Running Adsense on my site now…

I wrote a script that takes the lifetime of the cellular automaton Conway’s Game of Life and extrudes it into a three dimensional object. The script is written in Python and runs within the Golly cellular automata simulator. Time is equated to the Z-axis, and every live cell/pixel is converted to a cube, output as raw vertices in a text file that can be opened in Blender, an open source 3D graphics program. Because the script inefficiently renders every individual cube into a text file, I’m currently unable to render objects that are much larger or more complex than the images below. Optimizations to the script like combining faces, eliminating hidden faces, and switching to a binary vector file format should eventually reduce this problem.

Download the script here.

To use the script, you’ll need Python, Golly, and Blender. Run Golly, load or draw your starting pattern, then choose Run Script in the File menu and find my script. Enter the number of layers to render; initially try around 10 for large patterns, 100 for small patterns. The script will create a file called 3dlife.raw which you can import into Blender with File->Import->Raw Faces. On my computer, Blender will struggle or crash if the raw file is much more than 150MB.

examples rendered with Blender:

“The greatest war the world has ever seen is about to commence. It’s so great that even the Swiss are getting involved this time! This is a beat-’em-up based on the British TV show of the same name, which lets you match six of the world’s leaders against each other - Maggie Thatcher, Ronnie Reagan, Michael Gorbachev, Pope John Paul II, Ayatollah Khomeini, and P. W. Botha. Of course, each of them has their own ways of fighting. You select an opponent and a champion, with you playing the opponent, and if you defeat the champion three times, it’s on to another one….”

Niels van Dijkhuizen made a MIDI interface for the Cynthcart that does it all through simulating keypresses and paddle movement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL2oBjugmx0

Awesome DIY article about FPS and human eye perception.

I’m in a show opening Saturday, September 5th, 5:30PM - 7:30PM at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary. The show is curated by James Cope and also includes work by Brian Fridge, Amy Revier, and Edward Setina. I’ll be showing three new prints and a print/video combo.

This book looks good.

I released a virtual 10 inch with four new Tree Wave songs.

I use primarily open-source apps, but I still use Windows because I think Linux is way too far behind to be reasonably cost-effective for personal use. This is a pretty good summary of my gripes against Linux, and also against open-source development in general.

I’ll add that this is one of my primary problems:
2.1 No good stable standardized API for developing GUI applications (like Win32 API). Both GTK and Qt are very unstable and often break backwards compatibility.

This is how open-source developers’ poor understanding of UI design and user experience are embedded into Linux design. To get a taste of this, install GIMP on Mac or Windows, and notice how the dialog boxes (particularly the open/save dialogs) are different from what you’re used to. In fact, GIMP open/save dialogs are vastly inferior to Windows WIN32 API open/save dialogs. I’m not willing to take such a major hit in usability just to save $100 on my operating system.

You’re Not My Father is going to be installed at the MCA Denver, show opening this Tuesday. I got one more submission to the project since I finished it, so the version at the museum will be 20 seconds longer with the new footage. Here’s the AVISynth script that I used to edit the raw footage into the exact same cuts as the original clip:

#DJ: 271, 1267, 3130, 3744, (4210)
#close: 6744, 7565, 8704
#walk: 2905, 4750
#sit: 10702

sound=wavsource("original_audio.wav")
src1=DirectShowSource("raw_xvid_audio.avi",29.97)
#src1=DirectShowSource("dvd.mpg",29.97)

# DJ! (18 frames)
clip1start=3744
clip1=trim(src1,clip1start,clip1start+18)

# You can't tell me what to do (82 frames)
clip2start=8025
clip2=trim(src1,clip2start,clip2start+85)

# DJ walks away (61 frames)
clip3start=2905
clip3=trim(src1,clip3start,clip3start+61)

# Joey sits (216 frames)
clip4start=10702
clip4=trim(src1,clip4start,clip4start+216)

finalclip=clip1+clip2+clip3+clip4

#finalclip=tweak(finalclip,0,2.9,0,2)
#Tweak(clip clip [, float hue] [, float sat] [, float bright] [, float cont] [, bool coring] [, int startHue] [, int endHue] [, int maxSat] [, int minSat] [, int interp])

#finalclip=audiodub(finalclip,sound)

finalclip=trim(finalclip,0,340)

return(finalclip)