ponnuki

So continuing my quest to learn processing. It’s a beautiful language really simple and well structured. I think it’s a really great way to learn programming at large.

This is my first ‘game’, or an interactive program that has a goal, a score and where difficulty increase the higher the score get. Now bare with me, this is not object oriented, I don’t use any fancy codes and now that I am learning about object oriented and class and array this code doesn’t really make sense at this point.

But it’s a great learning. If you are learning processing it’s a nice example of what can be done quickly without much knowledge.

BLOOD – the goal of the game is to mouse over the first drop of blood. There is so many drops that it would be impossible so the first drop get brighter and brighter the more drops fall. It’s a really simple randomization of translucide ellipse, and every frame an if check if your mouse is over that random first drop. In order to make it easier, the mouse position check is larger (+/- 10px). Every time the mouse position align with the first drop the screen clear, the drop starts small again and the speed increase. If the size of the drop gets bigger than the screen then you ran out of blood = you are game over !

Click here to play the game!

So I received my first arduino board, right after I successfully installed puredyne on my eeepc.

Puredyne is a wonderful system optimized for multimedia creation and computer art. It’s filled with all the linux tools to play music, program, edit images, video, audio. Loaded with pure data, super collider, processing and arduino to name a few – there is also a load of soft synth, dj mixing tools, multimedia player and also the basic file system and web browsing. It’s built on top of Ubuntu karmic koala so it offers quite a solid architecture while offering a good user interface and easy customization. It’s built with xfce instead of gnome in order to minimize the resources usage of the system, keeping the computing power of your machine for multimedia task.

Systems like puredyne are mostly created for a certain type of user, a user that care more about the power of the tool than the presentation, artist and thinkerer. When an artist is painting – he doesn’t really care if the paint container is nicely label, he doesn’t care if the studio he works in is a mess an located in an industrial building – what is important is that the tool respond to his or her creative impulse. That is what puredyne is, an artist tool crafted to be as powerful as possible for the computer artist.

It’s interesting to note that in this time of computing, where we rely more an more on browser based system, cloud computing and ‘thin client’ (sorry kids if you don’t get the thin client story… cloud computing has been around a lot longer than last year), I am asking why would we waste computer power on the user interface and the graphical system itself, the only real need is the multimedia factor of your machine. Operating system like puredyne is a really logical move in the overall operating system evolution.

Arduino is, in short, a prototyping electronic device that you can program from a simple interface. Since I started learning processing, I was interested in Arduino since you can program Arduino with processing. So the processing-arduino integration provide a complete interactive creative system for computer artist. Arduino bards are pretty inexpensive and easy to purchase and they’re also modular, you can plug them in different shield (proto board that add to the main board) to create what you want to create, from controller to musical instruments.

In this example I used a lcd-keypad module from ekitszone.com directly on a arduino mega board. Every add on to the arduino needs some library and if you get boards that are minimally maintained you shouldn’t have much to worry. In this case I simply had to download the library from ekitszone and add it to my arduino library (opt/arduino/hardware/) and there were even example to get me started on that.

Where is it all going ? I feel with the learning of processing, arduino and my recent acquisition of electronic music devices there is something being blended together for my creative expression to flourish in some way. Hopefully something fun will come out of all that – but it might only be to keep my brain alive

happy hacking!

So – I get to electro faustus site – way kool device, electronic analogue dual oscillator, made in new york. Pretty sweet deal to make noise! And for the price no problem. I get a ef-101, get it ship to canada – get the device really quickly ~ super excited to play with it. I plug in a stereo 1/4 inche to 1/8 to fit my headphone jack into the ef-101 but to my grand disappointment I cannot hear 2 oscillator but only one. Write an email to electro faustus – no problem they’ll ship another one right away! And on top of that they sent me a t-shirt.

