running late tonight so I modified a processing patch used for a different project - playing with tints and darker images. maybe it's the influence of the HP Lovecraft class I'm doing a the moment.. ;)

05/11/2009

blog post @ http://www.aliak.com/content/barely-there

this is day 5 of VloMo09 - 2009 Videoblogging Month - watch other people's videos at http://videobloggers.mirocommunity.org

.mov video file ::: .flv video file ::: video page at blip.tv

mobile processing links

Mobile Processing page
Francis Li's page
Mobile Me(dia) course at NYU by Shawn Van Every

Mobile Processing for Mobile Phones workshop at electrofringe 2009

as part of the "Transhumanism, Singularities, and Other Far Out Futures" class with R.U. Sirius at Evolver Academy we watched TechnoCalyps: Transhuman documentary - here are my notes & quotes from viewing the film
note: times mentioned are rough times only

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT_LnUObIf8

- keeping the brain surviving outside of the body - experiments with animals
05:25 - total body transplant. Stephen Hawkings could possibly survive a total body transplant?
06:10 - consciousness can be transplanted. human soul? can be argued that this can be transplanted. they did experiments with monkeys - transplanted the head of one monkey onto another & it lived for 7 days before being rejected

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z257yC2HAlI

01:10 - humanising the pig kidney/liver so it's not rejected by human body, then transplanting these into humans (pigs as donors)

01:35 metamouse - laboratory grown ear on back of a mouse. hasn't Stelarc been growing an ear on his arm? art project?

03:25 - artist - designing future human bodies. 'after all the body is an extension of fashion' -- I think the body was around before fashion...

10:00 - most people think you have to build a brain and a body will fall out of it. but when you look at nature, well over half the species on Earth have no brain to speak of at all yet manage to move around and survive very effectively.

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxBGMGxVCg0

00:00 - scientists have evolved very effective nervous systems. not brains

03:10 - history of humans is that they haven't treated other life that is similar to humans very well. even back to neanderthals when the homosapiens arrived - they didn't live in co-operation, even though they were very similar. even back to 500 years (or this year?) humans haven't treated other humans well (colonization)
won't be pleasant for the losers. -- joseph m rosen

08:30 - highlighted/coloured nerve cells - can see them working

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZShORepzB-g

04:45 - replacing part of the biological brain with microchip. inputs & outputs still work the same

06:45 - using these computer chip-brain replacements now for sound recognition - to recognise sounds of gunshots which make a camera zoom in on the sound - crime stopper cameras in high crime areas. member of the black community says that they are being watched whereas white community areas are not

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGQjwhntAG0

01:30 fit onto a cd rom - 600Mb I bet that's all you need to copy a person

03:25 scientists can move a single atom from one place to another

05:50 they want to build nanobots (low number of atoms devices with computers more powerful than today) - inject them into the human body eg bloodstream to kill cancer cells, modify dna, etc

06:15 basic goal of nanotechnology is to build an assembler (auto-assembler) - a very basic device, that can build copies of itself

06:50 molecular nanotechnology is to physical reality what computer programming is to virtual reality. .. bit of an exaggeration, but gives the idea.. whereas computer programmers can program software to do what they want, molecular nanotechnology will allow us to change matter at the most fundamental level. it will allow us to build just about any kind of structure, to our exact specifications by moving individual atoms. ... this sounds like a world of magic(k) where all that we imagined becomes reality but the role of the good fairy is taken over by robots so miniscule that we cannot see them. (background images of Cinderella where pumpkin changes into a coach) and instead of saying the magic word, we program them to grant all our wishes.
>> myths, dreams & fairy tales - the human premonition of what we will one day create. or if not premonition, the imagination of what we want to create?

07:40 the other side of the fairy tale is what is called the "grey goo syndrome" - nanobots programmed for terrorist action or rapidly start reproducing themselves & a chain reaction causes planet to be reduced in 72hours into a grey goo of swarming nanobots

08:00 most scientists think that "grey goo syndrome" is very unlikely - we will have nanotechnology to control nanotechnology.
>> the "watchdog" - who's watching the watchdog??

