here are the books and stuff I wrote down from comments during your review:
Phil Worthington Shadow Monsters (not really a book)
Scott Simbbe another design person but I didn't note his topic - this was Mike's suggestion
Random International internet architecture
Eric Raymond the Cathedral and the Bizarre the end to end argument (maybe by someone else?)
Group of Mitch Resnick
Lo Ceiling White Walls
Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams
Edward Brandigan
Narrative Comprehension and Film
2 random books I think from David
Water and Power
the Computational Beauty of Nature
some stuff from others:
Scott colorlovers.com
Colin search for Golan Levin master's thesis
Golan Levin also has a great site with flash experiments: http://www.levitated.net/
if you search in google you will find a wealth of other stuff
Golan Levin's page
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
inflatable bag monsters
wow. I just love these creatures animated with subway exhaust. they are magical.
Monday, March 9, 2009
kaiten sushi time japan
...where the subject is static and the camera moves.
here it is in faster motion, but unfortunately paired with a really cheesy track.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
3 rules for swarms:
a tendency towards spontaneous order
a. all individuals are only aware of their nearest neighbors
b. have a tendency to align in the same direction
c. all attracted to each other, but try to keep some distance.
fish 1 body length apart, birds 3 or 4 body lengths apart.
when a predator's coming, get out of the way. then try to get back together.
advantages: your odds of being the one eaten is reduced. waves of panic can propagate. information is sent about half a kilometer in birds in a very short time.
find Steven Strogatz whole talk about nature and sync here.
a. all individuals are only aware of their nearest neighbors
b. have a tendency to align in the same direction
c. all attracted to each other, but try to keep some distance.
fish 1 body length apart, birds 3 or 4 body lengths apart.
when a predator's coming, get out of the way. then try to get back together.
advantages: your odds of being the one eaten is reduced. waves of panic can propagate. information is sent about half a kilometer in birds in a very short time.
find Steven Strogatz whole talk about nature and sync here.
John Maeda makes stuff
in this video hosted at ted.com, John Maeda talks about his life and work. he shows lots of experiments where he makes students function as parts of a computer. he also made a drawing program that has the feature where you can make a piece move about entirely randomly.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Dubberly Design concept maps
Dubberly Design has posted a series of maps of different things on one page. some of them have links to pdf versions so you can really see the details.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
how to make a blue laser gun
instructions for making a blue laser gun out of an Xbox and a CO2 pistol (whatever that is).
Saturday, December 6, 2008
user experience design at halo
this is a short interview with Colm Nelson, Halo's interaction designer.
here's a short excerpt:
"By any measure, Halo 3 is one of the most wildly-successful consumer software interfaces in recent memory: more than 1 million players played the game in its first 24 hours on Xbox Live; over 8 million copies sold to date; and “over 100,000 pieces of user generated content being uploaded daily[...]"
the article is fairly brief but I wanted to be able to find it again some day so I'm posting it here.
here's a short excerpt:
"By any measure, Halo 3 is one of the most wildly-successful consumer software interfaces in recent memory: more than 1 million players played the game in its first 24 hours on Xbox Live; over 8 million copies sold to date; and “over 100,000 pieces of user generated content being uploaded daily[...]"
the article is fairly brief but I wanted to be able to find it again some day so I'm posting it here.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
water veins
natural motion with a haunting similarity to a vascular system. thanks to Paul Kahn and NEW Magazine.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
links to self portrait pdf's
here are pdf files showing 8 self portraits drawn with my eyes closed from an exercise in class compared with self portraits I have drawn from as far back as when I was a teenager.
self portrait 1
self portrait 2
self portrait 3
the above 3 are just portraits drawn from memory with my eyes closed
self portrait bad 1
self portrait bad 2
these next 2 were drawn when I was thinking about a time when I was being told I was bad
self portrait child 1
self portrait child 2
these 2 above were drawn while thinking of myself as a child
self portrait overjoyed
this final one was drawn while I thought about a time when I was overjoyed.
self portrait 1
self portrait 2
self portrait 3
the above 3 are just portraits drawn from memory with my eyes closed
self portrait bad 1
self portrait bad 2
these next 2 were drawn when I was thinking about a time when I was being told I was bad
self portrait child 1
self portrait child 2
these 2 above were drawn while thinking of myself as a child
self portrait overjoyed
this final one was drawn while I thought about a time when I was overjoyed.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
link to as3 class notes
I started posting my class notes from Brian's class in a separate blog. this way they will all be in one place without other junk inbetween. go to my main blog at viacamp.blogspot.com and look in the column on the right under good links if you want to see them.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Wii night at dmi
work hard. play hard. and drive like a bat out of hell! wii night at dmi is a serious study all about passing information through the wiimote. ok and a little bit of friendly competition. tennis anyone?
