Stung Eye blog

Blog: Mobile Development

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:15:05 +0100

This weekend I’ll be exploring:

PhoneGap - Cross-platform mobile app-dev using html / css / javascript.
JQTouch - A mobile plugin for my fav Javascript framework, JQuery.
iProcessing - The API from processing.js extended for mobile use.
MobiOne - Windows mobile emulator for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Pre.

Step one: Install Eclipse, PhoneGap and the Android SDK along with JQTouch, iProcessing and MobiOne.

Step two: Play around. Create a few sample apps.

Step Three: Tomorrow Andrew and I will deploy these apps to his Android phone.

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Blog: You Know Who "Gets it"?

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:48:22 +0100

The Hypemachine, Groveshark and SoundCloud understand that the future will be streamed.

You can listen to (in their entirety) every album of the Hypem top 50 of 2009. The top 50 was crowd-sourced from the top 10 lists of over 500 bloggers. The albums are hosted by Groveshark.

Yes, the Hypem leaderboard gets gamed now and then, and it sometimes get clogged with meme-ooze, but the web’s messy like that.

SoundCloud is a mix-hunters paradise. I’m listening to Dj Czech’s “Bucket Of Grease” mix right now.

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Blog: A Perfect Day for Bananafish

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:19:00 +0100

Rest in peace Mr. Salinger.

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Blog: A Catch

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:50:00 +0100

How’s life? I’m reading Catch-22. I laugh out loud on the bus. You know? Real life lols. It’s a little dated, but luckily I know who Henry Fonda is.

“You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age?”

The Canadian Copyright Consultation ended in September. The submission from the Canadian Music Creators Coalition (CMCC) is quite enlightened, the submission from Don Hogarth of the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) is not.

Meanwhile, Canadian officials are taking part in negotiations concerning a top-secret copyright treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that could see families barred from the Internet for a year if someone in the household is suspected of illegal downloads. [source]

Even though copyright was created to protect the commercial interests of content creators, the ACTA includes provisions for the criminal enforcement of “willful copyright and trademark infringement even where there is no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain.” [source]

Might I one day be jailed for making mixtapes or posting my mixes to the net?

Listen, I’ve said it before, I’m not a pirate I just grog a lot.

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Blog: The Loss of Parker Forest

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:37:00 +0100

Winnipeg city council has approved a city land-swap with developer Andrew Marquess of GEM equities. 59 acres of unserviced city land in the Parker neighbourhood will be traded for nine acres of serviced land in the Fort Rouge Yards. The city wants the Fort Rouge land for a future rapid transit corridor. Marquess wishes to build 3500 townhouses on the Parker land.

Nearly half of the Parker land being given to Marquess is forested. I spent a few afternoons in the summer of 2006 exploring the Parker Forest and I have returned to it often since. Here’s how I described it back then:

The forest is triangle shaped, with an estimated area of over 100,000 meters squared (or .1km²), and is composed of tall prairie grasses, dense forest (mainly Trembling Aspen with some Bur Oak), and (presently dry) wetland. It sits on what I believe to be CN land, south of Taylor Ave.

I discovered this forest during a Glutton University field trip in 2003. It remains my favourite secret forest in Winnipeg. It appears that I’m not alone; after following some human tracks we spied a campground, their tent fire red, camouflaged by the afternoon sunlight.

Hopefully this land is never sold for development.

The debate is complex. In-fill housing development is preferable over sprawl, especially if the housing is affordable. But the land they need to build this housing is of particular beauty and importance. Urban forests play a role in our communities as spaces of leisure, sport, relaxation and socialization. Most importantly they are home to numerous wild plants, insects, and animals. I’ve spied fire-files in the Parker grasses at night and local residents have spotted everything from deer to lynx.

The density of the proposed housing is also very steep. If we alot 5% of the land for roads, infrastructure and public space that leaves us with 56 acres. To accommodate 3500 townhouses they would need to build 63 townhouses per acre. (One acre is a little smaller than an American football field.)

