvas. The aim is to destroy the ball. As you click on the ball to destroy it, smaller balls appear. Destroying the smallest balls, finishes the game! Play NOW!

I wrote another little script to draw gradients in canvas. This was fun. By clicking on any part of the gradient you can change the page background. I used this script along with the game to change the colours of the balls while the game in in play. Have fun with it!

To start of, I created a single tile and filled it with #ff5f44 (the theme colour of the website). You can fill your tiles with any colours you like and also apply pretty patterns / gradients / overlays, etc. I the created the six layers by copying and pasting the tile as follows. Each layer should be an individual Photoshop layer.

Then copy and pasted the layers from 0 to 5 and back down to 1. This is so that when the layers are animated, and the animation looped, it forms a continuous animation by looping through each layer and showing a continuous equalizer.

To animate the layers, click on Window -> Animation and an animation panel appears near the bottom of the interface.

Click on the little icon near the top right of the animation panel and click ‘Make Frames From Layers’ to create all the frames, quickly.

You should now see all the frames. Each frame has a frame duration, in seconds, written under it. Select all the frames and change the duration to 0.1 seconds.

Click File -> Save for Web and Devices, and select GIF as the file format. Set Animation Looping Options to Forever and save your beautiful new equalizer.

You can play around with different colours, gradients, overlays and even images for the equalizer tiles. You can also have a lot more frames, change frame durations, etc. I just needed a simple equalizer for a gif icon. I created a 1794 x 664 gif, which I’m going to resize down to just 81 x 30.

I’m running at least twice a week. The longest distance run so far is 6 miles, at a pace of 10:21 min/mile. This sort of pace will mean a finish time of under 5 hours. I’d quite like to finish under 4 hours. So, am aiming for around the 7-8 min/mile mark.

Last Monday (26th Nov), I ran 3 miles in 20:34, at a pace of 6:51 min/mile and was quite happy with that. Another run, on Friday, this time running 5.5 miles at a pace of 7:06 min/mile, which again is great!

Live near the top of a hill at the moment, so whichever route I decide to take, I still have to run back up to the top. This I hope, pays off during the marathon.

Have raised more than £200! Thank you for all your generous donations to Association for International Cancer Research! Keep them coming =)

You can donate here at http://virginmoneygiving.com/mansimransingh. All proceeds go to AICR, helping fund the fight against cancer, globally!

But, there has been some improvement. I ran the same distance, same route again tonight, and completed in 22:39 minutes. That’s brings the pace down to under 8 minutes a mile.

With my Sheffield Muay Thai Interclub this Sunday (25th November), I’m managing training for both. The next run (third run), will be on Friday (23rd November) and I will be running 5.5 miles aiming for around 45-50 minutes, that’s a pace of around 9 minutes a mile.

Thank you for all the donations so far!

Keep donating to Association for International Cancer Research (AICR) generously here at: http://virginmoneygiving.com/mansimransingh

On 17th March 2013 I will be running the Barcelona Marathon, raising money for Association for International Cancer Research (AICR).

This is actually happening, the whole 26 miles of it!

I’ve never run a marathon before, in fact the furthest I’ve run is about 6 miles, so 26 miles will be quite a challenge.

I will be following a strict 16 week training programme and will post updates regularly.

With enough blood, sweat and tears (mostly sweat though) AND YOUR GENEROUS DONATIONS, we can make this happen!

PLEASE DONATE online at http://virginmoneygiving.com/mansimransingh

Thank you!

Do you use Twitter’s blogger.js on your site for twitter feeds? Recently, two of the websites I had worked on stopped displaying the Twitter feeds.

After a quick search on Twitter’s API its caused by a change in Twitter URLs…

From:

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/msingh_5.json?callback=twitterCallback2&count=10

To:

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=msingh_5&callback=twitterCallback2&count=10

A quick and easy fix to your non-functional Twitter feed!

While working on a website recently, I was looking for solutions to “turn off the lights” while watching videos. I found two decent solutions. One was based on a jQuery script while the others were a set of browser plugins.

I needed something which didn’t rely on any javascript libraries, worked within the website and was light!

To use this solution simply add the following code to the <head> section of the page and then use the onclick=”lightSwitch();” event on any supported HTML tag and add an empty div with id=”shadow” anywhere on the page!

Vied the demo!

