I had a Logitech mm28 NXT speaker for about 4 years. It was great, amazing battery life, good sound (up to a certain point), portable etc… However it broke a few months a go (due to me dropping it on a concrete floor)  and I didn’t know what to get as a replacement. I was thinking about getting the same one again but I found out they don’t make them any more.

I did some hunting and there really wasn’t much choice. They all seemed to be either really tacky looking, too big, too expensive or had poor reviews.. that was until I came to the X-mini on Amazon. At only £12 I wasn’t expecting much but then I started reading the reviews.. Currently on Amazon there is 1011 reviews nearly all 5*! I couldn’t believe it, so I thought I might as well give it a shot and see for myself.

When I got it out the packaging I was instantly surprise at how well build it is. I was expecting some cheap light weight toy but its defiantly not. It feels solid and has a nice weight about it. I was even more surprised when I plugged it in and started playing a tune. I couldn’t quite believe that something so small was producing sound as good as it was.

Below you can see the the built in 3.5 jack plugged into my iPhone. This also gives you a sense of scale. By twisting the top half a couple of degrees CCW it pops up increases the size of the speaker which provides better bass.

A bright blue light signals that the device is on. There is also a volume dial near the power switch.

What I like about this speaker is that it has an internal rechargeable battery that charges of a mini USB port. The speaker also comes with a mini USB splitter that allows you to charge the device and play music off a longer cord. This also allows you to plug the jack from the speaker into another X-mini meaning you can daisy chain a few of them together theoretically increasing the volume.

Over all this is one of the best value products I own. It’s not often a company actually really thinks about the functionality of a product and pulls it off. If you’re looking for a small, good quality, cheap, portable speaker then look no further. I promise you wont regret it…

Last couple of weeks I’ve been rinsing the online stores and my bank account. I decided this year I would finally buy my own snowboard kit as renting it was starting to add up and didn’t really seem worth it. My friend Joe goes to Imperial College in London and is head of the snow committee.

One of the perks of this meant he could get Rome snowboards at stock price. I originally chose the Rome Pusher but unfortunately they were out of stock so I settled with my second choice the 156 Postermania. The graphics are a little strange and wouldn’t normally be my preferred choice but for a current season board at nearly £220 less than RRP I cannot complain! I also ordered some Burton mission bindings. Apparently these are pretty decent for that price range. My spending spree also included a new Helmet, Goggles, Board bag and Jacket.

Any way here it is my first complete board.. I cannot wait to hit the slopes!

I found that you can generate a fractal in After Effects the other day.. I couldn’t resist having a little play. Here’s what I created… Be warned the video is ever so lightly trippy :p

Fractalorama from Rob Antill on Vimeo.

Load up After Effects.

Create a New Composition. You can use these settings..

Anywhere in the comp window Right Click > New > Soild… > Click Ok

Right Click the newly generated Layer then Effect > Generate > Fractal

You should see something like the image below.

Go into the settings tab on the left.

By clicking the equation roll out you can generate different patterns.

If you want to animate the zoom effect like my video check the stopwatch on the left next to the magnification slider.

Now in the time line move the slider to 20 seconds for example and increase the zoom amount. As you zoom in change the position of the x(reel) and Y(Imaginary) making sure your always zooming in on one spot. and not just blackness. Watch out though the further you zoom in the smaller the amount you need to enter in the x and Y values. It takes a bit of playing around to get it working correctly!

Once you’ve set it up and happy with the way it looks Click Composition at the top then Make Movie. Use the settings below.

Job Done..

If you want any further help just post a comment below..

Back in May I saw that the company Wicked Lasers were taking payments for a new laser pen that was soon to be released. They said it was the worlds most powerful consumer laser. Usually for a laser pen of equivalent power would cost around $1000 mark. They were selling these for a mere $197! I couldn’t resist. £130 for a laser pen I hear you say.. well you have to understand that I’ve been obsessed and fascinated by lasers since I got a little red one on January the 1st 2000! I’ve had many different types included a couple of Green ones since. I got a 100mw green laser about 3 years ago (that was capable of burning certain things) and loved it. So when I found out that I could get the most powerful laser available (and its blue!) for a relatively low cost I ordered straight away :p.

It took nearly 5 months for the device to arrive! Apparently they got flooded with orders (Goes to show there are other losers just like me :p). Also they decided to add an extra safety switch that delayed the shipment further.

I put this little video together demonstrating the ridiculous power of this thing. I’m using a magnifying glass to focus the beam. Even without the magnifying glass it’s very capable of burning things. The reason it doesn’t light the match heads instantly was because they were damp from being out in the conservatory over night. At the end where I put a dense piece of card in front of the beam you can see that it burns a hole through in a matter of seconds :)

Below is a shot of it in action out into the sky and what was included in the box. It even come with a pair of protective glasses. Its pretty important to wear these when using it indoors. The refection of the dot is enough to cause eye damage :s.. Any way that’s enough geeking out for one day..

For more Photos head to my flickr..

In the new year I went on the Nottingham Trent Snowsports trip to Tignes in France. I was responsible for documenting all the crazy stuff that went down.

Since we got back I’ve been busy editing all the footage and producing a DVD. Kane has also given his creative input. He created the cover, menu and provided some cool animations.

Over all the main video is 16 minutes long with 6 minutes of extra features and 195 high res images.

That’s what 101 DVDs looks like. Looks a lot more than I was expecting.

After I had finally settled on the master copy (after 6 different versions made) I sent the art work and master copy to a company called http://www.vponline.co.uk/. I was really pleased with this service, very professional would highly recommend if you ever need DVDs or CDs replicated.

I decided to get the discs thermally printed and get the full size cover, this was more expensive but it looks a lot nicer.

Here’s the cover design and menu design, created by Kane. I created the DVD artwork using a Stereographic image I took at the top of the mountain.

So over all I’m really pleased with the results! It’s taken up sooo much of my time but I think it has paid off… well I now need to sell them all for it to actually be paid off but I have enjoyed the process at least.

Joe T showed me a really cool Java App the other day. It’s called Mouse Path and it basically tracks where your mouse pointer has been over a certain amount of time. You can also have it draw a circle when the mouse is inactive, the longer you leave it the larger the circle.

Here’s my mouse path over about 3 hours while I was setting up this new blog.

Here it is overlaid on the background to get an idea what I was up to. You can see I was using tabs quite a bit.

If you would like to have a go download it here

Credit to Anatoly Zenkov