This blog is usually all about things I make and do, and I’ve been doing a poor job of documenting active work lately - things are rushed - I promise a lot of updates over the next month as projects wrap up, NDAs expire and I transition out of school.

I can’t believe it’s been four years. It feels like just yesterday we were making shoes out of cardboard and drawing cubes, yet when we look back we look so young. Mike put together a slide show of superlatives to honor our graduating design class, enjoy.

If you’re looking for more nostalgic bliss, check out the full 20 minute slide show http://www.vimeo.com/986784

I’m happy to announce the release of a new Processing Library: RedBlue.

As you might imagine, RedBlue is a renderer for Processing that will give you Anaglyph Stereoscopic 3d images. It’s super simple to use, is web-applet safe, and should be really easy to fit into your existing 3D Processing sketches!

If you make anything awesome, it’s your job to let me know. As well as if you find some way to make it even better, such as making RedBlue for openGL which has trumped me so far (that Processing camera still baffles me).

Another product of Experimental Form. The Waveform Organizer is a desk shelf, the intersection of two sine waves which creates pockets and shelves to stash your things. The materials are a white ash ply and white acrylic bound with polished steel hardware to keep the acrylic suspended.

While this doesn’t hail from computation nearly as much as my other pieces in this class, I did put together a few small programs to help the composition and in order to print out working documents for working with in the shop.

Read on for detail images.
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An update on the global typography. I’ve filled in the western hemisphere, and extruded each country in respect to their population per sq. mile. Because the extrusions are essentially cone shaped, I’m actually extruding by the square root of the population per sq. mile. This also emphasizes the differences between most countries while making the sharp peaks not quite as harsh.

The result of printing…
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I’d like to share a work in progress. I’ve been tossing around ideas of what to do with our 3D printer, what might be interesting and engaging. I eventually arrived at this concept.

Each country is represented in their own language, the type creating the shape of the country, each done by hand. I hope that the hand-craft aesthetic of the type is an interesting juxtaposition with the process and material. Each country will be extruded outward a different distance, to correspond to some data set, such as population. Perhaps a series of these could account for multiple data sets.

This post is just to show the proof of concept. I’m working on a piece of software to generate the files to send to the 3D printer. Read on for how I’m doing this.

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I’m taking a class with Karen Moyer on Mapping and Diagramming, presenting and communicating information both seen and unseen.

This brief assignment was to create an aid to a friend visiting from out of town. He can get to your house, but you need to get him to meet you outside of class, when you are finished.

My compatriot, Mike Levy, and myself just successfully had the first of our seasonal radio show: “The Weird & The Beard”. This is a time-lapse of our show, 2 hours compressed into 2 minutes.

Be sure to tune in Thursdays at Midnight. 88.3FM for Pittsburgh listeners or wrct.org for the rest of the world, where we have mp3 and ogg streams.

I’m happy to say that there is now a web-ready version of Roku.

I won’t be releasing a downloadable version because I feel this is representative enough of the gameplay.

Click the screen to go play Roku! It is a rather large file (15MB), be patient for the download.

Roku has a simple game metric chosen to link together the virtual and physical game play: Cellular Automata.

Roku is made from an arbitrary number of cells arranged into a hexagonal grid, like a honeycomb. The concept of Cellular Automata is reflected in Roku by each cell recognizing and affecting only it’s direct neighbors. This allows the game play to be very simple yet unique.

While this version has only two games Warm and Cool, other games could be created from this same base mechanic. For example the introduction screen is actually Conway’s Game of Life implemented in hexagonal space.

Physically, Roku exhibits strong Modular Design by using identical physical cells. It would be possible to build a Roku game board of any shape and size which allows for unique physical implementations while enabling mass-production.

Roku Warm is much like the game Lights Out. Pressing a cell will cause all of its neighbors to toggle between up and down. If a neighbor cell was up, it moves down and vice versa. Pressing the same cell a second time would return the board to it’s previous state.

To win the level, all cells must end up in the down position.

Roku Cool is about making clusters of the same color. Pressing a cell causes the colors of it’s neighbor cells to rotate. Pressing again would cause a second rotation. Six consecutive presses would return the board to it’s original state.

Make clusters of a common color to eliminate them from the board and buy you more time. Top out the time-bar to win the level.

Roku uses Cellular Automata and Modular Design techniques within a Game Design method. The result is pretty interesting in terms of a physical-virtual game crossover, expandable systems and furniture design.

Hopefully, the result is just fun!