What's that? Spring Show? Can you believe it? Spring, really? Yea, that's what I said, but believe it. Planning for the ITP Spring Show is already under way. I was recently informed that the post card design I had submitted was chosen for the show! I'm so happy I could run down Broadway throwing confetti. But I wont. Not without one of these.

Here's a larger view for those who are interested. These images are what was submitted so there may be some changes along the way. Hope to see ya there!

I updated the Physical Computing section with more documentation from the Networked Object Game Assignment. The photo on the left is one of the networked controllers we built. Check it out. Let me know what you think.

Friday afternoon linkage and re-blog
Interactive Architecture has some great new materials and some new work by Nikolai Cornel. Go Nikolai. I think we all need Paper Chairs. Don't you? [via:The Core]. And Pink bring us an and iPod ties. So freaky.

That's it for now. Happy Friday.

This morning Zach Eveland and I presented our one week game assignment in Networked Objects class. The assignment was truly a trial by fire to get us in there and get familiar with the XPort. The game we created is a networked Whack-A-Mole type game. One player is the 'gopher' or in our our case the red ball and another player tries to hit the balls as they come out of the holes. Each player has a networked controller. The controller submits button values to a PHP script where they are written to a text file and pulled into Flash. I'll get photos of the controller and the code up later tonight.

Normally I have good things to say about Apple, but today I'm being more critical. Apple missed out on the oportunities presented with the Olympic games. While it is true that Apple did gain a notable amount of free exposure from athletes wearing iPods at the games, they didn't follow through. Its the songs they are listing to that will turn exposure into dollars. Right now, Sasha Cohen is warming up listening to her iPod. I went to iTunes for her Celebrity Playlist and nothing was there. I'm probably not alone. The same goes for Shawn White and Hannah Teter. Shawn won gold in the mens half pipe wearing an iPod. In an interview afterward he reportedly was listening to AC/DC, but what song? Can I buy it? I like snow boarding. I'd buy his playlist. There are no Celebrity Playlists from the Olympics. In fact, the iTunes store has no mention of the Olympics at all. If Apple intends to keep making inroads into popular culture and our living room they're going to need to seize opportunities like this when they're presented.

Mick Lexington had a bad day, Peter Miller goes online, there was a pillow fight in Union Square and I spent the majority of the past few days wrestling with my XPort.

Our first assignment in Networked Objects class (besides building out the XPort board) is to create a networked game. We only have a week to do it. I think the point is to toss us on the fire and and make us get intimate with the XPort quickly. Zach and I have gotten the XPort to send ADC values and switch states to a PHP handler which we're pulling into Flash. We've had some frustration in doing so. Mainly inconsistent outage wt w/ the server responding the http request being sent by the PIC/XPort device.

The semester is picking up, I can feel it. The nights are getting later, the ideas are getting crazier and the length of daylight is getting a little bit longer. I intentionally haven't posted project ideas for my mid-terms yet (hard to believe they're already here). Most of them are still jelly and need a bit more time in the cooker.

Oh, and for the the fellow PComp nerds out there, here's an OS X widget that tells the ohm rating of resistors based on their colors. Woo! Hoo!

This week I ran the example classes and am having an easier time doing so. Eclipse is making more sense and so is the programatic structure of our Java applications. This week I tested the strength of bayesian analysis by training our program with poetry from Bukowski and Edward de Vere.

As I understand it, the analysis doesn't discern 'good' from 'bad' rather only knows 'one' form 'another' based on what it is taught. Right? (somebody please clarify this for me if I've got it wrong). Hopefully we'll talk more about the statistical nature of how the code performs its analysis in class today.

Once the application was trained with Bukowski poems and poems from Edward de Vere (Edward de Vere ina n 18th century poet who I've never heard of but though 18th century poetry would be about the furthest thing from Bukowski), I fed the app poems from both authors. The app knew who's each text belong to each time. This type of analysis could potentially be useful for determining where text originated, and the authenticity of authorship.

Possible ares for improving how the analysis takes place include the ability to analyze structurer. It would be useful to know how many lines were there in each paragraph? What was the average word count per sentence? Quantitate measurements used for analysis would get a t the qualitative components of the text.

The modified example code for this week can be found here: BayesianSpam.zip. Also, Dan asked that we post our code from the first few weeks spent crying. So here it is: inPut_outPut.zip, paella.zip, regular_expression.zip.

You can read more about bayesian analysis on the A-Z blog.

This morning I woke up to two feet of snow! I can't go snowboarding even thought I want to. I like snow a lot. However, I'm sure it will be a big disgusting mess by tomorrow morning.

If you're looking for new content, the Physical Computing section has been updated with some of the goodies we've been working on in Networked Objects. It feels like things are in full swing in terms of getting going technically. I'm sure we'll be up and running with projects soon so stay tuned.