Saturday, October 4, 2008
chaos, mojo, talisman, hoodoo, randomness and brownian motion
"Chaos = order without surface predictability." -Bala
"Talisman or amulet, a small object intended to bring good luck and/or protection to its owner
Mojo (pronounced /ˈmoʊdʒoʊ/) is a term commonly encountered in the African-American folk belief called hoodoo. A mojo is a type of magic charm, often of red flannel cloth and tied with a drawstring, containing botanical, zoological, and/or mineral curios, petition papers, and the like. It is typically worn under clothing.
"Spider's Nest Blues" by Hattie Hart and the Memphis Jug Band, Hart wants to go to New Orleans to get her toby (mojo) "fixed" because she is "having so much trouble" -- the mojo is protective and its power is wearing off, as witnessed by the "bad luck" she is having.
An amulet ( [Pliny], meaning "an object that protects a person from trouble"), a close cousin of the talisman (from Arabic طلاسم tilasm, ultimately from Greek telesma or from the Greek word "talein" which means "to initiate into the mysteries").
"Brownian motion (named in honor of the botanist Robert Brown) is the random movement of particles suspended in a liquid or gas or the mathematical model used to describe such random movements
Consider a large balloon of 10 meters in diameter. Imagine this large balloon in a football stadium. The balloon is so large that it lies on top of many members of the crowd. Because they are excited, these fans hit the balloon at different times and in different directions with the motions being completely random. In the end, the balloon is pushed in random directions, so it should not move on average. Consider now the force exerted at a certain time. We might have 20 supporters pushing right, and 21 other supporters pushing left, where each supporter is exerting equivalent amounts of force. In this case, the forces exerted from the left side and the right side are imbalanced in favor of the left side; the balloon will move slightly to the left. This type of imbalance exists at all times, and it causes random motion of the balloon. If we look at this situation from far above, so that we cannot see the supporters, we see the large balloon as a small object animated by erratic movement."
Einstein's Explanation of Brownian Motion; click here, this is a link. this is an animation showing a bunch of small balls making a bigger ball move around by randomly hitting it over and over again.
Below: Lucretius's scientific poem On the Nature of Things (c. 60 BC) has a remarkable description of Brownian motion of dust particles
"Observe what happens when sunbeams are admitted into a building and shed light on its shadowy places. You will see a multitude of tiny particles mingling in a multitude of ways... their dancing is an actual indication of underlying movements of matter that are hidden from our sight... It originates with the atoms which move of themselves [i.e. spontaneously]. Then those small compound bodies that are least removed from the impetus of the atoms are set in motion by the impact of their invisible blows and in turn cannon against slightly larger bodies. So the movement mounts up from the atoms and gradually emerges to the level of our senses, so that those bodies are in motion that we see in sunbeams, moved by blows that remain invisible."
all quotes except for Bala's taken from Wikipedia, September 30 and October 4, 2008.
"Talisman or amulet, a small object intended to bring good luck and/or protection to its owner
Mojo (pronounced /ˈmoʊdʒoʊ/) is a term commonly encountered in the African-American folk belief called hoodoo. A mojo is a type of magic charm, often of red flannel cloth and tied with a drawstring, containing botanical, zoological, and/or mineral curios, petition papers, and the like. It is typically worn under clothing.
"Spider's Nest Blues" by Hattie Hart and the Memphis Jug Band, Hart wants to go to New Orleans to get her toby (mojo) "fixed" because she is "having so much trouble" -- the mojo is protective and its power is wearing off, as witnessed by the "bad luck" she is having.
An amulet ( [Pliny], meaning "an object that protects a person from trouble"), a close cousin of the talisman (from Arabic طلاسم tilasm, ultimately from Greek telesma or from the Greek word "talein" which means "to initiate into the mysteries").
