informal dialogue

box2d Body silhouette [Flickr]

jason.mcdermott — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:58:17 PDT

jason.mcdermott posted a photo:

box2d head collision test [Flickr]

jason.mcdermott — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:57:49 PDT

jason.mcdermott posted a photo:

Links for 2010-07-27 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 PDT

Apple Magic Trackpad introduced with new iMac
Apple's really got a death wish for the mouse, which it originally helped popularise back in 1984. First it disposed of the right mouse button, then it disposed of the buttons entirely, then added multitouch, and now it's begun selling a laptop-style trackpad to plug into desktop PCs. It's called the Magic Trackpad.
Evolution of the World Cup ball
With the World Cup in full swing, the New York Times has been rolling out its World Cup-related graphics so you can stay on top of all the matches. They've got their live trackers, complemented with live blogging, and a map to find where to watch the game (in NY), based on what team you're rooting for.
Glasses: the ultimate image changer
[This is hilarious and uber creative advertising. If I wore glasses, I'd totally buy from these guys.]

Links for 2010-07-26 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 PDT

Sketch Chair [Processing, Objects] - design, lasercut/cnc and build your own chair.. | CreativeApplications.Net
Sketch Chair by Greg Saul is a exploration in using computation and rapid manufacturing techniques to allow users to design and build their own products or in this case their own chairs. Created in Processing, the application allows users to take part in the entire process of designing and building their own chairs. Chairs are designed using a simple 2D sketch-based interface and design validation tools. Thereafter chairs can be fabricated from sheet materials cut by a laser cutter, CNC milling machine or papercutters.

Links for 2010-07-25 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:00:00 PDT

Terminal Tips and Tricks For Mac OS X - Super User
great list of tips, including this doozy /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &
Add more solid desktop color options | Software | Mac OS X Hints | Macworld
When it comes to customizing your desktop, OS X seemingly provides anything you could want—there are a number of Apple-provided images, there are connections to your user’s Pictures folder and iPhoto library, or you can use any of 10 provided solid colors for your desktop background. But if you’re a fan of solid colors, you may not agree with the 10 that Apple has provided. Thankfully, there are two relatively easy ways to get additional color choices.

Instant Oil Spill

jasonmcdermott — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:03:29 +0000

Schweinsteiger looks on in concern..

See instantoilspill for more

Links for 2010-07-23 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 PDT

Wireless + Arduino + oF [Tutorial] by Joshua Noble aka @factoryfactory | CreativeApplications.Net
In the last tutorial we used an openFrameworks application to control a process running on an Arduino board. In this tutorial we’re going to reverse that and use an Arduino board to control an openFrameworks application that’s playing back music and we’ll do it wirelessly and (relatively) inexpensively. The electronics in this tutorial are a little more involved than the previous one because we need an oF application to control and two Arduino controllers: one to send transmit data and one to receive data and communicate with the oF application. There are a whole bunch different ways to do wireless communication that we’ll outline in the section below on wireless but for this tutorial, to mitigate the cost of requiring two Arduinos, I’m going to use inexpensive Radio Frequency (RF) components to send and receive the data.
Arduino + Servo + openCV Tutorial [#openFrameworks] by Joshua Noble | CreativeApplications.Net
One of the my favorite things about creativeapplications.net has always been the small tags one can find beneath the name of an application indicating among other things, the technology used to create it. That little nod to the process and to all the work that went into creating the libraries and techniques that an artist or designer uses helps not only contextualize the work but it also helps give recognition to everyone who has contributed their time and expertise to building tools for creative expression in code. Figuring that some of the readers might be interested in learning a little more about these frameworks I’ve put together a quick walk-through of how to connect up two of those tools that one so often sees attached to the names of the projects profiled here: openFrameworks and Arduino.
1960s & 1970s Scandinavian Design Logos - a set on Flickr
logos. logotypes. trademarks. scandinavian design. furniture. textiles. glass. porcelain. housewares. 1960s. 1970s. denmark. sweden. finland. norway. industrial design. typography

Links for 2010-07-21 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:00:00 PDT

Multiuser Sketchpad
RT @blprnt: I'm not entirely convinced that Multiuser Sketchpad isn't what the internet was invented for: http://mrdoob.com/projects/mul ...

