Mighty Toast ^beta

Depth Charge is a game that a group of six undergraduates created as part of our Computer Science course at The University of Bristol back in 2001.

The game ran on a Motionbase simulator, a large yellow pod with six hydralic legs. The player would climb inside, where they were greeted with fighter pilot-like controls and three large screens giving them a 120 degree panoramic view over the 3d scenary.

The game was based in the future, where the world has been flooded as a result of global warming. You, as the pilot of a submarine, must reactivate the nuclear power plants in order to reduce the water level.

Elastic Audio is a program I designed and built as part of my final year thesis project. It allows the user to import any recorded monophonic audio file, such as a vocal performance, saxophone riff or flute part. The audio file is then analysed for note timing and information, extracting precisely which notes the performer played and at what point.

The user is then presented with a screen displaying all of the notes played, and a suite of tools with which the user may edit the performance.

You can use it to fix wrong notes, alter notes completely, change note lengths, and create vocal harmonies.

My Computer Science course at Bristol Univerity had a lot of interesting modules, and we got to do everything from basic CS concepts like data structures & networking, all the way up to audio processing, 3d graphics & animation, and game programming using a motion simulator (more on that later!).

One thing I enjoyed a lot was using Maya to animate a robot character called 'Gumbo'. We had to insert the virtual bones and joints into the model ourselves, and then produce a 16-second animation using the inverse kinematics systems built into Maya. I made my robot talk, transform, fall apart and rebuild itself, and do a little bit of kung-fu to boot.

I've made a little low-quallity flash movie of the animation.

Here's a collection of some of the drum beats I've made over the years. I haven't ended up using most of them in my songs, so I thought I should 'set them free' and see if anyone else can find a use for them. They were made using various programs such as fruityloops, reason, and cubase. They're in a variety of styles, and many have an electronic bent to them.

I uploaded them to 'Freesound', a great creative commons audio sharing site

My drum beats on freesound

Pond Life is a comedy band from Bristol. We seem to have pretty much stopped playing now as Will and Glyn have moved away, which is a shame. We had a little bit of a student following in Bristol Uni as we played fairly regularly in the Mandela Bar in the Student Union as part of their livesoc! events.

You can hear us in action at our myspace page

Pondlife has 4 members, here ordered by price of education:

• Sir William J Voelcker the Third - Synth Broccoli and Bass www.casualphysics.com
• Richard J Wadsworth - Synth Synth and Falsetto Vocals
• Glyn J Collinson - The one with the real instrument www.glyncollinson.co.uk
• Benjamin J Clayton - Synth Drums + Recordings www.mightytoast.com