Monday, February 09, 2004  

Greetings!

Los Angeles Teens - want to learn Flash programming?

This summer, I'm teaching a 10 week class at Art Center in Pasadena for High Schoolers entitled "Video Game Design / Actionscript programming in Flash". Despite the title, this class is more about flash programming than about design. We'll be making all manner of software toys and games in Flash. Join me in Pasadena on Saturdays starting June 5. Contact Art Center (artcenter.edu) for details.

In preparation for my class (and just for fun), I've been making a lot of little Flash movies lately, most of which are heavily actionscript based. I've collected a few of them into a Bestiary, of sorts, which you can peruse at your leisure here: jbum's Flash Bestiary

The movies are organized into groups. Within each group, each successive movie builds on the previous one, and introduces new concepts (such as the use of sine waves to control color) which may take a day or two to fully understand, especially if you're new to programming.

Happy New Year!

If you like either Batboy or card tricks (or my Internet Lie Detector) you will like my new talking Oracle of Batboy - a Flash toy that can be used in magic tricks to reveal any playing card. Here are the instructions. Email me if you want the source code.

This is one of a number of current Flash-related projects while I teach myself Flash programming. One of the more tasteless games on this website, the Charles Manson Tamagotchi is now available in a Flash version (the old version was in Java and loaded more slowly, or not at all on some browsers...). I've made the Flash project file available as well, for those of you learning how to make simple games in Flash. Enjoy! (Parents, this virtual pet is NOT for kids...)

Fans of my 1991 classic arcade game "Cheese Toast" or it's sequel, "Son of Cheese Toast" will be glad to hear that I am preparing a new OpenGL version:

Cheese Toast III: Attack of the Scones

This is a fun little space shooter in the style of Asteroids. Instead of a spaceship blowing up asteroids, it features a teapot fighting hostile english muffins. You can try out the (Windows) beta version by clicking on the link above.

I'm working with Eugene Hourany on a Macintosh port of the same game.

Macintosh users may be interested in the new mac versions of some of my kaleidoscopes which are now available on my kaleidoscope website. New Mac Kaleidoscopes will be appearing over the next few days.

Thanks to the inimitable Eugene Hourany who is assisting me in this arduous task (and doing most of the arduous parts).

* * *

I've been working on creating some new visual effects which will eventually appear as new features in MetaScope, my "uber-screensaver."

A few days ago I made this interesting 'mosaic zoom' effect which seamlessly transitions from one picture to another. It's used in the free screensaver 'Escher Zoom' on my screensaver page.

For an amusing optical illusion, stare at Escher Zoom for about 15-30 seconds and then look at something else (like a picture on the wall). Woah dude! Trippy!!

Some comments about MetaScope, my internet-searching kaleidoscope screensaver:

"The graphics were awesome and the variety of patterns just astonishing."
-- Tara Calishain (coauthor, "Google Hacks")

"Nifty!"
-- Joe Edmonds (Uber-geek about town)

"Information superhighwaygraphtastic!"
-- Joe "Artlung" Crawford (Very quotable guy)

"I hate you…"
-- Francesca Murphy (Mac owner)

"This is about the most fascinating net-toy I've come across."
-- Cyndi Mudge

MetaScope gehört eindeutig in meine eklektische Auswahl brilliant
absurder Software und das aus zwei Gründen. Die Software ist
hauptsächlich in Lua gescriptet und darüber hinaus ein hübsches
Beispiel wie Bilder, wenn sie erst einmal digitalisiert sind , absolut referenzlos
werden - Bezeichner und Bezeichnetes; vollkommen losgelöst.
Ein semantisches Armageddon.
-- Thomas Fürstner, Blendobox

(a "translation", with some help from Googlefish):

MetaScope clearly belongs to my eclectic selection of brilliant
absurd software and for two reasons: The software is
mainly in Lua Script and furthermore, a beautiful example of how
pictures, if they are only digitized, can become utterly referenceless
- designators and designation; perfectly detached.
A semantic Armageddon.

"A semantic Armageddon". Gotta like that! Not bad for a one-and-a-half month old piece of software, eh?

MetaScope beta test!

