Travel Application

Before I take off to England, I wanted to say that if anyone has any questions about my project feel free to comment to this post and I'll reply to your questions. I should have Internet access as soon as I get there. If for some reason, the presentation doesn't work tomorrow, I'll be happy to post some of my work up here for everyone to see. Good luck to everyone on their presentations.

Casual posting and a little economics

I just realized that last week I have inverted my postings so I posted here what should have been posted in the visualization blog. Well that might say how stressed and tired I am at the end of the semester. And I am still finishing up the long list of presentations I have for next week!

I came across a site that helps visualize economics but particularly a web site dedicated to data visualization of government data.
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/

Travel Application

I just realized that I forgot to post an update on my project last week. I tried contact the Swedish destination marketing organization, but they never got back to me about getting authorization to use images. I ended up using images mainly from their Web site. If or when I put my application on Facebook I'll probably have to remove this content unfortunately. The images on Flickr for Sweden that were classified as creative commons tended to be not be very informative or visually interesting. I'm currently putting the final touches on my project and preparing my presentation. The thing about projects like this is there is always something that can be added or improved. I really am happy that I have been able to maintain the clean design while adding large amounts of content. I'm just trying to get everything to the point to where I'm highly satisfied.

Avant dernier poste du semestre

I have been putting together 2 more movies for my presentation, that makes 3 in all. I am wondering how long will everyone have to present? (in terms of maximum and minimum) - I also invited Dr. Miriam Zech, professor of music from the Music Department here at UF.

I really liked the presentation of Scot McCloud on Understanding Comics. I put the link to it on top by the title. What I liked the most about his ideas is the one where the cartoonist has the reader (viewer) see the panels, within the panels, and then imagine in between the panels. So between the panels there is nothing to see but there is a space to imagine. I like very much this idea. Music rests (in French "silences = 1 beat - pause = 2 beats) corresponds to this idea visually, because it is in the silent moments between sounds that you can most hear (by guessing, sensing) what's coming next.

Best wishes to Arturo and Anton in the Conference, we've been missing you guys today. I hope someone gets to record you and we can get to see the presentation too...

eComm in San Francisco

I hope all of you are doing great and your projects are in the final stretch without too much stress (a little is OK:-)
The conference is great, lots of good speakers and ideas. We are ready for ours tomorrow...
But for all of you here is a premiere peek:

Board game

Here is the final board game. I am in the process of finalizing the rules and touching up my presentation.

Updated site

Hi everyone!

My project site is updated. I have added in the "artsourcing" projects that others have made. Check it out and see what people have been working on.

SHARE

http://share.media.mit.edu/


Share is an experiment in designing a networked programming tool for distributed communities of practice.
It is an IDE that automatically shares all the code you write with everyone else that is using Share, and keeps track of how that code is used. Thus allowing you to see the network that grows around code you contribute to, borrow from, or just happen to be interested in.
Share is built upon processing!

powerpoint hell

I think that we have all sat through presentations like this. I thought with our final project date looming we could all use some levity.
HERE

Quck Project Update

I wanted to post what my homepage for my application looks like. If anyone wants to give me feedback on the layout, I'd appreciate it. Also, last class Arturo showed me Google Gadgets. I'm going to use some of these within my application. I'm planning on having most of the page layouts done by the end of this week.

Freedom of speech and Freedom of press

The idea of social networking is powerfully summarized by Linton C. Freeman’s article in how Cartoons have been visualizing, or focused visualization on social networking ideas such as “rumors”, “diffusion”, “connections”, “word of mouth”, etc. Caricatures and Cartoon figures, besides the comic humoristic side, have their own powerful visual speech and that’s what makes them so attractive to be read. In few words, a whole philosophical concept is summarized, visualized, radicalized, and in some extent, widely spread. I believe this joins Tufte’s idea of “confections”. Freeman’s article: See you in the Funny Papers: Cartoons and the Social Networks shows very well the relationship between a concept as such, and its visualization. The visualization of a concept makes this concept familiar and popular at the same time. In a way, this is, as I understand it, the root and the fruit of any culture. If a culture does not stand the test of visualization through media, humor, cartoons, etc. it is not worth being called a culture. Laughter is healthy in cartoons not because it ridicules the matter that it’s treating, but because it’s bringing it to light. And light purifies, and clarifies. The laughter that cartoons stimulate in us is one of sharing and caring. It is not the negative mocking part that it is about, but rather the positive learning healthy part. To say my thought plainly, countries who do not allow freedom of speech, freedom of press, do not allow cartoons or illustrations; and their only cultural concern is to censure, to restrict, to forbid, and to silent their artists and authors.

Parcipatory culture

Thursday during the game class, we had the visit of Dr Liza Potts that is specialized in parcipatory culture. She is working on the use of social software during times of disaster. She had us do an exercise that I think should be call visualizing the usability because not only it can help see the target audience but can allow one to see the relationship between the participants and the dynamics between a core concept and the participants. It appears to be a simple exercise but it can be difficult if the scope of one's project is big or there are many targeted audiences. If you want to learn more about her work you can check this site out: http://odu.academia.edu/LizaPotts or click on the title of my post

remixed

Hi.