"Brownian motion (named in honor of the botanist Robert Brown) is the random movement of particles suspended in a liquid or gas or the mathematical model used to describe such random movements
Consider a large balloon of 10 meters in diameter. Imagine this large balloon in a football stadium. The balloon is so large that it lies on top of many members of the crowd. Because they are excited, these fans hit the balloon at different times and in different directions with the motions being completely random. In the end, the balloon is pushed in random directions, so it should not move on average. Consider now the force exerted at a certain time. We might have 20 supporters pushing right, and 21 other supporters pushing left, where each supporter is exerting equivalent amounts of force. In this case, the forces exerted from the left side and the right side are imbalanced in favor of the left side; the balloon will move slightly to the left. This type of imbalance exists at all times, and it causes random motion of the balloon. If we look at this situation from far above, so that we cannot see the supporters, we see the large balloon as a small object animated by erratic movement."
Einstein's Explanation of Brownian Motion; click here, this is a link. this is an animation showing a bunch of small balls making a bigger ball move around by randomly hitting it over and over again.
Below: Lucretius's scientific poem On the Nature of Things (c. 60 BC) has a remarkable description of Brownian motion of dust particles
"Observe what happens when sunbeams are admitted into a building and shed light on its shadowy places. You will see a multitude of tiny particles mingling in a multitude of ways... their dancing is an actual indication of underlying movements of matter that are hidden from our sight... It originates with the atoms which move of themselves [i.e. spontaneously]. Then those small compound bodies that are least removed from the impetus of the atoms are set in motion by the impact of their invisible blows and in turn cannon against slightly larger bodies. So the movement mounts up from the atoms and gradually emerges to the level of our senses, so that those bodies are in motion that we see in sunbeams, moved by blows that remain invisible."
all quotes except for Bala's taken from Wikipedia, September 30 and October 4, 2008.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Microsoft releases Photosynth for public use
I haven't checked this out yet but hope to once I get a little caught up with the rest of my work. Microsoft has released an online version of its software that collect groups of images and builds a kind of 3D model of a place out of them. it's available here
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
terminology considerations for a catalog of movement
I'm considering words to describe my catalog of movement.
lexography
The pursuit of lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:
* Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.
* Theoretical lexicography is the scholarly discipline of analyzing and describing the semantic, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships within the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language, developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries, the needs for information by users in specific types of situation, and how users may best access the data incorporated in printed and electronic dictionaries. This is sometimes referred to as metalexicography.
General lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of general dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that provide a description of the language in general use. Such a dictionary is usually called a general dictionary or LGP dictionary. Specialized lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of specialized dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that are devoted to a (relatively restricted) set of linguistic and factual elements of one or more specialist subject fields, e.g. legal lexicography. Such a dictionary is usually called a specialized dictionary or LSP dictionary.
taxonomy
Originally the term taxonomy referred to the classifying of living organisms (now known as alpha taxonomy); however, the term is now applied in a wider, more general sense and now may refer to a classification of things, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification.
Almost anything — animate objects, inanimate objects, places, concepts, events, properties, and relationships — may be classified according to some taxonomic scheme.
The term taxonomy may also apply to relationship schemes other than parent-child hierarchies, such as network structures with other types of relationships. Taxonomies may include single children with multi-parents, for example, "Car" might appear with both parents "Vehicle" and "Steel Mechanisms"; to some however, this merely means that 'car' is a part of several different taxonomies.[1]
A taxonomy might also be a simple organization of kinds of things into groups, or even an alphabetical list. However, the term vocabulary is more appropriate for such a list. In current usage within "Knowledge Management", taxonomies are seen as less broad than ontologies as ontologies apply a larger variety of relation types.
ontology
In both computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain.
Ontologies are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, software engineering, biomedical informatics, library science, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. Common components of ontologies include:
* Individuals: instances or objects (the basic or "ground level" objects)
* Classes: sets, collections, concepts, types of objects, or kinds of things.[1]
* Attributes: aspects, properties, features, characteristics, or parameters that objects (and classes) can have
* Relations: ways in which classes and individuals can be related to one another
lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon (from Greek Λεξικόν) of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes.
