What's your vote for the most Fun computer project?

[Owen Densmore]

OK, lots of us have noticed that computing is not all that fun  
anymore.  Its a grind.  Sure the outcome of the grind might be  
rewarding.  But is it fun?

So my challenge to us here is: What's the most fun computer project  
you can think of.  Or have done, for that matter!

This includes using fun environment like NetLogo, Smalltalk and the  
like.  Rapid (and satisfying!) prototyping.

     -- Owen



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Prof David West]

Two come to mind

  1- My first two Smalltalk programs, one a simulation of a Tibetan
  monastery's micro-economic system based on staging sponsored religious
  ceremonies, the second a simulation of interactions with a cultural
  informant for a field methods course in grad school.

  2- A C (absolutely hated the programming language) - Windows
  Developer's Toolkit v 0.9 (absolutely hated Microsoft from that day
  forward) program to measure the cow eyes in order to fit them with
  contact lenses.  It seems that cows with poor eyesight give less milk
  and and contact lenses meant more milk and more ice cream at Babcock
  Hall, University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I did the project.

I have always had fun when working with Smalltalk, whatever the project.

davew

On Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:05 -0600, "Owen Densmore" <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> OK, lots of us have noticed that computing is not all that fun  
> anymore.  Its a grind.  Sure the outcome of the grind might be  
> rewarding.  But is it fun?
>
> So my challenge to us here is: What's the most fun computer project  
> you can think of.  Or have done, for that matter!
>
> This includes using fun environment like NetLogo, Smalltalk and the  
> like.  Rapid (and satisfying!) prototyping.
>
>      -- Owen
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Roger Critchlow-2]

I had a bunch of fun just this weekend.

I had been noticing blog chatter about running webview's on the
Android desktop, and when I looked I found two projects dedicated to
making it possible to write applications for iPhone, Android,
Blackberry, Symbian, etc. using just html, css, javascript and a
little bit of bridging to the native phone facilities.  One's called
QuickConnect (http://tetontech.wordpress.com/) and the other is Phone
Gap (http://phonegap.com/).  The idea is that you build an app that
links to the webkit libraries, opens a window, and loads a url.  The
url can come from the local filesystem, from the web, from an archive
built into the application, it doesn't matter as long as it loads
cleanly and finds the rest of the stuff it needs to run.

It sounded like fun, so I started making one for Ubuntu.  It's 235
lines of bewildered.c, 58 lines of Readme.txt, and 32 lines of
Makefile which compiles to a 15608 byte executable, stripped of
symbols.  ldd says it has 65 libraries linked in.

I run it as:

  CANVAS='http://elf.org/quantum-classical-clock/clock.html?hand_style=fade&hand_shape=lozenge&dial=face'
\
    ./bewildered --uri="${CANVAS}" --geometry=225x225-20+40
--transparent=1 --decorated=0 -below=1

and I have a transparent clock with alpha blended quantum delocalized
hands running on my desktop, using the exact same code that runs the
clock on my web page in the big boy browsers.

But it's my desktop clock, now, and my first transparent desktop bling.

-- rec --

On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

> OK, lots of us have noticed that computing is not all that fun anymore.  Its
> a grind.  Sure the outcome of the grind might be rewarding.  But is it fun?
>
> So my challenge to us here is: What's the most fun computer project you can
> think of.  Or have done, for that matter!
>
> This includes using fun environment like NetLogo, Smalltalk and the like.
>  Rapid (and satisfying!) prototyping.
>
>    -- Owen
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Frank Wimberly]

In 1996, when I was working in the Philosophy Department at Carnegie Mellon, I wrote an Applet to answer d-separation questions.  D-separation is an important concept in statistical causal reasoning.  I was just learning Java and had never written a program to be deployed on the Web.  Java (version 0.89) didn't have the Collections classes at that time and had a very rudimentary event model.  I had to develop data structures for directed graphs, sets, ordered pairs, etc.  The program seems very quaint by today's standards but apparently it has been used; a couple of years ago the Philosophy department took it off their server.  Almost immediately email started to arrive asking what had happened to the applet.  It has a small but appreciative user community apparently.  Here is its address:
http://www.phil.cmu.edu/~wimberly/dsep/dSep.html

The user interface isn't very robust or well-designed but it works.

