Dec
24

Goodbye 2009

Posted by Stewart in Code Examples / Debrief— No comments

EastRiverWinter

Thank you all for a wonderful semester. I saw some really great work. Together we discussed typography, some graphic design, and of course Processing. Ah… data visualization. I hope you’ve felt productive and have a wonderful break. And waste some time with Browser Pong.

Code Examples
Here’s a reverse-chronological list (hopefully somewhat complete) of code examples from this past semester. This may serve as a helpful reference for you when trying to quickly solve (Rubik’s Cube style) problems in the future. Maybe.

Midpoint Circle Algorithm
Thank you for posting this Chris. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midpoint_circle_algorithm

2D clicks in a 3D world
This has come up a few times in class, “How do I do a mouseover or mouseclick on a rotating / spinning object in 3D space?” The above is just a collection of links to Processing topics that will help you answer that question.

Textures [via Processing]
Processing’s guide to textures.

Presenter
Paths, Agents, Scenes… This little package allows you to really build up a presentation that can translate, rotate, and animate along nested timelines. Great for stitching together multiple complex visualizations.

Data Ripping
Using fuzzy found image data to your benefit. Hue and Saturation are usually key here.

Making a Mystery Image
A brief program for making the scrambled RGB (XYZ) data image for the previous homework assignment.

Decomposing Images
This is the “Mystery Image” (“Space Neighbors”) assignment. PImages, loadImages(), OpenGL, etc.

MSAFuild Dynamics
(Thanks for pointing out this fluid dynamics library Peter.)

Weather Example 2
Use a Class and ArrayList to create many objects. Grab weather XML, animate many objects in 3D, pause, save frames, etc.

Tim’s QualityCam
An ITP homebrew camera library for Processing courtesy of Tims.

Peasy 3D Camera
Processing Library for manipulating the 3D camera.

Weather Example 1
Grab weather XML, animate a simple shape in 3D, pause, save frames, etc.

Push / Pop Matrix
Use pushMatrix() and popMatrix() to add layers of control to your rotations and translations in 3D space.

Translate and Rotate
Position and orient objects in 3D space using OpenGL.

Weather RSS
Grab an RSS (XML) feed and search for Content and Attribute values inside.

Robert Penner’s Easing
Processing library for easing motions like ease-in, ease-out, bounce, etc.

Text and CSV
Parse CSV files from your sketch’s “/data” directory.

Theme and Variation
Visualize two hard-coded variables.

And of course, this should be bookmarked in your browser :
http://processing.org/reference

Dec
17

Week 14: And… done!

Posted by Stewart in Class Agenda— No comments

12:20~12:30
Load up your presentations and fill out the teacher evaluation forms. I’ll be outside of the classroom showing our guest critics around ITP. Please also write your group’s (or solo act’s) name on the whiteboard so we can establish a presentation order.

12:40
Your teacher evaluation forms should be completed; choose someone among you to deliver these to Gordy in the office. All of your presentations should also be ready to go, either on the classroom’s laptop or on your own machine (configured in such a way that you can quickly switch the projector cable to your machine and go).

I will introduce our critics: Holly Gressley, Renda Morton, and Andy Pressman of Rumors. They’ll describe themselves briefly and we’ll move on to your presentations.

Continue reading →

Dec
16

Tomorrow: Final Presentations

Posted by Stewart in Class Agenda— No comments

ITPFinal1

Subject: VisDat. Our final class
From: Stewart Smith <-------.-----@nyu.edu>
Date: December 16, 2009 11:18:43 AM EST

Tomorrow is Thursday, December 17th.

Sadly it is also our final class together. We will meet as usual, at 12:30 in our regular classroom at ITP. I have some teacher evaluation forms for you to fill out at the beginning of class as you load your final projects onto the room’s laptop or do any other presentation preparation. (I’ll be out of the classroom while you do this; showing around our guest critics.)

Our final critics are the three principals of Rumors, a design studio in Brooklyn. They are Holly Gressley, Renda Morton, and Andy Pressman. Please see their website where you can view work, bios, and their blog. http://rumors-online.com

Bring your final projects, a pen to fill out evaluation forms with, and plastic safety glasses just incase there’s a misfire.

+
Stewart

Dec
10

Math Bagel

Posted by Stewart in Uncategorized— No comments

mathbagel

http://www.georgehart.com/bagel/bagel.html

Dec
10

Week 13: Surprise. We’re nearly done.

Posted by Stewart in Class Agenda— No comments

surprisekitty

Hackers and Painters
We’ll begin class by talking a bit about the Paul Graham listening assignment. Let’s take a look at the original homework assignment. How do you feel about the assertion that “painters decide what to paint and then they have to paint it.” Does the metaphor hold up for “great hackers?” If you were put off by the original Paul Graham listening assignment, did this one win you over? Or was it more of the same? (Let’s not argue too long on this, there’s a lot more to get to.)

Twitter Earth
Next up, are there any comments on the Twitter assignment? Did you feel there was a subtle elegance to using the rotate( radians( i )) combo when dealing with actual latitudes and longitudes? Let’s talk about midpoints for a moment; or rather let Chris talk about them.