Links for 2010-07-20 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:00:00 PDT

ribbon type flow :: 01 on Vimeo
particles moving inside a perlin noise field, each leaving a trail or a ribbon path on which type is printed.
Daring Fireball: Antennagate Bottom Line
bottom line on the iPhone 4 antenna: it has a weak spot but there’s no evidence that it’s a significant, let alone catastrophic, problem in practice. It’s telling that the criticism surrounding this issue has shifted, quickly, from speculation about a technical defect in the iPhone 4 hardware to criticism over the tone of Apple’s response to it.

Honk if you hate vuvuzelas

jasonmcdermott — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:01:03 +0000

My buddy Steve wasn't feeling so great, so I made this poster for him.
Maybe you're also in need of a good cheering up, in which case..

enjoy!

Links for 2010-07-19 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:00:00 PDT

Design Pod
It is a reality of the changing work / studio environment that we are working in larger, shared, non-hierarchical spaces. For the sake of efficiency many feel the loss of their autonomy, and power over their own actions.

noisy

jasonmcdermott — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:01:22 +0000

Click here to see more

animation

jasonmcdermott — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 02:34:25 +0000

Here's another mini sketch, using the tester from the wordpress processingjs plugin. Bear with me, folks..

processingjs

jasonmcdermott — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 03:02:16 +0000

Here is the latest in a small series of tests, embedding processing sketches on this blog. This one uses the wonders of processingjs, John Resig's fantastic port of processing to javascript. This animation is nicked directly from the processingjs website, so please don't hold that against me. Some oddities notices so far - I can't seem to work out how to include text in processingjs sketches, apparently there's some kind of glyph-y magic which helps - and the mouse interaction seems broken. Hmm..

pachube coffee and gps

jasonmcdermott — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:18:17 +0000

Below is a small experiment I'm currently running; very informally I'm updating a pachube feed ('cups of coffee today') with the current location data. It's a bit of an odd experiment - I'm not really always drinking coffee, but once I set it up (using the pachube iphone app, which is pretty simple to use) I discovered that it logged the location of each coffee cup consumed. Not so exciting I know, but I'm interested in the notion that my daily activities and movements can be logged, tracked in some sense and collected to form an image - be that automatically or manually logged data. It's by no means new territory, but I'm keen to see how it all works out. There's a chance that the 'update feed by twitter' tool will come in handy, but who knows at this point.

So as I said, It's a bit of a mish-mash, however there are a few things of interest. 1. I can log 0 cups of coffee, which will update the location but keep my caffeine intake low. 2. When i do have a cup of coffee the daily tally will increase and I'll be able to see where and when it all happens (at work, that's a no brainer..). 3. Along comes this openstreetmap based project from the pachube apps page - Trails.

Have a look for yourself, just how well or unwell my coffee consumption is going over the last 24 hours.. Hopefully, if you're reading this you'll see a map below, with a gps overlay of location (x,y) and consumption (z) data. If not, then perhaps I've not updated in a while. Nonetheless, it's got me thinking about these new consumer (no pun intended) tools which are now readily available - and free.
Not sure where this will go, not exactly sure where it belongs, but it's worth mentioning at least.

Drink up!

Batch Convert Images in OS X

jasonmcdermott — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:16:09 +0000

This post is more for my benefit than others, but you may in the end find it useful anyway. I've recently come across a handy batch conversion technique for switching image formats in a snap;

1. Put a load of images in a folder
2. Open the Terminal
3. cd to the current directory
4. type in

mkdir jpgs; sips -s format jpeg *.* --out jpgs

done.

I found this one whilst looking for a quick and easy way to switch a folder of .pngs to .jpgs, without needing to download/purchase any additional software - and programming something quickly in Automator seemed like more work than was necessary!

If you're looking for other solutions to this problem, this page had a few other alternatives.

Happy converting!

Google Maps GPS

jasonmcdermott — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:39:35 +0000

This might come in handy to some of you, it has made life remarkably easier for me in recent months;

Steps involved;

1. navigate to a desired location in google maps
2. paste this script into the url bar + hit enter

javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

3. a window will pop up showing you the gps coordinates of that location
4. done!

Hope it helps!

Index

jasonmcdermott — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:24:52 +0000

Are you going to Index tonight? It's the end of year show for the UTS Architecture school, with work being exhibited from all 5 years. Go check it out!

url shorteners

jasonmcdermott — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:27:26 +0000

Shouldn't a URL 'shortener' service make the URL shorter? perhaps even a google search term would have been appropriate, but then again that might have used up enough energy to boil a kettle*.

* I'll have to explain this one later..