Here are some of the cooler things I have either made or contributed to:
01.1 – Let’s talk about how to talk about statistics! Part one
The first couple chapters of the ISLR deal with vocabulary and underlying concepts. I’ve chosen to summarize them in a series of hopefully more engaging and descriptive posts that break the information down topically. If you come from a STEM background, all of this should be at least passingly familiar, if not outright dull. If you…
Teaching Myself R via the ISLR
This will be the first of hopefully a long series of posts of me learning the R programming language by working through the examples in “An Introduction to Statistical Learning”, which is free in PDF form. Before we get too deep into code and math, keep reading if you want a high level overview of…
What’s with the new name?
I’ve recently made the decision to focus this blog on my journey in data science. With that, I wanted to give a brief explanation of the name change, what I’ve been up to recently, and what I plan on doing moving forwards.
What I learned from a Data Science Bootcamp
So those of you who may know me personally may be aware that I recently completed General Assembly’s Data Science Intensive Fellowship. I’ve had a few months to internalize the experience, figure out what other skills may help me get employed, and get a taste of the current job market. What follows is my deconstruction…
Off-Topic Entirely – SARS-2/Covid19 Thoughts
I know what you are thinking. “I come to this blog to learn about making things blink, not get bummed out by health, politics, and economics.” And that’s fine. Writing this is maybe more an exercise for me than you. But my background and interests are pretty eclectic, and I’m using this as a chance…
It’s Been a While. . . .
It’s been the better part of two years since I last wrote a post for this site. The reason for this travesty is that I took a job for an abusive employer. I was working 80 hours a week, often including weekends. The breaking point was when I caught my employer stealing leave. As my…
Is Interactive Art Actually Art?
I am writing this piece in response to a recent article on Glasstire.com. For those of you who are not aware of obscure websites that offer information and critique on the Texas art scene, Glasstire offers information and reviews of art openings, galleries, museums, and events within and adjacent to Texas. The article, titled…
A Few Words on TouchDesigner
TouchDesigner is an extremely powerful and versatile tool for media and interactive art. I was introduced to this program by Tavia Morra, and got my first lessons in it from a workshop done by Daniel Schaeffer. More and more, I find myself gravitating towards making my interactive projects with it, particularly since it allows for…
The FireFlower: Some Technical Details
So last post I gave a bit of an overview of how the FireFlower worked. Today, we’ll go into a little more depth about how it was made. Newsflash – I am terrible about documenting the things I work on, and so I will endeavor to do that better on future projects! The code for…
The FireFlower
The FireFlower represents my second fully self-designed interactive art project. It incorporates LEDs, color theory, propane flame effects, and an interactive puzzle game to trigger the effects. The project is made of steel and wood, uses a 30 gallon air compressor tank as a vapor accumulator, and is driven by two arduinos and a custom…
The Quacken: Overview
This thing was so much fun to work on! This was easily the most technologically advanced project I have had a hand in. Animations and effect triggering were handled on a laptop using TouchDesigner, with code developed by Tavia Morra and myself, and animations primarily designed by Tavia. Effects were triggered by a game called…
Altared Space: The Code
So it has been a hot minute since I have made a post – been dealing with the ongoing madness that is trying to find a job. The code for this project was based on the FastLED library, and modified from the demoreel example. Demoreel is a cool little snippet of Arduino C that really…
Altared Space: LED physical layer
In a previous post we took a look at how we built the structure for Altared Space. Here we’re going to go into a little bit more detail about the physical layer for the LEDs.
Altared Space: Construction
Pictured above is the Sketchup drawing of the project. Obviously, a lot of identical repeating elements, which for a project like this translates to “easy to build.” I think all told, it took about 3 hours to make the model in Sketchup. From there, the file was sent to a friend who does vector work,…
Altared Space: The Backstory
In a previous post, I mentioned that Altared Space was a combination of LED project, burnable art piece, and wedding venue. Here’s the story of how it came to be.
The Quacken
So unfortunately I’m away from the computer right now, which means I’m posting from my phone via email. However, when I’m done chatting about Altared Space, we’ll take a look at a somewhat more complicated project – The Quacken. This guy was a great project, mostly because I got to learn about some new tools.
Altared Space
One of my earlier LED projects, Altared Space. My wife and I designed and built this piece, took it to Burning Man, assembled it, had our wedding ceremony in it, and then burned it to the ground (we saved the electronics though). All told, it was some 1500 LEDs, 30 sheets of 3/4″ plywood, and…