Fundamentals of Interactive Media: Mon/Wed 8-10:50 a.m.
Audio Production: Mon/Wed 11-1:50 p.m.
Typography: Mon/Wed 2-4:50 p.m.
Critical Thinking: Friday 8-11:50 a.m.

Fundamentals of Interactive Media is going to be a really easy class for me, it covers basics of web. Including design principles, basic markup, and flash. I’ve never really liked flash, in fact I’ve always hated flash. But I think it will be a beneficial thing to learn so I think I’ll have some cool learning projects pop up here and there. In coming months I’m really going to dedicate my learning for web into javascript and flash. I really was aiming to get good with javascript on my month off of school but it never really happened. But here’s to the coming weeks and months *cheers*

Audio Production has had a pretty slow start. So far it has been a lot of vocabulary and concepts to wrap your mind around but its not boring at all. I’ve always had an interest in audio and its really great to actually learn about it in depth.

Typography started out pretty quickly and it seems like it will be an easy and fun class. Our first assignment was to take any typeface and create some sort of object out of the different letterforms. We had to then create it in illustrator, print it out, mount it on 5″x5″ matte board and tape a paragraph to the back stating your reasoning for using your specific typeface. I screwed up the alignment a little bit, and I left some pencil marks on the matte board on accident :( . But I had neither the patience or time to redo the entire thing.

Here’s my project (front/back):

My favorite application for white/pink noise is Noise by Blackhole Media. I noticed today that it the app was taking up a little more memory than it should have been. So I did a little investigation and found that it was running as a PowerPC binary, considering the copyright on this app is 2001 I guess its to be expected.

Fortunately the app is open source so I opened everything up in xcode and recompiled it as a universal binary. While in xcode I noticed a few features that I didn’t know existed. There are actually two buttons in the menu that allow you to switch between pink noise and white noise. There is a significant difference that you can hear between the different types and I’ve found they allow you to concentrate in different ways.

So I’ve changed the button from the older ‘Push Button’ to the newer ‘Rounded Rect Button’. On top of that I’ve added two radio buttons that allow you to switch between pink and white noise. Everything else is the same.

So if you’re on an intel mac feel free to download and share! (the screenshot is a link to the download)

Download Now!

In this first picture, justin was being made fun of by a little black kid. The black kid said the eye looked like a fish. When it was clearly an eye.

Justin’s finished eye, also shows creation of a universe.

Another picture of the eye.

Collage of everyone’s work.

Justin’s Fireworks tag.

My Triangle Mural with added hearts on the bottom.

I made up a todo list of things I have to do for the month off and I’ve got a bunch of stuff I’m going to do for fun as far as web projects go. I’ve started doing design work for Taboo and I’ll have a new project coming up with MindLog.org. All in all it should be a good month.

Oh and I turn 18 on friday.

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Here’s the first draft of the Taboo ui redesign (click to see full size):

One of the things that has kept me away from developing in the past is the difficulty of accessing, contributing and sharing of code. Given my limited ability in programming has prevented me from contributing anything of much use but there has always been somewhat of a barrier keeping me from going forth and working towards something of use.

But ever since Jesse got me started with Git I’ve been all over the place screwing around with all different types of code. Github makes it all easy. All you do is fork a current project, clone it, and then you have your own repository of code to work from, and that anyone can fork and use for themselves.

Its a lot easier than downloading source via svn, and having to create a patch or something, and then sending that to the software publisher; forcing them publish the patch into the actual software. Its been a constant barrier, and now its gone.

I have a feeling that as my knowledge grows with programming, there will be a limitless supply of open source contribution.

I’m going to be learning a lot of things involving code while on the break. I’ve been screwing around with javascript pretty frequently and over the last week I’ve been toying with python on appengine.

I expect myself to come out of the month break with at least two learning projects, which may or may not be entirely original. Either way I’d like to release some open source stuff for shits and giggles.

Also my friend chuck has been making music for a little while and I’ve yet to post any of his music. He made this song the other day and it really hits the tone of the way life has been going lately. I’m really not a fan of the first section but once the song kicks in its great through the end.

(feel free to leave feedback for the song in the comments, I’m sure he’d appreciate it)

The song is called Gold Plated Tints by Old Will Brown [download]

Anyway, here’s the finished product:

You offer $300-$600 to anyone and everyone who has some interaction with the political process. If I am correct this will both cure the apathy that is fueling our current state of politics, and help the economy. Sure giving money to the average joe to spend at the mall is one way of boosting the economy, but that is only one of our countries problems.

To begin to address the rest of the problems we need some form of participation by **__AVERAGE__** every day citizens. It will completely shatter the trends of dynasty politics and could possibly break down the barrier between politicians and citizens.

I really didn’t finish up the black and white one because I got tired of working on it, but the colored one looks pretty cool.

Here it is: