Lift off!

Greenberg arrived in the post this morning. I was impressed by how much background information is included in the first couple of chapters and was quite awestruck at the CVs of the artists profiled in chapter 1. I'm so glad I went for the printed copy, though I may well still access the e-book to follow up some of the links - perhaps not too many though or I'll never start writing!

Chunk 67

I've been allotted chunk 67: Name Transformations. This chunk will be about reflections, rotations, sheers, scalings and translations and should provide some good opportunities to produce some interesting patterns as well as animations, so I think I'll enjoy writing it. Still no sign of my copy of Greenberg - it's just as well I haven't run out of reading on the Processing web site yet!

Indenting Java Code

I'm wondering if this trick learned in TT281 will work here to indent code. Place <pre> before the code and </pre> after it. Here's a sample to see:-

if (expression)
{
   //do something
}

Eureka!

Painting by Numbers

I am reminded of trying to achieve the realism of watercolour with a new set of poster paints in my teens. I had to relearn everything I knew, but came to realise that there was a place for both in my paint box. I can build very powerful applications with Java but before I could teach someone how to draw coloured patterns I'd have to show them how to make panels and frames. Using the colorMode, stroke and point functions will, I suspect, need a little practice, but I am amazed at what can be drawn using just these 3 functions in only a few lines of code and impressed that they can be learned so quickly. So far though, I haven't found my way around the help files provided in the environment effectively. "Help | Find in Reference" doesn't seem to do anything and I miss the JavaDoc style API specification. Does something similar exist anywhere for Processing I wonder?

First Sketches

Today was about exploring the Processing website. At the second attempt, after I realised the version of Java I'm using wasn't supported, I had the software unzipped and ready to go. It was that simple. Within minutes, following the basics tutorial I had ET staring out at me from my screen. Eerie! Here's my own sketch - a little guy with glasses. I found you had to draw the large circles first or the small ones were hidden!

Beginnings

"How hard can it be to write 2,500 words and 2 programs?" I said. If choosing a name for a blog is anything to go by then the journey could be harder than I imagined. Still, I've made it this far, ordered Ira Greenberg's book and looked at some of the other blogs. Some of you have even selected a chapter you'd like to write. I'm impressed! I'm looking forward to the challenge however and hope everyone else is too. Good luck!