Archive for February, 2006

Dorkbot London 35

Monday, February 27th, 2006

Reporting on Dorkbot London 35 (search Dorkbot for previous events). Photos here.

First up was the ever busy Tom Carden. Tom gave a general introduction to Processing, for those who simply didn’t know. He then announced two arrivals to the community: ProcessingHacks (collaboration with toxi) a wiki detailing some of the trickier coding approaches & ProcessingBlogs, a site syndicating content from other blogs posting related work.

Tom then went on to show some of his recent work. The Travel Time Tube Map is a Processing app that shows the tube map based on time. His attractors and particles sketches led to a series in collaboration with a fashion photographer. My favorite was a nice applet using data from Bio Mapping (Christian Nold), shown here.
Tom Carden
Bio Mapping

Dave Griffiths presented Fluxus, a graphical system for live coding, and Fastbreeder, an experimental genetic programming synthesiser.
Fluxus
Fastbreeder

The last dorkbot was Wojciech Kosma, who attempted to present his work on the PSP (Playstation Portable) without using an enlarged projected video feed or audio signal, but hey, his website explains things better. Watch video.
Portable Musicians

On to the open dorks. First a chap called Anton attempted to show us how to hack RFID readers using Linux, although failed to get it working :)

Cefn Hoile and Dave Chatting, from Curiosity Collective (making ipswich interesting), showed some very interesting projects, so I urge you to check out their site.

The last opendork was a surprise, Simon Green from Nvidia showed some impressive game-of-life and particle simulations using the Nvidia GPU.

Aside from giving a Nintendo Powerglove away at the end, there were two announcements. Firstly for Dorkfest, two days of dorkery as part of the Node London season. Secondly an Open Street Map workshop on the Isle of Wight.

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006

got a “show” coming up and wanted to create a new look… something more painterly… less computery.

I reckon this is about as far away from Unreal as you can get (not that i hate unreal or anything, i love it!)

this is pretty much just the same old code, with some 3D’y drawing stuff… simple (a little too simple), but effective none the less!

Wanted: Herraizsoto is seeking for talent.

Tuesday, February 21st, 2006

This is specially targeted at the people at processingblogs:

Herraizsoto, the interactive agency I work for, is seeking for an interactive supersamurai, with proven experience in everything from mobile to physical computing, installation art to that which is to be named. He (or she) will take charge of the R&D department.

Here is the job oportunity:

wanted

Head of R+D
Someone passionate about new technologies, art and communication, capable of investigating, creating and coordinating installations, mobile applications, new web applications, or even something that nobody knows exists yet.

Several years of proven experience in programming Java (processing-flavored or not), Flash and other languages
Experience in other technologies such as mobiles, installations (computer vision tools, MaxMSP), electronics, etc.
Previous experience in an interactive advertising agency is desirable but not essential.
You will be working alongside a multidisciplinary team.
You will be reporting to the executive creative director of the agency.
Good working knowledge of English is essential. The agency will not be responsible for finding accommodation but may be able to offer assistance.

Timescale: urgent but not desperate!

We are based in a nice office with nice people in the sunny beautiful barcelona… so if you feel like coming or you want to know more, send an email to wanted { at } herraizsoto.com with your work and they’ll consider your profile.

Also if you want, you can drop me a line to jesus {_at_} jesusgollonet.com and I’ll be glad to help you.

tags: ,

Friday, February 17th, 2006
Wargames (The legend that is)

……………………….

LOGON: Help Games

‘GAMES’ REFERS TO MODELS, SIMULATIONS AND GAMES
WHICH HAVE TACTICAL AND STRATEGIC APPLICATIONS.

