Final Project Ideas

there're a few ideas i've had kicking around for a while; haven't really decided on anything yet, but these are the top of my list:

• delta frames

  
  
  
  
  
  • Takeshi Murata and Sven Konig have done some really cool artwork that exploits keyframed compression codecs to create an effect that looks totally fresh and new. By removing keyframes and playing only deltaframes, an image describes future movement by its past moves. I'd barked up the tree of trying to find a way to do this in max by similarly rmving delta frames, but i'm starting to think that it makes more sense to replicate the process in max, rather than using encoded video. to that end, i'll make a patch that isolates areas of movement and uses that to create masks for future frames.
  
  



• performance interface (a la red panda, dervish, etc)

  
  
  
  
  
  • i've been itchy to make a performance interface. haven't done it yet. i'd like to take a look at red panda, focus, dervish, grid pro, and any other PE's i can get my hands on and try to find some best practices in their interfaces and put together my own.
  
  



• cat-pee detector

  
  
  
  
  
  • my cats are old and they're getting a little grouchy. they're peeing on the furiture when i'm not home. can i use computer vision to distinguish bw a cat sleeping and a cat peeing? i'm not sure. ideas would be welcome.
  
  



• vision-impaired assist

  
  
  
  
  
  • my grandpa can't see so well (macular degeneration), and the VA gave him a massive CRT hooked up to a camera hooked up to a magnifying glass. wouldn't this be easier with an iSight and a laptop? if i go this route, i'll be mostly concerned w UI and accessibility issues.
  
  

Back in the Saddle

the Powers That Be graciously allowed me to count an NYU ITP class for New School credit, so the final class for my Masters Degree will be Live Image Processing and Performance with Luke Dubois. Groovy. I've seen a bit of this stuff before, but I'm taping the class (as i did with Josh Goldberg for the last two semesters) so its interesting to see similar matirial via different teaching styles.

Skip the Middleman

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060526/1755212.shtml

College 2.0: No Lectures, But Plenty Of Podcasts, Blogs And Text Messages
from the lectures?--how-1.0-of-you dept
We've seen tons of stories these days about professors recording their lectures and posting them online for download, but one professor in the UK is going even further. He's getting rid of in-person lectures completely. Instead, he's only recording the lessons for students to download as podcasts or video. Students can then ask questions via email or text message, and the professor will respond on his blog. It's all very "2.0" of him. While some will say that this is a less personal approach to teaching, that might not really be true. What the professor noticed is that there's less benefit in large lectures for the students to actually be present. Instead, this way, he can focus on spending time with students in smaller groups, where he's actually focused on teaching, rather than just lecturing. Not surprisingly, in order to facilitate that, he also has a web-based schedule for students to see when he's free to meet.

soft launch

in response to someone's begging josh for a class-spot on the ITP list, i publicly posted, for the first time, the URLs of the sites that are at the moment comprising Maxmspvids. The drupal site is still a ways away from being functional, the recent vids are nowhere to be seen, i'm missing the advanced RSS xml page, and i'm sure there're a hundred other things i'm missing. But still. I'd love to think that maybe people will check it out and find it useful.

i dunno about max, but

had a really productive research methods class in which i realized that at this point i should focus on getting some Producers Craft vids online. i'll have a MUCH larger audience to get feedback from. started capturing footage from oldest classes tonight, and hopefully i'll be able to move pretty quickly on this.

drupal in effect

a few dvlpments today:

- i've been working w dd to dvlp the drupal site. dt.parsons has an old version of MySQL, so drupal wouldn't work. finally solved it by moving to an acct on a.parsons.edu, which has the most up-to-date MySQL support. we're on drupal 4.6, but 4.7 may be necessary to use all the echochamber stuff kent is working with.

- made contact with kent bye, and will dvlp that further. still have to really dig into his site.

- otherwise we're pretty close. still to do: make Advanced RSS, fully dvlp drupal site. i've been stuck on the skin so far (the custom logo doesn't seem to want to work) but hopefully that'll come around soon.

Intro XML Done

seeing as the class is over, i think this is the end of it. Sweet! need to check that there aren't any tapes that i've totally failed to UL, but otherwise this should be ready to roll. need to check in w josh to see if there's anything else he wants to add to it, and then we launch.

next up:

- test / proof
- check w josh
- deploy

and then start worrying about a feed for the Advanced class

Slogging through: RSS & Re-encoding

continuing to work on RSS; i've gotten it to work in FireAnt, but not in iTunes. The iTunes example (from apple!) won't even work in iTunes! not sure what the problem is or how to address it. I'm doing the XML markup by hand, which is a pain in the ass, but at least its getting done. Trying to automate the process may be more trouble than its worth.

also: kits going to put me in touch w his streaming guy. the future of kits vids are a little up in the air. they'll probably eventually live on his mediachops site, but for now they're on the portal.

Its getting to be crunch-time at the lab, so i'm limited in how many computers i can hijack at a time. Right now i'm crunching through the last of this wk's Advanced class, and then i'll be able to fill in the last few Intro holes. Its a long process though; i haven't been able to automate the compression, and the H.264 encoding takes FOREVER.

...aaaaaand WE'RE BACK!

its been a while since i retired this blog. Jonathan's class is over, but seeing as i'm going to be using footage of Josh's Advanced Topics in Max class for my Guerilla Tele-Pedagogy independant study, this seems as good a place as any to keep track of my progress.

Things i'm doing right now / need to do:

- taping kit's class
- taping josh's class
- re-encoding some of the Intro vids (from last semester) into H.264 ( a compression type that delivers really good-looking video in fairly light files)
- trying to write an RSS feed that iTunes will accept
- pulling "5 Tips for producers" from the tapes of kits class and posting them on file sharing
- validate XML
- convert all MS Word Notes to HTML
- create XML feed for IntroToMax
- create XML feed for AdvancedMaxMSP
- tell josh when XML feeds are up so he can post a link
- add chapters to QT one of these days
- UL all notes as HTML and tell josh the names have changed to .htm instead of .txt