Another quick update. In this class I have really thought a lot about the nature of artistic visualization. My theory is that it is almost viral. Movements spread and catch on as fast as people can see them. What better way to track something like this than by using code?

I have been reaching out to the processing community and sharing code with them. My idea is to mutate the sketches I generate by letting these become more of a collaboration. 

Tomorrow I will post the first of these experiments.

Website Online

I just put my solar position calculator online: http://corbettschoenfelt.com/solar/solar_position.html

Before you view it make sure you have the Unity web player plugin installed from: http://unity3d.com/webplayer/

Also, to walk around the house in first person view, press "1" then use the "wasd" keys and mouse to move - like in a video game :)

Continuing quest

It's late and I'm tired. Here is most recent shots of progress on radio TX and Arduino RX . This is more for my game project for the locating device but the things i have learned working on it apply to the mood broadcaster that I am working on as well. I modified another example I read in which the person used a 555 timer and potentiometer to blink an LED w/o an MCU or any other device. It was my hope that instead of the output timer of the 555 timer leading to an anode of an LED i would instead hook it to the data pin of the TX. I could than theoretically use the potentiometer to input values to the 555 and continually "blink" or broadcast that specific value out. The arduino with the FM receiver hooked to the RX or 0 pin of the microcontoller could than be told to listen for and return only that value or above that is being broadcast from the independent TX circuit.When the value was detected it could turn on the LED (and later scroll text in an LCD), hooked to pin 13 and ground of the MCU. This is my theory or method thus far. SO far i am not sure if its responding correctly or not. RIght now my hunch is that something is still amiss. I believe i need to test it with a 100k ohm Potentiometer as right now I am only using a 10kohm pot.

UGC/Citizen Journalism and Quick Project Update

National Geographic is asking it's readers to share their "stories of close encounters with volcanic power." I really find it interesting the idea of citizen journalists. Also, the pictures of Iceland's erupting volcano are truly spectacular.

Also, I wanted to include a quick project update. For my project, I have worked on several page layouts as well as researching the data necessary to fill these layouts for full mock ups. I may just have mock ups for the final project with a description of how I would proceed if I were to make this a running Facebook Application.

The Emerging Brain

The reading of Comment Flow, the visualization tool created by Dietmar Offenhuber and Judith Donath established, in my own synapses, a neural connection with memories that as a result are now closer, perhaps fixated in a longer term, or simply transported along a Network Path to a more focused state where I can observe it in more detail. Does any of this make sense to you?

The topology of a distance 3 network p.11

As early as in the 1930's, Jacob Moreno laid down the foundation of the discipline of social network analysis, which is I believe, the basis for Dietmar and Judith study of huge social networks, perhaps never envisioned by Moreno.

Social network diagram

One phrase in the study really called my attention:... it is the differences among the people (nodes) and their relationships (links) that create the specific structure of each network and that determine the strength and significance of the ties (p.2). Of course it is common to compare the internet with the human brain, and I do that all the time. The similarities are obvious to me. The strength of a neural connection happens pretty much (albeit chemically) in the same way as the above phrase implies.

Visualization of neuronal connections in the brain

Perhaps the internet, the social networks as neural clusters and other yet unknown developments that we cannot even imagine are still in a larvae stage, but the speed at which it grows and the way it interconnects with our own brains, which reinforce the connections, suggest to me that the Singularity proposed by Ray Kurzweil is indeed in track. I hope I get to see the emergence of our evolved brain.

Lovely Place

I think the article Visualizing Email Content: Portraying Relationships from Conversational Histories is very interesting.
The point I like the most is the one made about the keywords used to allow visualization of email archives.
Of course Chapeau! The project is worth admiration, though it needs further development.
I believe one of the best things at MIT and Harvard are the social components, and the spirit of group or team work. I went to Cambridge, Boston, last summer to accompany my daughter in her first week summer internship at Harvard, and I was impressed by this social dimension over there. You feel the same kind of human warmth in Paris. There are musicians playing and singing in the streets... and you can sense the close relationship between artists and civilization or urbanization. You can listen to an interesting TV interview with Judith Donath here

Congratulations to Irvika for her website. See you tomorrow.

Project update

Here is the original configuration I chose for the kaleidoscope- a composition of six triangles. The triangles are going to be made out colored plexi and encased with mirrors.

As you can see, the mirrors do not intersect to allow light to permeate from the sides only.


These are two colored plexi of the triangular prisms I have made so far:



And here are some of its effects when they were placed in the mirror case:

My website

I finally got the site running properly meaning that even my link on the first page is working. It might be not a big deal for a professional but when you are new to web designing, things never seem to work as you want.

When you click on the second page just click on the button then click "ok" for all the warnings. I need to add the markers for this page now and I will be done (for now)

Here is the link http://plaza.ufl.edu/irvikafrancois/ or you can simply click on the title of this post and you will go to the website.