For a better idea of what 63 dwelling units per acre (or du/ac) looks like, take a peak at these 40-60 du/ac communities and 60-80 du/ac communities in California.

Here are some excerpts of recent Winnipeg Free Press Letters to the Editor on the subject:

A Lot to Lose

If you woke one morning to find bulldozers tearing down the park that your kids play in to build a fire hall and had to open the paper or be called by a neighbour to find out what’s happening, would you be upset?

[…]

I live on Parker Avenue. I have a lot to lose. Collectively, our neighbours have a lot more invested in our neighbourhood than any developer or any elected official. I believe we have a right and a duty to speak out.

-Robert Lewyc

In Fill Instead of Sprawl

[The proposed development is] “infill” instead of sprawl. It is dense housing, compared to single housing farther to the south. And if rumours are true, it is low income housing, something the city needs more of desperately.

[…]

I hope city council will consider things like a linear parkway, bike paths and green space paralleling the busway, and I look forward to more decisions that recognize the value of building on lands inside the existing city instead of the constant sprawling so-called developments that left such areas vacant for so many years.

-Shane Nestruck

No Consultation

[T]his protest, for me at least, has nothing to do with keeping out low rentals. What it has to do with is the fact that nobody at city hall bothered to ask any questions before agreeing to this land swap. Nobody asked: What kind of community are we infringing on; what is on the current site; how is the current site being used; what would be lost if it was bulldozed; what is it really worth on the open market; is it even developable?*

All of these questions must be asked as part of a due diligence process, but were never asked. The people of Winnipeg deserve better.

-Cal Dueck

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Blog: Vote for BabyLolly @ The Next Web

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:26:00 +0100

Hi pals. We need your votes for BabyLolly in the Rising Sun Startup Rally for this year’s The Next Web conference. Please lend us your support by clicking the “Vote Now” button.

With enough votes for our video we’ll be able to present at the conference later this month in Amsterdam.

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Blog: Art and Code - Overview Part III

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 21:49:05 +0100

My Art and Code overview continues… (See: Part I & Part II)

Sunday Continued

The toolkit presentations continued after lunch.

Processing - Presented by co-creators Ben Fry and Casey Reas

I’ve written about Processing here before. It is still my goto tool for visual coding.

Jotted Down:

Fry, Reas, Shiffman, and Greenberg all in one room.

Should the concept of literacy be expanded to include programming fluency.

Max / MSP / Jitter - Presented by Luke Dubois

Max / MSP / Jitter is a graphical programming environment for music, audio and media. A patcher based languages that shares roots with Pd which was demoed in the morning.

Jotted Down:

I guess I’m a FLOSS snob; although this environment looks much more polished than Pd, I gave it less attention because it’s a commercial product. (There’s a 30-day trail version, but the full bundle costs $699 USD.)

Reminder to check out the work of Michael Joaquin Grey, especially Recapitulate: Retrace, Erase, Repeat which uses Goya’s The Disasters of War etchings as source fodder.

Also, check out Hello World, The Song (in Max/MSP)

VVVV - Presented by Sebastian Oschatz

Vvvv is a video-synthesis toolkit. The programming interface is similar to the patch-base language we’ve already seen (Pd and Max/MSP), graphical function-blocks connected with wires. For a more detailed look read Ctrl+B For Concurrency.

Of the visual languages presented at the conference, vvvv is the only one I downloaded and experimented with. Oh I do wish for infinite time to play with all these wonderful tools.

Jotted Down

Read the vvvv licensing page, commercial vs. non-commercial uses.

This language doesn’t contain any explicit looping structures.

Nerdy VJs would go wild for this.

And then we had a cookie break.

AIR & Extendscript - Present by Dr. WooHoo

A number of Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, AfterEffects) contain an implementation of Javascript (called Extendscript) which can be used to programmatically control (and potentially abuse) these products.