MetaScope is the coolest screensaver I've created to date. While watching it, you can type in words like Britney Spears or Kittens or Picasso or anything else you like. It pulls matching pictures off of the Internet, and in seconds, you get a gorgeous kaleidoscope, customized to your personal interests. I will soon be selling MetaScope as shareware. Please try this free beta version and give me some feedback at my new website. More kaleidoscopes here...

Photo Kaleidoscopes

Got Fruit? the screensaver. This is a kaleidoscopic screensaver that features photos of fruit and vegetables. It looks a bit like one of those "Fruitopia" commercials. This is one of many kaleidoscopes I've been working on the past few days. There are others, including blinking neon signs, kids cereal boxes, and so on. For more kaleidoscopes, visit my new Kaleidoscope collection.

Game Programming & The Palace

For the first time in a long time, I'm working on programming something vaguely Palace-related, AND I'm having fun, which is a rare combination. I'm working on a new game-engine which will support both 2d arcade-style games, and palace-style chat. It will be ultimately be crossplatform, using OpenGL and the Lua scripting language (and not Iptscray).

If you're a Windows Palace user, you might like this screensaver. It reads random images from your Palace prop file and makes a pretty kaleidoscope out of them.

Speaking of the Palace -- some weeks ago I was a guest speaker at The Farm Palace. You can read a transcript of that event here. And here's a lovely snapshot of the event. I'm the little black hole on the left. I always did go in for those flashy avatars.

Website fixes

The website got a minor overhaul today. The homepage (this very page you are reading here) now contains my blog, which was formerly buried and hard to find. As a result, you are more likely to see new stuff when you visit, which I hope isn't too often. Get a life already! I've also renamed the "egocentrism" page to about me, although it is certainly no less egocentric.

I hope you like the changes. If you'd like to comment feel free to visit the the Wiki/Guestbook.

Biomorphs

After a few months doing mostly music, I'm gravitating back to graphics programming, which is a much more cerebral activity. When my brain gets tired, I'll do some more music again.

As a programmer, I've always had this lingering fantasy that if I were really smart (or lucky), I could write a really simple program that could, thru a series of self-mutations, evolve into a sentient being. Unfortunately, although I've written millions of lines of code, I've never hit on the right combination.

Ten years ago, a really smart programmer named Karl Sims wrote a really cool program that comes as close as anything I've seen to fulfilling that fantasy. His program evolves virtual creatures and was used to produce a series of demonstration videos of his "blocky" creatures, which you may have seen.

I'm in the early stages of designing a similar kind of system for evolving animated creatures. I wish to get the same kinds of results (goal-directed evolution) as Karl's system, but produce more visually appealing creatures. This is a daunting task, and I'm not as smart as Karl, so I don't expect to get very far.

As a means of getting there, I'm going to make some "breeding" programs for making different things. Trees, screensavers, kaleidoscopes, and so on.

Update: I got as far as making a program which breeds 2d artwork, similar to some work Karl Sims did. The program generates and mutates Lisp-expressions which are used to build dynamic pictures in OpenGL. It works pretty well, but generating dynamic textures using an interpreted Lisp-expression is still a little too slow. I will return to this effort after in a few years, when I have a faster computer.

Also, after having manually generated a lot of algorithmic textures during much of the 90s, I'm finding there aren't as many surprises out there as I was expecting to find - the things I'm mutating tend to look similar to things I've already made by hand - moire patterns, spirals and noise-based textures.

Other related links:

Cool Snake Robots

The Digital Biology Project

Disney meets Darwin

Music

Last december I threw myself a large birthday party and invited a lot of musician friends. We played and sang music of various sorts, and a swell time was had by all. Since then, my interest in making music has increased.

I've been playing Jazz and Rock with various friends. This spring I sang Tenor with local acapella ensemble Morris Madrigals, as well as with the Valley College choir.

In addition, I've begun making an attempt to record some of the pop tunes I've written over the years, but have rarely (if ever) performed. You can hear some of my early efforts here. These tracks for the most part consist of me simulating various instruments (poorly) on my MIDI keyboard, and overdubbing vocals. Upon hearing them, you'll have a better understanding of why I'm a professional programmer (rather than a professional musician). You've been warned. :)

In the process I have amassed a small collection of interesting music software. This stuff is addicting.