TechnoCalyps: Transhuman Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Wx3UPyd6U

00:00 this is not the end of history. becoming post-human creates new problems. still have same personality problems as before. you're just going to be "more" than you were before. you'll have more power. with more power comes more responsibility.

GE AR - augmented reality
I tried playing this AR video at home tonight and it worked! this is the first attempt so the video I took is a bit dodgy but it gives an idea. the cat was purring whilst I was recording and kept nudging my head. I tried blowing on the mic but couldn't get the windmill blades to spin. try it out! now I want to try make my own!!
thanks to @LukeSnarl for tweeting the link

http://vimeo.com/4764743 :

GE AR - augmented reality from kath on Vimeo.

GE page
- print out the marker
- u might need to upgrade your flash player to v10
- turn on your webcam (mac - do this with flash player not photobooth - read the help tips on the url for help)
- launch wind power or solar energy links
(if you just see the green oval spinning then it probably can't see your camera)
- hold the marker printout so it's facing your webcam.. then watch the 3d images appear!

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality

http://bit.ly/9V5hV is a better video demo (clearer than what I've done - but I wanted to try it myself)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00FGtH5nkxM

luke sent me a great AR game by Julian Oliver (NZ) :
http://vimeo.com/1320756 :

levelHead v1.0, 3 cube speed-run (spoiler!) from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

this is amazing!
he's made a game using cubes - called Levelhead - it's won all sorts of awards (deservedly so!)
he explains it on his website @ http://julianoliver.com/levelhead (& has code for you to try too)

Julian is part of HIT Lab NZ - The Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand - from their site it looks like they're doing some pretty cool stuff!!

ARToolKit

ARToolKit
ARToolKit documentation page - with samples, tutorials and background details

yesterday, @DustForEyes posted an "AR scratching" video by vanderlin to stealth board & twitter. it's tagged with tags such as AR, augmented reality, opencv, and openframeworks, so I googled some of these. the AR markers seem like the fiducial markers found in reactable - note there's going to be a performance / demo of one of these called dubtable at ripped next week which would be cool to check out.

netbeans tutorial on netbeans.org website :

hello world app in the netbeans ide

web applications tutorial

:::

J2EE tutorials

XML
JAXP = java xml api (processing)
- dom - reads xml & creates a tree of tags
- sax - simple api for xml - read a stream of tags

JAXB = java api for xml binding

JAXR = java api for xml registry
- registry is used to deploy & locate web services
- jaxr is the abstraction that makes the interface to the web services look the same

JAXM = java api for xml messaging
- send and receive xml documents as messages
- includes SOAP (message format)

transactions
- to record the state of different steps in the application process

A SHIMMY SHAKIN' NIGHT OF LIVE ELECTRO/DANCE-POP WITH SUPER MASSIVE & YEN

Award winning Sydney dance/rock band Super Massive team with fellow electro-funksters Yen for a very special night of electro/dance-pop at the Excelsior Hotel Surry Hills on Saturday 7th March. Newcomers Life Bitter Soul support.

The night showcases three of Sydney's best up and coming electronic/dance rock bands. With all bands on the bill sharing a love of deep rhythm, shimmering synths, poetic pop, not to mention lights and lasers, it's set to be a spectacular, shimmy-shakin' night, if not an outright dancing frenzy, if both Super Massive and Yen's previous shows are anything to go by.

The show is at the Excelsior Hotel, 64 Foveaux St, Surry Hills. The night starts at 8pm. Tickets are $10- at the door.

knitting resources and links

:::

knitty (online) magazine
http://knitty.com

:::

online knit communities

knit-list
wooly thoughts yahoogroup
wooly thoughts site
subversive yarn

:::

knitted toys

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/knitlist/message/90742
Squid Hat
Chicken hat
Knit Spider
Knit Veggies
Knit Dinos
Jess Hutchison - Her pattern booklet is fantastic!! but now out of print (i have a copy)

http://groups.drupal.org/drupalchix
Drupal Chix

http://groups.drupal.org/node/13312 is the drupalchix thread about conferences

:::

some in Australia / NZ regions
interestingly, most of these seem to be using drupal too!