Jotted Down

Reminder to check out In the Mod.

openFrameworks - Presented by Zachary Lieberman, Theodore Watson, Arturo Castro

openFrameworks is a C++ library for creative coding. It was described as a glue languages wrapping together several commonly-used open-source multimedia libraries. Minimal Design: There are very few classes, and inside of those classes, there are very few functions.

Jotted Down

Looks fast! Might lend itself nicely to augmented reality projects.

Evening - Dorkbot @ Brillobox

The Dorkbot Pecha Kucha at the Brillobox was fun. I presented early having greatly under-estimated the length of my presentation. The 10 minutes were over quickly, and I fear my last few minutes were a muddle.

Delicious beers were consumed. I chatted with some wonderful people.

Floating-Lightbulb of the night, bringing Jonathan Brodsky idea of coding competitions to RRC.

Monday - The Warp Up

Panel discussions, CODE and FORM at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, pizza and beers with some interesting folks, and then a cab ride to the airport and home again home.

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Blog: Art and Code - Overview Part II

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:12:57 +0100

My Art and Code overview continues… (See: Part I)

Sunday - Toolkit Overviews and Dorkbot @ Brillobox

Sunday was a day of presentations. From 8:45 to 17:45 we were treated to 45 minute demos of various arty programming toolkits. In the evening there was a Dorkbot Pecha Kucha-ish gathering at a pub called the Brillobox.

Some notes I jotted down during the presentations:

Alice - Presented by CMU’s Don Slater.

Alice is a 3D programming environment for creating animations, games and videos. 3d models of objects and characters are programmed visually by dragging/dropping/connecting various Instruction-Tiles together.

Jotted Down:

Five Fundamentals of Programming

Sequence
Decision
Repetition
Data Persistence (Variables)
Methods (Modular Abstractions)

Pd - Presented by Hans-Christoph Steiner

Pd or Pure Data is a graphical programming language for audio and video programming. Data (most often audio signals) flows through various specialized transformation or generation nodes/objects which are visually connected together by the programmer using “wires”.

1000 words == Picture

Jotted Down:

Closed tools split creators from consumers.

We need to think about programming as something every does / will do.

Scratch - Presented by John Maloney and Evelyn Eastmond

Scratch is a graphical programming environment for children ages 8 and up. Like Alice, the programs are created by snapping graphical blocks together.

Jotted Down:

Remixing of Scratch programs is encourage via their website.

There appears to be a nice learning path from Scratch through Processing to Java. Perhaps we could use Scratch as an introductory programming language at the college. David Malan has been using it for a intro comp sci course at Harvard.

Scratch is implemented in Squeak Smalltalk.

May 16th is Scratch Day.

Scratch anime!

Hackety Hack - Presented by _why

Hackety Hack is a Ruby-based environment designed to make programming accessible for kids, (especially teenagers). Its motivation: The Little Coder’s Predicament

Jotted Down:

Why claims to be a freelance professor, in other words, half-way between a scarecrow and a seeing eye dog.

A logic/programming card game called kaxXxt is also in the works.

The ASCII sword-fighting program stirs-up long dormant memories of Monkey Island.

And then we ate lunch. To be continued…

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Blog: Art and Code - Overview Part I

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:38:11 +0100

It’s about time I wrote an overview of my Art and Code experience.

Saturday - Workshops and Church Brews

The day began with a walk by the Cloud Factory followed by two programming workshops with lunch between them. There were 9 simultaneous morning and afternoon workshops. Choosing just two was frustrating. Another day of workshops would have been delightful.

I attended Information Visualization and Play Games with Hackety Hack.

Information Visualization - Ben Fry

Ben Fry along with Casey Reas created the Processing language “for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions.” I first discovered Processing (aka p5) in January of 2004. One of my first sketches stitched together MRI brain-scan images into an interactive animation. (See: my early p5 sketches and a more recent sketch.)