The Tunguska Event and Shamanism

I have been doing some research for a children's story which takes place in 1908 in Siberia, shortly before the Tunguska Event, a (real) explosion in this area, probaby caused by an asteroid, which was the equivalent of numerous nuclear bombs.

The people who lived (and still live) in this area are called, variously, Tungus, Evenk/Evenki and Orochon/Orochi. They are nomadic reindeer herders who practiced Shamanism. We get the word "Shaman" from these people. The Evenki lived in tchums (a kind of teepee) and wore richly decorated and colorful clothing made of reindeer hide. They tell a story that the Tunguska event was caused by a vengeful invasion of "Agdy" or Thunder-bird-gods, who were angry about a clan-feud which was occuring at that time.

There is very little English-language literature available about the Evenki people. Sadly, much of the Russian-language literature, which I've read in translation, is highly negative because the State took an 'enlightened' (superior) view of shamanism. One of the more interesting books I've read on this subject is "Man, God and Magic" by Ivar Lissner. I've since discovered that Lissner was possibly a Jewish spy who reported to the Nazis on activities in Mongolia.

English Words and Dictionaries

I recently purchased an Oxford English Dictionary (the 1970s compact edition with a magnifying glass) and have read a number of books related to it, including 'The Professor and the Madman,' 'The Story of English,' and some excerpts from Johnson's Dictionary. I memorized enough greek letters to be able to pronounce the greek etymology entries in the OED.

In the course of doing this, I made a point of using, in my computer interfaces, shorter words of germanic origin, in favor of longer 'technical' sounding words of latinate origin. For example, "Keep" was preferred over "Manual Delete Only". Whether this is a better way of communicating to the user, or a form of ethnic cleansing, I don't know.

Tarot Decks and Old Playing Cards

I recently did some work on a card trick that involves Tarot Cards. In the course of working on it, I read a lot of the material on the web regarding the history of Tarot Cards (which were originally created to play a bridge-like game) and bought a few decks. My favorite modern deck is the Victoria Regina Tarot by Sarah Ovenall, which is a black and white collage deck reminiscent of Max Ernst.

No, I do not actually "believe" in this stuff.

Computer Chess

If you look *way* down near the bottom of this file, you'll see that at various points during the 90s I was intensely interested in computer chess, and was writing a chess program for the Macintosh.

In the last few weeks, that interest has revived, perhaps fueled by the recent "Brains in Bahrain" human/computer match pitting the current world human champion (Kramnik) against the current computer champion (Deep Fritz). That match ended in a draw.

A few weeks ago, I dug out one of my archival Macintosh CD-ROMs and copied my old Macintosh chess program, "Mu Chess," so I could get it working on my Windows machine. After fixing a few long-standing bugs, the program is playing better than ever (which is not all that great - it has a Blitz rating of about 1500). I've gotten it to interface with a common chess- board UI, XBoard/Winboard, and it is now regularly playing games against human chess nuts from various parts of the world on the Free Internet Chess Server.

The program plays under the name of 'plywood', a name intended to insult its intelligence, as well as a reference to the plies that computer-chess programs search when they are thinking.

Oh yeah, I've resumed my subscription to the ICGA Journal (formerly the ICCA Journal), an academic publication for programmers of computer games, such as chess, backgammon and go. The back-issues since 1995 are coming in the mail. Yeehaw! Geek in paradise!

3D Game Programming

Over the summer, I did some research into game programming, an extension of work I started earlier this year in 3D graphics. I read 'Physics for Game Developers,' 'Game Programming Gems I' and some other Game-programming books. I find game programming interesting because it can require a lot of cross-disciplinary knowledge and often involves difficult programming challenges, such as path-finding, simulation of physics, collision detection, and so on.

I also played a few games, particularly BZFlag, a multiplayer tank game I originally read about on Slashdot. I wrote some software to generate new maps for BZFlag, including a replica of the Parthenon, and an old-west town.

As of June 2003, I am still wasting an enormous amount of time playing BZFlag. It is my multiplayer game-of-choice. My BZFlag handle is "his blind ambition". I use this name so that when someone dies from my bullet, the message seen by all is " was destroyed by his blind ambition."

When I originally wrote this post, I was experimenting with an open-source 3D game engine called CrystalSpace . CrystalSpace runs on a variety of platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac, BeOs) and supports multiple graphics architectures. I was toying with some ideas for a multiplayer game / chat system. Ideally, I'd like to combine some of the things I like about BZFlag with 'The Palace.'

More recently, my interest in CrystalSpace has waned because it has been crashing my Radeon graphics card for the last few weeks.

Collaborative Websites

I've been messing around with a few different collaborative/dynamic website technologies, including Wiki, Blogger (of which this is an example), and Slashcode.

Blogger is a convenient way of doing journals on the web. I've converted this particular web-page, which is basically my projects journal to a blog. Blogger is a little too one-way (basically, only I can post, unless I add some extra bells and whistles). Still, it's much more convenient than my old system (text editor / ftp) and as a result, you will probably be seeing more frequent posts here.

Wiki has a "completely open" philosophy, which appeals to the anarchist in me. It's one of the few collaborative technologies in which *anyone* can edit *anything anyone else* types. Although this sounds like a recipe for disaster, there are some good reasons for doing so - for one thing, it allows people to refine and correct other people's writing - producing much higher quality content, and it forces the community to create its own social standards, instead of trying to synthesize them through programming. Wiki sites tend to be butt-ugly, sadly. This is used as a defensive mechanism to keep away the trolls. You can visit (and add to) my tiny Wiki experiment here. I am in the process of converting some areas on the site (such as the guestbook, and shareware feedback) to Wikis.

For large-scale sites, I'm liking Slashcode the best (the technology behind Slashdot), because the anonymous moderation features work well to improve the signal/noise (something which Wiki's proponents feel is overkill). I think Wiki would be great if I wanted to make a little site for me and a few friends, but for a larger scale community-based site with a lot of anonymous contributors, I'm liking Slashcode. I am assuming that Wiki doesn't scale as well. The problem with Slashcode sites is that they all look like Slashcode sites (just as Wikis tend to look like Wikis). All of these programs require a great deal of customization.

If you know of another interesting collaborative web technology, tell me about it on my Wiki page!

The remaining posts on this page are copied from my old "Personal Interests" page which goes back a few years.

OpenGL and other Graphics Programming

Fall-Winter 2001-2002. Having explored 3D programming in DirectX8, I am now exploring OpenGL, which has a cleaner interface, and runs on multiple platforms. Unfortunately, some of my graphics cards aren't optimized for OpenGL as well as DirectX (a good example of Microsoft's clout stifling a superior, but underfunded technology).

I'm doing most of my modeling in "Rhinoceros" which is a nice Nurbs-based modeller (and not too expensive on the faculty discount). I convert these models to .3DS files and render them in OpenGL. I'm also doing some nicer non-real-time rendering in BMRT (a renderman-like system).

Current and upcoming programming projects: I've ported my Kaleidoscope screensaver, "Trinkets," to OpenGL, and begun work on a recreation of a classic 19th century parlor kaleidoscope which contains liquid-filled glass ampules. "SpaceRangers" is a screensaver in the style of a Black and White 50's B Movie, with cigar-shaped rockets and so on. "TreeGrower" (a literal translation of my last name) is a program for modeling trees and rendering them in real time. I'm working on some more surreal screensavers. "Yggdrasil" depicts a mystical wind-blown tree next to a rippling pond. "Paradise Lost" and "Heart of Darkness" are two others with more abstract and personal imagery. Finally, I'm making a small collection of screensavers for flat-screen monitors, including an aquarium which contains only Flounder and other creatures lacking in depth.

Check out my software page if you'd like to try a screensaver.

Kaleidoscopes and Stained Glass

Spring-Summer 2001. I recently lectured on "Random Numbers and Computer Art" at UCSD. For the lecture, I programmed a Kaleidoscope simulation to illustrate a metaphor about the relationship of disorder and order in computer art. In the process I became fascinated with Kaleidoscopes, and the recent resurgence in Kaleidoscope artistry.

