Random Etc. Notes to self. Work, play, and the rest.
The Month Ahead and The Weekend Past
Last weekend, I attended day two of dorkbot Ghent's dorkfest. Due to a few people over-running and a later than expected start, I didn't actually speak for anywhere near as long as I had planned. I even missed out my tube maps in the rush which was disappointing. I hope to return and give a better presentation another day because I definitely liked Ghent and lots of things caught my eye.
Many thanks to Lieven and friends for inviting me, and to all the participants for showing their excellent and interesting projects. Highlights for me were Sven Koenig's sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ!, Heiko Hansen's overview of HEHE's work and the increasingly impressive NodeBox - think Processing meets Python plus lots more, sadly Mac OS-only right now but work on porting it is in progress.
This weekend, I hope to catch the end of the RCA Summer Show (particularly Interaction Design as covered by Tom at plasticbag) and the Bartlett Summer Show (alas I missed the MSc AAC show last weekend due to the clash with dorkbot Ghent). With luck, I'll also make it to Future City at the Barbican.
Looking further ahead, I'll be in Manchester for Futuresonic from 20th-22nd July. I'm taking part in a panel for the Social Technologies Summit with Stanislav Roudavski and Matt Webb entitled Iterative Architecture (Built On An Internet Of Things). The rest of the festival is shaping up nicely, I'm pretty excited about seeing Battles again on the Friday night.
One of my fellow EngD students at the Bartlett, Karen Martin, is helping to organise Why Wait? (a workshop on place, time and future technologies) to be held on the 27th and 28th July. You might also like Karen's blog, Mr. Watson. I'll be at the first day of the workshop before I leave London on the 28th for two weeks in Chicago, New York and Boston. If you've read this far and you live in any of those cities, let me know - we should probably meet!
Processing Blogs at Dorkbot 35
Dorkbot 35
Originally uploaded by rob.purdie.
Seriously though: cat pictures and gengerative art, what's not to like?
I'm told I gave good tube map.
dorkbotlondon #35
I'll be talking about some of my recent Processing work including Processing hacks and the travel time tube map at dorkbotlondon tonight. It's a Brick Lane one, so no excuses!
Being In The Know
Somebody just emailed me and asked me about Processing sites that aren't commonly known. It's a difficult question to answer, but if you're just starting out with Processing, here are a couple of tips.
- I can't emphasise enough how useful the Processing.org discourse section is. Anyone can join the forum and post questions, and there are several regulars (myself included) who enjoy helping out wherever they can. I learnt a lot from that forum in a very short space of time, and you could too! Psst! It's also worth noting that I won't answer questions by email, but I answer questions on the forum all the time. Likewise, the Processing.org Frequently Asked Questions really could solve a lot of your initial headaches.
- This blog, and any others I can find, are syndicated at Processing Blogs. Subscribe to our RSS/Atom feed (what?) and keep up with our latest experiments, events, rants, raves and off-topic meanderings...
- Searching for "Built with Processing" on Google gets you to all the pages which haven't changed Processing's default html link (and there are lots!).
- I keep links at del.icio.us/TomC/processing.org, and the full del.icio.us/tag/processing.org feed is well worth watching. (Processing's own Casey Reas also has well-organised and focused links, and Generator.x's tagged links are good for a wider view of the scene - Processing and beyond).
- In London, dorkbotlondon is a popular event for several Processing-friendly people - your local dorkbot might be similarly receptive to Processing show and tell.
- Finally, Rich Hauck's CodeTree is shaping up to be an interesting resource for Processing and Flash hackers alike, and I encourage you to try submitting some work there and see what people think.
Just remember that Processing is designed as a teaching language so there will always be more newbies than experts. You should never be embarrassed to ask questions - I can guarantee that they won't be as dumb as you think!
Cheese, Stinky… Challenging, Emotion
My friend Ben launched his project Holy Shallot at Dorkbot London last night. The product of a year's cookery school, a life-time's obsessing and a thoroughly interconnected brain, Holy Shallot graphs food relationships across ingredients, flavours, emotions, cooking methods and seasonality.
It's a great piece of work, and - whilst it's one that I suspect will never truly be finished - it works, it's here now, and it's definitely worth a look.
dorkbotlondon
img050720-2112
Originally uploaded by piotch.
There was quite a buzz about our maps at dorkbotlondon last night. It went down very well.
Catch us at Open Tech, or catch Steve and Ben at What The Hack if you want to know more.
Dorkbot and Open Tech
I'll be at dorkbotlondon tonight, hopefully doing a 5 minute "open dork" presenting a few bottom-up/emergent GPS map visualisations related to OpenStreetMap, if that's your thing. (There will also be a short article written by yours truly about OpenStreetMap in the next issue of Architectural Design, if that's your thing).
I'll be at the UKUUG / NTK / BBC Open Tech bash on Saturday too. It's sold out now, but if you're attending then be sure to say hi. When I'm not heckling Steve Coast I'll be trying to clone a Ted Nelson so I can have one for myself.
Dorkbot London tonight
From Saul Albert and the dorkbotlondon-announce list.
--=~=-=~=-=~=-=~=--
DORKBOTLONDON #27
--=~=-=~=-=~=-=~=--"People doing strange things with electricity"
Time: Wednesday 20th April 2005 from 7pm
Place: Boxing Club, Limehouse Town Hall, E14 7HA
Map: http://tinyurl.com/6zf7f (arrow points (almost) to the Boxing Club))
see website (http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/) for directionsStarring the lovely and talanted:
- Katiushka Borges - Love Coach will thrill us with live
demonstrations of her interactive game Erotic Shortcuts,
stimulating a pair of lovers to explore their likes, dislikes
and fantasies through sensory experiences.
- Robin Oppenheimer - who will be sharing some of her research into
the ancient history of people doing strange things with
electricity, including a super-rare screening of Robert
Rauschenberg's documentary of his "Open Score" performance from
the 1966 "9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering"
- http://opsin.org/ - blatant but interesting http://meta.am rip-off
- OpenDorks: Tav: The Plex: http://blog.espnow.com/, others? get in
touch if you want to give one: dorkbotlondon@dorkbot.orgSee you then!
........................................................................
.........dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity..........
..........................http://dorkbot.org/............................
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I'll be attending this - say hi! (And add yourself to the Upcoming.org page for this event?)
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