Ben’s lecture focused on using visuals to effectively communicate complex information. Shout outs to Edward Tufte and Mark Lombardi (See: Lombardi 1 & Lombardi 2)

Info Viz Workflow:

Acquire
Parse
Filter
Mine
Represent
Refine
Interact

Also:

An Important Visualization
It’s easy to lie with statistics and maps [pdf].
Using Cartoon Faces to Represent Multi-dimensional Datasets (More: Chernoff Faces and Face Saver)

During the experimentation part of this workshop I began working on the Marvel “Social Network” visualization.

Lunch was tabbouleh salad, hummus, pitas and an apple.

Hackety Hack - _why

Why began the afternoon workshop with a song accompanied by autoharp. Then we played with a pre-release of Hackety Hack, a Ruby-based toolkit for learning to code.

Some Notable Features:

Bloopsaphone songs and sounds:

b = Bloops.new
b.tempo = 320
# Where s1 is a bloopsaphone sound that can be 
# generated for you or created by you.
b.tune s1, "f#5 c6 e4 b6 g5 d6 4  f#5 e5 c5 b6 c6 d6 4 "
b.play
sleep 1 while !b.stopped?

A vim-style (aka modal) drawing tool.
Integrated mail client for sharing code.
A Dingbat sprite library for game creation.
IRC-like chat channels for human or programmatic communication. (For example, we wrote “chat” apps that allowed us to communicate by colour. Each rectangle in this image represents someone in the room.).
Embedded Try Ruby

Upcoming Features:

Built in Tutorials / Lessons (Similar to the original Hackety Hack)
Database (sqlite?) tables for data persistency.

The kid sitting to my left (maybe 12 or 13 years old) was new to programming. He was enthralled by the Hackety experience. I could almost hear his brain rewiring as he started to grok Ruby. Okay, I could literally hear it too, as he asked me a number of great programming questions.

After the workshop I spent some time chatting with Why and a group of fun and friendly Ottawarians. (Is that the right term for someone from Ottawa?) We eventually found our way to Church Brew Works (a restaurant and micro-brewery inside an old church) for a lovely dinner with some lovely beers. It took a while to obtain a table for 13, but good times were had by all.

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Blog: Art and Code - Day 1 - Morning

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 09:41:03 +0100

I arrived in Pittsburgh last night. The Cathedral of Learning is just outside my hotel. (Check out the commons room.)

Last week I read Michael Chabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (thanks Jeff!). I walked by the Cloud Factory on the way to registration this morning.

Next up is Information Visualization with Processing presented with Ben Fry.

This afternoon I’ll attend Make Games with Hackety Hack on Your Laptop Right There on Your Lap with mr. why the lucky stiff.

Right now I’m enjoying a coffee inside Carnegie Mellon’s Baker Hall.

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Blog: BabyLolly Featured In Winnipeg Free Press

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:27:05 +0100

I’m very excited to announce the launch of our new website, BabyLolly.com. For the past year I’ve been working along with my friend Andrew Burton, my sister Colleen Geske, and her husband Moses Faleafaga, on this online babybook and social network for families.

Today we were featured in the business section Winnipeg Free Press.

BabyLolly.com is an online babybook for parents to capture & share their baby’s precious moments with family and friends.

Photo/Video Gallery: no more cumbersome emailing of baby photos. Store and organize all your photos and videos and share them with family and friends.
Baby Journal: keep an online journal of your baby’s experiences and developments.
Baby Milestones, Firsts & Favourites: never forget an important milestone again! Capture and share all your baby’s important firsts & favourites.
Connect & Collaborate: give family and friends the opportunity to fully contribute to the babybook by leaving notes, uploading photos & videos, and sharing in each and every precious moment.
It’s a private site (so only people you invite will see your babypage) and best of all: it’s 100% free!

We’d love for you to sign up if you have a young family. You can also view a demo account for a fictional family.

If you have friends with babies share the link with them and let them share the joy of their baby! We would really appreciate your support!

I look forward to hearing your feedback on BabyLolly.

