I recently finished my friend Dan Shiffman’s Learning Processing book site in time for the Fall semester. It’s still being populated with examples and tutorials, but Dan’s definitely one of the best at teaching programming. Check out the site and the book.

I recently found Nexus for Facebook (via Flytip), a pretty cool social networking visualizer.

The graph it generates looks like something straight out of Clay Shirky’s class, and the lower sphere definitely serves as a testament to how well connected ITP alums are.

I have a Facebook friend over at Microsoft and I just viewed their graph–which looks like it has about 7000 more connections than mine. I definitely need to get out more.

…or just finished reading, rather. It’s Clay Shirky’s latest book, Here Comes Everybody, and it’s accompanied by a Web site.I recently caught his talk at ITP where I was introduced to HDRI. Coincidentally, I’d been using this technique for years and never known there was a name for it.The book served as a nice refresher on groups using the Internet, power curves, and the prisoner’s dilemma.

Between some intensive game programming for the past two weeks I’ve spent the tail end of the week playing tour guide to friends who’ve come up for the weekend. Yesterday, I dragged my sister-in-law Anna over to the MoMA, rediscovered Wyeth’s Christina’s World (I searched all over the Brandywine Museum in Chaddsford the other week for it), visited Design and the Elastic Mind (it was definitely weird seeing so many ITP alum I knew in the exhibit), and found this disgustingly-complex piece of origami (above).Oh yeah, and as always, I got furious over people using their camera flashes on fragile works of art. There’s plenty of light! Read the manual, people!

That’s my message to game publishers out there. Okay, it’s not my message, but I definitely agree with it. My friend Amit Pitaru recently had an MIT Press article published on accessibility and game design. It’s a fascinating read, and really makes you ask why the industry has neglected establishing some sort of standard. Sadly, I doubt making more money will serve as a catalyst for supporting accessibility. Rather,  I could only foresee a governing organization enforce ADA compliance.

My friend Lian just posted a site for Fashionably Late for the Relationship (you might have read about it in the Times or scratched your head passing her at Union Square last July). I’m hoping the footage (along with my 1/2 second cameo) will surface, but in the meanwhile, the site features a number of pics by yours truly.

I’ll admit I didn’t bother to clean up many of them (several are slightly underexposed), but it’s definitely cool to see what shots others took of the performance.

My favorite so far.

I must be crazy.

Well, somebody signed me up for Mouna’s Creative Act II (thank ZeFrank for Creative Act I), so February’s going to be a busy month.

While in Clay Shirky’s class last year, we discussed that when it comes to online presence, no image expresses a person more than a picture of their face.I don’t know if it’s just a trend, or if everyone else I know got MacBook Pros with built-in cameras, but it seems like my buddy list has been slowly transforming into a gallery of friends’ mugs.My father-in-law and sister-in-laws tried to blitz me into removing that (super cool!) MandalaTV icon to no avail, but now it almost feels funny hiding behind some nifty illustration while everyone I know is out in the open.

Alas, I’m joining the bandwagon.

I get my fair share of CSS support requests from friends and ITPers–particularly for simple layouts. The nice thing about the Web, though, is that usually a few hundred other people write-up some nice support pages for the rest of the world.
Case in point: Alessandro Fulciniti’s Layout Gala.