Thursday 30 October 2008

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!

Sunday 26 October 2008

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?

Saturday 25 October 2008

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!

Thursday 23 October 2008

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!
 

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