Drawing from Class (final)
Third Draft
Second Draft
First Draft
Lisa
I was not scared of Processing. I am now a little scared of Processing.
Although my picture from class was complicated to describe for a person and for the exercise in class, because there are only a few shapes–circles and lines–it was relatively easy to make the first draft. I used the Color Selector tool because I there were specific colors I wanted to use. I initially made the size of my sketch the same as the original graph paper. The result of the first sketch is here. It actually looks closest to its model (the constellation of Orion) in this form.
The next series of simple shapes (triangles, quads, lines) went well. I had to rearrange some of the code in order for the shapes to appear in the right order. I also had to make sure the stroke sizes and colors were affecting the right parts of the drawings. The points of the belt, for example, I wanted to be visible, while the other points could be covered by the lines and shapes. Here’s where I ran into trouble.
I got to a good stopping point, took a deep breath, and decided to go for an ARC. It was frustrating. Robert was able to explain how the arc works, but I’m still not sure about the PI ordering. I finally got the right points–3Pi/2 and Pi/2, but the arc was going in the wrong direction. I reversed the order of the commands to put it in the right direction. Here’s what the final draft looks like.
I think ran into trouble when I tried to upload the files. I wasn’t sure at first what to reference–the index? the .pde file? I saw that the index was sort of working, but the actual picture was showing up as a small black box. I turned to Resident Jeremy who explained that there is a bug in the system that seems to appear only with static images. He showed me how to open the index file in Dreamweaver and edit the size of the file, which had been reduced to 100 x 100 back to the original size of my sketch. He also explained how labeling the folders “_applet” was unnecessary and how the server will automatically find the “index” page within a folder (so I only need to reference the folder with the index of the project inside).
Finally, inspired by Shiffman’s Zoog, I made Lisa.
As We May Think, Vannevar Bush
The coolest part of Vannevar Bush’s article was his prediction of Front Row with his memex.
I also found interesting his conclusion of why the memex would work so well. The kind of associative and immediate organization reminds me of Wikipedia, Google, and of websites in general. In some way, they are all examples of well-organized research—any research should include lots of different resources and “trails.” The immediacy of the web makes it unique. Wikipedia provides information and then provides paths to other information associated. Google gives other trails it thinks you might be interested in.
I once looked up “generation” on Wikipedia, in the hopes of finding some sort of definition of the seemingly vague generation I happened to be born in. Internet Generation was one label given, and it resonated the most with me. We turn to the internet first when a question comes up because it gives us this kind of super-well organized information super fast.