Here is an explanation of d-separation written by my colleague Richard Scheines:
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/scheines/tutor/d-sep.html

Frank


Frank

-----Original Message-----

>From: Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]>
>Sent: Mar 17, 2009 11:02 PM
>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What's your vote for the most Fun computer project?
>
>I had a bunch of fun just this weekend.
>
>I had been noticing blog chatter about running webview's on the
>Android desktop, and when I looked I found two projects dedicated to
>making it possible to write applications for iPhone, Android,
>Blackberry, Symbian, etc. using just html, css, javascript and a
>little bit of bridging to the native phone facilities.  One's called
>QuickConnect (http://tetontech.wordpress.com/) and the other is Phone
>Gap (http://phonegap.com/).  The idea is that you build an app that
>links to the webkit libraries, opens a window, and loads a url.  The
>url can come from the local filesystem, from the web, from an archive
>built into the application, it doesn't matter as long as it loads
>cleanly and finds the rest of the stuff it needs to run.
>
>It sounded like fun, so I started making one for Ubuntu.  It's 235
>lines of bewildered.c, 58 lines of Readme.txt, and 32 lines of
>Makefile which compiles to a 15608 byte executable, stripped of
>symbols.  ldd says it has 65 libraries linked in.
>
>I run it as:
>
>  CANVAS='http://elf.org/quantum-classical-clock/clock.html?hand_style=fade&hand_shape=lozenge&dial=face'
>\
>    ./bewildered --uri="${CANVAS}" --geometry=225x225-20+40
>--transparent=1 --decorated=0 -below=1
>
>and I have a transparent clock with alpha blended quantum delocalized
>hands running on my desktop, using the exact same code that runs the
>clock on my web page in the big boy browsers.
>
>But it's my desktop clock, now, and my first transparent desktop bling.
>
>-- rec --
>
>On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 6:05 PM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> OK, lots of us have noticed that computing is not all that fun anymore.  Its
>> a grind.  Sure the outcome of the grind might be rewarding.  But is it fun?
>>
>> So my challenge to us here is: What's the most fun computer project you can
>> think of.  Or have done, for that matter!
>>
>> This includes using fun environment like NetLogo, Smalltalk and the like.
>>  Rapid (and satisfying!) prototyping.
>>
>>    -- Owen
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>
>============================================================
>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Parks, Raymond]

Owen Densmore wrote:
> OK, lots of us have noticed that computing is not all that fun  
> anymore.  Its a grind.  Sure the outcome of the grind might be  
> rewarding.  But is it fun?
>
> So my challenge to us here is: What's the most fun computer project  
> you can think of.  Or have done, for that matter!

Hands-down - war-driving.

--
Ray Parks                   [hidden email]
Consilient Heuristician     Voice:505-844-4024
ATA Department              Mobile:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:[phone]
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Nick Frost]

On Mar 17, 2009, at 6:05 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

> OK, lots of us have noticed that computing is not all that fun  
> anymore.  Its a grind.  Sure the outcome of the grind might be  
> rewarding.  But is it fun?
>
> So my challenge to us here is: What's the most fun computer project  
> you can think of.  Or have done, for that matter!

I'd have to say either;

- turning old Mac-mini's into office MP3 servers (GNU-MP3D http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/)
, or old PC's running Linux/Firefly (Avahi/mt-daapd) doing same for  
some righteous/calming tuneage while working..

or;

- integrating various alarm system and camera hardware with a PC and  
some simple Python (serial) code...i.e. homebrew alarm system.

-Nick
----------------------------------------
Nicholas S. Frost
7 Avenida Vista Grande #325
Santa Fe, NM  87508
[hidden email]
----------------------------------------


============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Don Begley]

David,


i lost the hotel info & I'm getting inquiries. Could you send it to me?

Also. I didn't realize this was a conference. What can I do to promo it?

-d-

On Mar 17, 2009, at 7:54 PM, Prof David West wrote:

> Two come to mind
>
>  1- My first two Smalltalk programs, one a simulation of a Tibetan
>  monastery's micro-economic system based on staging sponsored  
> religious
>  ceremonies, the second a simulation of interactions with a cultural
>  informant for a field methods course in grad school.
>
>  2- A C (absolutely hated the programming language) - Windows
>  Developer's Toolkit v 0.9 (absolutely hated Microsoft from that day
>  forward) program to measure the cow eyes in order to fit them with
>  contact lenses.  It seems that cows with poor eyesight give less milk
>  and and contact lenses meant more milk and more ice cream at Babcock
>  Hall, University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I did the project.
>
> I have always had fun when working with Smalltalk, whatever the  
> project.
>
> davew
>
> On Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:05 -0600, "Owen Densmore" <[hidden email]>
> wrote:
>> OK, lots of us have noticed that computing is not all that fun
>> anymore.  Its a grind.  Sure the outcome of the grind might be
>> rewarding.  But is it fun?
>>
>> So my challenge to us here is: What's the most fun computer project
>> you can think of.  Or have done, for that matter!
>>
>> This includes using fun environment like NetLogo, Smalltalk and the
>> like.  Rapid (and satisfying!) prototyping.
>>
>>     -- Owen
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org