Geekpulp blog feedhttps://geekpulp.co.nz/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2025/05/17/one-year-later-building-from-the-inside-out/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2025/05/17/one-year-later-building-from-the-inside-out/A year ago, everything was loud. A life-changing health condition. A recent big career change. Meds that messed with my body and my mood. And under all of it,…Sat, 17 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2024/06/23/the-hard-part-navigating-emotional-turmoil/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2024/06/23/the-hard-part-navigating-emotional-turmoil/I’ve just finished reading “The Life of Dai” and highly recommend it. This book beautifully captures the experience of going through a health crisis and…Sun, 23 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2024/06/12/a-surreal-journey-from-head-rushes-to-heart-surgery/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2024/06/12/a-surreal-journey-from-head-rushes-to-heart-surgery/So, this post is a bit different from the norm, but I think it will do me good to write it, so here we are. April 18th, 2024, was a bit of a "game changer" for…Wed, 12 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2023/08/15/ternary/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2023/08/15/ternary/If you find yourself with a conditional in the form on an if else, there's a more concise way of writing it. Say hello to a ternary. Take this code: Simple…Tue, 15 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2021/08/17/mutation/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2021/08/17/mutation/One of the many things I've picked up from the excellent Syntax podcast over the years is mutation should be avoided. Today a came across a great example of…Tue, 17 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2021/07/11/protecting-myself-from-myself/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2021/07/11/protecting-myself-from-myself/Being the lone developer on a personal project makes it really easy to do sloppy things. For example, doing undisciplined things with my git repo, like just…Sun, 11 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2020/02/01/taking-the-month-off/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2020/02/01/taking-the-month-off/After I completed the full stack web dev boot camp (see my final project code) I decided to give myself a month off studying software development to explore a…Sat, 01 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/11/23/sponsor-me/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/11/23/sponsor-me/Did you know you can sponsor my study and contributions to open source projects? If I had my way that's how I'd spend all my professionally time, but a dude's…Sat, 23 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/10/21/mongodb-and-macos-catalina/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/10/21/mongodb-and-macos-catalina/Like a good Apple nerd, I updated to the latest version of macOS Catalina. If you're using older 32bit apps Catalina won't run them. Thankfully, I wasn't in…Mon, 21 Oct 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/06/29/coding-on-a-plane-on-an-ipad/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/06/29/coding-on-a-plane-on-an-ipad/The project In my ongoing efforts to up my development game, I’m currently working on learning how to create an app that has user authentication. Adding…Sat, 29 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/04/25/traversing-folders/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/04/25/traversing-folders/I always manage to forget the syntax for traversing folders. So for the recorded, this is how it's done: / means drop back to the root folder then traverse…Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/04/15/restful-routes/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/04/15/restful-routes/What are REST, Routes, CRUD? Representation State Transfer or REST is a pattern/convention for defining our routes. Routes are the code that listens and…Mon, 15 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/04/08/installing-mongodb-on-macos/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/04/08/installing-mongodb-on-macos/The course I'm doing uses Cloud 9 (C9) as cloud-based IDE. I've basically ignored that side of things and done everything locally on my Mac as that feels more…Mon, 08 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/04/01/yelpcamp/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/04/01/yelpcamp/I've now reached a turning point in my web dev course. This morning I started writing code on my first meaty project, YelpCamp. As the name implies the…Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/29/json/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/29/json/I've worked with JSON data before when I was learning Swift and iOS development. At the time I didn't really know much of JavaScript or its object syntax. Back…Fri, 29 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/27/a-battle-for-the-ages/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/27/a-battle-for-the-ages/Spaces vs tabs is a hilarious holy war that doesn't really matter but I do find amusing. Modern text editors normalise differences on a project anyway, but I…Wed, 27 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/25/express-snippets/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/25/express-snippets/Since I'm playing with Express at the moment I've updated my collection of snippets to include a few things I seem to be doing regularly: Express setup I use…Mon, 25 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/22/npm-and-a-demon/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/22/npm-and-a-demon/So learning node.js has been really interesting so far, I'm quite taken by it. It's great being able to transfer my JavaScript skills from frontend to backend.…Fri, 22 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/20/the-three-stages-of-developer-growth/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/20/the-three-stages-of-developer-growth/Today I happened across a great Quora post by Andreas Blixt. In the post, Andreas outlines the three stages of developer growth: The novice hacker "This code…Wed, 20 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/19/how-much-time-should-i-spend-a-day-learning-to-code/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/19/how-much-time-should-i-spend-a-day-learning-to-code/This is the question I asked myself when I first started learning (well relearning really) to code a while back. Obviously I Googled this and found some really…Tue, 19 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/18/i-made-a-thing-aroha-generator/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/18/i-made-a-thing-aroha-generator/So I made another thing. The only reason I'm really even talking about it is because what's going on in Christchurch is so awful I can hardly bear it. Making…Mon, 18 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/14/constantly-letting-down-my-variables/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/14/constantly-letting-down-my-variables/As it turns out I’ve been doing everything wrong. Well, maybe not everything, but at the very least I’ve been declaring variables incorrectly. There are…Thu, 14 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/13/flow/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/13/flow/Getting into a flow state>) is super helpful when you're trying to get some coding done. Whenever I'm working on a course exercise or side project I find a few…Wed, 13 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/12/how-to-write-modern-js/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/12/how-to-write-modern-js/So you're learning JavaScript (JS), cool. Putting all this effort in, you'll want to be learning the modern usage of the language right? Time to get strict.…Tue, 12 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/09/i-made-a-thing-to-do-list/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/09/i-made-a-thing-to-do-list/Yep, I made another thing in JavaScript for the course I'm doing. This one's a bit more basic, but really it's more of cutting my teeth with jQuery sort of…Sat, 09 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/09/pastebot/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/09/pastebot/The more time I spend coding the more time I find myself researching solutions to workflow problems I've never had before. Copy and paste is a good example of…Sat, 09 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/07/on-click/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/07/on-click/Today I learned the difference between the on("click") and click() methods in jQuery. click() only adds listeners for existing elements, so it will completely…Thu, 07 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/05/vs-code/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/05/vs-code/Recent reading leads me to think my text editor of choice (Atom) might not be the best solution for my current needs. To that end, I'm downloading VS Code just…Tue, 05 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/04/what-is-the-state-of-javascript/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/04/what-is-the-state-of-javascript/This JavaScript thing is really catching on eh? As the name suggests, "the state of JavaScript" survey gives a snapshot view of JavaScript development. What…Mon, 04 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/03/pigs-in-namespaaaace/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/03/pigs-in-namespaaaace/When you're working on a JavaScript (JS) app you'll create loads of functions and variables. By default in JS, there is no namespacing so everything you…Sun, 03 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/02/atom-snippets/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/03/02/atom-snippets/One of the things I love about modern text editors is code snippets. Coding tends to involve repetition, code snippets can really help cut down on needless…Sat, 02 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/28/selection/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/28/selection/One thing I notice about jQuery is how it simplifies common tasks. A good example is something you do all the time with JavaScript, select DOM elements. In…Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/27/survey-says/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/27/survey-says/Today I was reading the 2018 stack overflow developer survey and boy was it an interesting read. There are loads of insights into the current state of software…Wed, 27 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/25/emmet/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/25/emmet/Whatever your text editor of choice (I just can't quit you Atom) there is a wide range of plugins to enhance its capabilities. One such plugin that I use…Mon, 25 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/24/hex/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/24/hex/Just a quick post to say I’ve updated the colour game with a new mode, Hex colours. To enable different modes I’ve changed a little bit of the UI. So the…Sun, 24 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/22/jquery/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/22/jquery/What is jQuery? jQuery is a JavaScript library designed to simplify front end web development. It is the most widely deployed JavaScript library by an insanely…Fri, 22 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/20/halfway/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/20/halfway/Just now I've put the finishing touches on "The Great RGB Colour Game" thereby passing the halfway point of my web dev bootcamp. You can take a look at the…Wed, 20 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/18/rgb-colour-game-ui-update/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/18/rgb-colour-game-ui-update/Tonight I got a bit of time to work on a new version of RGB colour game. This time I focused mostly on UI improvements so the game looks a little nicer than…Mon, 18 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/17/maintaining-an-open-source-project/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/17/maintaining-an-open-source-project/This morning I read a short article on the maintainer of GitHub desktop, William Shepherd. For some reason, I kept seeing the article everywhere so eventually…Sun, 17 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/16/i-made-a-thing-colour-game/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/16/i-made-a-thing-colour-game/I made another thing in JavaScript as part of the course I’m doing. This time it’s a simple colour picker game. The code is still very rough but the app is…Sat, 16 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/13/commitment-issues/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/13/commitment-issues/You’ve been spending plenty of time together. You’ve had your ups and downs. As time’s gone on you’ve realised you like the