This site has moved to www.suricatafx.com

Site Closure

Suricata — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:03:06 +0000

I have noticed an increasing number of people coming to this site lately. I have moved over to www.suricatafx.com and I will be closing this domain down within a month (I will put up a redirect). Apologies for any inconveniance this may cause.

Moving Server

Suricata — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 20:54:04 +0000

I’ve finally taken the plunge and purchased my own web domain and host. I’ve decided to remove my blog from wordpress and place it on my server so that I can have full control over the entire sites content, coding and styling. The new address is:-

www.suricatafx.com

I will leave this blog up whilst the transition is been made, once the other site is fully functional I will remove the blog from wordpress and place a redirect here instead. The site will be getting a major overhaul, both in looks and in content.

New layout

I will be working on making the site more user friendly, therefore I have some new catagories of pages I will be adding. To ensure the navigation is as friendly as possable, it would be a great help if people could take part in a little exercise called ‘card sorting’. basically, I will put a list of all the areas I will add to the site and would like people to place them in groups. You are welcome to add other page ideas as well as catagory names if you don’t feel any in the following list seem right. If you don’t think a page can go in a group, you can leave it asa stand alone page

HTML/CSS page (page for showing code tutorials)
Star Trek articles
Star Trek ship design guide
Concept art
Star Trek online guides
Royal Navy ship guides
Royal Navy referance photos
About me
3d model downloads
News feed
Gallery
Contact details
Website design rules
Portfolio
Colour theory
Marketing theories
Links
Curriculam Vitae
Links
Fun Flash Games
Pet Rat care

The purpose of the exercise is to create a site map structure for the new site. Like I said, any other ideas for the site would be greatly appriciated. I may also add some forums as well, but that will probably not happen until the rest on the new site is running smoothly

Delorean 2011 Concept

Suricata — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 08:32:11 +0000

For the last few weeks now I’ve been working on a hypothetical relaunch project of the Delorean DMC-12. During the process I came up with a concept of how a relaunched Delorean could look (similar to the remodels of other classics like the Ford Mustang). After weeks of market analysis and user testing we realised that The Delorean is just too big of a cult classic to change the design, so we decided to go with a relaunch similar to the Vespa scooter, where the exterior remains pretty much the same, but the performance and internal equipment is updated.

I thought I’d post the concept here so it wouldn’t get lost amongst all the other drawings I have cluttering up my hard drive!

Website Testing

Suricata — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:51:31 +0000

Hey guys, I’m still here!

I’ve been very busy with school work lately hence the lack of updates on the blog. Funnily enough myself and a friend have been learning PHP and have been writing some blog code from scratch. I’ve also been playing around with styling using HTML5 and CSS3. It’s not finished and it’s more just a sandbox site, but you can check it out here:-

http://www.alhen.monline.dk/phpsession/

I have a few projects on my hands right now, including a 3d model of a Delorean, which I’ll post when it gets further along

Site redesign

Suricata — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:17:25 +0000

I’m currently redesigning the blogs layout and organising all the content to be abit easier to navigate. So please bare with me over the coming week as I tweak the site.

Type 45 Daring Class Model

Suricata — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 18:54:55 +0000

I’ve been working on this model over the past week, it is a low polygon count model and is intended for use in computer games. I’ve actually made this model a public release and it can be downloaded from the Miltary Meshes forums.

The model comes in at around the 50,000 face range.

I’ll probably do some other low polygon models of other Royal Navy ships, I’m thinking of doing the new Astute class submarine and the upcoming Queen Elizibeth aircraft carrier.

HMS Westminster 3D model

Suricata — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:50:51 +0000

As some people know, I used to serve in the Royal Navy as an engineer. During my time in the navy I served aboard the Type 23 frigate ’HMS Westminster’ (The finest ship in the fleet I might add). Over the years I’ve made several attempts at modeling her in 3D, however, I was never able to achieve a standard to which I felt she deserved..until now!

The ship is still a work in progress and you can follow its progress on the Military-Mesh forums

You can also see a test render of the radars operating in the video below.

User Testing of the Blog

Suricata — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 12:51:53 +0000

Hi everyone, I’m currently doing a user test of this blog so I can refine its design. Currently the blog averages at 400 – 500 hits everyday and quite consistently, however, I would like to promote the site more and improves its usability. I am doing this redesign as part of a school project, so if people could please fill out the following questionnaire it would be very much appreciated, it should only take a couple of minutes.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGhSa0ZGVUdfdi1YZzFKU250NmhkR2c6MQ

Suggestions for improvements would be greatly appriciated!

Thanks in advance

USS Enterprise – NCC-1701-F

Suricata — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 10:31:46 +0000

About a month ago a contest was announced to design the Enterprise-F. Sadly the contest was only open to residents of the United States, but I decided to doodle out a few ideas anyway. In the end I came up with the idea of a merging my Hurricane and Hikaru class designs. I always liked the idea of a more sleek and organic look to future starships as technology levels progressed, so I wanted the Enterprise-F to signify a leap forward in starship design. I’m pretty sure that this design would not look out of place in a fleet of Starfleet ships. Size wise she’s about the length of the Soveriegn class. I was intending to make the ship in 3D and submit it to the contest, but since I can’t enter I thought I’d share my ideas here

Formula One car

Suricata — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:18:52 +0000

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been working on a low poly model of a Formula One car for a school project, you can see the result above. I might make some tweaks to the engine’s air intakes as well as improve the suspension, but overall I’m pretty happy with it, more so since it will only be visable for about 10 seconds during a presentation!