Processing 101

Finally, my copy of "Processing" arrived at Waterstones today and as late as it is I sat down to have a quick play, I am very impressed.
It's astonishingly simple to get quick results.

Here is a quick example of an animated Venn type diagram:

 int angle1 = 0;
 int angle2 = 120;
 int angle3 = 240;
 int radius = 40;

 void setup() {
   //start the initial window.
   size(400, 400);
   //start animation.
   frameRate(30);
   smooth();
 }

 void draw() {
 
   //change the position
   angle1 = angle1 + 1;
   angle2 = angle2 - 1;
 
   //clear the animation
   background(255);
     
   fill(0, 0, 255, 90);
   ellipse(200 + cos(radians(angle1)) * radius, 200 + sin(radians(angle1)) * radius, 150, 150);
 
   fill(0, 255, 0, 90);
   ellipse(200 + cos(radians(angle2)) * radius, 200 + sin(radians(angle2)) * radius, 150, 150);

   //no animation, just redraw.
   fill(255, 0, 0, 90);
   ellipse(200 + cos(radians(angle3)) * radius, 200 + sin(radians(angle3)) * radius, 150, 150);

 }

The Processing book looks a whole lot of fun too - it seems very comprehensive and chocked full of information. I am looking forward to delving into it during the week.

The Power of the Internet.

Some people spend much of there waking life online, others have never touched it, but only a philistine would fail to see that it has potential almost beyond comprehension.

I wouldn’t consider myself as someone who spends a lot of time online but in terms of communications it is by far the medium I use the most, I use voice services to talk to friends and relatives round the world, email to communicate on a daily basis, blogs to publish information to others and the web to collaborate and gather information.

I have been using the internet since the early days of ‘consumer’ services appeared and now I use it at work, at home and I carry it around in my pocket, all at speeds only a few years ago would have seemed unimaginable. Since it’s early days the World Wide Web has approached more of a two way model (with greater user contribution), the so called Web 2.0, collaboration on a grand scale has emerged with sites like Wikipedia which contains over 2 million user contributed articles.

This project puts a nice twist on the online collaboration in that the end product is an ‘offline’ piece of work, a tangible product you can sit down with flick through the pages and doesn’t disappear of your bookshelf when your ISP has a round of technical difficulties.

Despite what some people may think, the book is not dead. Sure, when it comes to the latest hot off the press news about the latest and greatest technology this week the Internet is your source, but the quality of even the most authorative Internet sources will not stand up to the quality of information within a book.

It is these things that are going to make this project great to be a part off.

About Me

To provide a little background about myself for (mostly) the benefit of my fellow writers I will update this post as relevant. Initially a couple of online bits may help:

• http://www.ultramarathonmike.co.uk/blog - My running/ultra running exploits, up to date and thoroughly "offline".
  
• http://blog.blamires.co.uk/ unkempt and out of date!

I have just finished 6 years of study towards a BSc(hons) degree, the most interesting part being the final project.I have spent the past 8 years working a data analyst, project engineer a senior data analyst and now I reside as a software engineer.

MCT Mass Writing Project

Sometimes an opportunity comes along that you can't pass up, and this popped into my inbox the other day and I couldn't resist.

The MCT Mass Writing Project, lead by Professor Darrel Ince of the Open University, is about creating a book collaboratively using the Internet as an enabler. Based on an exsiting book (Greenberg, I. (2007), "Processing", Springer) which explores creative code and computational art.

The specific sub topic I will be looking at is chunk 71 "Alpha Transparency".

This blog will chart the progress of my 2-3000 words and the associated application. The central blog for this project can be found at http://bookfragments.blogspot.com/.