The lexicon includes the lexemes used to actualize words. Lexemes are formed according to morpho-syntactic rules and express sememes. In this sense, a lexicon organizes the mental vocabulary in a speaker's mind: First, it organizes the vocabulary of a language according to certain principles (for instance, all verbs of motion may be linked in a lexical network) and second, it contains a generative device producing (new) simple and complex words according to certain lexical rules. For example, the suffix '-able' can be added to transitive verbs only, so that we get 'read-able' but not 'cry-able'.
Usually a lexicon is a container for words belonging to the same language. Some exceptions may be encountered for languages that are variants, like for instance Brazilian Portuguese compared to the Portuguese language, where a lot of words are common and where the differences may be marked word by word.
When linguists study the lexicon, they study such things as what words are, how the vocabulary in a language is structured, how people use and store words, how they learn words, the history and evolution of words (i.e. etymology), types of relationships between words as well as how words were created.
An individual's lexicon, lexical knowledge, or lexical concept is that person's knowledge of vocabulary.
vocabulary
The vocabulary of a person is defined either as the set of all words that are understood by that person or the set of all words likely to be used by that person when constructing new sentences.
all definitions taken from wikipedia. links to the articles are placed on the terms. I will post some thoughts on the terms considered and why I am considering them soon.
lexography
The pursuit of lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:
* Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.
* Theoretical lexicography is the scholarly discipline of analyzing and describing the semantic, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships within the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language, developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries, the needs for information by users in specific types of situation, and how users may best access the data incorporated in printed and electronic dictionaries. This is sometimes referred to as metalexicography.
General lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of general dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that provide a description of the language in general use. Such a dictionary is usually called a general dictionary or LGP dictionary. Specialized lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of specialized dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that are devoted to a (relatively restricted) set of linguistic and factual elements of one or more specialist subject fields, e.g. legal lexicography. Such a dictionary is usually called a specialized dictionary or LSP dictionary.
taxonomy
Originally the term taxonomy referred to the classifying of living organisms (now known as alpha taxonomy); however, the term is now applied in a wider, more general sense and now may refer to a classification of things, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification.
Almost anything — animate objects, inanimate objects, places, concepts, events, properties, and relationships — may be classified according to some taxonomic scheme.
The term taxonomy may also apply to relationship schemes other than parent-child hierarchies, such as network structures with other types of relationships. Taxonomies may include single children with multi-parents, for example, "Car" might appear with both parents "Vehicle" and "Steel Mechanisms"; to some however, this merely means that 'car' is a part of several different taxonomies.[1]
A taxonomy might also be a simple organization of kinds of things into groups, or even an alphabetical list. However, the term vocabulary is more appropriate for such a list. In current usage within "Knowledge Management", taxonomies are seen as less broad than ontologies as ontologies apply a larger variety of relation types.
ontology
In both computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain.
Ontologies are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, software engineering, biomedical informatics, library science, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. Common components of ontologies include:
* Individuals: instances or objects (the basic or "ground level" objects)
* Classes: sets, collections, concepts, types of objects, or kinds of things.[1]
* Attributes: aspects, properties, features, characteristics, or parameters that objects (and classes) can have
* Relations: ways in which classes and individuals can be related to one another
lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon (from Greek Λεξικόν) of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes.
The lexicon includes the lexemes used to actualize words. Lexemes are formed according to morpho-syntactic rules and express sememes. In this sense, a lexicon organizes the mental vocabulary in a speaker's mind: First, it organizes the vocabulary of a language according to certain principles (for instance, all verbs of motion may be linked in a lexical network) and second, it contains a generative device producing (new) simple and complex words according to certain lexical rules. For example, the suffix '-able' can be added to transitive verbs only, so that we get 'read-able' but not 'cry-able'.
Usually a lexicon is a container for words belonging to the same language. Some exceptions may be encountered for languages that are variants, like for instance Brazilian Portuguese compared to the Portuguese language, where a lot of words are common and where the differences may be marked word by word.
When linguists study the lexicon, they study such things as what words are, how the vocabulary in a language is structured, how people use and store words, how they learn words, the history and evolution of words (i.e. etymology), types of relationships between words as well as how words were created.
An individual's lexicon, lexical knowledge, or lexical concept is that person's knowledge of vocabulary.
vocabulary
The vocabulary of a person is defined either as the set of all words that are understood by that person or the set of all words likely to be used by that person when constructing new sentences.
all definitions taken from wikipedia. links to the articles are placed on the terms. I will post some thoughts on the terms considered and why I am considering them soon.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
notes and suggestions on research agenda
I've been pooling notes for the exhaustive and exhausting self-study that I need to submit by October 1 in order to keep my job. one of the items I am asked to supply is my research interest and agenda. I do not know what a research agenda is, so I did some searching and found the following links.
