Hey guys. It's been over a week since I updated my blog... What's up with that!?!?! Well, all I can say is I apologize... I'm sure you guys have been dying a little in the inside waiting in anticipation. So I have lots of fun things to tell you, but I'm not ready to tell them all to you yet. Instead I'm going to tell you guys that if you haven't already, you should check out Makezine's blog. Not only is it inspiring, interesting, and helpful, but it's AWESOME!!! GET ON THAT GUYS! Sorry... didn't mean to shout.
Anyway. I just went on it today. They have a How To on a self venting cat box!! Holy awesomeness. If you don't think that's cool or useful, then, well, I don't know what to tell you. Take a look it's so cool.
I'm not ready to stop rambling, but here is an album of the Vimeo Festival + Awards. Just posted them a couple hours ago on Fineartmagazine.com. I was originally going to show you guys a little video preview, but it's having some issues uploading.
That's just a little preview from what I experienced at the Vimeo Festival + Awards on Saturday, October 9th 2010.
It would be so awesome if some of you commented on my blog. Or commented on that awesome cat box. I would love to hear your thoughts!! Let's get some sort of conversation going on. I mean I know I'm nuts, but it's not as fun always talking to yourself. So talk guys and if not I still love you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to read my boring... I mean extremely interesting thought provoking posts.
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Thursday, October 14, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Senior Project
It's about time I give you guys a little update/taste of my senior project. Although I haven't been doing a ton of research reading, I have been doing quite a bit of coding research and actually taking some electronics apart.
Well I'm guessing you probably have no idea what I am trying to accomplish. Last year I created a project that consisted of three recycled printer cartridges attached to a DC motor with a potentiometer. When you turned the pot it would change the speed of the motor. When the motor spun the force caused the ink to spit out around the room, all over the floor, chairs, and on innocent bystanders.
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| Printer I took apart to obtain any DC motors from within |
| Motor? |
| Lots of gears and screws I can use!! |
| My Project |
View the video above to see a demonstration of how it worked (This was after all the ink ran out). So what am I going to do for my senior project that relates to this? Well, instead of using a potentiometer to control the speed at which the motor spins, I will be using sound. I hope to create a whole bunch of these motors so that I can fill a white room with them where they can splatter paint everywhere.
| Splatter |
What I have recently decided I may do is instead of buying a whole bunch of microphones to use on my splatter devices, I may just take hack into things like headphones and cellphones to obtain the microphones out of them. In this way I will be sustaining the idea of recycling and re-appropriating materials.
| Motorola Cellphone |
| Top cover peeled back and underneath exposed |
| Lots of pieces |
| This little microphone is all I wanted it for |
The next step is creating a code that will read the microphone signals, send it to the computer as data as well as send the values to the motor to determine how fast it will move. I began working off a simple code to just get the readings of the microphone. It was getting readings, but in some way the readings weren't actually corresponding to the microphone. Still haven't gotten to the bottom of that. However, in the mean time we can take a sneak peek at some of the wiring I was working on yesterday.
| Wiring on breadboard and Arduino |
Well for now this is what I got. It may not seem like much, but it's definitely a start. Can't wait to share what surprises come next!! Thanks everyone and check back soon for more updates on my senior project as well as PTV updates and probably some Fine Art Magazine updates this weekend after the Vimeo Awards!!
P.S. I really enjoy getting comments, so if you have any suggestions, ideas, or just general comments, please don't hesitate to leave one :) Thanks!!!
P.S. I really enjoy getting comments, so if you have any suggestions, ideas, or just general comments, please don't hesitate to leave one :) Thanks!!!
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Saturday, October 2, 2010
Now Playing Application
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| PTV Now Playing Bar |
Check out the new and revamped now playing bar on the left hand side of the PTV website. It took me a couple days, but I finally finished coding it to perfection. I thought I would go with a much simpler and clean look. Thank you Grace for helping with how it should look! Last year we had the now playing bar only on the home page. It was big and took away from space we could use for news.
I coded it in JavaScript and used a little bit of HTML and CSS to make it look pretty. Here is a little sample of my code I use to get this bad boy to work:
var currentTime = new Date();
var day = currentTime.getDay();
var hours = currentTime.getHours();
var minutes = currentTime.getMinutes();
var seconds = currentTime.getSeconds();
var i;
for(i=0;i<data.length;i++) {
if ((day==data[i][0])&&(hours==data[i][1])&&(minutes>=data[i][2])&&(minutes<=data[i][3]))
{
document.write(data[i][4] .link(data[i][6]));
}
}
var day = currentTime.getDay();
var hours = currentTime.getHours();
var minutes = currentTime.getMinutes();
var seconds = currentTime.getSeconds();
var i;
for(i=0;i<data.length;i++) {
if ((day==data[i][0])&&(hours==data[i][1])&&(minutes>=data[i][2])&&(minutes<=data[i][3]))
{
document.write(data[i][4] .link(data[i][6]));
}
}
The code above is only used for the text and link in the now playing box. For the images I had to create a separate JavaScript file containing all the same data, but the function to execute the data is strictly for the images: [document.write("<img height='100' src='"+data[i][5]+"'>");].
In each of the files there is an array that I call data that contains every show that is on every day. Example:
//THURSDAY
//LIVE SHOWS
[thursday,21,0,59,"News Flash with Michael Latin", "http://ptv69.com/themes/ptvtheme/images/shows/news.png", "http://ptv69.com/index.php/shows/news-flash-with-michael-latin"], //9-10
[thursday,22,30,59,"Show and Tell", "http://ptv69.com/themes/ptvtheme/images/shows/showandtellicon.png", "http://ptv69.com/index.php/shows/show-and-tell"], //10-10:30
[thursday,23,0,59,"Whalehammer", "http://ptv69.com/themes/ptvtheme/images/shows/whale.jpg", "http://ptv69.com/index.php/shows/whalehammer"], //11-12
//LIVE SHOWS
[thursday,21,0,59,"News Flash with Michael Latin", "http://ptv69.com/themes/ptvtheme/images/shows/news.png", "http://ptv69.com/index.php/shows/news-flash-with-michael-latin"], //9-10
[thursday,22,30,59,"Show and Tell", "http://ptv69.com/themes/ptvtheme/images/shows/showandtellicon.png", "http://ptv69.com/index.php/shows/show-and-tell"], //10-10:30
[thursday,23,0,59,"Whalehammer", "http://ptv69.com/themes/ptvtheme/images/shows/whale.jpg", "http://ptv69.com/index.php/shows/whalehammer"], //11-12
So essentially there are four files I use to make the entire thing work and look good. There are two .js files (these are the JavaScript files), the HTML page that calls for the .js. The code that places the .js where we want on the page is:
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?=$this->getThemePath()?>/schedule_images.js">
Now you may notice a snippet of the code that reads: <?=$this->getThemePath()?>. Since my application is being used on the Concrete5 CMS system we need to let the program know that in order to find the JavaScript files it must start by searching within my custom theme I created as opposed to the base public_html.
The last thing I did was style it using CSS. I can not take full credit for the JavaScript of this beautiful application however. I received a lot of help from one of my new media professors Jeanine Meyer. She is absolutely amazing and an exceptional coder :).
Well I think that is all for now. Check out the now playing application on PTV69.com, so that you can always stay up to date on what's going on. Also a little thing to look forward to is live streaming. Soon I will be in charge of setting up the live streaming for live shows over the web. Now everyone can watch their favorite PTV shows no matter where they are in the world!!
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Friday, October 1, 2010
Silent Rave!!!
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