Monthly Archives: October 2014

Hey guys. Sooooooo imma go out of my realm for a second to talk about a popular topic around here in the SIF world: Etexts.

One of the major problems of languages today in terms of communicating is that weird letters don’t really translate into numbers really well. Granted, the English alphabet is recognized by computers all the time because, historically, English was the major language used by the people who helped advance computers back in the 40s or 50s when they really got rolling.

So that solves the problems of English somewhat, but all languages have to be encoded someway into the computer. 1s and 0s have to be included somewhere.

Somedays (when your really tired doing that “paper” last night when you were really partying out with your friends) you click on a regular MS word doc, but you right click and open in a regular text editor like Notepad and get this crap:

ä_ûø||¤âkì&¥!z’åd³’êP¥ÃÖük¾§š’PKoð„¬ 
PK  }\E  docProps/core.xmlmÝJÃ@FŸÀwXö>™FA$$é…è•‚ØV¼]f§ébö‡Ý©IßÞmÐ(ØËá;s˜ùšõdñI1ïZY•+)È¡×Æõ­Üm‹;)+§ÕàµòDI®»«C>ÒKô”J”‹\ª1´òÀj€„²*•™p9Üûhç1ö~¨žàzµºK¬´bga£üVj\”á‡Y h KŽTe¿,S´éâÂœü!­áS ‹èO¸ÐS28Žc9ÞÌh¾¿‚÷ç§Íüjaܹ*$Ù5k6<Pw¿{}{>ê|¬ØFe\î¶Ô§ª…v_PKïÙ]ò œ
PK  }\E  word/numbering.xmlíÝŽ£6†¯ ÷!åp&˜B¢ÍìAW[µUU»½ œ-2ì\CzÖžöÚz%uþ˜MB dmÞ#ì¼ñcëó0ïÞ‰ÂÞšñ,Hâ™AM£Çb/ñƒx93~ÿôñÁ5zYNcŸ†IÌfÆËŒ÷Oß½ÛL㔚3.úõDŠ8›FÞÌXåy:2oÅ”š=&)‹Eã”áÍÅG¾D”.Ò/‰Ršó ò—ešŽqH“ÌŒ‚ÇÓCŠ‡(ðx’%‹|2M‹Àc‡Ã1‚×¹î>äCâ‹óÝœ…â’8[iv̵Í&WÇ$k™ˆuûmÒ:Wó9݈ç…ûmî§<ñX–‰³öeFbÖx€ÛeD[8½æñN”Äeš­;Ε×~×><´]ªW!¯Ï”ëÜȾé9˜sÊ_.xž_ǧA-ŸeQyÁKC¶Iá­(Ϗ Â6ÂÄûÌüïi¼¦¥™ýe-;Ÿeòºä4z5iÖè›%æ™]~[Ñ”½f[þ¿l?ð¤H’1Ñy–sêå?Qïäӏ¾Êv]Âu(šq˜æîŒÌx.έi¸í4xÚe£òä¼C–ï[Dà’ö¥lú÷ï?Ëó?ydz![º§¿ðí!ˆ}Ѷ==3Æ–R7ÓEÀ³ü9ØþH†Ž¹í=(»óý¡8æ‹ÅH{è

And your like: “OMG I BROKE WORD!!! MY PROJECT IS RUINED!!!!11!11!!!!!!11!111”

Don’t worry about it, it just 7-bit ASCII.

To cope with the problem of natural language processing, a branch of machine learning (think artificial intelligence), computer scientists employ many different encodings to protect text or other media from becoming distorted.

The above first  lines in binary looks like this:

11000011101001000101111111000011101110111100001110111000011111000111110011000010101001001100001110100010011010111100001110101100

which translates to:

&#195;&#164;_&#195;&#187;&#195;&#184;||&#194;&#164;&#195;&#162;k&#195;&#

which are html characters your browser can detect and use for spacing, symbols, etc…

So there you have all your data, not alien symbols from another planet. Pretty cool right?

This binary data can be used for any type of media, and we can see this through 3D binary visualizations.

A PDF file.

32 bit Windows executable

(All posts from this tool called binwalk, Github repo containing code to make this visualization here)

Here’s a nice Ted Talk talking about binary visualizations here.

Currently, text encoding on etexts for tablets is not really standardized. Most of the laid-back app developers in the store just use zooming as a way of getting you around the document you’re trying to read, but it is very inefficent and makes for tired fingers. Others use an algorithm to help display text in the right way like as discussed in this video:

Some academic uses for text encoding come from LaTeX. I’m pretty sure it’s phased out now by MS’s new mathword thing that tries to do math equations on a document, but someone out there might use it.

Anyways, it opens a major problem for people who wish for broad acceptance for the use of etexts. You either have to make an algorithm that displays a certain font and then use it FOR ALL FONTS EVER MADE!!!!

Or you can low-brow it and use a zoom function.

There’s plenty more problems in the world of text, typography, and computers, and if you want more posts detailing this subject just leave a comment.

I suppose that is it for me today. I’ll be sure to check in next week. Last week was really busy. 😛

I leave you with these optional videos you can see I found very compelling. Well…I guess if you like listening to old people like your grandparents it is interesting.

Hello all, got some good stuff to talk about this post.

My ThreeJS stuff is hitting off the roof now with more and more projects coming in from a lot of different places. So much in fact I can’t process it all. So I have decided to spearhead renewed energy into all this ThreeJS stuff. Originally, my plan was to add to it gradually, but I see that time is of essence to get my point across.

Well, enough about me.

It’s time for you guys to see what I’m doing.

First of all, I have been researching a lot of the potentials of ThreeJs and WebGL in general. WebGL is the standard of graphics in the browser. It’s the flip side of OpenGL, which is a larger library with more potential, especially for phones. Anyways, I’ve been looking at a lot of Google Talks and research stuff, which was all kind of exciting, but I could have done with a paper I could browse in 5 minutes vs a 20 minute video.