Professor Barbara Ryder of Rutgers University has a simple, very understandable list of ideas on how ad why to do research.
this link goes to a pdf with her questions and answers. I am going to use this one in writing the paragraph on my research goals and agenda for my self-study.
Luis Villa made a blog posting of a series of notes from a seminar on establishing a research agends. First Movers focuses on legal research but it seems to have good general tips on what belongs in a research agenda and how to think about doing research long-term.
Getting A Teaching Job: The Research Agenda again, is written by a law professor. this article describes what a research agenda is and goes on to discuss why schools look for research agenda in prospective professors. I think the approach fits a variety of fields.
Brad Neuberg's "Coding in Paradise" is one programmer's musings about his own personal approach to research and why he finds it important. there is a list of research questions down on the page that I found helpful when I start thinking about my own research questions, particularly now that I need to explain them in writing to an academic, liberal arts audience that will most likely not understand any technical information but will very likely be evaluating my writing against an unknown and undefined criteria.
You and Your Research is a transcript of a seminar talk given by Richard W. Hamming of Bell communications research on March 7, 1986. the talk is about his relationship to his research peppered with some stories of others around him and where they succeeded or failed in their life's research. it's interesting.
Professor Barbara Ryder of Rutgers University has a simple, very understandable list of ideas on how ad why to do research.
this link goes to a pdf with her questions and answers. I am going to use this one in writing the paragraph on my research goals and agenda for my self-study.
Luis Villa made a blog posting of a series of notes from a seminar on establishing a research agends. First Movers focuses on legal research but it seems to have good general tips on what belongs in a research agenda and how to think about doing research long-term.
Getting A Teaching Job: The Research Agenda again, is written by a law professor. this article describes what a research agenda is and goes on to discuss why schools look for research agenda in prospective professors. I think the approach fits a variety of fields.
Brad Neuberg's "Coding in Paradise" is one programmer's musings about his own personal approach to research and why he finds it important. there is a list of research questions down on the page that I found helpful when I start thinking about my own research questions, particularly now that I need to explain them in writing to an academic, liberal arts audience that will most likely not understand any technical information but will very likely be evaluating my writing against an unknown and undefined criteria.
You and Your Research is a transcript of a seminar talk given by Richard W. Hamming of Bell communications research on March 7, 1986. the talk is about his relationship to his research peppered with some stories of others around him and where they succeeded or failed in their life's research. it's interesting.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
links to my processing sketches
pointLight5 is my sketch for moving light around following the mouse. I got it to read mouseX and mouseY.
(speaking of mice, I cleaned a lot of droppings in the studio this morning. pretty yucky.)
useMyClass10 is a space with the point light and another kind of light from the pointLight sketch with some spheres created with a class and some composite cubes with a stationary cube in the same place as a non stationary cube that rotates according to the mouse. it looks pretty cool.
moveClass4 is a sketch that I started with the hope of making the elements of useMyClass float around on the screen. it didn't work out that way but what happened is really interesting. I have no control over this one and I don't know how it does what it does but it does move.
I posted moveClass5 here also but the only difference from moveClass4 is the background color. today I couldn't see the darker one on my screen, probably because I was facing the rising sun so I made it lighter.
Jason, exporting processing sketches to html is easy. so I did some for all of you to see.
(speaking of mice, I cleaned a lot of droppings in the studio this morning. pretty yucky.)
useMyClass10 is a space with the point light and another kind of light from the pointLight sketch with some spheres created with a class and some composite cubes with a stationary cube in the same place as a non stationary cube that rotates according to the mouse. it looks pretty cool.
moveClass4 is a sketch that I started with the hope of making the elements of useMyClass float around on the screen. it didn't work out that way but what happened is really interesting. I have no control over this one and I don't know how it does what it does but it does move.
I posted moveClass5 here also but the only difference from moveClass4 is the background color. today I couldn't see the darker one on my screen, probably because I was facing the rising sun so I made it lighter.
Jason, exporting processing sketches to html is easy. so I did some for all of you to see.
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