Author: jet Townsend

Interactive Devices and Practical Movie Effects

I’m a huge fan of science fiction movies and I think part of the attraction is special effects, more specifically practical effects.  CGI can be a tool for fantastic visions in movies (ex: TRON, Avatar) but a practical effect is a real, physical thing in an actor’s hands while they are shooting a movie.  One side of practical effects is the world of fandom and at the opposite end are the people who make movies like Blade Runner 2049.  (Probably some spoilers in this but if you haven’t seen 2049 yet now you have two problems.)

Assignment 3: p5.js + Arduino

Assignment 3

Due 23:59, 5 Feb, please post a .zip folder with your p5.js folder, Arduino sketch, and Fritzing sketch.  If you can post video, great.

Tie your previous project (or a new one if you like) to a p5.js client: display the state of your client and any relevant sensor data in p5.js.   Use graphics, animation, sound, or any other p5.js feature you think is the best element for displaying this data.

10 Rules For Students and Teachers From John Cage

John Cage, 10 Rules for Students and Teachers

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher ; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher: pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined: this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you want it to lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work.

RULE EIGHT: Do not try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

RULES: We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can on your hands. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything. It might come in handy later.

Class Notes, 30 Jan 2018

Preparation for a couple of weeks of p5.js

BRING YOUR LAPTOP POWER SUPPLY TO CLASS

’nuff said.

Install software

Install p5.js

Install node.js

Find a text editor

Software development requires you use an editor that supports plain text (ASCII and UNICODE) and doesn’t do goofy formatting things with HTML.  Most (all?) software development editors will handle JavaScript.  Note that “which editor is best?” is what we refer to as “an underwear argument.” This is when adults waste countless hours arguing about briefs, boxers, boyshorts, thongs, hipsters, and going commando.

Open source options include:

  • emacs — steep learning curve but worth the effort.  This is my editor for all programming languages including TeX (a markup language popular for academic papers).
  • atom — like emacs but for people who are younger than emacs. Lots of interesting ways to customize for other applications. For example, it’s my Python editor when I’m using the Rhino CAD software and writing a Python script to modify models.
  • sublime — like atom but different.  Very popular on the Mac as a replacement for BBEdit, predates atom.

There are plenty of commercial options, if you already use BBEdit (equiv) or XCode that should be fine.

Become Shiffman’s BFF and crash learn p5.js

A very detailed history of p5.js.  This will answer a lot of  what/why questions.

Since we just did arrays, here is how they work in p5.js.

Later in the semester we will look at “scraping” data from the interweb to use in class project, here’s one way we can do this.

Review the p5.js reference

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