josh giesbrecht

Processing is a neat little language that I discovered recently.  It looks like a great little environment to prototype ideas in.

According to the website, "Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound."  It's built on top of Java, but abstracts away a lot of the annoying details, and is combined with a clean, minimal IDE that keeps things simple and fun.

The language is syntactically Java, but lets you write only what you need to write.  If all you want is to draw an ellipse, you can just tell it to draw an ellipse in one statement, no mucking about with setting up graphical output or classes or whatever.  If you want to do some simple animation, just put your per-frame code into a draw() call, set the framerate, and let 'er rip.  The website has a great set of tutorial code that not only teaches, but makes little things that look pretty cool.

At the same time, if you need to step outside the bounds and get a hold of some Java library, you can write a full-fledged Java program that can still use the additional Processing function calls.

The IDE is beautiful in minimalism, designed clearly for the task of letting people program without having to worry about details.  Open a new "sketch" (Processing's name for a program or project), type your code, press Play, watch it run.  If it looks cool, with a single menu option you can build standalone executables for Windows, MacOS, and Linux; or export it in applet format, complete with a nice clean webpage that contains it for easy viewing. 

The syntax highlighting and autoformatting is good enough, but if you really want to write your code in another editor, you can switch the Processing app to a non-editing mode where it simply runs the code as it is currently saved.  No re-opening needed, if you save a new copy elsewhere and press Play in Processing, it will auto-refresh and run the new code.

While the language was initially aimed at programmed media projects, it has been used for interesting data visualization experiments, a-life experiments, and other more "computational" tasks.  There are also a bunch of additional libraries, including OpenGL support, networking, and a controller interface.  (See the Exhibition, the forums, or the examples at Codetree.)

Give it a try, if nothing else it's a great way to have fun making some bouncy little unusual animated toy over a lunch break.  If you're trapped in legacy code, gotos, and/or layers upon layers of interfaces to trace through, it's nice to take a deep breath and play with something that reminds you that coding is fun! =)

I really should point people to this one on Evangelical Christian groups promoting clean air.

I feel a little better about the world now.

In this article on rioting in Paris, I found this incredibly timely quote:

"We see among the rioters kids of 13 to 15, who are swept along, who are encouraged to take all the risks, and the others, the ringleaders, who are used to creating trouble, they terrorize everyone, and don't want to stop," said Franck Cannarozzo, a deputy mayor of Aulnay. "Rather than playing on their Playstations, they attack the police."

In the interest of promoting conflict resolution, I think it would be in the French government's best interest to issue a PS2 to every household, along with a "Peace Voucher" that's redeemable for two new release games.

Keep violence off the streets and in our videogames where it belongs!

Go read this now, and BE AMUSED.

It's tragic that Practical Common Lisp isn't even on the first page of results when you google for Lisp tutorial, so I'm doing my part to correct that.

(Hey, if it works for 'failure', it should work for this.)

For the record, I would prefer that this guy not be what comes to mind when people think of Christianity, thanks a lot that'd be great bye.

Anyone who complains about the parentheses in Lisp has not had to read and debug an XML-based build config file.

No pun intended. And he hasn't actually done it yet, but it's an interesting idea. Following the passage of the same-sex legislation last night, Ralphy is saying that Alberta might stop solemnizing marriages altogether. For those readers who are also ifMUDders, you may remember miseri suggesting this same thing not too long ago.

Why should government define marriage, anyway? If we (crazy churchfolk) are serious about trying to "defend" marriage as a sacred thing, why is the secular defining our sacred? (Of course, that raises the question of how much we should really care what the government defines marriage as, anyway.)</b></a>

I've never been all that amazed by Wikipedia. Sure, it's the collaborative knowledge of thousands upon thousands of geeks - great, so I finally have the definitive reference on Klingon, but can it be trusted to be reliable when any would-be editor can alter or add facts? How do I know that there isn't a mistake in an article that hasn't yet been corrected?

But apparently the CBC doesn't mind the ephemeral nature of facts found on Wikipedia. This in-depth look at the Sudan crisis has the following sources:

SOURCES: US Department of State, Wikipedia, Arab Net, CIA World Factbook.

Wikiwha? Okay, so I'm sure that the other sources did a good job of confirming the Wikipedia's accuracy, but this still makes me double-take.

What's next, news reporting with blogs as the sources?

From a mailing list email I just received comes this excellent quote:

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."

- Soren Kierkegaard


I really need to finish reading that Kierkegaard collection that I've got around here somewhere.

Sitting here at my desk at work over lunch, relaxing after a nice bento box meal, and playing Go ...

...am I officially left-coast now?

For those of the programming persuasion, next time you've got the itch to try a new programming language, why not go super-old-school and try out the 45 year old that C-style languages still haven't quite found all the features of?

( and hey, the book is online )

The BBC offers up this wonderful typo, or at least I hope it was:

Grand Theft Auto publisher Rockstar Games said its policy was not to advertise a product around programmes where less than half the audience was below the age required to buy it.

So, they'll be putting San Andreas ads in Teletubbies and Zoboomafoo, then?