:::

https://conf.linux.org.au
from their site blurb : "linux.conf.au (LCA) is Australia's national Linux conference, and said to be one of the best in the world. It prides itself on being “seriously fun and seriously technical”. In January 2009 it's being held in Hobart, Tasmania, for the first time. So join us and march south! :)2009 will be the 10th anniversary for LCA. It will run from January 19-24 and end with an open-to-the-public Open Day"
- not strictly women, but I've heard it's a good conference
- they're calling for papers if anyone is interested :
http://freeasinfreedom.modernthings.org/d/doku.php?id=call_for_participa...

:::

http://au.linuxchix.org
AussieChix is the Australian regional chapter of LinuxChix, for women living in Australia, aimed at providing ways for women living in Australia to meet each other, talk about, and get involved in Linux, Free Software and related things. AussieChix welcomes women interested in Linux or Free Software at any level of experience.

:::

http://conf.au.linuxchix.org/2008-microconference-sydney-and-melbourne
AussieChix microconference in Sydney and Melbourne: October 25 2008 (it's tomorrow!)
- they have a list of other events in the calendar on their site
- there's also geekgirl dinners in sydney & melbourne (related to this site)

:::

http://linuxchix.org.nz
LinuxChix NZ is a community for women who like Linux, and for women and men who want to support women in computing. Linuxchix NZ activities will include support forums, mentoring, training courses, social meetups and linux install fests.

:::

other regions :

:::

http://eclectictechcarnival.org
The /ETC is a unique tech skill-share that has been held annually since 2002. The emphasis has always been women sharing their experiences, knowledge and skills around free software, open hardware and universal interoperability of systems in a fun way. The eighth Eclectic Tech Carnival will be held sometime in Septmeber 2009 in Istanbul, Turkey.

:::

http://www.genderchangers.org/herstory.html has a list of others (past events, but you could search for them and see when the next ones are being held)
& the links page http://www.genderchangers.org/links.html has more women's groups/events

:::

http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2009
OSCON

:::

today 18/10/2008 was the Sydney Drupal Camp - held at University of NSW campus in Camperdown & hosted by the Drupal Australia Group. Ryan Cross did a fantastic job organising the "unconference" with assistance from many people in the group. I'm too tired right now to write up my notes about it - suffice to say it was a great event and I learnt a few new tips to try out. I'll try write more tomorrow & post the photos (I only took a few) after some sleep. I'd helped out by recording audio of the sessions which will be uploaded to the group site & available for those who couldn't make it.

attached are the raw notes I took during the day - pasted below for searching purposes. I spent all day in the "B" area - which was beginners, but they went through some of the new drupal 6 modules I haven't used much yet. area "A" was more for the hardcore programmers.

photos @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliak_com/tags/drupalcampau08

there are more photos by woulfe / Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sydney @ http://peu.pharm.usyd.edu.au/content/drupal/content.html

I went to the Sydney Drupal Usergroup - October Meetup last night - my first one in Sydney. previously I've only been to the drupal sessions at fosdem 2005 in Brussels as I'd never been to Brussels and wanted to see what it was like. I'd been using drupal for a couple of years at the time and was testing upgrades. initially this site was a custom made php site that I coded to let me do data entry for events / news items and display them on the site in the same format I used for the mail lists which had been running for a few years prior to the site - so at the time, the custom php site saved me time. but also I found I spent a lot of time getting the site to work and adding new features, so when a friend (thanks Damian) asked me over to try out some CMS's including Drupal and we got it working in about an hour, I was hooked! the format of the articles was not exactly the same as what the previous site had been using, but it was so much easier to manage! I can't remember the exact date I moved the site to drupal, but by looking at the the wayback machine pages, it seems to have been in june / july 2003 - maybe 23rd july??

slideshow of fosdem 2005 :

other drupal articles on this site

so, back to the Sydney meeting...
I was surprised to see so many people there - probably around 25-30 people. I hadn't realised drupal was so popular in Australia - though to be honest, I hadn't really checked for a few years. even the European and USA conferences and meetings are really popular now! great to see!! and there's so many books available.

16/10/2008
notes (point form) :

Leonardo/OLATS, co sponsor of YASMIN, is pleased to announce

Cybernetics Serendipity Redux
http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin/viewtopic.php?t=4385 (ed: discussion link seems to be broken now 15/02/2009)
http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin_oldarchives - has archive of yasmin mail list
http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin - new Yasmin list

A moderated discussion on YASMIN
Beginning September 1 2008

Discussion On YASMIN, led by Ranulph Glanville.
Moderators Ranulph Glanville, Paul Brown, Paul Pangaro

40 years ago, Jasia Reichart's exhibition "Cybernetic Serendipity" showed that cybernetics, computing and art had arrived.

40 years later, while computers and art remain, cybernetics has nearly vanished, although there is a reviving interest in art.

hackety.org is a website for artful computer hacking. they're interested in how hacking weaves into life

just read about this on the toplap list :
Clojure was developed by architect / programmer Rich Hickey who has worked on projects such as scheduling, automation, election displays, fingerprinting, audio analysis, machine listening.

"Clojure is a dynamic programming language that targets the Java Virtual Machine. It is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Every feature supported by Clojure is supported at runtime. Clojure provides easy access to the Java frameworks, with optional type hints and type inference, to ensure that calls to Java can avoid reflection."

DrupalCon was held recently in Barcelona. I didn't make it this year. the schedule looked good though, and from all reports it was the best drupalcon ever (as it is each year!!). there's a wrap up post on the drupal site with links to some of the slide presentations, videos of the sessions on archive.org - search for drupalconbarcelona2007 tag, or try the mirror site.

drupal for facebook was a session by Dave Cohen. he's started a Facebook project on the Drupal site. the video of his presentation is online as well as the slides
there's a demo on facebook. I'm already feeding facebook with my drupal site blog entries using the RSS capabilities of Blog Friends and the built in Notes application, but it'll be interesting to see what the Drupal guys build.

and, speaking of facebook, mashable have reviewed widget box, a wizard for creating Facebook apps

I'm trying out making music using live coding techniques, with 2 pre-requisites - that it's easy and fast to do & learn - probably not the right pre-requisites (might upset real musicians :), but it's where I'm at for the moment.

so, I'm trying chucK. this is the first chucK tutorial. I used the miniAudicle IDE instead of command line interface. it was very easy to load the songs into the IDE (miniAudicle) and play them. I had separate files for each module and adjusted some of the parameters to change the sounds, then clicked the 'replace shred' to 'take' the change and add this file's sounds to the output audio.

this it meets my criteria - easy and fast to use. now I just have to make it sound musical instead of a collection of random sounds & tones :) (the hard part)

chucK documentation
chucK community / mail lists
chucK miniAudicle documentation
chucK wiki
chucK projects - some people are hooking up chucK apps and Processing for java based visuals, plus there's many examples of laptop instruments, as well as a Max patch and more

listen to the audio :
chucK_tutorial01.mp3
loscha_com_tambura01.mp3 - from the loscha.comchucK tutorials ( Loscha is in the Australian band Toydeath - a circuit bending performance experience ) - this piece reminds me of the original samples of the bridges in the Jodie Rose Singing Bridges project and cd.

ChucK is a new (and developing) audio programming language for real-time synthesis, composition, performance, and now, analysis - fully supported on MacOS X, Windows, and Linux. ChucK presents a new time-based, concurrent programming model that's highly precise and expressive (we call this strongly-timed), as well as dynamic control rates, and the ability to add and modify code on-the-fly. In addition, ChucK supports MIDI, OSC, HID device, and multi-channel audio. It's fun and easy to learn, and offers composers, researchers, and performers a powerful programming tool for building and experimenting with complex audio synthesis/analysis programs, and real-time interactive control. ChucK is one of the programmes used in live coding circles. visit http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/ for more details.

I've been trying out some processing apps - Substrate is one of my favourites. written by j.tarbell from complexification.net. it creates a generative image from colours in a specified source image using a simple algorithm.

I used this photo of Auckland countryside as the source image. here's the results:

http://complexification.net/gallery/machines/substrate/ for j.tarbell's amazing works.

some links for drupal features and module development.

CVS
http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/ has an example/browsable view of the drupal code & contributor code CVS system.

themes

http://themegarden.org/drupal50/ has some drupal 5 themes, though it seems the themegarden has recently been closed.

http://drupal.org/project/Themes has some screen shots of themes.

artists sites & groups

http://groups.drupal.org/art-music - this replaces the http://www.drupalart.org/ site.

CCK - Content Construction Kit

http://groups.drupal.org/content-construction-kit-cck - group for Content Construction Kit (CCK). this is the new system to replace flexinodes and allows you to create different fields.

http://drupal.org/node/101723 = Content Construction Kit handbook

http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/88 - lists the different field types for CCK

Views

http://drupal.org/project/views - there's also a system called Views which are like database user views and allow different collections of information to be collected and then displayed once integrated into the theme. from this page:
"This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results. It has four modes, plus a special mode, and provides an impressive amount of functionality from these modes."

http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/views

theming CCK fields

theming individual CCK fields - http://drupal.org/node/62466

theming CCK & views to create a scheduling grid (good examples of how to customise which could be applied to other CCK node types) : http://groups.drupal.org/node/2647

http://oif.eafarris.com/cck_theming_in_drupal_4_7 - this is the site of the creator of freelinks module. he's using CCK on his site and shows an example of how he made and themed a custom version of weblinks module in CCK

tutorials & documentation

http://groups.drupal.org - for general info on different sections of drupal project

drupal video tutorials and screencasts -
http://drupal.org/node/124318

support @ bryght.com - http://support.bryght.com/

http://drupal.org/handbooks

writing your own drupal modules

http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo = a group for writing your own drupal modules with some lessons/tutorials

http://drupal.org/contribute/development has some ways people can help with drupal development

http://docs.drupaldojo.org/getting-started-with-drupal-development - there's a coding lesson coming up on 11th march. & they're working on a "Getting Started with Drupal Development" handbook

http://drupaldojo.com/lessons/ - has some of the lessons

http://drupal.org/node/508 - module developers guide

http://drupal.org/node/17914 - how to build drupal 4.7 modules

http://drupal.org/node/82920 - building drupal 5 modules

http://drupal.org/node/318 - drupal coding standards

http://api.drupal.org/ - drupal api's

http://drupal.org/node/49768 - drupal object reference

http://api.drupal.org/api/HEAD - examples from drupal head

The Zen Garden aims to excite, inspire, and encourage participation. To begin, view some of the existing designs in the list. Clicking on any one will load the style sheet into this very page. The code remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external .css file.

Sophie, the Institute's first piece of software, is designed for reading and writing next-generation electronic books. Sophie will facilitate the easy construction of documents that are designed to live on the network and to use multimedia and time in ways that are currently difficult, if not impossible.

HelloWorld! squeak file

visit squeak plugins page if you can't see the app below

or click here to open hello world squeak test app if you can't already see it. once the page opens, scroll to the toolbar at bottom of page and add things to the test page - you won't be able to save though!

hrmm... that didn't work at all :(

useful links to docs / info :

http://www.squeak.org : one of the main squeak sites

http://guzdial.cc.gatech.edu/squeakbook/ : book on squeak "Squeak: Object-oriented design with multimedia applications" by Mark Guzdial

http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/cs2340/ : uni course using squeak that the "Squeak: Object-oriented design with multimedia applications" book was based on

http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/Videos/ : video tutorials - don't seem to have sound in all of them though! screencasts

http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak : Squeak Swiki

http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2983 : documentation

http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/82 : a self study course in squeak

http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/20 : other squeak websites

http://www.univ-savoie.fr/Portail/Groupes/listic2/membres/Stephane.Ducas... : pdf books on squeak

Alice is a modern programming environment designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn basic computer science while creating animated movies, simple video games, where students control the behavior of 3D objects and characters in a virtual world.

Squeak is highly portable open-source Smalltalk with powerful multimedia facilities. Squeak is the vehicle of a wide range of projects, ranging from educational platforms to commercial web application development.

The Croquet Project is an international effort to promote the continued development of Croquet, a new open source software platform for creating deeply collaborative multi-user online applications. It features a network architecture that supports communication, collaboration, resource sharing, and synchronous computation among multiple users. Using the downloadable Croquet SDK, software developers can benefit from a flexible enough framework that virtually any user interface concept could quickly and easily be prototyped and deployed to create powerful and highly collaborative multi-user 2D and 3D applications and simulations.