I read a few books on the subject, and learned about the Brewster Society.

I visited an amazing collection of scopes in Fullerton at the Eileen Kremen Gallery, purchased a few, and began learning a little bit about stained glass, so I could construct my own scopes. I'll be taking a class in stained glass over the summer.

I also programmed a Kaleidoscope Screen Saver for Windows, which you can download. I began working on an accelerated 3D version of it, using DirectX-8.

Procedural Textures and Compositing

Winter 2000-2001. I've been working on a new program called "QTS" (QuickTime Synthesizer) which uses an XML-like syntax to create procedural textures and animations. It's basically a more powerful version of "Pixel Magic".

You can view some sample movies here.

Classic Cryptography

Summer 2000. Having recently read David Kahn's "The Codebreakers", I've been studying cryptography as the hobby du jour. I've developed an interest in the Voynich Manuscript, a medieval manuscript which is written in code and is still undeciphered. I have also joined the American Cryptogram Association, a motley group of amateur cryptanalysts.

Lexicons / WordOx

During 1999, I played quite a bit of WordOx, an online scrabble-like game, eventually becoming reasonably good at it. My interest in the game piqued a more general interest in Lexicons - collections of words, and wordplay. I published the results of some of my experiments in the third issue of The Tiny Lobster. My WordOx handle is "Tiny Lobster", by the way.

Lego Robotics

I acquired a Lego Mindstorms kit in late 1999 and have been having a blast building and programming robots. You can find out more about Lego robotics at LUGNET, the lego user's group. I now teach a kid's class at Art Center in Lego Robots, and I also cover it in my interactive design workshop for grad students.

Windows and Unix

Technical acquaintances from before 1998 will be shocked to learn that, while I haven't totally "gone to the dark side", I did indeed spend much of 1998 programming in the Windows Environment. I ported some of my Macintosh shareware programs (Pixel Magic, Syd and Orville) to Windows, as a way to teach myself the Windows platform. I currently have a Unix Box, a Windows Box and a Macintosh on my desk, and, in a futile attempt to be completely "non-sectarian", I try to use each box 33.3% of the time. Unfortunately, that Windows box turns out to get far more use because my old Mac is getting pretty long in the tooth, so I use the (faster) Windows machine for Web browsing and e-mail. The Mac is used for photoshopping, and the Unix box for website maintainence. I program in various languages on all three platforms.

Birds

During the summer of 1997, I got very interested in birds, and began keeping a life-list of species sited. Over a period of about 2 months I spotted a little over one hundred species. Here's how it happened:

I was sitting in my backyard one day when, for no apparent reason, I noticed the birds. It was not that a particular bird caught my eye, or that I heard a striking birdsong -- it was that I noticed all the birds at once. I realized that for much of my life, I had been ignoring the birds, even though they were all around me, flying in front of my face. Although I could recognize a few basic types, such as hawks and crows and sparrows, the majority of the birds around me were anonymous brown creatures.

I'm not sure why, perhaps I was frustated by my ignorance. For whatever reason I was filled with the desire to know the names of these creatures. The following day I bought a field guide at a bookstore (the first of many).

Over the next few days, I would sit in my backyard every evening after work, systematically identifying every bird I saw and writing it down. At first this was difficult, because I had no idea what to expect. When I would see a brown bird, I would flip through the entire field guide, past gulls, pelicans and owls, looking for something that resembled my target. Eventually, identification became easier, as I saw that the birds in my yard tended to fall into a few thin sections of the book: Thrushes, doves, finches and so on. For the most part I could skip the water birds and the birds-of-prey. Soon I was able to leave the book in the house, as I was able to identify the vast majority of birds in my yard by sight and sometimes by sound.

I made a list everyday of the birds I saw, and began to recognize patterns in the locations and behaviors of the birds in my suburb. And I learned interesting esoterica. I learned that what I called a sparrow was not a true sparrow, but a kind of finch. I learned that what I called a Pigeon was named a Rock Dove. I learned that the birds I called Crows were often Ravens, and that many of the birds I called Ducks were Coots. I learned that some of the most common birds we see (such as Pigeons, Sparrows and Starlings) originally had been brought from Europe, and had made a large impact on local species diversity.