Anyways, I looked at this thing called ROME made with a lot of people and some Google employees. It’s a movie that interprets a lot of content in just a browser. Pretty amazing interactive music video. Click here to see it.

Awesome visualization through shaders in WebGL as well as a little pick up from ThreeJS

Cool stuff. Also, I looked at a lot of cool data visualizations using just simple JS to make graphs and charts:

• Polis is a nice way of getting huge feedback yet having planes of agreement and disagreement between people.
• This  is by Information is Beautiful. The chart is referenced in a lot of Ted Talks and stuff.
• A great way of delivering meaningful content, D23’s library is an awesome way to just get code and input your own values to get awesome data.
• Deeptime is a really nice interactive piece. It shows history throughout time and provides visual cues for people to read about. Wish every textbook was like this.

However, one of my favorite websites using Javascript and ThreeJS in general is UniversLabs  They did some cool stuff with the Python Programming language and the 3D program Maya. Stuff of dreams it is.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to develop upon this tech and make my own stuff.

However, right now I’m gonna just get through some projects and get the Tools Wiki into overdrive. I’m gonna do something special for Halloween at CURVE using Three.JS   😉

After that, I’m gonna try and do something like ROME where it’s a virtual movie in ThreeJS. I’m thinking this nice single by Imagine Dragons that they made for the League of Legends Championship. Google already has the cel-shading techniques down, but the light diffusion on those clouds is a whole nuther thing I’ll tell you that. Pretty cool if there were rays of lights coming out every which way that have some motion and character into them.

But until that time, I’ll sign off with one of the treasures of the Internet.

Enjoy 🙂

Cool, so we built our first “pre-viz” versions of the wiki, but it didn’t look like anything we wanted it to look like because the default wiki sandbox doesn’t have a css editing plugin. I tried other sandboxes, ways of editing a page, and even just straightforward code, but nothing really worked.

I did find this app for Google Chrome called Stylish: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish/fjnbnpbmkenffdnngjfgmeleoegfcffe?hl=en. Pretty cool. It enables you to add your own css stuff right into the app so any page you look at is customized to your liking. I used that and our css profile to make wikipedia look different and show our design.

Anyways, we decided to open a wikispace so that we could put in some content. We are not going to fiddle with it now, but we are creating separate blogs to try and create another brainstorm type thing. Once we figure out the how the info fits in to different slots, it’ll work out fine.

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Three.js page for the SIF Sharepoint website is up which is AW3SOM3. Now, people will be able to look at different,cool things that can be used for other purpose other than different, cool things that just look different or cool. :/

Anyways, it’s a big step in things for that little side project/fun time thing. I’m trying to be straight up on my goals and perspectives for that…”thing” because I don’t want it to be a project or something, but more as a thing where SIFs can just drop in and drop out to peruse some cool things.

However, I will continue to add on it during my free time.

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On an unrelated note, Joe asked me the other day to pull up some stuff using Three.js on the InteractWall last Friday and one of the people he was talking to wanted to see it in terms of social media.

While Three.js, WebGL, and Canvas have a lot of things in the social media perspective, there was one problem…Chrome did not want to display in 5760×1080 aka the InteractWall resolution.

I was questioning why the content of my thing was getting cut off until I realized that the screen resolution for Chrome was at its default monitor screen size.

So I’m proposing that we change the Chrome screen size from its default 1080x1920p to 5780x1080p. That way, people’s content won’t get cut off and there will be no repercussions to anyone or anything on the InteractWall. I’ll check it out sometime this week.

Also, I have been noticing that people who use the InteractWall or 4k workstation are having trouble uploading and resizing files, touch capacitive interfaces, and other stuff like that. So it might be time to “upgrade” the InteractWall. Now, when I mean upgrade, I mean just a few plugins to get our sore fingers rest from clicking so much. We shouldn’t have to teach people how to use the InteractWall. I mean tablet technology has gotten to the point that people can just turn on their tablet, press a couple apps, and read a book and whatever, but they should be able to do the same thing on the InteractWall without any worry.

As a lot of SIFers know, the last computer on the array of the InteractWall is used for display control and separation. We can bring the 4k screen to the InteractWall and back, separate multiple picture-in-picture frames, and just roundabout transformations on the screen. Most of this can be controlled by simple Windows Key shortcuts by pressing the Windows Key and an arrow button to max/min content or snap it to the extreme left or right. However, many people don’t know that shortcut, don’t have the time to open multiple files, and other crap they have to do while up there on their presentation. On top of that, Windows does not see the InteractWall as three separate distinct zones of screen or ever screens at all rather than just a huge display. That’s why we are there at CURVE giving customer support.

But what if we didn’t need all those things? What if people can just get all the files with their presentation, but not have to spend any money on clickers, presentation software, or give that awkward period of silence waiting for the person behind the computer click to the next piece of content? IT’S MADNESS!!!!!

Those are the sorts of questions a lot of people ask themselves while working with technology: how can I do things fast, cheap, and efficiently without clicking everything? Some answers are given like Prezi or Powerpoint where you can make a quick presentation given that you have the time and experience to do that, but what most people want is just a way to bring simple data onscreen without any of the middle-man stuff so that they can teach a class or get their idea across.

Why do you think people who work on just a board and a marker get their point across faster than those working with a multitude of technology? There have been studies done, and they all point to this type of logic in presentations. Most of what you see and hear in lecture halls is not on the screen, but the person teaching it.

Letting that creative, intuitive understanding of a person with years of experience should be allowed to come out pure into the classroom, conference, or whatever medium expressed in.

That’s the point of technology. Of innovation. Of CURVE.