I just got an email from Casey saying that processinghacks.com has finally officially been integrated into the main Processing web site. The new URL is http://processing.org/hacks/. Processinghacks was a great initiative by Toxi and Tom Carden, but has ended up in an inactive limbo over the years. Wikis are perfect for letting users contribute their own content, but they also requires a dedicated community to work properly. Sadly, that never quite happened.

Hopefully, the integration into processing.org will provide a little extra motivation for would-be contributors to step up to the plate. There are already links to empty pages indicating topics that should be filled, giving some useful starting points. I know there are some things in unlekkerLib that would fit, but I’ll have to see when I have the time to write them up.

In any case, congratulations to the Processing team for adding a new feature, and thanks to Toxi and Tom Carden for having the Processing hacks idea in the first place…

Contents of Code & Form code library v0001

I’ve decided to put my Processing hacks from the Code & hacks page and consolidate them into a downloadable archive. Thus the Code & Form code library is born. It will contain various demos and hacks, as well as example code for the unlekkerLib library. It should be much easier to publish code this way, since students etc. can simply download the archive and dump the contents in their sketchbook folder for quick access.

I’ve started a Google Code repository for this purpose, which seems a good way to go. I’m still figuring out SVN etc, hopefully I can switch to publishing the unlekkerLib source “live” through SVN once I figure it out. I’ll also publish archives of code written during past workshops to the repository.

There seems to be a growing list of Processing-related Google Code repositories out there, examples include Toxi’s Toxiclibs, interfascia and jddaniels. Do a search for processing.org to find more.

Layout with Packing 1b + 3b for Portuguese magazine EASI.

Horror Vacui: Fear of void, fear of empty space. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Is there really emptiness between the atoms? It is hard to imagine. Who can take comfort in the uncertain world of quantum mechanics? Better to consider strategies for filling vacuum, covering the blank surface with form and structure, and thus conquering it. It might seem extreme. Claustrophobic, even. But there is safety in numbers.

Two-page layout for EASI, a magazine from Porto, Portugal. See the image in high res to see the smaller details.

I’m still not quite done with the Packing series, even though packing algorithms have become a bit of a generative clichee recently. It becomes an issue of whether you’re able to give the image qualities beyond the default result of the algorithm. For now, I still believe that my take on it succeeds in doing so.