Final Projects
Ok. So much to do and oh so very little time. Let’s use the remainder of our time for an in-class work session where I’ll meet with each group (or solo act) about the progress of your final projects. I may occasionally ask for everyone’s attention to go over some example or topic that has broader relevance.

Final Class
Obviously you should bring in your final projects and be prepared to present them. Less obvious; bring a pair of plastic safety glasses. No reason. No reason at all.

Dec
03

MOTHER F*CKING MID POOOOOOIINTTT!!!

Posted by Chris in Code Examples— No comments

Ok, first off, here is my issue:

1) I have two distinct points on a globe and i want to draw a line between them at a nice arc.

From what I understand there are two solutions:

a) calculate the x, y, z of those boxes and then draw an arc between them.  This turns out to be incredibly difficult, but using screenX, screenY, and screenZ is a start.

You use the mid point equation:

xMid = (x1 + x2)/2
yMid = (y1 + y2)/2
zMid = (z1 + z2)/2

and *snoooooorreeee*

f*ck math, who cares…

2) My way, abstractly, check code for exact solution, is to calculate the midpoint of the long, lat coordinates and recursively plot points over and over till you have a line.  Here is the meat of that:

float lat1 = radians( -34 ); float lon1 = 151; // sydney
float lat2 = radians( 37 ); float lon2 = 127; // seol

float dLon = radians( lon2 - lon1 );

float Bx = cos( lat2 ) * cos( dLon );
float By = cos( lat2 ) * sin( dLon );

float lat3 =  atan2( sin( lat1 ) + sin( lat2 ),
                   sqrt( ( cos( lat1 ) + Bx ) *
                   ( cos( lat1 ) + Bx ) + By * By ) );

float lon3 = radians( lon1 ) + atan2( By, cos( lat1 ) + Bx );

At this point you essentially done. Just rotate twice and translate once and draw the f*cking box or point or whatever.

To finish off the line just do this over and over again recalculating the midpoint. You might calculate the number of times to recurse based on the distance which is calculated:

float dLon = radians( lon2 - lon1 );

Animate it? No f*cking problem. Just store longs and lats as you go and animate the drawing of the boxes!

– chris allick

Nov
24

Carl… oh Carl.

Posted by Chris in Uncategorized— Comments Off

Carl!

Nov
23

Ok Cupid On Online Relationship Dynamics

Posted by Patrick P in Uncategorized— No comments

This is a fun read, and also has some great graphing visualizations.

Nov
21

Homework: Twitter Earth

Posted by Stewart in Homework— No comments

texturedSphere2

First of all, have a lovely Thanksgiving break. (Our class will not meet this coming week.)

Email
It’s time to start thinking about your final projects. Select a social network data source (if you have an alternate type of source discuss it with me first) that frequently updates and returns a lot of information. I recommend Twitter, but if you’re attached to another live dataset that’s acceptable. Does it provide user names? Date and time? Geographic locations? Locations within a connectivity network? A text payload? Avatars? Hyperlinks? Links to other users / items / objects in the network? List as many items as you can for your data source. Then imagine some creative ways of harnessing or comparing those pieces of data. How can relationships between separate pieces of data reveal something new? How can 1+1=3? And what story does this tell? How can a data visualization have a narrative? For this Tuesday, email me answers to the above and a synopsis of your attack plan. You may complete your final project solo, or in groups of 2 or 3. Let me know who your partners are.

Build
For next class, show me Twitter. Pick aspects of Twitter data that appeal to you and represent that somehow on a sphere. You might think of this a two problem project. The first problem is accessing data from Twitter that includes latitude, longitude, and some payload that you would like to display. (You might try looking at the Twitter4J library, HTML and RSS scraping, or other.) The second problem is displaying this on a sphere. To partially answer Peter’s question, here’s a cluttered example of plotting points according to lat/long that maintain a “pleasant” rotation: texturedSphere2.zip. Remember, you don’t need to do anything to the latitude and longitude values (other than use the radians function) because lat and long were devised for plotting points on a sphere. This means you do not need to worry about Map Projections or converting to Cartesian space, etc. So how might you add Paths and Agents to this to make easy animations? What about being able to save animation frames, or render out movie frames? Wow me.

Contemplate
If you choose to continue using Twitter for your final presentation then this may build towards that goal. If not, that’s also acceptable. (And your final need not be on a sphere!) While you’re working on this project I want you to continue to think about your final. How will it differ? What things have you learned from this semester that you might incorporate into your final project? For this week’s homework do your own exercise independently, but for the final you may choose to work with one or two other partners.

Listen
Also, listen to Paul Graham’s “Hackers and Painters” interview. I realized that the earlier Paul Graham listening that I assigned you my have been too off-putting to get at the really interesting ideas he proposes. What does he say painters and hackers have in common? (In contrast to say, how architects and engineers might interact.) Please respond to this listening on your blog before next class.

Nov
21

The Midpoint Circle Algorithm

Posted by Chris in Code Examples— No comments

A few classes ago I mentioned this alrogirthm as an alternative method for drawing a circle. It’s very interesting and very very fast.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midpoint_circle_algorithm

– chris allick

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