Just a quickie: If you, too, are learning to code, I strongly recommend following @NatashaTheRobot on Twitter. She posts a consistent stream of links of interest to students of programming. She’s also written a book about how to learn this stuff, How To… Learn To Code. Get Your Dream Job. Change Your Life (which—confession—I bought but haven’t read yet), and she has a fine blog, Natasha The Robot.
Photo: Robbie by Jeff / mr_jeffreed; some rights reserved.
This week’s assignment for Crafting with Data was to “Get to know the normal distribution intimately by building your own quincunx or Galton box. You may use either physical materials or create an imaginative software simulation.” Continue reading Crafting a Quincunx
For this week’s homework in Understanding Networks, our assignment was as follows:
REST assignment. Communication in not-so-realtime. Deliver information to the user through the browser from somewhere else. Update the information they’re seeing while they interact, preferably based on input from multiple sources.
As I mentioned last week, I wanted to work with the newly released Wordnik API. Continue reading Product of a RESTful night
For Crafting with Data today, our assignment was to gather preliminary data for our Discovery Seeker project:
Use what you’ve learned to gather sufficient samples for your purpose. Explore again, check for significances, patterns, correlations or trends to share with the class.
Since my project is to try to approach the abandoned Bookalator from a new angle, I didn’t actually set out to collect new data right away. Continue reading Revisiting book data
Hallowe’en is coming, which must be why the Bookalator has been stirring again, gathering its strength to once more stalk the earth.
Back in May, I made a summer “to do” list which was long enough to keep me busy for the next ten years. Among the proposed tasks was “finishing” the perpetually stalled Bookalator project. I then, of course, proceeded to spend the next three months mostly sitting around feeling bad about not doing stuff. But the constant demand for Ideas, Ideas, Ideas, and my constant lack of same, has made spring’s doleful mess look like fall’s Golden Ticket.
Continue reading The Project That Would Not Die
For week 2 of Understanding Networks, a newly created class that keeps shifting between abstraction and application, leaving me sadly uncertain as to whether I understand what Tom’s talking about at any given moment, our terrifying assignment was as follows:
Socket exercise: communicating in realtime. I will give you a game platform and the protocols to log in and communicate with it. Make a client to log in and play. Work in Processing, Flash, Arduino or whatever environment is comfortable to you. You will not play with your own client, but you’ll show someone else how to use it.
Another catch-up post. Week 2’s assignment for Drawing Machines was as follows:
- Make 5 quick studies that explore gesture
- Create a digital piece that explores gesture
- Describe an abstract process that explores gesture
Doing some catch-up documentation, here. I was finally allowed to replace this class with Mashups on Monday, but I thought I might as well post my work from the first month, since, you know, I did it and all.
The assignments for week 1 were,
- Make 3 drawings that explore line & contour according the instructions given in the Nicolaides reading.
- Photograph an image that explores line & contour.
- Describe an abstract process that explores line & contour.