way things are going and it’s time…Wed, 13 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/12/every-team-needs-a-beauty-routine/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/12/every-team-needs-a-beauty-routine/Over the years everyone will develop their own beauty routines when it comes to their individual coding. While it's easy to become attached to how you like to…Tue, 12 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/11/more-on-issues/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/11/more-on-issues/The more you understand an issue the better equipped you'll be to solve it. When I was creating issues in GitHub for Score Keeper, something about the process…Mon, 11 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/10/weve-all-got-issues/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/10/weve-all-got-issues/Since I’ve been learning JavaScript I’ve been making an effort to do things as if I was working with others. The idea being that any project of meaning is very…Sun, 10 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/08/i-made-a-thing-score-keeper/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/08/i-made-a-thing-score-keeper/I’ve been doing a web development course for a few months and today I made my first thing that actually does something. Nothing amazing mind you, but it’s a…Fri, 08 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/07/learning-from-a-579-year-old-printing-press/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/07/learning-from-a-579-year-old-printing-press/Gutenberg is the name of WordPress’ new editor and like its namesake, the Gutenberg printing press, I think it’s going to be a big deal. Recently I’ve been…Thu, 07 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/06/listen-to-your-heart/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/06/listen-to-your-heart/JavaScript is responsible for the behaviour of your website/app. At the heart of affecting the behaviour of the page is listening for user interaction events.…Wed, 06 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/05/this-is-our-concern-dude/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/05/this-is-our-concern-dude/In web development, there's a concept called "the separation of concerns" between your HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Each language plays a role in web development…Tue, 05 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/04/dom-dom-dom/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/04/dom-dom-dom/Playing with the DOM is all about adding interactivity to your page. The DOM (Document Object Model) is the interface between your JavaScript and your…Mon, 04 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/02/github-flow/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/02/github-flow/I've recently been attempting to contribute to some open-source GitHub projects with varying degrees of success. One thing that's extremely useful to do before…Sat, 02 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/01/load-scripts-last/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/02/01/load-scripts-last/So you’ve got your HTML and CSS sorted and you’ve started to drop in some customs scripts to make things a bit interactive. To keep things in shape it pays to…Fri, 01 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/31/no-comments/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/31/no-comments/When I was first learning to code, something that came up a lot was to always comment your code. Code comments have value, but despite what my teachers at the…Thu, 31 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/30/dry-variables/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/30/dry-variables/The concept of DRY code is simple, Don’t Repeat Yourself. So if you look at some code you’ve just written and notice it’s looking a bit moist, AKA the same…Wed, 30 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/29/equals-vs-equals/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/29/equals-vs-equals/In JavaScript not all comparisons are created equal... see what I did there. Let’s say we’re comparing two values like this: The use of “==“ will compare two…Tue, 29 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/28/zombie-code/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/28/zombie-code/Part of developing (and certainly learning to develop) is creating code, commenting it out, and creating a better version. As you get into a flow state with…Mon, 28 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/25/keep-your-friends-close-and-your-variables-closer/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/25/keep-your-friends-close-and-your-variables-closer/Back in the day, I used to have this habit of declaring all of my variables at the top of the file. My thinking at the time was it would keep everything…Fri, 25 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/23/how-to-function-correctly/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/23/how-to-function-correctly/Coding is a fairly amazing thing to be able to do. There are effectively no limits to what can be done when you’re more or less writing the universe from…Wed, 23 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/22/simplify-conditional-statements/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/22/simplify-conditional-statements/Consider the following code: Looks good right? It’s logical and easy to understand, just your standard if statement. All true, but over the course of an entire…Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/21/avoid-abbreviating-variables/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2019/01/21/avoid-abbreviating-variables/Do you know what's super annoying when reading someone else code? Abbreviated variable or function names. Until late 2017 I hadn't done any coding in years so…Mon, 21 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/11/25/ipad-pro/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/11/25/ipad-pro/I've been really loving working on my 10.5-inch iPad Pro since I got it around a year ago. Recently the newer, fancier 11-inch pro came out and as much as I…Sun, 25 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/11/11/running-lessons/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/11/11/running-lessons/Over the past few years, I've had an on and off relationship with running. I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying "I'm a runner", but I have run a few half…Sun, 11 