Due to assorted stuff there’s been a schedule change for the next Tiny Army meeting.

My Kinect/Animata talk is now scheduled for February 1.

This month (January 4) we’ll be seeing Bob Boze Bell instead.

This actually works out well. While I have stuff ready to show, I’ve learned all kinds of things about Animata that I’ve been working to include in my demos, so the extra time will allow me to also show some better Android/Processing/OSC neatness as well.

The general outline of my talk:

• Doing stuff with Animata, Kinect, and a laptop running OSCeleton
• Augmenting that with other sources of OSC commands
• Some discussion of the quirks of using Animata and how to save yourself some grief
• Some discussion about why OSC is important (e.g. how the demo actually works)
• Some fun with OSC and Processing (and Android devices)

There may or may not be some Wii stuff in there. SketchUp and LightUp will make an appearance as well.

I’ve a few goals with this talk, but one of them is to avoid overload. So I’m looking for a balance of interesting, practical “show and tell” and some extended observations on what’s now possible with readily-available hacker/artist-friendly tools like Processing, Android, Arduino, and such.

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I’ll be giving a presentation at the next Tiny Army meeting (Jan 4 2012, Phoenix Art Institute) about using the XBox Kinect for real-time animation.

I’m still sorting out details, but I have three goals. One is to show some sweet demos. I know for sure I’ll be demoing Animata but I also hope to show real-time interaction with Google Sketch-Up using some Ruby code I’ve been working on.

I also want to spend some time on the in’s and out’s of using Animata; it’s really amazing software, but it has some quirks, so I’ll try to give some pointers on getting started while avoiding some possible annoyances.

Finally I hope to show how there has been an ever-expanding realm of tools, both hardware and software, that allows for non- (or less-) technical people to create serious (or not so serious) art with computers, software, and assorted hardware. Part of this is OSC (Open Sound Control), which can act as a sort of glue protocol among various inputs and outputs, but there’s also Processing, JRuby + Monkeybars, Wii controllers, Arduino, and more.

I do not plan on this being an especially technical talk (e.g. while I may be running custom software I am not going to be showing code or anything like that) but I do hope to show that there are all sorts of things one can do without needing to be particularly geeky, and to hopeful get more artists involved with, or at least aware of, a slew of available technology.

BTW, I’m more than happy to answer technical questions if people have them, either during or after the talk. It’s just that this isn’t meant to be a code-y presentation per se.

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If you happened to read my post from the other day entitled My New “Top Artists Last 7 Days” Widget, you know that I went through three iterations of getting it going. The final solution, written in Ruby worked well. Until … Continue reading →
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It costs a lot to get elected to high political office. A lot. So much, in fact, that a candidate has to either be independently wealthy, or they have to sell their souls votes to those who would finance their … Continue reading →
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JavaScript是一门已然成为主流的程序设计语言，但无可否认，作为急就章的产物，它还是有很多不令人满意的地方，需要专门有人告诉我们怎么用它。

CoffeeScript边产生于这种背景之下，它就是为了回避JavaScript的丑陋。说穿了，CoffeeScript只是JavaScript的语法糖，所有的CoffeeScript代码最终都会转化成JavaScript代码。

Node.js既然是一个JavaScript的平台，当然也会对CoffeeScript张开怀抱。在Node.js下运行CoffeeScript，首先要安装：
  npm install coffee-script

万事俱备，先来问候吧！

  console.log 'hello, coffee'
  (hello.coffee)

然后，运行起来：
  coffee hello.coffee

终端上就会出现
  hello, coffee

之前说过，CoffeeScript代码会转化成JavaScript，我们来看一下由CoffeeScript转化出的JavaScript代码，只要在命令里加入参数即可：
  coffee -c hello.coffee

对应的js文件会产生在当前目录下：
  (function() {
    console.log('hello, coffee');
  }).call(this);
  (hello.js)

包裹在外面的结构让这段代码成为可执行脚本，真正与我们的问候对应的代码实际上是
  console.log('hello, coffee');

当CoffeeScript遇见Node.js，我们就拥有了一个良好的编程平台：不错的运行时环境，加上良好的语言表现力，它们甚至可以让我们忘记了JavaScript的存在。是的，如果初涉Node.js，不妨从CoffeeScript起步。

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The forthcoming 3.2.x release series will be the last branch of Rails that supports Ruby 1.8.7. There’s a new 3-2-stable branch in git to track the changes we need until 3.2.0 final is release and for managing point releases after that.

So for now you should stop floating on rails/master if your application is not compatible with Ruby 1.9.3. We have updated the version numbers to indicate this backwards incompatibility to be 4.0.0.beta. This doesn’t mean that 4.0 is anywhere close to being released, mind you. We’re simply doing this now because we’re dropping support for Ruby 1.8.7 in rails/master and people should know what’s up.

Major versions of Rails has been on about 2-year release cycle since 1.0 (released in 2005, followed by 2.0 in 2007, followed by 3.0 in 2010) and we intend to continue this pattern. The current internal target for Rails 4.0 is sometime in the Summer of 2012 — but we have blown every major release estimate in the past, so don’t bet your farm on it.

There’s not a lot of details about what we’re going to include in Rails 4.0 yet as the primary purpose for bumping the major version number is to drop Ruby 1.8.7 support. But unlike Rails 3.0, we intend for it to be a much smoother transition. The intention is not for this to be a REWRITE EVERYTHING release in the same way 3.0 was to some extent.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First mission is to get Rails 3.2 out!

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