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Blog: You Are Beyond the Edge of Forever

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:59:00 +0100

…

  (sleeping) Enter command: inventory
        You are carrying: a theorem. an axiom. 
                          a postulate. a hypothesis. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: examine postulate.
        It's a basic fact. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: think
        You thought of an idea 
  (sleeping) Enter command: examine idea
        The idea is very vague and not fully developed. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: develop idea
        The idea developed into a contradiction. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: examine contra
        It is true and false, but neither is correct, 
                   and both are right. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: examine supposition
        It's an almost proven fact. It is not proven. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: Prove supp
    With what? postulate
        Somehow a contradiction keeps coming into the proof. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: drop contra
        OK. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: prove supp
    With what? postulate
        The postulate is now a lemma. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: examine lemma
        It's a rather specialised fact. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: examine hypothesis
        It's a complicated statement. It is not proven. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: prove hypo
    With what? lemma
        The hypothesis is now a theorem.
        Suddenly, a hyper-spatial cliff passes by 
        and the lemma leaps to its demise. 
  (sleeping) Enter command: examine theorem
        It begins:

“The metaphysical existentialism of reality…”

via: trivium

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Blog: Daceybassyrappyhappy - Glutton Mix

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:31:19 +0100

Daceybassyrappyhappy - Choons from 2007/2008 that made me smile and dance around.

Track List

Marlena Shaw - California Soul (Diplo / Mad Decent mix)
My Robot Friend - Robot High School
Mark Ronson feat. Lily Allen - Oh My God (Chris Lake mix)
The Ting Tings -That’s Not My Name (Tom Neville mix)
Calvin Harris - Merrymaking At My Place (Kissy Sell Out mix)
Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor
Z-Trip - Something Different feat. Charlie Tuna
GoldieLocks - Learning To Brap
Ricardo Villalobos - Enfants (Olin Fix)

I’m not a pirate, I just grog a lot.

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Blog: Act Entr'act

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:38:23 +0100

For my stungeye.com readers I’ve enabled comments. The comment links are found on the left below the date markers. For the Tumblrs it’s business as usual.

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Blog: Pirates of the Amazon Abandon Ship

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:29:00 +0100

Dutch students “release a Firefox extension that made it easy for people who were browsing books, music and movies on Amazon to download the same products free through the Pirate Bay, the illicit BitTorrent site.”

Amazon serves a take-down notice. Students comply.

Student defend their work as parody:

“[Amazon and the Pirate Bay] might look like opposites, but are actually quite similar in regards to the mainstream media content they provide. Our project demonstrated this practically. So it’s a parody of any kind of media consumerism, whether corporate or subcultural.”

The students weren’t hosting or providing pirated media. They were pointing the way. Will this eventually lead to world governments enacting legislation that limits certain types of linking on the net? Might it eventually be illegal for me or Google to link to the Pirate Bay?

Source: tnyt

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Blog: A Process That Resonates

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:22:00 +0100

Processing is a free open-source programming language for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It was created with artists, designers and hobbyists in mind.

After seven years of alpha and beta testing version 1.0 of Processing was launched yesterday.

I first discovered Processing in late 2003 and started coding sketches in February of 2004. Since then I’ve logged countless hours geeking out with this wonderful tool. I published my early sketches online, but I think the last sketch I shared on StungEye was a crystal growth simulator back in October of 2007.

Lately when I want to do some experimental coding I pull out my Ruby Shoes, but I have started teaching some of my students how to write programs for their cellphones using the mobile version of Processing.

I also own an Arduino, the electronics-hacking version of Processing. Next week Andrew and I are going to use an Arduino to build a random number generator. Why? Well, for use as a consciousness field resonator to test the existents of the Noosphere, of course. :)

BTW, if you want to see what’s possible with Processing check out the work of Robert Hodgin or Glenn Marshall.

If you want to learn Processing you can get started by following the tutorials and the API reference. You can learn from and be inspired by other peoples code. I also recommend the book Learning Processing by Daniel Shiffman.

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Blog: Exit the Loop, but When?