A week later or so receive the second device. Same story, adaptor, head phone, only one osciliator… that is crazy, I can understand it’s hand made but… Email again – the guy at electro faustus cool as ice – no problem will ship you another one. But I start to doubt about my own electronic music skill – So i brought the 2 device (and the t-shirt) to my home studio (I received the devices at my office) – plugin the MONO 1/4′ to my digital multitrack and voila!

For some reason the stereo jack wouldn’t make it happen. But now I have 2 ef-101, hum, ho well, might as well plug them both in at the same time! You might remember about brain wave music, where 2 different frequencies are played in each ears. Well now imagine this on acide – that is what came out of double ef-101. I recorded a sample of it, where I feed both device in my mini kaos pad. Sorry for the audio/video quality, I’ll upload better quality sample when I create something with it but you can check it out here:

well with a 2 year commitment to stay in the kootenay’s, at the ashram there is much to think of. I am planing to learn piano, get more into programming and continue music creation and all that. Like a new year commitment but for 2 year ~ lot more fun

Hopefully you’ll hear more about me, about processing, pure:dyne, arduino and crazy electronic music and of course what sustains it all ~ yoga!

As well as why will the next Tron movie will sux big time, why playstation store is ridiculous how come web page will not be there anymore few years from now and other movie/games/trend review!

Happy new year – this is the year of the tigger so get your shit together! There are actually people registering to my newsletter so I guess I will have to start writing something there too!

Here for new year gift a little tenori-on mini kaos pad jam! enjoy (or not)
Download tenori kaoss

So I embark a new programming language. Processing .

It’s a fairly simple language, and I am using Daniel Shifman’s really good bookLearning Processing. It remind me when I was learning basic on my Vic0-20 when I was 8 years old. It’s really really really fun and since I always have been a half assed programmer, I am glad to welcome such a simple language. I’ll be posting my ‘homework’ here, but I tend to get off trail a lot during class.

My first interactive display is call grey hot dog grey hot dog and I am finalizing my first video game (since I programmed ski! in basic when I was 10, I mean I didn’t invented, just coded it).

more to process…

Bakemonogatari ended up few weeks ago and left the anime scene with not much interesting twisted anime. Now with pale cocoon, my desire for nice noir sci-fi needs a re fulfiled. It’s a must watch for most anime lover, the 3d integration is really nice and the technology design is really intelligent. Episode 1 was neat enough to get me hooked but not sure where the story will go. It’s probably the only actual anime now that worth following. 8 out of 20 for the first episode. EDIT: This is a 2005 anime! Not airing right now ~ still really good but an ova of 1 episode, so you get what you get ; )

I am in need of creation, it seems that anything that is not creation seems useless ∞ the best I can do is to sit and relax, or if not create, draw, play music or code some website…. my personal playground has been updated and I want to post all my creation there… http://gef.freeshell.org

But it’s under construction now ∞ and forever… like me

I have being enslaved in the electronic music world, doing lotsa research about linux, java, audio and all that crap! Getting all the gear ready, making sure I don’t become the prey of GAS (Gear acquisition syndrome)….

I’m starting a new section in my wiki to keep track of all that! Check it out, it’s still under construction, like everything here http://www.ponnuki.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=electronic_music This cute logo is the logo of the project called minicomputer, a nice synth for linux! (that I have yet to make work with glitch sequencer)

Finally got my hands on a tenori on, good deal on e-bay, still you can get them in the US for 750$

I will post soon some creation from it, if you still haven’t heard of the tenori-on you probably lived the last few years under a rock check it out :

ascent magazine

I am now feeling the one… the one that is being with me.

Trough practice and trough the hidden language of hatha yoga I started to realize how it feels good to follow my path. My path is there and I cannot decide for it – I can only follow.

Being myself - realizing that I am – I am the teachings – I am the posture…

I was nostalgic about Vancouver today, realizing that yesterday I felt freedom, freedom from my preconceived idea of who I am… I let go yesterday, and decided to listen to what is…