Almost Two years later…

Almost two years after my last post in February 2011, I have decided to revive this blog.

Since New York I have been keeping myself busy working in the industry, pumping out one web project after the other.

While gaining invaluable professional work experience in multiple commercial projects of different types and scopes, I still neglect my experimental, interactive work.

By constantly keeping at least one eye on the NUIgroup community, I noticed a well paced development in just three years, when it comes to building DIY mt devices.

Despite familiar techniques like FTIR, DSI, DI, LLP etc. still being around and popular, building set ups utilizing photo transistor matrices becomes seemingly more trendy.

That very approach caught my attention, since it tackles one of the main annoyances I experienced, dealing with an optical mt setup including a projector. Even eliminating

the need for a projector by swapping it for a LCD matrix, still requires a minimum distance between camera and the backside of the display-surface.

By using photo transistors instead of camera and projector or LCD matrix, a DIY mt setup could possibly shrink to an estimated height of something about 2Inch.

Now that’s pretty cool.

However, digging just a little deeper I quickly realized, that there’s quite a bit of electronics and C language brushing-up work to do.

But that’s ok,  since me aiming for a more transparent publishing of learning curves, I should be able to post more frequently at the same time 🙂

My next post shall contain a sketch of my proof of concept.

mfg gabor

Filed under: Arduino Wiring, Thoughts, Visual Diary

Edge Refined

Filed under: Visual Diary

Box2DFlash – Text à la Cyancdesign.com

Hi there,

in the course of the mentioned art project I was considering to utilize Box2DFlash physics engine ( initially written in C++ ) in order to achieve more realistic ‘onCollosion’ – text effects. Having never played with any physics stuff I’m still in the midst of understanding this fun tool. I have also found a very useful tutorial by Cyancdesign.com who found a pretty straight forward way of attaching AS TextFields to b2DShapes. By hiding the shape that functions as ‘container’ one can achieve the effects I was after. At the moment I have no clue of how to define my edges of the live video feed as  a rigid body,  opposed to the circle being used at the moment. I could imagine that one should be able to write a custom shape class which dynamically accepts a new argument ( Vector.<Point> ). The body is then constantly being redrawn according to the coordinates stored inside the vector. I will sure need to dig myself through a lot of cryptic looking source code over this weekend … yay! Another question also pops up…will i actually be in need of Skinner’s collision detection, once the method just described is working out? Probably not. The only reason to still implement pixel perfect collision detection could be additional effects to garnish up the whole experience. Well we’ll see. I may end up ditching the whole physic engine completely and decide to go for a fake gravity effect or so…

Note: Use the button in the upper left corner to toggle the debugDrawing’s visibility.

Filed under: Visual Diary

High Rise Climb No. 2

I guess it has been time again. For almost 2 years, after climbing a skyscraper at Milsons Point with OYO and Adam, I have been on a constant look out for the next object, that would be worth risking charges for trespassing private property. Not long ago I have found it. The building again is a former high rise office building located at the arguably heart of Sydney. As the building at Milsons Point, this future apartment block stands completely naked just in its skeleton, allowing light to penetrate its corpus. It must have been sunset again making me fall in love with this ugly monster.

Unfortunately I have only been able to climb this building to the 15th level. The only way of reaching the roof top would have been a “little” spiderman action along the outer facade of the building, which I haven’t been equipped for. And free climbs at these heights are pretty scary. Compared to Milsons Point, this building was more difficult. Firstly reaching the scaffolds required more climbing, the building has direct neighbors and there were helicopters patrolling due to the weekend madness taking place every Saturday night in Sydney’s CBD. It was worth the sweat though. The breathtaking view over the city as well as inside the building, where humongous, gaping holes allow glancing all the way down to the ground level, inspired me immensely. Adrenalin rush, concrete traversed by massive metal rods, missing balustrades at the sides of the building, light rain and a fresh breeze as well as the the scarcely illuminated architecture (only flashing aircraft warning- and city lights) made this building an unforgettable experience. I have also left a banner this time, which became lose a bit on the one side making it hang a bit crooked. Though 6 hours after my adventure and in bright daylight (10am) the banner facing Hyde Park is still attached. I wonder for how much longer and if people or weather will finally bring it down. One thing I know – I will not stop climbing buildings and feel the urge of getting equipped better in the future in order to become capable of tackling obstacles that prevented me this time from reaching the roof. Gabor

Filed under: Visual Diary

TED Talk – Charles & Ray Eames

“The extend to which you have a design style is the extend to which you have failed to solve the design problem.” Charles Eames

TED Talk about Charles & Ray Eames

Cheers

Gabor

Filed under: Visual Diary

Emma McNally – Illustrations

Emma McNally’s Flicker Page

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Visual Diary

O’REILLY – Programming Interactivity arrived

Surprisingly my new O’Reilly book – Programming Interactivity – arrived today. Way earlier than expected. I ♥ Amazon.

Filed under: Visual Diary

New Scientist – The Remotest Place on the Earth

Like so often when I browse the web on the look out for inspiration, I start off or end up at VisualComplexity.com, founded by Manuel Lima and launched in late 2005. This time an information graphic caught my attention that has been created according to the research of several international institutions. One of them is the World Bank. The graphic via color code maps out the most remote places on earth, by comparing the travel times it would take people from all over the world to reach the next largest populated area of a minimum of 50.000 inhabitants. The map only considers land and water ways as the two forms of transportation. According to summary the Tibetan plateau is the most isolated place. But also Russia is quite interesting to look at, remembering that it is the largest country in the world.

I straight away recalled a Ted talk held by Parag Khanna in which he talks about world countries interconnection and their shifting borders over time. Parag points out that only about 1/5 of Russia’s population is spread over the eastern regions. That is by the look of it roughly 2/3 of its overall size. The fascinating thing about comparing the first with the second map is, that they complement each other very well coming from different sources.

It was an interesting find which I can recommend to have a look into and the “Remotest Place on the Earth” map also satisfies my daily cravings for eye pleasing information graphics.

Cheers

Gabor

Filed under: Visual Diary

Duemilanove has arrived

Yup…that was one quick delivery, haha. My Arduino board is here. And came in a tupperware like plastic container. Actually quite smart.

The original Arduino controller (there are many similar products on the market ) has been developed in Italy and bears the www.tinker.it domain printed on its PCB. I have added this website to my link list and will be browsing it tonight after finishing work. I have also ordered a paperback version of O’reilly’s Programming Interactivity book. Reading more than 700 pages on screen is suicide. Unfortunately it will take quite a while until I can smell the scent of freshly printed spreads. 12th of November – an Amazon estimate 😦

Can’t wait to start tinkering. My tool box felt so lonely recently.

But first things first.

Cheers

Gabor

Filed under: Hardware, Visual Diary

Arduino Duemilanove Is On Its Way

I’m reporting back from Sydney CBD. The “Speed” coffee bar to be precise. The coffee here is delicious and two cups of Flat White definitely get you going. The atmosphere is great for one can observe summer approaching 😉 I’m currently busy writing quotes for some dynamic flash games and due to that need to delay my website launch even further. Bear with me. It’s coming soon. I have also just ordered my first Arduino Duemilanove Board online and can’t wait to get my hands on the Development Environment, which is based on Processing IDE. The programming language is based on Wiring and this is pretty much all I know so far. I have also organized the relatively new O’reilly book “Programming Interactivity”, which is another subject to study.
Ok, back to work 😉

Cheers

Gabor

Filed under: Visual Diary