In raving about Pirates!, I failed to mention that I managed to borrow a PS2 and a copy of Antigrav. Not having a TV, I haven't bothered to pick up a console of my own. What I forgot is that my video card has a TV in, so borrowing a console to prove that the port actually works was perfect. And while I had a PS2, it was time to try out the newest game from Harmonix.

Antigrav is a fun, futuristic board-riding game, sort of like snow/skateboarding except on a hoverboard with jets. The controls are not your standard skate-game fare: to turn left, you lean left. To duck, you duck. Antigrav uses the PS2's Eyetoy peripheral, which comes included. (Unlike some games that have a custom peripheral included, however, I've seen a street price equivalent to other console games, which is excellent.) For those who don't know, the Eyetoy is basically a USB webcam. Once you've got it lined up to have you in the camera's field of vision, with some decent lighting conditions, it's a snap. You calibrate it to your face, and it tracks both your face and hand movements. You steer with your head movements, and arm / hand motion lets you do mid-air tricks (plus grabbing points when you ride on rails).

I was impressed. I didn't play through the game, I only got through the first couple courses, but the experience is a blast. Racing down colorful, futuristic streets and through the skies in the flying sections while crouching, jumping, leaning, and gesturing madly to pull off tricks is really fun. The pacing isn't so frantic that you strain yourself, in fact I was always surprised that I had broken a sweat after racing through a couple of tracks as it never felt too exerting. (That might be a sign that I'm really out of shape, but I prefer to think of it as exercise which is fun enough that it doesn't feel like exercise.)

Now that I know I can get a PS2 setup running well on my decently-sized monitor, a PS2 and Antigrav are officially on my To-Buy list. The fact that it's non-couch-potato activity means that it might even bump ahead of Pirates, as I'm in dire need of more sources of exercise.

Maybe if I'm lucky, some EAC project will pick up on this sort of innovation, and I'll get to play with an Eyetoy at work someday ...

Apparently, Winnipeggers may now bask in the glory of their cynicism towards the NHL, as NYT tells the world that yes, Manitoba is laughing at you all.

I don't really have anything constructive to add to that, except, "HA HA." Also, Bettman and the player's union leaders are all equally dorks.

(Free registration required, probably, but if you're one of my Manitoban comrades, it's worth it to read this one.)

I borrowed the new "Sid Meier's Pirates!", and wow is it awesome. Beautiful open-ended gameplay, just like the original ... ah, the memories, the childhood years spent on glorious exploration and plunder of the Caribbean!

If anyone wants to get me a late birthday present, and be my hero, get me Pirates! (Is it more syntactically correct to have two exclamation marks there?)

I know, the subject line sounds like I'm waxing sci-fi-poetic, but this is unfortunately serious.

According to NYT, 'A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to the Battlefield'. It's a fairly thorough article, covering how appealing the idea is to the military, as well as the fact that intelligent robot soldiers are still a long way off.

It also mentions the concern that giving robot intelligence the choice to distinguish friend from foe might be risky - what happens if a robot blows up a school bus instead of a troop carrier?

All of this is well and good, but to me, the biggest danger is perhaps the least obvious for those designing the machines. The writer mentions it, very briefly:

"There is a lag between technology and doctrine," said Mr. Finkelstein of Robotic Technology, who has been in the military robotics field for 28 years. "If you could invade other countries bloodlessly, would this lead to a greater temptation to invade?"

Bloodlessly? That word alone reveals the source of the real problem, which robot soldiers would amplify tremendously. The sad fact is, we only care about our own losses. Look at Iraq, where the loss of American soldiers to the war is a far greater issue in the debate than the over 15,000 non-combatant civilians who have died, never mind the complete lack of respect for due justice or human rights that occur there.

How would America have viewed the Iraq war if no American soldiers had been present to die there? What if there had been zero American losses? Would they have paid attention to the fifteen thousand innocent lives who were caught in the crossfire?

Would they have called it "bloodless"?

Un-freaking-believable. One small step for man ... one big freaking mecha stomp for owners of this sweet, sweet prototype.

Okay, so it's not really that big. Yet.

Toyota's R&D engineers are now my heroes. The i-unit is nice, but read further down about the i-foot.

Oh, this is good.

"We cannot defend our country and save our homes and families by waiting for our enemies to attack us. To remain on the defensive is the surest way to bring the war to Canada." - Dubya

No, see, you're missing the point, Georgie. The world actually LIKES Canada. They don't want to go to war with us. That's probably because we don't force our viewpoint down their throats at gunpoint, or through economic blackmail.

"We are bound by history and geography and trade and by our deepest convictions," Bush said of the relationship between the two countries. "With so much at stake, we cannot be divided."

Something about this just seems oddly ironic, but I can't quite put my finger on it. The strongest reason I voted Liberal is in the hopes that a Liberal government would continue to have the cajones to set its own foreign policy and stand by it, no matter what stupid things our economic allies pursue. For Canada's sake, I hope I was right.

... er, I mean Valve. Right.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4054643.stm

The story isn't nearly as important as the fact that it contains the word "keen" three times. Which, if you're easily amused, is amusing. And I am easily amused.