"Paranormal discreptancy"

Yeah, I'm not good in figuring out titles :), better make it sound good.

Last post was about that I would read back my all my posts that I have made before and reflect on that. And after the reflecting I would set course and sail into waters which would bring me to awesomeness. Haha! How wrong I was... some stuff happened (Mainly work) and of course the summer in Amsterdam (parks, picnics, bbqs. Sun :) ). So now finally (when the weather is bad) I get back on this.
So when reading the posts I had to take notes right? This is why I used the amazing Paper on my ipad. It is really interesting how you can make sort of nice images :), so you'll find them scattered around this post :).




I started this blog, way in the beginning, for me to focus. I had just tasted a little of Arduino and MAX-MSP and it sparked something in me. I wanted to do projects, but by keeping this blog (or journal) I could find a direction and investigate this further and thus reach a niche which I should really like.


But apparently even focusing on this "electronical" branch of "Design" (not sure if it is design or not?) seemed to be surprisingly difficult, because it is actually quite big. I experimented with weather interactions using Arduino, making music using Arduino, programming live (or at least love) in processing, Building BEAM bots and making a longboard. All of them were really cool to do, which made it more difficult to choose which way to continue. Next to that, other interest tried to lead me into designing and making things like watches or write stuff about buttons or the conflict between the digital and analog world.
These things seem to sort themselves (it's fuzzy sometimes) in three categories: Creating life, Product design and Research/essay.

Creating life is about... well.. creating life, this is where the BEAMbots come in most, to me they are the most like small creatures that do just on thing, but in a life like way, sort of... But also the things like the sun greeter and sun chime fall under this category in that they make the things around us which might not have a life (the weather) seem like they do live. I like this category the most because this is why I started this blog (I guess). The first time I used Arduino I found out how lifeless things seemed lifelike, and then if it is very life like, then isn't it alive? Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I want to create something that seems as though it might be alive, or at least sparks some imagination that it might exist.



Product design always kind of comes back, in me trying to find something that I can maybe make and then sell, and then make more, and then sell more. This is the case with the watches, wallet and also slightly with the Tower-USB. I would really like to do this sort of full-time, 50% writing and making projects and 50% building product to sell online or something. I'm never really sure what I should do with this, because it will never end until I finally do it, but it will never work until I find something that might actually sell. But this will be continued surely in other posts :).

Research/essay is my conscience part that wants to be smart, and smart people do research and write about it. I like that. And there are some things that are actually quite interesting (Buttons, digital vs analog interactions) and I would really like to see where it ends up... The thing is, I need to start on it and expect it will take me more than a year before I ever finish any of it. But it is interesting :).

So, now I'm not sure yet where to go with this blog, I do have ideas, but I need to think a bit harder on them to be sure.



I started this blog which the idea that I would post every week, even if I had nothing to show it would still keep me going. I think I want to do this but then every two weeks, to give me some preparation time :).




see you in two weeks!

Alive!

I'm Alive!

Yeah!,

Let's not talk about the details but yeah, I'm still here.

I guess I've written two posts already, but due to problems with Evernote (damn logins) and bad writing I didn't post anything.
The problem was (or still is?) that I was working on my Internship, and after that didn't really have the time (read : energy) to do anything else (let's say work on blog/projects/guitar playing/reading/watching blogs/ etc.). But then Aurora and I got a house(!) in Amsterdam(!) so now, for a month, we've been painting, laying the floor, slept, moved all our stuff, had coffee, had lunch, tried to organize way too many things, fix bike, dance Tango, drink more coffee, also some tea, bake pizza, and bake bread.
So I guess my excuse was (and sometimes still is) that I have too many things to do, to even care about my projects.

So, now the tide seems to have withdrawn for a while.

So from now on I will have some time to play with some ideas for projects.

The plan:
- Read back the posts..
- write down plans for new projects, or ones I still need to finish
- Start first project

(One note: the working room is still a mess so big handworking projects may still need to wait, so maybe now I will start the beginning of an awesome project! :) )
(Not too, that I don't really have a clue what I'm doing.)

But it does sound like a good plan right?

Also (maybe especially now that I have a house) this website has awesome projects! to create awesome furniture cheaply and awesomely!:

http://homemade-modern.com/

:D

cheers!
Frank

A new Year

Hello!

Happy New Year :).

From Berg London

Last month a lot of interesting things showed up on the internet. The first one was lamps, a collaboration between BERG london and google creative labs (which somehow is untraceable on google... ). It started out with the question of what google would be if it were physical and thus not behind glass. The end result is an interesting mix between projection mapping and a DIY kind of Kinect. This "lamp" could project data on the things it sees, which might be handy on a desktop: maybe to do some sort of physical photoshop, aided and saved by a computer or even the cloud! 

Wheathly from Portal 2

Anyway, there were some very interesting remarks about what this "lamp" shuld be. They called it a companion species like Bit in Tron or the Daemons in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Phillip Pullman. I realy like this concept, now that i think of it it can also be that robot from portal2 Wheatly :). But this lamp would be your little mind (companion) that connects to the big mind, aka the cloud, to help you do your things and give you more and relevant information. (Actually this also sounds like paperclip from word :), but then hopefully more helpful and context aware.)

From Berg London

It is interesting how this companion species is described: "... when our digital tools become more than just tools - acquiring their own behaviour, personality and agency." For example Lamp, would be you companion that would shoot between the cloud and the real world. Having learned from experience what you like, how fast you;d like it and how you like your information given, it will adapt itself more and more to you. But that is not the only thing: having its own personality and behaviour means that it is able to surprise you.

It kind of reminds me of what I wanted to create for a project, though a lot less informative. I wanted to create a little creature that would need a lot of attention when you'd want to sleep during a lecture. It would try to move, break free, or even scream, to make sure you'll keep it in check before some social awkwardness appears. But this idea is a lot more interesting in onnovatove in how it looks at the prodict itself, what its function is and how it should interact with the user.

More on this later? maybe? :)

Ingress

The other cool thing that showed up is Ingress by Google (coincidence?). Which is a game that wants to break free from the screen. It makes you go outside, see the world and progress in the game. It is connected to the internet so it becomes a sort of mmorpg but then in real live.

I guess it's a mix between existing things: Pac Manhattan, FourSquare (and other geolocation based games) and maybe even WOW, but then mixed into something new and big. The deal is that Google made it and I think that they can make something big out of it so it can become interesting to play. Because, especially with a game like this you'd need to have a lot of players to keep it interesting. I'd like to see how this develops :).

The Nature of Code

In the more programming or Creative coding world, two interesting things came up, The Nature of Code by Daniel Shiffman and Weird Faces Study by Matthias Dörfelt created in paper.js. I'm still in the process of reading the nature of code, But so far it is very interesting, and it really helps me a lot in developing my coding skills and the way I think about programming stuff. 

Weird Faces Study

Weird Faces Study showed me something that I never thought about but really hit me in the face. In this project a computer makes up faces and they are all different, and it seems as though an artist has created them! But the thing is, Matthias created a set of different eyes, noses, ears and so on, and the computer can draw a face with randomly chosen eyes and ears, but still change them a little bit. This is why every face is different. 

The thing that was interesting for me was that he uses predefined objects and then shuffles them together! Now that I think about it I've seen it at Spelunky:

Spelunky

Which creates whole levels by randomly placing tiles in the level, but also maintaining a playable level.

And Canabalt:

Canabalt

Which places building block and other set pieces randomly so that every run is different.

So now I plan to make a program that is both predictable and yet, also, still unpredictable and random!

I hope you have liked the read :).

and see you next time!

Frank