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Apr. 23rd, 2005 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_tectonicToday's lessons:
GridBagLayout is a gigantic pile of suck, but if you're doing something simple with it, it's bearable.
Proce55ing has gone beta! Old code breaks, but the new stuff is better.
Chrononauts is a fun game, and I seem to have special birthday game-winning luck.
Karen's white cake with whipped cream and raspberry sauce is really, really good.
GridBagLayout is a gigantic pile of suck, but if you're doing something simple with it, it's bearable.
Proce55ing has gone beta! Old code breaks, but the new stuff is better.
Chrononauts is a fun game, and I seem to have special birthday game-winning luck.
Karen's white cake with whipped cream and raspberry sauce is really, really good.
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Date: 2005-04-23 08:01 am (UTC)HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEEMER!
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Date: 2005-04-23 08:10 am (UTC)HAPPY BIRTHFDAY! HAPPY! HAPPY BIR! HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAPPY BIRTHAY! HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY BIRTH B B B BIRTHAYDAY!
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Date: 2005-04-24 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 09:53 am (UTC)Hippy Barfuday!
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Date: 2005-04-23 10:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-23 11:00 am (UTC)Or at least, he would write it on a useful pot for putting things in.
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Date: 2005-04-23 12:20 pm (UTC)And, on another subject, can I ask you questions about the capabilities of Proce55ing, or would you rather I go through the program's forum?
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Date: 2005-04-23 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-25 09:38 pm (UTC)It is looking like Proce55ing is not right for what I want to do. I was intruqued because it looked like a programming tool for artists, and it does seem great for creating electronic art stuff, but it looks like I would have to become a programmer to really make it go.
What I want to do is create a visual representation of how square dance moves flow together. All square dance software currently available is written by engineers and mathematicians who get really facsinated by how all the different calls fit together. (I suspect it is a lot like the crystal theory that Escher was so fascinated by...square dancing, especially at the higher levels attracts a lot of programmers, and scientists with artistic sides.) They tend to leave out the dancing part. I on the other hand keep being impressed by how beautiful all the calls that the mathematicians play with are when they are danced well and combined so they have really good "flow".
What I would like to be able to do is set up the variables and rules that govern square dancing, then feed the program a list of calls and be able to watch an animation of a little square of dancers (probably just 2d sprites) dancing those calls to check for good flow. It would be cool to add voice recognition, but since my programming skills stop at html and css, I suspect I am already being too ambitious. I had even fantasized about making it a game, but that would definitely require voice recognition since there are so many calls and adding having to remember the key combinations for 68 calls to something that is already complex would make the game non-fun pretty quickly.
I suspect that something like Flash (which is all about elaborate if/then statements) that is closer to what I already do for a living would be a better fit for me.
What does the program you are working on do? I must have signed on well after you began it. I know it is educational, but that is it.
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Date: 2005-04-26 10:37 pm (UTC)As for the square-dancing stuff... that's a really interesting problem. I kinda think you might have to become a programmer to make it go, even in Flash. I guess it depends on what exactly you want its capabilities to be. Of course, if you're interested in learning how to program, one of the best ways to do it is to find a project you're excited about and use it to learn about programming, so, hey, maybe it's a sign. =)
Anyway, I don't know enough about square-dancing to really understand how it would work, but if you wanted to do something like write a list of calls in a file, have the program read the file and then animate each one, I think it would probably be about as easy in Processing as Flash. (Of course, I know almost nothing about Flash.) If you have an animation for each call, it's really easy. If you make the animations from a sprite and some movement commands, it's still very easy -- at least in terms of the program structure. How hard it is to make the dancing animations, that I don't know.
Anyway, good luck finding a suitable platform for making your program; it sound really neat!
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Date: 2005-04-27 11:24 am (UTC)(Years ago, back when
My sense, from what I know about this area, is that it'd be a decently hard thing to do; Ian got reasonably far on prototyping the juggling thing, but doing the proper interface into the language of the existing juggling programs is hard, which is probably true as well for whatever is the standard for square dancing these days (when I did it, 10 yrs ago, it was Steven Gildea's program "sd").
On the other hand, for both of them, it'd be really cool.
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Date: 2005-04-30 09:26 pm (UTC)Happy Birthday!
Date: 2005-04-23 10:16 pm (UTC)(And yes, I knew it was your birthday and was looking for you most recent post to say something about it. But I'll bet you have no idea who I am. :-)
Re: Happy Birthday!
Date: 2005-04-24 01:32 pm (UTC)Re: Happy Birthday!
Date: 2005-04-24 05:34 pm (UTC)Re: Happy Birthday!
Date: 2005-04-26 10:49 pm (UTC)Re: Happy Birthday!
Date: 2005-04-27 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-24 07:21 pm (UTC)