Here is a helpful video on using crimping beads: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Hy5KjSPLw

they are conductive, now that I can make pretty necklaces, maybe I can start using electrical components in them.

However, what electrical component has the mystical powers of a lost tibetan bead?

There is quite a bit of post production work to do now and that it going to round out my 4×4 week.

I spent quite a few hours Wednesday night/Thursday morning struggling to get Cineform’s video codec to render alpha channels – it doesn’t for the $100 neoscene pack.  Anyone want to help a brutha out with Neo4k or Neo3D? In the frustration I did learn a cool feature of the Adobe Creative Suite CS5 called Adobe Dynamic Link.  Remember how you have to render out all those After Effects comps to get them into timeline software, in this case Premiere, well  if you have a kick ass computer, I do, you can use Premiere and simply import an AE sequence and bam.  AE is open at the same time so changes you make in AE effect Premiere in real time.  Hella cool and saves a lot of time especially when mocking this up quickly.

<3 rader

I liked the image so much, that I decided to do a Philippe Halsman-esque photoshoot of people jumping for my next project. I’ve been taking pictures with my Nikon D40x for about a year now, and as an amateur photographer I’m always looking for chances to improve my skills and try new things. This seemed like a more exciting way to investigate portrait photography, and I knew that I wouldn’t have many chances to take photos once the semester started.

A few of my favorite (hastily edited) photos follow. You can find the set (for what it’s worth) here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tylerdurden3181/sets/72157625862952834/

some highlights:

working on logo:

and web site:

http://www.sofyyuditskaya.com/sonia/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Picture-24.png

so goes the groundwork.

When Atari undertook the design of the game, they expected wild commercial success. The whirlwind development process was designed to capitalize on the incredible popularity of Steven Spielberg’s movie. Unfortunately, it also lead to an extremely poor level of quality in the final game, which was boring, confusing, and featured abominable graphics:

The result was millions of unsold cartridges that the company had no way to dispose of. Eventually, the hit on the solution of burying the cartridges in a dump outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico.

I first heard of the dumping from Nick Montfort’s excellent history of the Atari 2600 Racing the Beam. For more on the topic, see the Wikipedia and Snopes articles on the topic.

This 3D modeling project is the first step towards building a diorama depicting the full dump with millions of cartridges, the concrete slab that covers it, and the New Mexico dessert and sunset above.

To start out, I searched out high quality scans of the Atari cartridge online. I ended up finding them on Atari Age. Here, for example, is the front of the cartridge:

I used these high resolution scans and some other research to figure out the dimensions of the cartridge and set about building a basic rectangular solid that matched these dimensions.

I used Blender as my 3D modeling tool of choice on the recommendation of Scott Wayne Indiana. With lots of help from Scott, I managed to get going with the basics in Blender and, eventually, I had a rectangular solid with the right proportions:

(Note, both Scott and I found Super3boy‘s Blender tutorials to be incredibly useful in the process of getting started with this complicated program. It’s both humbling and really helpful to learn by listening to a bunch of tutorials narrated by a kid who sounds like he’s about 7.)

After I had that down, I started working on adding the cutaways for the stickers on the top and front. Using Blender’s “add difference marker” functionality, I was able to use separate rectangles to carve those out from the original slab. Then, finally, I added a bevel to the edge of the cartridge to simulate the roundness of the original:

Writing down this process in a few simple sentences makes it sound linear and straightforward. It was actually difficult and somewhat challenging. Without Scott’s help, the entire endeavor would have taken significantly longer.

Once I had the basic shape of the cartridge worked out, it was time to try to add the graphic stickers to the top and side. After an initial attempt to navigate Blender’s nest of menus (aided by this tutorial on textures in Blender) I eventually managed to map the image all over my entire object:

This was not quite what I wanted, but it was exciting to see an image actually appear for the first time. Eventually, I found the Blender wiki tutorial on multiple materials which explained how I could apply an image to just one specific surface of my object. This also made the Blender menu system start to make sense to me for the first time (by explaining the way selections made in certain menus modified the options available to you in others.) The result was a cartridge that was really starting to look right:

The end cap should have the ET logo image on it — which isn’t working for some reason I don’t understand — but otherwise this is really starting to be what I was aiming for. I even added an additional gnarled black texture to emulate the molded plastic of the non-sticker part of the cartridge. I’ll probably include that texture in the final print, but I’m not showing it here because it made it very hard to see the details of my 3D modeling in Blender’s preview images.

There are two next steps forward for me on this project. One of them is to get a 3D print made of this cartridge, mainly to gain experience with 3D printing. The second step is to make a model of the ET box and start combining multiples of that box and this cartridge into the limitless pile that sits under the Alamogordo sand.

The game would consist of two teams defending and conquering territory in the current landscape with reference to the landscape that existed at the time of battle.

Ideally, historically important destinations will be geotagged, and players can see where they are on period maps, relating it obviously to where they are in the contemporary city. The “Redcoats” will be given specific objectives to capture, while the “Revolutionaries” will be given defensive positions, and can send out expeditionary forces to prevent capture.

The capture and defend mechanism is at the moment envisioned with cameras. The Redcoats photograph predetermined locations and icons, and email them back to headquarters, while the Revolutionaries try to defend those positions by photographing the Redcoats first. The game may or may not end with a variant of Capture the Flag at Stone House, the likely game headquarters, and site of one of the final critical skirmishes of that battle.

Each team’s status along the way would be updated with reference to how the actual battle played out, so that players have the opportunity to learn about the historical events that occurred in the locations the game is taking place, and develop a deeper appreciation for Brooklyn’s past and relevance to early days of the Revolution.

The critical locations stretch from Gravesend Bay at the southern end of Red Hook, to the Cemetery of the Evergreens, and west to Brooklyn Heights, as can be seen from “Howe’s Map” of October 1776:

Credit: Brooklyn On Line

The point to the British seizing Brooklyn and New York was to wrest control of the Hudson River from the Americans and separate New England from the remainder of the Continental United States.

Critical locations and dates [Credit: Brooklyn On Line and NY Freedom]:

View The Battle of Brooklyn in a larger map

What’s the Difference?

Thanks to everyone in the video for volunteering your time.

I have finally, after talking about making mash ups for 4 years or so, created one of my own.  ”We Will Rage You” is a combination Linda Rondstadt “We Will Rock You” vs RATM “Maggie’s Farm”  I had to use Soundtrack Pro, cuz I’m not about to buy Ableton Live.  I learned the best way to make it is by cutting up each section of the song, any differential just give it’s own track.  The issue with doing that is if you need to slow down any of the instrumentals, I’ll need to find a way to coordinate the changed sample rate.  After Using 11 tracks (3 more deleted), and 8 1/2 hours, it’s done.  It’s my first, but I hope people who like mash ups and Rage Against The Machine will like it(NOTE: apologies, there’s 8 seconds of silence at the top, no clue why).

“The oldest surviving samplers were constructed in the 15th and 16th centuries. As there were no pre-printed patterns available for needleworkers, a stitched model was needed. Whenever a needlewoman saw a new and interesting example of a stitching pattern, she would quickly sew a small sample of it onto a piece of cloth – her ‘sampler’. The patterns were sewn randomly onto the fabric as a reference for future use, and the woman would collect extra stitches and patterns throughout her lifetime.

16th Century English samplers were stitched on a narrow band of fabric 6-9in (15-23cm) wide. As fabric was very expensive, these samplers were totally covered with stitches. These were known as band samplers and valued highly, often being mentioned in wills and passed down through the generations.”

I decided to do an interpretation of the band sampler and have the base cloth for my sampler be a long, narrow form:

Since the idea with the sampler is to collect techniques as you learn them, this is just the beginning of a work in progress. The first example on it compares various soft conductors: ironed-on conductive fabric, as well as machine-sewn and hand-sewn conductive thread.

Soon to be added are different insulation techniques, crimp beads with surface mounts components, as well as various connectors and switches. More pictures to follow!

more 5-in-5 photos on flickr

Click Hanger!

In a previous post, I described how this idea stemmed from a desire to make people aware of how many times they click their mouse each day. Invisibly tracking mouse events on a Mac proved more difficult than anticipated. As an alternative, Josh and I used a embedded Processing app to simulate the effect in a localized area.

For each click, Processing sends a “1″ to grab.php:

grab.php inserts the 1′s into the click_hanger table.

Another file, read.php, takes the SUM of clicks and displays the hiker position accordingly.

Check out what Joshua has to say.

That’s all! Thanks.

What began as more of a comment on our aggressive use of computers has turned into a game. The mountain climber moves up the mountain with each click on the blue square. Other users can sabotage the mountain climber by causing an avalanche. Try it, it’s fun!