Programming gets you freedom to do what you want with data

October 26, 2011 to Coding • Share on Twitter • Comments (8)

Casey Reas and Chandler McWilliams asked visual designers why they write their own software and how it affects their process:

The answers reflect the individuality of the designers and their process, but some ideas are persistent. The most consistent answer is that custom software is written because it gives more control. This control is often expressed as individual freedom. Another thread is writing custom software to create a precise realization for a precise idea. To put it another way, writing custom code is one way to move away from generic solutions; new tools can create new opportunities.

Most of the interviewees are media artists, but there are a couple of names you'll recognize. My favorite, Amanda Cox, uses a Mad Libs metaphor:

Mad Libs is a game where key words in a short story have been replaced with blanks. Players fill in the blanks with designated parts of speech (“noun”, “adverb”) or types of words (“body part”, “type of liquid”), without seeing the rest of the story. Occasionally, hilarity ensues, but no one really believes that this is an effective method for generating great literature.

I'm looking at you, non-programming statistician.

Update: The article isn't there anymore, so you can read the cached page for now.

Sorting algorithms demonstrated with Hungarian folk dance

April 14, 2011 to Coding • Share on Twitter • Comments (17)

We've seen sorting algorithms visualized and auralized, but now it's time to see them through the spirit of Hungarian folk dance. In a series of four videos (so far), folks at Sapientia University in Romania demonstrate how different sorting algorithms work with numbered people dancing around and arranging themselves from least to greatest.

See them in action in the video below. This one is for Bubble-sort. They move with such zest.
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Code to make your own movie barcodes available

March 16, 2011 to Coding • Share on Twitter • Comments (1)

You know those compressed movie barcodes that we saw last week? Here's a Python script by Benoît Romito to make your own. Run a .avi format movie through, and voila. Free gift idea: digitize some old home movies and make a personalized barcode for your family.

Why everyone should learn programming

October 28, 2010 to Coding • Share on Twitter • Comments (2)

Daniel Shiffman, assistant professor at the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program, talks programming, computation, data, and why everyone should learn programming in this interview by Mark Webster.

It's not just about saving time. There are certain things you can discover and be creative with with computation that you can't by hand. They both go together.

Watch the four-minute interview below. The excitement in Shiffman's voice alone might want to make you learn some Processing (which he wrote a useful book for).
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How to Make Your Own Twitter Bot – Python Implementation

November 5, 2008 to Coding, Self-surveillance, Tutorials • Share on Twitter • Comments (24)

Following up on my post last week about using Twitter to track eating and weight, some of you voiced some interest in creating your own Twitter bot. This post covers how you can do that.

The Gist of It

Creating my own Twitter bot was pretty straightforward (much more than I thought it'd be), mostly because Twitter provides an API and the resources to make it that way.

I wanted something really simple that I could play around with. I just wanted to be able to send a direct message to my Twitter bot, and from there, it would store my data. OK, so here are the basic steps I took: