Ladies and gentleman it’s been a while. I won’t spend long on the soap-box, and where possible will stimulate with moving pictures, not words, but the important new is – Adam Vernon has joined Thought Den and hopefully you’ll come to love him as we already have (despite his gammy eye, though he insists it’s a new, Bristol-based affliction. He moved here especially you see! A good stat for Bristol Media perhaps – Thought Den drag Edinburgh graduate 400 miles to new Bristol studio)

Below is video 01 from our new Geek Club series, charting the Den’s trials, tribulations, banter and revelations. Think Blue Peter, without the bog roll tubes. Or HP Labs, but with less money and more sellotape.

Adam says :

“It makes use of the OSC protocol (likely eventual successor to MIDI), which is normally used to transmit musical and audio control data over UDP. The iPhone app, TouchOSC, is designed to be used as an OSC controller and also supports transmission of accelerometer data, indicating the orientation of the phone. The UDP packets are received by a Java flosc server, running on the PC, which retransmits the OSC data over Flash-friendly TCP. On receipt of a packet, Flash assigns the received orientation values to the rotationX and -Y properties of a cube made with the Flash10 3D API.”

Word on the street is that we’ve moved studio. An official (and thoroughly imaginative) announcement will follow forthwith. Isn’t it a shame that ‘real’ work gets in the way of devising these witty and clever ways to let you know we now stare at different coloured walls when Firefox crashes? Soon your inboxes will sing to the sound of Thought Den’s latest self-indulgent, digital distraction. Curious? You should be…

What a “Good Friday” it was last week! The Thought Den crew all came into the studio to solely badger away and put live the new Florrie site, florrie.com.

The project was no small undertaking,
- concept
- branding
- design
- a Squarespace site-build
- social media page branding (Youtube/Twitter)
- working on Good Friday =)

The process
Here’s some sneaky shots of the Thought Den process which produced the sexy results

Who is Florrie?
If you’d like to know who Florrie is, (she will be gracing our radio airwaves and tv sets very soon!). She’s a singer, songwriter and rather importantly a drummer!

Check it all out!
Site – http://www.florrie.com/
Twitter – http://twitter.com/florriemusic
Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/user/florriemusic

Like what we did?
If you’d like to talk about Thought Den’s full branding & online services, please mail ben@thoughtden.co.uk for more details

Dan too, and here’s his plan to fix it. This coming Thursday (8th April), Thought Den are hosting a mini flash game code-a-thon and we’re inviting other AS2 coders to come along.

Flash AS3 day

The day will see us all coding our own games, but we all have to do it in AS3. Painful? No, because we’ll all be in the same room, we’ve all coded in AS2 before, we’ll have the internet and most importantly we can share as we go. A bit like crowd-sourcing from clever individuals.

Thought Den provide.

breakfast, coffees & lunch
prize for the best game at the end of the day!

You provide.

computer with Flash installed
a game idea
openness to help your fellow man

Mail me, dan at thoughtden dot co dot uk for an invite.

—— DETAILS ——-
The plan.
Code a game in AS3.

Prize for best game.
A book! yup. “The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses: A Book of Lenses” (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Game-Design-lenses-Lenses/dp/0123694965/)

Who’s it for?
AS2 coders / coders, looking to start coding games in AS3

The place.
Pervasive Media Studio
Leadworks,
Anchor Square,
Harbourside
Bristol
BS1 5DB
some details are here – http://www.pmstudio.co.uk/open-studio-friday

The time.
Thursday 8th April. 8 till 5.30.

Places.
Mail dan@thoughtden.co.uk

Yup, we’re looking for graduates. Specifically, 2 separate positions to join our Bristol team on 8 week sponsored internships (and possibly longer!). Below are the headlines for the posts, the first is for a Flash Programmer & the second is a Studio Marketeer.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Download

Thought Den – Flash Programmer

Thought Den – Studio Marketeer

Note
No agencies

Text versions

———-
Flash programmer

WAGE
£300 per week

DESCRIPTION
We build addictive games. That’s why we’re chosen to work with agencies on their big clients like Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, BBC and leading British Universities.

Our Flash Programmer role will involve intensive Actionscript programming to develop gameplay, but will also involve building connections to databases and loading XML files. You will be supported by the creative and technical team in terms of visual assets and complex technical solutions.

See some of our examples
The JD Set – http://www.thejdset.co.uk/
Fire Kills – http://campaigns.direct.gov.uk/firekills/game.html
Virtual Tour – http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/virtualtour/

You need to have a good understanding of Flash and Actionscript, or at the very least, a strong desire to learn.

TASKS
- ideas generation
- rapid prototyping
- programming
- testing
- deployment of game

DURATION
8 week trial

——–
GETTING IN CONTACT
Please send to dan@thoughtden.co.uk
- a Cv, some links to your work (student, graduate, own time)
- a zip file of 1 Flash project, code+fla. (no more than 5MB!)

SCRABBLE IT TOGETHER BY
April 6th

THEN
If we like the cut of your jib, we’ll find a time to chat from the April 7th

——–
Studio Marketeer

WAGE
£250 per week + commission

DESCRIPTION
Thought Den are going places. We’ve been working with agencies on their big clients like Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, BBC and leading British Universities for 5 years.

Now we need someone to start shouting about it.

Ultimately this role is responsible for raising the profile of the company and generating new business leads. Thought Den design, build, collaborate and educate. We need someone to take responsibility for separating and defining our range of services, develop the appropriate sales strategies for each and then execute the strategy.

The successful candidate should have a good understanding of the digital industry, including trade magazines, blogs and other appropriate channels. But of most importance is the creative spark and enthusiasm that will help communicate Thought Den’s passion for delivery rewarding digital experiences. Financial rewards for doing well.

TASKS
- writing blogs / articles / tweets
- researching target clients
- cold-calling new clients
- placing articles in the appropriate channels
- brainstorming and creative thinking

DURATION
8 week trial

——–
GETTING IN CONTACT
Please send to dan@thoughtden.co.uk
- a Cv, some links to your work (student, graduate, own-time)
- a mini-blog post to sell “iPods to your Nan”
- 200 words max.
- 1 hand-drawn image. A drawing, pen/pencil/pasta choose a medium
- delivered in a blog/word doc/plain text doc + attachment

SCRABBLE IT TOGETHER BY
April 6th

THEN
If we like the cut of your jib, we’ll find a time to chat from the 7th April

A note from Nepal.

So it’s been a few week’s since our man Rhys headed out on some adventures to Nepal and he just sent us a email. “All’s good over here, in Nepal at the moment, gonna do a few days trekking up in the mountains tommorow. For how long depends on how long my fitness will last I think!”

He even sent us a picture!

Thought Den written in the beach

Btw. in the next few days, keep your eyes open for something Thought Den’s been working on for Kerve Creative & Southern Comfort, it’s called Facebite. And we’re a little bit proud, as always.

Facebite vampire