List Games

FALKEN’S MAZE
BLACK JACK
GIN RUMMY
HEARTS
BRIDGE
CHECKERS
CHESS
POKER
FIGHTER COMBAT
GUERRILLA ENGAGEMENT
DESERT WARFARE
AIR-TO-GROUND ACTIONS
THEATREWIDE TACTICAL WARFARE
THEATREWIDE BIOTOXIC AND CHEMICAL WARFARE

GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR

Slow Life

Thursday, February 16th, 2006

I was reading about moss-art over at We-Make-Money-Not-Art. I’m really into moss since going camping last weekend, so it was a little surprising that someone is already making art out of it. Anyways, a few clicks led me to this post about a japanese movement called Slow Life.

moss‘The current economic system has required people to be busy trying to achieve growth — it’s as though they’re continually riding a bicycle. People have to do things fast to meet the demand for excessive efficiency. So there’s no way to avoid doing things faster and faster. That’s the system at the moment. I think it would be better if Japan became a beautiful third rate country. It would be nice if Japan was a place of delicious food, beautiful scenery, and abundant nature. If that were the case, I think it wouldn’t matter if one had little money.’

I think the idea of Slow Life could be really useful for the USA as well. We’re similar to Japan in that we have gotten obsessed with the game of constantly making more things cheaper and faster and newer at the expense of reliability and overall happiness. I really like the idea of the united states becoming a third world country. The leaders of this country are so obsessed with being an incredible world power. Why do we need that much power?

I’m think i’m going to be living the slow life from now on.

Link: Some more interesting thoughts

variations

Sunday, February 12th, 2006
three color variations of a 3d model generating blobs.

One
Two
Three

(Click on the applets to re-generate with new parameters)

Sunday, February 5th, 2006
In a sick sick way I love fixing little code problems…
today for example I needed to search through a text file and find this line…

“Log: Browse: DM-jake2?BonusVehicles=false?Game=XGame.xDeathMatch?
Mutator=XGame.MutQuadJump,UnrealGame.MutBerserk,Watcher.Watcher?
bAutoNumBots=False?NumBots=15?SpectatorOnly=1?Name=Player?Class=Engine.Pawn?
Character=Jakob?team=255″

this line changes after every match of UT but the beginning part (and the basic structure) of the line always remains the same

“Log: Browse: DM-” (always starts like this)

So heres the problem… youve got lots of other array elements some of which also start
“Log: Browse:”

I want to find this particular line, and get only one piece of information out of it, the number of bots playing, in this case
“NumBots=15″

how to do it…
well, I dont know the proper way, but this is how I did it :)

for(int i=0; i < file.length; i++){ //i cant include the "is less than" symbol *fixed now*

String temp = file[i]; //copys this particular line of the text file into a temporary string
int templength = temp.length(); //finds out the length of this string (because if its under 13 we will have problems later as I attempt to access the 13th char)

if (templength>13){
char temp1 = file[i].charAt(0); // L (Log:)
char temp2 = file[i].charAt(5); // B (Browse:)
char temp3 = file[i].charAt(13); // D (DM-) //have we got letters in the right place?

if ((temp1 == ‘L’) && (temp2 == ‘B’) && (temp3 == ‘D’)){ //do these letters match, is this our line?
String cutline[] = split(file[i], ‘?’); //cut the line into seperate array elements using the ?’s as cut markers
println (cutline[5]); //using this method numbots is always element 5
}
}
}

p.s. Ive just made the number of bots a usable number. It may seem simple but it took me a while to see the simplness…
String justbotnumber[]= split(cutline[5], ‘=’); //split string into 2 at the equals
int botnumber = int(justbotnumber[1]); //int that string!
println(botnumber);

Saturday, February 4th, 2006
saveStrings (”E:/games/UT 2004/System/UT2004.log”, file);

now I know the above line of code dosnt work in processing… but I so far havent found anything that lets me save a text file anywhere but the sketch folder.

Im trying to set up my code so that I can keep clearing a text file that loads from here :-

file = loadStrings (”E:/games/UT2004/System/UT2004.log”);

and this file has to be in this folder as UT2004 is generating it constantly!

dag nab it.

////////////////////////////////////////////
update…

I have found a simple way around said problem, but have been told that what Ive discoverd is a bit of a security issue and so I wont say how I fixed it…

just know I did ;)
and it was pants… just a simple logic problem

Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
well, looks like UnrealArt (or possibly something else of mine) is going to be in an exhibition in Manchester… in Victoria Baths. heres the floor plan of the turkish bath area my space is the 2 rooms to the right…

2 whole rooms all to my self… warm up the printers! Alisons going canvas crazy, mwahahaha

you can see pictures of the space here -

piccie