Welcome to Arpia.be.
Arpia.be is the website of Peter Craddock, a British citizen who lives in Belgium and works for the law firm DLA Piper in Brussels.
During his spare time, Peter designs websites, composes music, writes novels and creates games.
New design: lighter, meaner, mobile-friendlier
Welcome to the brand new Arpia.be!
The past few months have been significant for me, and I haven’t had much time to devote to this website, let alone update its design. Still, an update was necessary, especially given that the old one was still not mobile-friendly.
So, a few hours of playing around with simpler designs later, I started to prepare a new one. The result is in my view cleaner, lighter, more fun. Also, it finally works well on my iPhone.
I’m also thinking about migrating away from arpia.be itself. As time goes by, the link between what I do and Arpia feels more and more remote… which means that I may link the server itself with a new domain name in the coming months. We’ll see.
Feel free to play around with the new design. The randomised paint blobs still appear all over the place, so reload a page to see different blobs appear instead.
I may soon post an actual update in terms of content. After all, the past few months have been life-changing in many ways. In that case… stay tuned!
Brick Painting: build your own LEGO-based reproductions
For a long time now, I’ve wanted to decorate my apartment with paintings. Ideally some of my favourite paintings, too, but a Monet isn’t exactly a small purchase, and learning to copy Van Gogh isn’t exactly a rapid process.
It turns out I can make copies that are more tangible than a print-out and that say “look, I am art!” in a completely different way, all thanks to little LEGO blocks.
I have discovered the world of Brick Painting.
Continue reading Brick Painting: build your own LEGO-based reproductions
The Brick Painter, for all master builders
The Brick Painter is a little web application that converts any image you feed into it (within reason) into blocks. Specify the height or width in blocks, choose the colour set, and it generates the brickified image for you.
It then tells you which colours of bricks are needed to build the image, and in which quantities. This allows you to then (if you are crazy enough) build it after ordering the relevant bricks (if you don’t have them in stock).
The Brick Painter is also released under a BY-NC-SA Creative Commons licence, so if you are into coding you can download the entire package here and improve it as you please. Hopefully the minimal comments in the code help.
Update: read more on the build process on the follow-up post, Brick Painting: build your own LEGO-based reproductions.
Let the mind wander in the desert
Less off the beaten track than the (also recent) Repenting (at least for me), Desert Crossing is a more classical piece with soundtrack overtones. See if you can imagine yourself crossing the desert on a camel. Or something different.
Going electronic
And it’s that time of the decade again – Peter has gone electronic in his music. At least, another attempt, one I prefer to my previous ones. It’s got a beat I can walk to, it’s got electronic sounds galore – many sins I have committed while composing this piece. Yes, the title is Repenting.
Janssens-Quidam redesign
Now that I’m working with a new law firm (Liedekerke, or Liedekerke Wolters Waelbroeck Kirkpatrick in full), it was high time I redesigned the Cat Hat / Janssens-Quidam e-reputation website.
For the uninitiated, this website presents the fictional tale of Janssens-Quidam SA/NV, presenting practical guidance on the legal implications of building and defending one’s e-reputation.
The design is less heavy and more in line with the feel of another project I’m hoping to unveil soon.
Content updates are also planned for Janssens-Quidam, due to legislative consolidation at a Belgian level (the Belgian Business Law Code or Code de droit économique / Wetboek van Economisch Recht). More on that when the updates are ready.
An untimely first Russian-sounding tune?
It’s really an accident, but here I am publishing what I find to be the most Tchaikovsky-inspired composition I have written so far… right in the middle of the Ukraine crisis. Wind Whispers is a mishmash of sorts, a blend of classical and contemporary, waltz and modern.
End of year, new sound
2013 is about to end, and it feels like I’m really getting back into music. Nineteen Times is the first in a long time to combine piano, bass, guitar and drums. A new sound, of sorts. I look forward to 2014!
Paint frenzy
It’s no secret that since I thought up the design for the Cat Hat e-reputation website, I have kind of fallen in love with paint splotches. [I’ll soon have to start creating real-life ones, but that’s another story entirely.]
Some two weeks ago, I felt it was time for me to come up with yet another arpia.be redesign idea. Unlike the N previous ideas, I ended up really liking the end-result.
What better way to start summer than with bright colours?
Winter & spring meet in song
Dandelion is my latest addition to my repertoire, a blend of tunes that were composed in the winter and just now that spring has arrived. Still many more in the pipeline, at least if I can finalise and record them!