Just saw these on Flickr today. Maybe I can try to replicate them in Processing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/solaas/sets/72157624817084209/with/4983542541/

I have joined RISD as an MFA candidate in the Digital+Media department. I have moved to Providence from Wisconsin, while John finishes his last year of his PhD at UW. I’m living with a roommate, Bernadine. She is a Cooking and Nutrition major at JWU, makes her own jewelry, gave me a handpainted apron as a gift, and is all around awesome. I’m living on College Hill, and working at the CIT building downtown during the daytime.

Tomorrow is the first day of class and I have no idea what is in store for me. I want to continue working on digital tools for creativity, but I also think it’s time for me to develop my own art a little further. I’m scared to enter something so unknown, but that’s part of the reason why I’m here. I’ll try to keep updates here with my progress and links to inspiring projects and artwork. I’m excited to learn how to critique. I’m also excited to collaborate and learn from my classmates, whom I have already met. Everyone here has been amazing so far.

testing a post from my phone with the wordpress app. area 51 store picture below.\n

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Hmmmmm

Thanks to Lawrie I’ve been motivated to learn Flex 3, Action Script 3 and Flex Builder 3.  I’ve been wanting to learn a new language for a long time, and the new Flex system seems perfect right now because it lets me play with fun applications that can go directly on the web.

One of the first things I’ve been playing with is image manipulation.  I’m using the Adobe flickr API and grabbing images from it to pixelate.  The result is this Flickr Pixelate app:

The most rewarding part was manipulating the pixel data bit by bit.  My first iteration only used the top left corner of each sub section of the image and sampled that color.  To make it more accurate, I instead averaged the color of all the pixels in the subsection.  The bit shifting part was fun, I hope to get better at it.  The most frustrating thing was dealing with the security issues having to do with accessing the bitmap data on files that exist on third party servers.  Thankfully, I eventually found a solution at the flickr api forums.

I’m also experimenting with the Flex components to see how well they can generate something like the current Scratch UI, which is built out of many custom made Smalltalk widgets which have taken years to tweak.  Results:

So far so good, in one evening I was able to recreate a very general interface, but very similar to the Scratch one.  That makes me feel good about the possibility of using Flex for our projects at work.

Lawrie and I have way too much fun online at work:

Rue Etienne-Marcel, Paris

I’m writing a post because I’m in a french cafe and it feels like I just have to. I found a cafe that had free wireless through free-hotspot.com and I decided to come to try to do work here today. It turned out to be a great idea! When I got here I ordered an (expensive) club sandwich and Schweppes Argum and sat inside while doing some research for a paper review for an upcoming conference. I saw people come and go as I read and ate my sandwich (and charged my laptop on an outlet I found!). Then I decided to get an espresso and come outside and go online while I continued the research and chatted with friends, and people watched. Since today is a holiday in France, everyone is being super friendly and pleasant, which is always a plus. So far my day has consisted of:

* croissants
* espresso
* sandwich with schweppes argum
* wifi
* meebo, chatting with friends
* youtube
* boingboing
* del.icio.us
* digital picture taking
* blogging on wordpress
* sitting on a french sidewalk watching the trendy people on motorscooters

It’s just all too trendy *not* to blog about. I’ll repost this later with a picture!
The wonderful cafe hosting this post today is called Lina’s.

This is exactly what they are like:

from la fille en rose‘s post a-little-slice-of-french-life-aka-why-on-earth-do-they-do-this

I am hardly the first expat to write about the exact change phenomenon. I’ve mentioned it to a few French people, and they have no idea what I’m talking about. I think it’s so ingrained in their culture that they just don’t notice it. But today I experienced a prime example, and wanted to share.

I went to MonoPrix and picked up some necessities. The total came to 6 euros and 77 cents. I dug through my change purse and came up with 6 euros and 80 cents. I thought that was pretty good, and was half-expecting a nod of appreciation.Instead, the cashier rolled her eyes and said, “you don’t have 7 cents?”

(The comments on that post include similar experiences)

If I wrote blog posts like that, I’d be writing all day (and feeling sorry for myself, and for them). I keep telling everyone, it’s the little things that make the hugest difference.

And they don’t just want the exact change, they yell at you and make very annoyed expressions when you don’t have it.
Everything is your fault, you are always wrong, you owe it to them.
I spoke about the ‘exact change phenomenon’ with my French labmate and Russian labmate the other day, and apparently it’s the same in Russia, it’s normal. Cashiers hate it when you waste their precious time, how dare you ask them to make change? Blah.

I made this the other day while I was on the phone.