A few weeks later, something amazing happened. A nondescript gray bird landed on the telephone wire in front of my house for a few seconds, and I noticed it. I noticed it because it was clearly not a bird I had ever seen before. I memorized its features before it flew away. When I looked it up shortly thereafter, I saw that it was a rare kind of dove. This is something that would have completely escaped my attention if I had not been paying attention to the birds in the first place. I paid attention to the bird, not because its feathers were brightly colored, but because it was unique; and that uniqueness, hitherto invisible to me, made it beautiful.

I realized, on that day, that the act of merely paying attention could bring new beauty into my life. What other things was I ignoring? What other beautiful creatures were right in front of my face, simply waiting for me to open my eyes?

Needlepoint

During the spring of 1997, as a result of my research into textiles, I got interested in computer-aided cross-stitching or needlepoint. I wrote a program to generate needlepoint patterns from PICT files, and began a working on a colorful spiral pattern derived from a computer-generated image, which was made using my Pixel Magic program. The old ladies at the needlepoint store were very helpful with my oddball questions, and provided me with some swatches to photograph digitally, so I could determine the RGB values of the colors. The work is almost complete now, although completing the background color is very boring and progress has slowed in recent months. If you're looking for a relaxation exersise to put you into a zen-like trance, needlepoint is a good candidate.

Computer Music

During the late summer and autumn of 1997, I've been reading about and making computer-generated sounds. The result of this work is Syd, a graphical instrument editor and software synthesizer for the Macintosh. I'm also working on a couple ideas for compositions, but mostly on improving the software.

These next few topics are obsessions from the first few months of 1997. They are all loosely inter-related.

Mathematics

I'm currently interested in Number Theory and Combinatorics. I've been learning enough combinatorics to answer such questions as "How many different patterns can be produced from a weaving loom with 32 warp threads, 32 weft threads 3 Colors of Yarn and 4 Harnesses and 4 Treadles?"

Much of the experiments I do in math end up being visualized in the Pixel Magic program.

Weaving

I'm interested in creating textiles with fractal patterns, but have found computer controlled weaving looms to be prohibitively expensive. Probably the most prominent company which sells computer-controlled dobby looms and software is AVL. The designer Jhane Barnes was making fractal fabrics for a while - and is certainly one of the best proponents of computer-assisted textile design, but appears to have stopped selling fabrics with explicit fractal patterns.

I've embarked on a related project to create an emulator of a historical Jacquard Loom. The Jacquard Loom was introduced in 1801 and was in widespread use by 1840. It was one of the first mass produced machines which used punch cards, and an important influence on Charles Babbage in his design of the Analytical Engine. The Punch Cards used in Jacquard Looms can be considered the first "digital graphics file format".

I have been searching for an intact set of historical Jacquard punch cards, so that I can scan them into the computer and create an emulator of a 19th century loom (note that modern day jacquard looms exist in quantity, and computer-controlled weaving is a basic element of the textile industry). Thus far I have found no 19th century Jacquard cards in existence, although there are certainly numerous antique textiles which were produced from these cards.

I have constructed a basic drawdown program in preparation for this project, which is similar to the shareware drawdown programs available at the AVL website, but has better graphics. If you're interested, drop me a note.

Some of the more interesting Jacquard patterns can be seen in the shawls at the Paisley Museum in Scotland. Weavers in Paisley used Jacquard looms extensively in the mid-19th century to weave elaborate shawls in imitation of more expensive hand-woven shawls from Kashmir. The characteristic patterns in these shawls are now known as "paisleys".

Unfortunately, most of the expertise in this area is not available on the net....

History and Archaeology

I recently created a parody website called The Institute for Druidic Technology which required some research in Archaelogy and Prehistoric Britain.

The inspiration for this project was a photograph of the Desborough Mirror, a Celtic bronze mirror which contains a design which is highly reminiscent of a fractal. I thought, "wouldn't it be interesting if the design actually WAS a fractal - and what would the implications be?" The implications, as followed up on the website, would be that the Druids had access to advanced computing technology, stone laptop computers, screen savers, video games... It's all rather silly.

Tom Stoppard's play "Arcadia" has some similar themes. In this play a precocious 19th century girl named Thomasina is suspected of having stumbled upon fractals. Lord Byron figures prominently in this play, and no doubt Ada Byron is an inspiration for the character of Thomasina. It is Ada Byron who said of Babbage's Analytical Engine "the Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves."

MIDI to Graphics

A couple years ago I wrote a program, which creates real-time computer animation in response to a live MIDI data stream. In other words, when I play the piano, cool stuff happens on the computer screen that matches exactly what I'm playing.

This program works by extracting various quantifiable musical elements from the MIDI data, such as note loudness, duration, pitch, rhythm, choice of chord, harmonic changes, etc and uses these numbers to control various graphical elements of the animation, such as number of objects, size, color, speed, direction of motion, etc.

The result is a hypnotic display that matches the music perfectly - I believe it is especially suitable for music which has a high degree of precision and clarity, such as classical and baroque music. But it is also fun for Rock and Blues.

I've also made modifications to the program so that some elements of the animation can be choreographed by inserting triggers in a prerecorded MIDI data stream, and I've also added support for using it as a mechanism for creating real time Karaoke graphics that can match the chosen tempo of the performer.

This technology is perhaps most suitable for live performance, however, and would be a great addition to an effects laden stage show.

I've made the program, Hypnoticon, available from this website. It requires a color Macintosh with Apple's MIDI Manager. The documentation is scanty, as I've had very little time to work on it as of late.

The following sections are some of my longer-term obsessions - some of which I've been fiddling around with since the mid-80s...

Other Music Projects

I'm still composing music and writing songs, albeit at a glacial rate. I've had an interest in computer-aided music composition since my days at Cal-Arts when I wrote a program that generates contrapuntal compositions (Palestrina). I would like to combine my MIDI to Graphics program with a real time music generator to create a self-contained sound and light show.

More recently, I've also written a program, "Syd" which does software synthesis, and can produce some interesting sounds.

Computer Chess Programming

I've written a computer-chess program for the Mac and at times have been quite immersed in following computer chess activity. I was probably the only "groupie" (e.g. non participant) who attended the ACM computer chess championship in Cape May New Jersey in 1994.

Contrary to popular opinion at The Palace, I am not a very good chess player. One of the main things hindering me from improving the play of my chess program is that it easily beats me and I am at a loss to figure out why, since my chess is so poor.

More recently, alas, my subscription to the "International Computer Chess Association Journal" has lapsed.

Visions of Mars

In 1994 I produced a CD-ROM called "Visions of Mars". This was a co-production of The Planetary Society and Time Warner Interactive. Two of these discs are slated to be sent to the Red Planet aboard two Russian Spacecraft in November, 1996.

The disc is a kind of time-capsule. It contains a library of classic science fiction stories about Mars, by the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, H. G. Wells and numerous others, as well as a collection of great science fiction art and audio clips.

Hopefully, one of these discs will be found, and treasured, by Martian colonists at some time in our future. I hope they're still running Windows!

Computer-aided Mentalism

One of my favorite projects is using computers to perform effective magic. I've found the type of magic called "Mentalism" to be particularly appropriate for the use of a computer.

At the turn of the century and later, a type of act in which the magician worked with a "medium" (typically his wife) was very popular. The magician would walk around the audience holding up various objects supplied by audience members, and the "medium", sitting on stage, blind folded, would precisely name and describe the objects to exacting detail.

I've written a Macintosh program, Orville, in which the computer plays the part of the medium. It uses the same time-honored methods for achieving the effect. When presented as an experiment in "Artificial Intelligence", the program has fooled some fairly astute, technically savvy friends of mine.

Image Synthesis

Pixel Magic is an art program for the mathematically literate. It creates images by computing the results of mathematical expressions (thus the name) which you supply.

Photoshop Expression is a Photoshop Filter that performs the same functions.

These programs can be used to create some extremely interesting and beautiful special effects such as Fractal Zooms, animated clouds and many others. I use it mostly to create animated textures for 3D modeling but it has a number of other uses. If you're scared of a little math and/or don't know what Photoshop is, I'd suggest leaving it alone.