Today Matt Mullenweg and the lovely people at Wordpress.org released Wordpress 3.0, named Thelonious, which probably is the most CMS like Wordpress yet. The features include bespoke drag-and-drop menus, custom headers and background per post, and probably most important, custom post types. No more fiddling with language files when you wanted to hide the fact pages were pages and posts were simply blog posts. Brilliant. Nice little video below that shows off the new features:

I cannot wait till I get some free time to fiddle with this new system. I doubt I'll be upgrading my own website to be honest, the nature of hackery used to get the functionality needed would not sit well with an upgrade. Once I have a go I'll be posting a little update on here. Watch this space.

Some people were not happy with the lack of definitive answers. To all those who are unhappy with the lack of explanation of the donkey wheel, what the island is, Walt's powers, this is fiction. This is not supposed to be based in our reality, never was.  People don't complain about Twilight, even though its set in a twisted version of our reality, and the magic would have been lost if they had to do a Q&A in the finale for all those still reeling for answers. If you're still desperate, rewatch the series: there are clues to what certain things are or mean, just not necessarily in the dialogue along. We're so used to being spoon-fed the plot structure that we've forgotten how to infer! The other explanation could be that the truth behind the phenomena may be beyond human comprehension, and therefore it was be futile to try and do it layman terms. The light at the centre of the island for example, is explained by a theorist over at DarkUfo as

"the closest way to quantify that light and explain it in layman's terms is exotic matter, a black/white hole, or a huge pocket of unbelievably powerful electromagnetism. We will never know the truth, because it is likely something too far out of human comprehension."¹.

Thats a pretty big step in overcoming the lust for answers: realizing that in some cases a literal explanation just wouldn't make sense nor be satisfactory.

However, I will admit that I was hoping for some very definitive answers by the end. Episode 15 of Season 6, Across The Sea, threw me off at first because we didnt get absolute answers, but after pondering over it for longer I found that that was okay. The island was, and hopefully always will be. The message here was you are looking at ONE instance of people interacting with the Island and the light it is protecting. There were possibly people before Jacob and MIB's mother, and there will be after Hurley and Ben. Someone akin to Desmond plugged the light in a long time ago, and it's not important who did it, like the same way its not important who built the concept of a wheel in our world. The island just is, the same way the universe is. And Definitive answers? Starting from this point at the end of Across the Sea, it was a lesson in letting go. The finale itself is the creators telling us to just let go in the same way the characters are, and take in the relationships and memories and forget about the details.

They couldn't have ended it better. We got a gripping resolution for the dark powers of the Man in Black. People will be theorizing for years exactly what he was. Was he Jacob's brother without the light in him, or was his something more sinister that resides underneath that cork keeping the light on and the lava out (perhaps some metaphor for a hell under the island). And the idea of the stopping station before the afterlife was absolutely fantastic. We know that those who left the island probably led full lives afterwards, and Hurley and Ben protected it as best they could for as long as they did. And once they had all passed on, they were all waiting on the otherside for each other. We not only got the ending of the show, but the true end of all those characters lives, a true conclusion.

And for all those who never saw the fuss about LOST, who scoffed at the sight of the polar bear on the island, I'm sure you're watching other series with more fantastical notions such as vampires or space stations. The difference with LOST is that it wasnt afraid to empower the audience, to let us work things out rather than sticking to the rules of television and spelling the plot out for us. It made us think, it made us invest, which is something no other show has done before to such a degree. There were no all-knowing characters, they were all flawed, they were all human, and at some point in the show, they were all lost.

One of the most riveting, fascinating and emotional stories I've ever come across. Thank you so much LOST.

1. Very good article in fact, I recommend reading it: http://theoriesonlost.blogspot.com/2010/05/regarding-end-and-minor-mysteries-part.html [back]

However, the work doesn't stop there with my final year project in the works over the next year: weighing in at 30% on my entire degree, I'm making sure I get this right. The name alone has taken me a while to settle on, but I've settled (for now at least) for UR!KA, as part of the course I have to maintain a development blog, which has given me an oppurtunity to start using Tumblr, an application I've always wanted to sink my teeth into.

I've start quite a bit of research into the specification and functionality, even writing up a brief document of deliverables. The next part is a combination of design elements and planning the coding structure. Due to the limited time frame of the project, I've decided to use the CodeIgniter PHP library to handle the bulk of the development for me, so I can focus on the nitty-gritty parts rather than core. For design, I'm looking around a some of the beautiful new sites on the net, such as DeviantArt v8 and Dribbble, for inspiration.

Its a long road ahead.

It was a definitely a steep learning curve, Maya is definitely not a easy program to pick-up for the novice, and you begin to really appreciate if the simple 3D work you see everyday. The initial stage of modelling was fairly long and arduous, albeit only scraping the surface of the tools you can actually use, and the mapping of all the objects¹ was a task and a half. What I ended up enjoying the most was applying the textures to the models, and creating lighting and effects. Theres nothing quite like seeing the scene come together as it shifts from a dull grey to fully textured.

A solid 100+ hours went into this project I think, and here, thanks to Vimeo, is the result of all that work:

Final WOW Ironforge Render from Luke Williams on Vimeo.

1. which involved unfolding all the shapes face by face, over 20,000 in the end [back]

Now I do already have the project planned, and as it counts for roughly 30% of my entire degree mark, I am being ambitious. I'm not going to divulge exactly what it is since I want to keep it a secret for the big reveal hopefully this time next year, but here's a list of a few of the deliverables:

• Small Social Networking Site
• Javascript powered Image manipulation
• Browser plugins
• Built in API to allow apps to connect to the site
• Javascript Bookmarklets
• iPhone App

The most exciting part of this for me is it means I will be able to teach myself many, many new things, without having to sacrifice my free time outside of university work. And of course that means I will be writing about the fascinating (hopefully) concepts I come across along the way on here.

So watch this space.

1. In which i was voted player of the season no less! [back]

This is why there has been little action to date, since there is not too much I've had to write about that I can only document on here. Most of my web-related work has been conducted within the confines on my job, and whilst I have learnt a considerable amount, most of the exciting projects are still in development and therefore I can't really post about it …yet. Academically my second year is moving ahead swimmingly, struggling with 3d but everything else is going well. I'm hoping to write a summary of the modules I've completed this year ¹ once they're finished off, hopefully giving an insight into what I've learnt, especially coming from a purely web-based background.

The reason for this post in particular is that I've updated the portfolio, both the main page and individual project pages. I conjured up a little piece of jQuery from scratch on a site I'm developing at the moment, and I reckoned it would be useful here, since the portfolio was a rushed job if I'm honest. So take a look, any feedback is more than welcome. Still ironing out the creases in the jQuery fades but its working fairly effectively so far. I'll be looking to update the front-page thumbnails at some soon too.

1. 3D with Maya, Software Engineering with C#, Portfolio Design in Flash, and Digital Film-making [back]

Overall, extremely happy with the functional implementation of this, and also credit to Active Webdezign for pulling off a great design.

In terms of my university work, I'm working with Flash AS3 this term, attempting to make a portfolio for my sister who is a cracking photography, so expect to see that posted here soon. We're also working with Maya to make a 3d model by the end of term, not to mention shooting a documentary over the Christmas break. So as you can see I've been fairly busy with work and sports, hence the long silence.

There is something of substance to report however. Back2 was finally launched, a project which I worked on with the boys at Active Webdezign just before I came back to university. We basically used a heavily modified version of our standard e-commerce package to allow such options as customizable colours, searching by price, size or availability, as well as having a 'fast chair' option where the user could select all the default options at once to get the quickest delivery possible. I'm very proud of the technical implemenation, and I've heard the clients were very happy with it.

Anyway, watch this space.