Archive for the ‘Processing’ Category

Coming soon on JAXenter: videos from JAX London [What Does Hardware Know?]

Wednesday, October 31st, 2012

Coming soon on JAXenter: videos from JAX London by Elliot Bentley.

From the post:

Can you believe it’s only been two weeks since JAX London? We’re already planning for the next one at JAX Towers (yes, really).

Yet if you’re already getting nostalgic, never fear – JAXenter is on hand to help you relive those glorious yet fleeting days, and give a taste of what you may have missed.

For a start, we’ve got videos of almost every session in the main room, including keynotes from Doug Cutting, Patrick Debois, Steve Poole and Martijn Verburg & Kirk Pepperdine, which we’ll be releasing gradually onto the site over the coming weeks. Slides for the rest of JAX London’s sessions are already freely available on SlideShare.

Pepperdine and Verburg, “Java and the Machine,” remark:

There’s no such thing as a process as far as the hardware is concerned.

A riff I need to steal to say:

There’s no such thing as semantics as far as the hardware is concerned.

We attribute semantics to data for input, we attribute semantics to processing of data by hardware, we attribute semantics to computational results.

I didn’t see a place for hardware in that statement. Do you?

Posted in CS Lectures, Java, Performance, Processing, Programming | No Comments »

Processing – 2nd Edition Beta

Sunday, October 7th, 2012

Processing – 2nd Edition Beta

You know when you read:

THE [*******] SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED TO YOU “AS IS,” AND WE MAKE NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER WITH RESPECT TO ITS FUNCTIONALITY, OPERABILITY, OR USE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR INFRINGEMENT. WE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY LIABILITY WHATSOEVER FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL OR SPECIAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, LOST REVENUES, LOST PROFITS, LOSSES RESULTING FROM BUSINESS INTERRUPTION OR LOSS OF DATA, REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF ACTION OR LEGAL THEORY UNDER WHICH THE LIABILITY MAY BE ASSERTED, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OR LIKELIHOOD OF SUCH DAMAGES.

By downloading the software from this page, you agree to the specified terms.

you are:

  • Downloading non-commercial beta software, or
  • Purchasing commercial release software.

Isn’t that odd? You would think the terms would be different.

The only thing you get different from a commercial warranty is a warrant they will come “get you” if you copy their software.

If you don’t know Processing:

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. Initially developed to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing also has evolved into a tool for generating finished professional work. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.

I first saw the notice of this release on Christophe Lalanne’s A bag of tweets / September 2012

Posted in Graphics, Processing, Visualization | No Comments »

Your Random Numbers – Getting Started with Processing and Data Visualization

Friday, May 4th, 2012

Your Random Numbers – Getting Started with Processing and Data Visualization

Jer writes:

Over the last year or so, I’ve spent almost as much time thinking about how to teach data visualization as I’ve spent working with data. I’ve been a teacher for 10 years – for better or for worse this means that as I learn new techniques and concepts, I’m usually thinking about pedagogy at the same time. Lately, I’ve also become convinced that this massive ‘open data’ movement that we are currently in the midst of is sorely lacking in educational components. The amount of available data, I think, is quickly outpacing our ability to use it in useful and novel ways. How can basic data visualization techniques be taught in an easy, engaging manner?

This post, then, is a first sketch of what a lesson plan for teaching Processing and data visualization might look like. I’m going to start from scratch, work through some examples, and (hopefully) make some interesting stuff. One of the nice things, I think, about this process, is that we’re going to start with fresh, new data – I’m not sure what kind of things we’re going to find once we start to get our hands dirty. This is what is really exciting about data visualization; the chance to find answers to your own, possibly novel questions.

Were I able to teach topic maps so well they would be about to take over the world!

See what you think.

Posted in Graphics, Processing, Visualization | No Comments »

Processing & Twitter

Friday, May 4th, 2012

Processing & Twitter

Jer writes:

** Since I first released this tutorial in 2009, it has received thousands of views and has hopefully helped some of you get started with building projects incorporating Twitter with Processing. In late 2010, Twitter changed the way that authorization works, so I’ve updated the tutorial to get it inline with the new Twitter API functionality.