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/09/29/oh-yeah/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/09/29/oh-yeah/Hey, so in case you haven't heard already the Oculus Quest is a thing. It's been a long time coming but we finally have proper PC free VR. I'm not going to go…Sat, 29 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/07/04/making-a-podcast/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/07/04/making-a-podcast/News flash, I'm working on a podcast. Maybe even more than one. I've always loved podcasts and have been listening to them for as long as I can remember. I've…Wed, 04 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/05/28/keynote-countdown-timer/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/05/28/keynote-countdown-timer/I made a thing! I was helping a friend with a Keynote presentation deck. One of the tricker parts was that it needed an automatic 30 min on-screen timer to…Mon, 28 May 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/05/15/github-learning-lab/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/05/15/github-learning-lab/I've been using GitHub for a while now as part of my spelunking into the world of VR and Mobile development. I think it's fair to say it's done a great job of…Tue, 15 May 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/05/06/how-to-setup-cocoapods-in-xcode/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/05/06/how-to-setup-cocoapods-in-xcode/Hey, guess what? I'm learning iOS development and have been for months! Thought I might increase my rate of publishing to my blog if I did what I did for my VR…Sun, 06 May 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/05/04/time-to-go-vr/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/05/04/time-to-go-vr/Well the Oculus Go is out. I’ll likely be picking one up later this year just to give it a go (see what I did there), but being a 3DOF system it isn’t the VR…Fri, 04 May 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/04/09/moving-host/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2018/04/09/moving-host/Hey team, I'm moving this site to a new host and I'm yet to polish things up. Forgive me if things are a little rough around the edges at the moment.Mon, 09 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/12/12/udacity-vr-nano-degree-retrospective/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/12/12/udacity-vr-nano-degree-retrospective/When I started my Udacity VR Nano degree I knew I was in for a challenge. Now that I’ve successfully completed my final assignment I thought I'd share some…Tue, 12 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/10/16/done-night-at-the-museum/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/10/16/done-night-at-the-museum/I’ve been AFK for a while (holiday) so I just wanted to post the details of the final version of "night at the museum" I finished a few weeks ago that I…Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/09/28/storytelling-in-vr/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/09/28/storytelling-in-vr/It's hard to not have "all the feels" watching the above video (Ideally in VR if you've got a cardboard headset). The creators have done such an amazing job of…Thu, 28 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/09/26/optimising-c-scripts-in-unity/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/09/26/optimising-c-scripts-in-unity/C# logoThe more I create C# scripts in Unity the more I learn about optimising those scripts. With code there are 100s of ways to solve a problem, not all of…Tue, 26 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/09/12/adding-spatial-audio-in-vr/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/09/12/adding-spatial-audio-in-vr/Part of my Night at the Museum project is adding audio descriptions to the objects on display. To do this in Unity I'm making use of the spatial audio…Tue, 12 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/09/03/more-progress/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/09/03/more-progress/Managed to get everything to compile to the phone again. Also, I can move about the place now :) The big issue was around the legacy Google Cardboard SDK…Sun, 03 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/31/getting-back-on-track/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/31/getting-back-on-track/So that thing I broke, it's getting fixed. Little by little, day by day. So far I've managed to get: VR working properly again (at least I think I have) select…Thu, 31 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/28/how-to-make-stuff/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/28/how-to-make-stuff/Making stuff is difficult, especially when that stuff is new. This is something I'm all too aware of. I was progressing nicely with my Night at the Museum…Mon, 28 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/10/project-night-at-the-museum/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/10/project-night-at-the-museum/I'm working on a project for my studies with Udacity. The goal is to create a VR experience that demonstrates my research into a VR company. I'll do a series…Thu, 10 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/06/the-daily-360/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/06/the-daily-360/So it turns out the New York Times has been doing daily 360 stories for some time now. You can view them all on their sub site, the aptly named "The Daily…Sun, 06 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/06/vr-course-exercise/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/06/vr-course-exercise/As part of my VR course, I’ve been asked to perform a bit of a thought experiment. The outline of this work is: Imagine you want to make a VR Education…Sun, 06 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/06/vr-reshaping-industries/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/06/vr-reshaping-industries/As a bit of a thought experiment, I'm taking a look at an industry and imagine a VR app might reshaping it. Given my family's always been in the construction…Sun, 06 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/03/types-of-vr/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/08/03/types-of-vr/As discussed earlier, there are loads of terms floating around in the world of VR. But it's not just things on the spectrum between AR and VR. There are also…Thu, 03 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/30/process-puzzler-project/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/30/process-puzzler-project/Over the past few months I’ve been studying with