I’ve added a Processing tutorial on my wiki that tries to demonstrate how different kinds of randomness and noise “feel”.
Category: Expression
Changing Processing’s Look and Feel
The Java Look and Feel that Processing uses by default on Linux can get a bit wonky. Depending on the GTK theme you are using, menubars can actually become unusable!
You can change the Look and Feel to something that works by editing the file:
/home/USERNAME/.processing/preferences.txt
Be sure that Processing is not running when you do this. To use the standard Swing Metal Look and Feel, change the lines that read:
editor.laf=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeel
editor.laf.linux=com.sun.java.swing.plaf.gtk.GTKLookAndFeelto:
editor.laf=javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel
editor.laf.linux=javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel
Metal may not be pretty, but it seems to be pretty robust!
Note that because Processing uses its own JRE, it will ignore LnF and other settings you may have configured for your default JRE.
Models versus habits
Many computer users don’t develop mental models. Rather, they develop interaction habits. Habits are much more fragile than models. They fall apart when there’s any shift of context.
New Website
U of M Toy Product Design
I had fun a couple weeks back helping review student work for Barry Kudrowitz’s Toy Product Design course at the University of Minnesota. Looking forward to seeing which toys the teams pick to refine for their final projects.
Processing: Video capture examples
I added some code examples my wiki that demonstrate how to do video capture in Processing using the Capture library. More examples will probably follow.
Processing: Capture is a PImage
Something the documentation on Processing’s Capture class doesn’t mention is that Capture is derived from PImage. I went digging into the Capture source code to figure that out:
public class Capture extends PImage implements PConstants { ...
This means all the methods and fields available to PImage objects should also be available to Capture objects. This makes video processing a lot easier!
Arduino and Bio-inspired Design
A week ago Monday I did a guest lecture on Arduino for Marc Swackhamer and Neil Olszewski’s graduate architecture course on bio-inspired design. It was an awesome experience–lots of bright and enthusiastic minds. We followed the lecture up with a studio on Wednesday, and later today I will be assisting with reviews. Many thanks to Marc for letting me participate in this inspiring process.
FPAleksandr
FPAleksandr is a theme for FlatPress that I am porting from Mat Wiseman’s insanely awesome Aleksandr, originally made for Textpattern.
It’s available in my Bitbucket, and there’s also a FlatPress forum discussion.
I tried to remain as faithful as possible to the original, but some things were just not going to translate directly—the footers, for instance. The best solution I was able to arrive at for the footers takes away some of the elegance of the original, but given the limits of the platform I don’t think it’s all that bad.
There are still some bugs to squash and lipstick to be applied, but it’s basically usable as-is.
How to make a thermometer
Over on my wiki, I’ve posted a series of examples that take you through the process of scraping XML data with Processing and using it to build a simple thermometer.