Accessing information from the Twitter API with Processing is (reasonably) easy. A few people have sent me e-mails asking how it all works, so I thought I’d write a very quick tutorial to get everyone up on their feet.

We don’t need to know too much about how the Twitter API functions, because someone has put together a very useful Java library to do all of the dirty work for us. It’s called twitter4j, and you can download it here. We’ll be using this in the first step of the building section of this tutorial.

A nice introduction to Twitter (an information stream) and Processing (a visualization language).

Both of which may find their way into your topic maps.

Posted in Graphics, Processing, Tweets, Visualization | No Comments »

Processing & Twitter

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Processing & Twitter

From the post:

** Since I first released this tutorial in 2009, it has received thousands of views and has hopefully helped some of you get started with building projects incorporating Twitter with Processing. In late 2010, Twitter changed the way that authorization works, so I’ve updated the tutorial to get it inline with the new Twitter API functionality.

Accessing information from the Twitter API with Processing is (reasonably) easy. A few people have sent me e-mails asking how it all works, so I thought I’d write a very quick tutorial to get everyone up on their feet.

We don’t need to know too much about how the Twitter API functions, because someone has put together a very useful Java library to do all of the dirty work for us. It’s called twitter4j, and you can download it here. We’ll be using this in the first step of the building section of this tutorial.

Visualizing Twitter messages with Processing (graphics language) is good practice for any type of streaming data.

I really don’t understand the attraction of word clouds but know that many people like them. What I think would be cool would be what looks like a traditional index for browsing where the words darken based on their frequency in the stream of material and perhaps even have see-also entries. Imagine that with a feed from CiteSeer or the ACM.

Posted in Indexing, Processing | No Comments »

Processing

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

Processing

From the website:

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. Initially developed to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing also has evolved into a tool for generating finished professional work. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.

  • Free to download and open source
  • Interactive programs using 2D, 3D or PDF output
  • OpenGL integration for accelerated 3D
  • For GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows
  • Projects run online or as double-clickable applications
  • Over 100 libraries extend the software into sound, video, computer vision, and more…

Posted in Processing, Visualization | 1 Comment »

Information As Art: 20 Stunning Examples Of Visualized Data

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

FInformation As Art: 20 Stunning Examples Of Visualized Data by Brad Chacos.

From the website:

Numbers, percentages, bits of data; normally, we tend to look at these tidbits as information, useful for statistical analysis and not much more. Accounting isn’t sexy. Spreadsheet programmers don’t cultivate the same star power as lead programmers on video games. But numbers and raw data hold a unique and powerful allure their own – just ask John Carmack.

Unfortunately, if you aren’t one of those aforementioned accountants or spreadsheet programmers, seeing the art in numbers can be tough. Data visualization changes that. By changing the way we look at ratios and integers and statistical anomalies and giving us the power to actually see the relationship between sets of inputs, data visualization brings a sense of wonder and humanity back to statistical analysis. And no, we never thought we’d ever say anything like that. We blame that Carmack guy.

Don’t believe the hype? Check out the twenty examples below and we think you’ll concur that data can be art. There’s a bonus if you make it all the way to the end!

One commenter mentioned:

Processing, open source programming language for graphics, animation, etc.

Cinder, graphics library for C++.

OpenFrameworks, “an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding.”

As places to see more visualizations.

Visualization is important as part of mining data, which you can then capture in a topic map as well as being a means of delivering topic map based content to your users.

(from @StatFact, RT from Joab_Jackson)

Posted in Cinder, OpenFrameworks, Processing, Visualization | No Comments »

Turtles all the way down

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Turtles all the way down

From the website:

Decisive breakthrough from IBM researchers in Haifa introduces efficient nested virtualization for x86 hypervisors

What is nested virtualization and who needs it? Classical virtualization takes a physical computer and turns it into multiple logical, or virtual, computers. Each virtual machine can then interact independently, run its own operating environment, and basically behave like a separate physical resource. Hypervisor software is the secret sauce that makes virtualization possible by sitting in between the hardware and the operating system. It manages how the operating system and applications access the hardware.

