HTML5 Canvas Hack Night with Rob Hawkes

That may sound like a TV show on one of those obscure digital channels, but no, the one and only third year IMP Rob Hawkes gave us a little glimpse into how his mind works in terms of the HTML5 Canvas element.

For those who don't know, the Canvas element in the next iteration of HTML allows you to draw things on the page with JavaScript. It's a bit like Flash, but without the need of a plugin.

The 'hack night' consisted of a bunch of people with differing experiences with web development in general – including IMPs from all years – learning from Mr Rawkets himself on how to make some basic shapes in the browser.

We were graced with the company of Ben Nunney from Microsoft who gave us free pizza, which is always nice. He knows his tech and likes helping students out in terms of technology and all that. That sort of person's always going to be useful to have on hand when everyone doesn't really know what they're doing, let's be honest.

But we all had a good time, to be honest. Completely informal gathering of people who actually wanted to be there for a change learning something which we could apply to projects later on (especially seeing as we have a HTML5 project coming up on Monday). Free pizza's a bonus, too.

So if you wanted to know what we got up to, we made a nice starry sky. D'aww. It's all randomly generated when you run it. All it needs is some rockets and I've got an awesome idea for a game…