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:05:00 +0100

There is a problem-solving strategy in computer science called recursion. It amounts to programming sets of instructions that are defined in terms of themselves (self-referential, meta).

Douglas Hofstadter’s academic pursuits centre on the connection between recursion and consciousness. Hofstadter maintains that our brains are recursive in nature, our consciousness born amongst the strange loops of our thoughts about thinking.

A recursive definition of recursion: “If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.”

Linguist Noam Chomsky has theorized that there is no limit to the expressive nature of English (and other similarly structured languages) due to the recursive device of embedding sentences in sentences.

This is the man all tattered and torn,
That kissed the maiden all forlorn,
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,
That tossed the dog,
That worried the cat,
That killed the rat,
That ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This post was inspired by a blog on beauty in computer science. My favourite recursively defined fractal is the Sierpiński triangle. I enjoy writing recursive algorithms.

Previously on Stung Eye: Recursion through definition.

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Blog: Who Owns Ideas - Bill C61

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:07:14 +0100

The copyright amendment bill (C-61) tabled a few months ago “died on the table” when the 39th Canadian Parliament was dissolved prematurely for the upcoming election. Sadly, I’m sure it will be back in one form or another (especially if the Conservatives win a majority).

In the mean while, I’d encourage you to listen to the CBC Ideas episode entitled Who Owns Ideas. [podcast here]

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Blog: Two New Wally Glutton Mixes

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:55:00 +0100

You’re My Ghost - Indie-tude from 2007-2008ish
Triangle Waves - Bass-Heavy Mini-Mix (with a dash of dirty)

You’re My Ghost

Speck Mountain - Girl Out West
Seachange - Glitterball
Rilo Kiley - Asshole
White Hinterland - Dreaming of the Plum Trees
The Ginger Envelope - Drift
Peter and the Wolf - Better Days
Silje Nes - Dizzy Street
Grey Reverend - The First Place
Yelle - Tristess / Joie
Constantines and Feist - Islands in the Stream
John P. Strohm - Where is my Mind
Birds Fled From Me - The Resisted
Marco Polo - Nostalgia feat. Masta Ace
The Black Ghosts - Tears from a Gun
She & Him - Black Hole
Cut Copy - Feel the Love
New Pornographers - Myriad Harbour
Reverie Sound Revue - Passes & Passports
Kate Nash - Fluorescent Adolescent

Triangle Waves

Atmosphere - Shoulda Know
Judi Chicago - Chick Feel A
Midfield General - Disco Sirens (MR GASPAR Remix)
LCD Soundsystem - Get Innocuous (Soulwax Mix)
Sebastine Tellier - Divine (Danger Mix)
Mylo - Sweet Child of Mine

I’m not a pirate, I just grog a lot.

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Blog: Canadian Tories Continue to Cut Federal Arts Funding

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:24:36 +0100

Contributions cut this week by the conservative government:

$300,000 cut from the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, which archives and makes available for distribution film, television and musical recordings.
$1.5 million cut from the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund, which helps top up the budgets of independent films and triggers private investment.
$2.5 million cut from the National Training Program in the Film and Video Sector.

Federal programs canceled this week by the conservative government:

The ProMart program, an artists’ travel support fund. ($4.7 million)
The Trade Routes program that supports film and music exports. ($9 million)
The Stabilization Project and Capacity Building program, which provides financial and administrative support to art groups.

[source]

Tories cut funding for artists touring abroad. — CBC:

Ideology played a role in decision, spokesperson acknowledges.

Want a ‘culture of innovation’? Fund our artists. — Globe and Mail:

First we have Bill C-10, the bid to deny tax credits to what the Heritage Minister calls “indecent material.” Meanwhile, other art forms have been told they are insufficiently “mainstream” and their funding has been cut through the cancellation of Trade Routes and PromArt.

‘Left-wing’ writer denies applying for travel grant — Globe and Mail:

The cuts to arts programs hit on a favourite theme of the Tories - cutting spending that appears wasteful and elitist - to gain political advantage in some target markets.

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