<style>
div#shadow {
        background:#000;
	filter: alpha(opacity=70); /* internet explorer */
	-khtml-opacity: 0.7;      /* khtml, old safari */
	-moz-opacity: 0.7;       /* mozilla, netscape */
	opacity: 0.7;           /* fx, safari, opera */
	z-index:9998;
        width:100%;
       position:fixed;
       top:0;
       left:0;
       height:0px;}

span.light-switch{cursor:pointer; z-index:9999;}
</style>

<script type="text/javascript">
function getDocHeight() {
    var D = document;
    return Math.max(
        Math.max(D.body.scrollHeight, D.documentElement.scrollHeight),
        Math.max(D.body.offsetHeight, D.documentElement.offsetHeight),
        Math.max(D.body.clientHeight, D.documentElement.clientHeight)
    ) + "px";
}

function lightSwitch() {
if (document.getElementById('shadow').offsetHeight == 0){
document.getElementById("shadow").style.height = getDocHeight(); }
else { var h = 0 + "px";
document.getElementById("shadow").style.height = h; }}

</script> 

Haven’t paid much attention to the Easy-Logo script for a while now. For a long time I had been planning to make the script more user friendly and I guess this is much much better.

Update features:
Added support for folder structure.
Added support for easy logo installation.
Easier to use UI.
Doesn’t require any back-end script editing.
One click install/use.

The easiest way to get this script running is to have a local installation of an apache server. Then all that needs doing is dropping the script in your web directory and you’re ready to go! Place all your folders containing photos that need to be logo’d in the ‘photos’ folder and change the parameters as required.

DOWNLOAD NOW!

This php script uses the GD library which comes with the default php installation.

Planned upgrades for future releases include:

A better looking UI.

Feedback while watermarking images. (probably using AJAX)

Better logos, photos and folder management.

On 12th March 2012, the Sheffield University Muay Thai club made their way down to Raw Physique in Nottingham in an epic minibus!

More about the minibus later.

With my second interclub fight in less than two weeks (20th May 2012, Wicker Camp) , I thought I’ll write about my first one. As the nottingham interclub was my first, I didn’t really know what to expect. I stepped into the ring thinking it was just going to be like the sparring sessions that I’d been doing with the Sheffield club, but of course not, this was a fight. And there were two of them for me!

After the weigh in, it was game on. Three 1.5min rounds and it was soon game over for the spectators. But those 9 mins (I fought twice)  fighting seemed liked the longest minutes of my life. The first round of the first fight, I did not have a clue what I was doing; I was all over the place. Less fighting, more dancing around the ring. All good fun?

I took the second and the third rounds a bit more seriously, knowing that the other guy was taking this a bit too serious: with my guard up, and the definite height advantage, I remember throwing some good kicks in. Getting up close into a clinch and BAMM! I was stopped. I was given a warning for nearly kneeing the guy in the head. WHAT? It wasn’t my fault he decided that the best way to get out of the clinch was to get under it and try slip out… foolish much? Soon it was over. A good first fight.

I had badly, badly bruised my left shin. Earlier that week, I’d dropped a flight case on that leg while working with the Technical Services Committee to put on Space (Friday night disco at the Octagon). That hurt. It had left a bump and a scar. With a badly bruised shin, after the fight I sat on a bench using whatever cold thing I could find (water bottle? a can of diet coke?) and applying it to the bruised area. I wasn’t going to disappoint the second guy by not stepping into the ring in half an hour!

The second fight was much better. I was tired, I was injured but this time I knew what I was doing. I’d learnt from my first fight not to give the other guy the time to think. Pulling out longer combinations and dangerous kicks, I stopped the fight in round 2. The other guy’s nose was bleeding and I was in no mood to getting any of the blood on my gloves. With that cleaned up, we carried on through the third round and there I was, having just fought two different people in my first ever interclub fight.

That feeling of stepping into the ring is something that I’ve never felt before. It was amazing. The adrenaline, the blood, the battered shin. Amazing.

And no, I haven’t forgot about the minibus. The minibus was full of tech. It wasn’t a minibus, it was a media/entertainment room on 4 wheels. On board were 2 x 14” JBL subs …4 x 7” LCDs …1 x 18” LCD …5 x surround sound JBLs …PS2 …4 trays of DVDs and Games …the most legendary minibus I’ve ever been on !!

Anyway, my second interclub is only 13 days away. BRING IT ON! This time I’ll have someone filming the fight, so I need to make sure I pull out some head kicks lol and look good on the camera.

The results? Well it was an interclub so ‘no winners/losers’, but instead I like to say…  Of course I won both the fights.

Some more photos from the Nottingham Interclub…