trying to get along with processing.

i don't seem to be getting parts of the programming language, although it's similar to actionscript and javascript in places (both of which i can just about get along with), in others it becomes too mathy and my brain refuses to compute it. i think the reason i get on with HTML and CSS so well is because it resembles english, i can easily translate it into sentences. as soon as my brain sees numbers, it just yells "NO!!! NOT WORDS!" and there's white noise in my head.

of course i'm determined to get over this, and whilst it involves spending much of my time staring at the code trying to figure out just exactly what i'm doing wrong, i'm starting to feel like i'm getting somewhere.

in my little experiments in the past couple of weeks i've managed to messily mash two bits of code i found together, one which generated random rectangles and another which imported SVG images, to create a piece of code that randomly placed the SVG on the screen. and after a bit of help it now has a variable which draws the SVG more than once.





keep in mind that these are just tests! i'll be creating some nicer SVGs over the coming weeks.

i'm no longer attempting to use the SVG script i mentioned in an earlier post, as it just doesn't seem to work for me! so i'm instead using candy, which allows fancy things like fills and shapes, and is actually built into the latest release of processing.

my next serious of faffage, or rather experiments, is going to include playing with varibles, including more than one SVG file and creating some kind of background. maybe. and taking more photos of pretty flowers and making them into pretty SVGs.

SVG in processing

since i love the look of Joshua Davis' work so much, i've been pointed in the direction of importing SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics or illustrator files to those slightly less geeky peeps). which will hopefully mean that i'll be able to create some elements in illustrator, and then import them into processing to create random pretty imagery.

my searching has found this little import script, which allows you to import SVG's made of paths. fancy things like fills and ellipses don't work at the moment. the script was used to create the elements that make up the creatures in this little program called manifest.

and now, i must faff with it.

all kinds of AWESOME.

i've been flitting around the place and found some cool stuff, most of which has been nicked from pixelsumo, but it's cool none the less.

started off looking around the processing blogs, seeing more of what's possible (it seems asking what isn't possible with processing would be the easier option). and found some nice videos:


Traffic Sketch 2 from Mark Chadwick on Vimeo.

and some nice images:


(real life sculpture, but pretty as hell. by tsa works)


(by David Muth)

i also looked into how people used processing to hack existing hardware, such as this hack by Daniel Shiffman, who has hacked a LED tile which is pretty mesmerizing. And here he' controlling a program made in processing, by calling it on his phone:

Calling Processing again from shiffman on Vimeo.


blinks and buttons is a project using processing (and mobile processing) and the flickr API. they've made a table with a screen full of photos, which then projects photos taken at the same time along the side through a glass stone. And a camera which takes other peoples photos. You simply press the shutter button at the moment you want to remember, and the camera contacts flickr which then sends you a photo taken by someone else at the same time. which is a nice idea methinks.

nothing to do with processing but when i found it i thought it was just that clever that i had to post it. here marc owen has created an avatar machine, which lets you walk around in real life viewing yourself as you would view an avatar.

so steve doesn't beat me up

he threatened me and everything.

river of cars