I've also posted new terrain models in the 3D section. My understanding of Maya is gaining ground. However there is still a lot to learn. This week we're digging into Virtools. The Virtools environment is very difficult to use to say the least. What is interesting to me is how the interface model establishes a different kind of model for scripting interaction. It is somewhat a combination of the Max model of visual objects and more traditional interaction scripting like that found in Flash.

Also, If you aren't seeing new content or are getting a hodgepodge of old and new, try clearing out your cache. I know some of you have written in about old style sheets and content pages not loading with the fresh stuff.

BBCi Showcase

For the BBC, IDEO designed a screen based interface to allow pedestrians to interact in real time with people being interviewed inside. The idea of pedestrian interaction in content creation is wonderful. However, what is so special about being in front of the BBC? If I were watching the BBC at home, why could I text message then? Is the physical interface intended to constrain to amount of feedback by limiting who can give feedback to one physical location?

If we accept 'the medium is the message' as being true then the is no difference between the screen outside BBC and Tobi Wong's On/Off. Both installations provide a conduit for pedestrians on the street to affect something inside (in fact, its arguable that Tobi's installation is more captivating because there are no wires attached to the switch).

If we take the conduit out of the equation, if we remove the medium, what's left at the BBC? Content delivery. But we already have that with email, don't we?

What the IDEO installation is successful in doing is irrelevant to the content or the medium. What the IDEO installation accomplishes successfully is transparency. By extending the pixels onto the street, the BBC breaks down a physical barrier. Transparency, in all honesty, is a wonderful thing. Typically we don't to see inside television studios. Taking down the wall and letting pedestrians know what is going on inside a building is a great thing. Giving them the opportunity to contribute is even better. What IDEO's project achieves which (Tobi's doesn't) is a re-contextualization of what is taking place inside. Participants have the ability to alter the direction of the conversation, which is a powerful tool to give someone on the street. I'd be very interested in hearing someone from the BBc share their experiences regarding how users have used the screen and what they've done with them.

Blinkenlights

The Blinkenlights project is amazing. However, the transient state of the project is what makes it special. If it were to be continuously on, it would fade in to the horizon and become part of the landscape of the city. We are surprised to see an animated building facade where yesterday only a building stood. The difference between Times Square and Blinkenlights is staggering. Times Square is pure visual stimulation driven by the image economy of capitalism. What makes Blinkenlights special is that it doesn't ask you buy anything, it asks you to play with it. And tomorrow the opportunity wont be there.

Vectorial Elevation

Vectorial Elevation is another public performance piece which accommodates user interaction. The projects are similar in that they both are performances pieces which are on display for the city to see. One of the primary differences between the two pieces is how much of a contribution each users feels they have. In the Blinkenlights project, users are given a blank screen to create content. Additionally users can play games on the building facade. I question if user of the Vectorial Elevation system feel their actions are unique. I question if users are able to express themselves in any meaningful way through the use of the spotlights.

For this week I added a java class which writes the contents of a concordance to a text file. It basically takes what was coming into the Eclipse console and writes it to an output file (concordanceOutput.txt). Dan's tree class was modified to return string values from the Tree. The concordance class was modified to call the A2ZFileWriter class accordingly.

The text file generated form running the most recent State of The Union address can be seen here. Iraq was used 13 times. So unlucky.

Modified source: concordance.zip
File Writer: A2ZFilewriter.java

Reactions to this weeks readings:
Algorithmic Efficiency
The concept of algorithmic Efficiency is something which I knew existed but knew nothing about. Being new to computer science concepts, I am still attempting to grasp many of the abstract ideas described in the article. The orders described in the article allude to a ranking system of efficiency. The orders described are typically referred to as big-O because order is typical written as O.

Looking at the various types of orders described O(1), O(logn), O(n) ect... I believe that everything I have ever written has been o(1), the lowest on the totem poll. This is probably because my expertise is in human factors and front end interface development. There hasn't been a need for advanced algorithmic compositions. Hopefully what I'll take away for this class is the ability to understand and compose more advance algorithms. More on the readings form this week...

Geoffrey Rockwell and Ian Lancashier bring up very good points in their article: What is Text Analysis? I've often contemplated whether or not information that is available to me will be available to people in five, ten and twenty years. Much of the electronic text produce by society is timely and will some day soon be deleted. The nature of electronic text is a blessing and a curse. While we casually enjoy the distribution model of being able to access electronic text from anywhere at any time, there is danger in how easily we can erase it. The transient nature of the text and content we create often goes unnoticed. However who is to say what is important? While cataloging all electronic text is an impossibility, there are culturally significant items which probably should be preserved. This loss is a loss of culture, not that of the author.

Thanks for being patient while I overhauled the site. The site needed a refresh in order to accommodate new content for this semester. There are lots of new items in the work section and more to come in the near future. I haven't fully tested every nook and cranny, so if you see something, say something. Enjoy!