Some Random Dude

Some Random Dude is a blog by P.J. Onori that covers design & technology in the broadest sense possible.

Archive for March, 2008

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Processing Motion Experiment – Meander

I have really fallen in love with Processing, but I had been had hit a bit of a plateau in terms of progress in the past month or so. I never really have spent too much time with algorithmic motion/drawing. When I jumped into Flash, I went straight towards the Tween class and never spent much time trying to work in the EnterFrame-loop based motion design. Because of this, learning how to work with Processing’s draw() loop has been a bit foreign and one can only find so many ways to implement sine/cosine motion treatments.

Luckily, I ran across the simply stunning work of Robert Hodgin who just happened to offer up his source code. After looking through one of his projects and banging away at it, I ended up learning a quite a bit on how motion can end up looking more organic and sporadic. This particular project used the noise() method as its basis for motion jittering. I had not even known such a method existed. After hacking up Robert’s source, I came up with some really interesting form experiments using Robert’s general motion concepts.

Read On…

New Grassroots Campaign Aims to Save Some Developers

As a former front-end developer, I know the horrors of building HTML/CSS sites that work across all browsers. Frankly, the whole cross-browser conundrum was one reason why I got out of it a year or two ago. While I may not get paid to build static websites anymore, I obviously am still vulnerable to these problems with the sporadic interface/visual revamps I make to this blog and other minor web projects I take on. As the months go by, I see my ability to (reliably) develop HTML/CSS that will work in older browsers. That is why I really like the notion of what the Save the Developers campaign is trying to do.

The idea is extremely basic – get owners of websites to put a small amount of Javascript on their sites that encourages Internet Explorer 6 users to upgrade to a more standards-friendly browser. The organizers of the project were smart not to make this some evangelist movement for their favorite browser; rather opting users to choose any modern browser that fits their needs, including the mixed-bag which is Internet Explorer 7. I have decided to participate not only to save the blood pressure of front-end web developers across the world, but for my sake as well. I am a sucker for grassroots campaigns as many of you may know by now. For those of you who are front-end developers yet less fascinated with this sort of thing, may I suggest that the sooner we can get users off of obsolete browsers, the better our (professional) lives will be.

www.savethedevelopers.org

YouTube Opens Up, Levels Video Playing Field… Almost

Say what you want about Google, they are the gargantuan multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, but the news from YouTube to radically open its platform has Google written all over it. With the features they have opened up, developers can (almost) essentially use YouTube as a free video hosting/serving solution. As expected, the videos will also be viewable on YouTube, but for people with little wallets and big ideas, this does not seem like a bad tradeoff. Services like Brightcove are going to no doubt lose some clients with less hefty pocketbooks.
Read On…

Google Reader Has Changed My (Online) Life

I really fail to understand how long it took me to start using Google Reader, but it is frankly changing how I consume content/information online. In the week or so I have used it, the amount of articles I have digested has taken off exponentially. I previously had a hard time regularly checking my favorite blogs as the process was cumbersome and plagued with too many steps. As usual, Google nailed the process and made something which previously was a pain into something I thoroughly enjoy.

I have noticed that I already have been commenting on my favorite blogs more frequently (which still is not enough) as well as getting ideas for new content on this blog. It is truly amazing what a good tool can do to impact your daily life.

Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts Album is About MUCH More Than Music.

If you have been reading this blog for even a moderate length of time, you are most likely aware of the unusually high amount of Nine Inch Nails articles on this site (seen here and here to name a few). Considering the general theme of this blog, I could see how this could be seen as strange to many. Still, I tend to write a lot about how digital media (which design-technology intersects with) is changing not only mainstream media, but the society which consumes it – which in turn impacts how we do our work. For the past two years, Nine Inch Nails has really been on the frontlines of pushing media away from the consolidated, copyright-heavy, corporate-run model to a distributed, grassroots, artist-run model.

Last night, Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV, an independently-produced album that is available for download for the price of $5. There are 36 songs in this album, so that $5 looks even more reasonable than ever. For those of you into the tangible, CDs can be purchased as well. Additionally, 9 songs are available completely for free – no questions asked. While this is distribution model is new, it is not new – we have seen it with In Rainbows and Niggy Tardust, each with their own little tweaks on it. However, make no mistake, Ghosts is unlike any other album distribution we have seen.
Read On…