IBM researchers found an efficient way to take one x86 hypervisor and run other hypervisors on top of it. For virtualization, this means that a virtual machine can be ‘turned into’ many machines, each with the potential to have its own unique environment, configuration, operating system, or security measures—which can in turn each be divided into more logical computers, and so on. With this breakthrough, x86 processors can now run multiple ‘hypervisors’ stacked, in parallel, and of different types.

This nested virtualization using one hypervisor on top of another is reminiscent of a tale popularized by Stephen Hawking. A little old lady argued with a lecturing scientist and insisted that the world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise. When the scientist asked what the tortoise is standing on, the woman answered sharply “But it’s turtles all the way down!” Inspired by this vision, the researchers named their solution the Turtles Project: Design and Implementation of Nested Virtualization

This awesome advance has been incorporated into the latest Linux release.

This is what I like about IBM, fundamental advances in computer science that can be turned into services for users.

One obvious use of this advance would be to segregate merging models in separate virtual machines. I am sure there are others.

Posted in Computation, Computer Science, Processing, Virtualization | No Comments »

Processing

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

Processing

From the website

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. Initially developed to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing also has evolved into a tool for generating finished professional work. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.

  • Free to download and open source
  • Interactive programs using 2D, 3D or PDF output
  • OpenGL integration for accelerated 3D
  • For GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows
  • Projects run online or as double-clickable applications
  • Over 100 libraries extend the software into sound, video, computer vision, and more…

With advances in graph databases, visualization techniques, availability of data, etc., now is a great time to be working with topic maps.

Posted in Graphs, Processing, Visualization | No Comments »

Scala + Processing – an entertaining way to learn a new language – Post

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

Scala + Processing – an entertaining way to learn a new language

From the post:

If you’ve read a book about some new technology it doesn’t necessarily mean that you learned or even understood it. Without practice your newly acquired knowledge will vanish soon. That’s why doing exercises from the book you are reading is important.

But all those examples are usually boring. Of course you can start your own pet project to master your skills. Several months ago to learn Scala I started my little command line tool which semi-worked at the end and I gave up on it. So, in a month or so I had to google syntax of “for loop”…

That’s where I decided that I should start writing simple examples for different Scala features that must be fun. Here’s where Processing comes into play. Using it, every novice like me can turn dull exercises into visual installations. And later you can try advanced stuff like fractals, particle systems or data visualisation.

You might be wondering what the hell is Scala. It’s a relatively new and extremely cool programming language. You can read more about it on Wikipedia or on official web site.

Processing, in case you haven’t heard, is a graphics language/environment. Has a great deal of potential for topic maps and their representations.

Posted in Processing, Scala, Visualization | No Comments »

Processing.js

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

Processing.js 1.1 has been released.

From the website:

Processing.js is the sister project of the popular Processing visual programming language, designed for the web. Processing.js makes your data visualizations, digital art, interactive animations, educational graphs, video games, etc. work using web standards and without any plug-ins. You write code using the Processing language, include it in your web page, and Processing.js does the rest. It’s not magic, but almost.

Originally developed by Ben Fry and Casey Reas, Processing started as an open source programming language based on Java to help the electronic arts and visual design communities learn the basics of computer programming in a visual context. Processing.js takes this to the next level, allowing Processing code to be run by any HTML5 compatible browser, including current versions of Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and even the upcoming Internet Explorer 9. Processing.js brings the best of visual programming to the web, both for Processing and web developers.

Everything you need to work with Processing.js is here. You can download the most recent version of Processing.js, read Quick Start Guides for Processing Developers or JavaScript Developers, learn about the Processing language, consult the Reference, and of course view many existing demos that use Processing.js. You can also get involved with the Processing and Processing.js communities, both of which are active and and looking for new users and developers.

If you are not familiar with the Processing project, you need to be.

Even a non-artistic person such as myself can appreciate and follow, if not imitate, the thoughtfulness that has gone into the Processing project.

Very much a project to follow and definitely of interest for visualization in connection with topic maps.

Posted in Graphics, Javascript, Processing, Visualization | No Comments »