Udacity to learn VR software development. The course has been great so far, so I thought I’d share a little of…Sun, 30 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/27/augmented-realitys-a-ha-moment/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/27/augmented-realitys-a-ha-moment/Everyone is using the headline, but it's so good I had to repeat it. Such a great example of ARkit in action. Apple's really on to a winner. Here's context for…Thu, 27 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/25/hardware-for-vr/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/25/hardware-for-vr/Starting out in VR development it's easy to think you'll spend the earth on special hardware to get going. The reality is that's just not true. The below 360…Tue, 25 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/22/ready-player-one/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/22/ready-player-one/I'm 6 chapters into the book and suddenly there's a movie trailer. Awesome!Sat, 22 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/21/99-ar-headset/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/21/99-ar-headset/I seriously doubt the stock like silliness in this promo video is even remotely connected to reality... but $99USD AR headset! Sign me up!Fri, 21 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/21/locomotion/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/21/locomotion/You know what’s really fun? Being able to move around and interact in a virtual environment. You know what isn’t? Barfing all over your new all birds. That’s…Fri, 21 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/13/vr-and-the-power-of-scale/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/13/vr-and-the-power-of-scale/One of the most powerful things about VR is its ability to have a shared experience at scale. From an education perspective, this is an extremely exciting…Thu, 13 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/06/process-user-experience-testing/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/06/process-user-experience-testing/As I said in my previous post on process, it’s important to test your work early and often. This means getting in front of your users and collecting feedback,…Thu, 06 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/03/tips-for-working-with-gameobjects-in-unity/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/07/03/tips-for-working-with-gameobjects-in-unity/Given I’m currently learning to develop in Unity I thought I’d share a few tips I pick up along the way to becoming proficient with it. When creating a scene…Mon, 03 Jul 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/30/arkit-is-just-amazing/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/30/arkit-is-just-amazing/We've seen some amazing stuff already with ARkit but this new demo really takes the cake. Just amazing tech. Hats off to Nedd for this one. So fancy! Source:…Fri, 30 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/30/armrvrxr-wtf/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/30/armrvrxr-wtf/One of the problems with discussion of emerging technologies is terminology, or more importantly the lack of clearly defined terminology. At the moment this…Fri, 30 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/28/more-than-games/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/28/more-than-games/When thinking of VR/AR/MR it’s easy for your mind to leap to games. Games are the obvious low hanging fruit of the industry, especially given all this stuff…Wed, 28 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/23/space/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/23/space/In VR, as in real life, personal space matters. Personal space is "the physical space immediately surrounding someone, into which encroachment can feel…Fri, 23 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/22/process/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/22/process/The making of a "thing" happens in loads of different ways, but I've always found it's best to have some sort of process to get a good result. It doesn't have…Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/20/mixed-reality-capture-or-how-to-share-your-vr-work/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/20/mixed-reality-capture-or-how-to-share-your-vr-work/You've likely all see the videos showing VR users actually immersed in a VR world, like the demo at WWDC. The question is, how can you do the same with your…Tue, 20 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/20/way-of-the-future/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/20/way-of-the-future/There might be something to this VR/AR business... IMG_4309 But seriously it will be interesting to see how these numbers shift in the coming years.Tue, 20 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/18/vr-design-google-street-view-for-ios/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/18/vr-design-google-street-view-for-ios/Part of my Udcaity VR course involves doing a quick/light review of a Google Cardboard app. So I figured I might as well post that here too. VR App review -…Sun, 18 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/17/augmented-reality/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/17/augmented-reality/Ever since Pokemon Go, AR seems to have worked its way into the "parlance of our time". Truth be told we've actually had loads of examples of AR apps for years…Sat, 17 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/16/117/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/16/117/Now this is exciting stuff. AR is only just getting started, but now it has the key, a platform.Fri, 16 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/16/git/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/16/git/Since I'm learning VR it seemed a good idea to finally learn Git properly. In the past, I'd used GitHub just to play around with git conceptually. I liked it,…Fri, 16 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/15/i-vr/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2017/06/15/i-vr/I've been studying VR development for a few months now. As I advance in the course I'm having to choose a specialisation. I'm more interested in high immersion…Thu, 15 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMThttps://geekpulp.co.nz/2016/05/29/siri/https://geekpulp.co.nz/2016/05/29/siri/I've just been reading this really interesting post on the possibility of a vastly improved Siri. It's funny how even Apple fans get into a panic whenever a…Sun, 29 May 2016 00:00:00 GMT