Archives for category: One For Fun

I don’t know about you, but December’s been pretty crazy for me. Between trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance (yeah, right) and trying to learn new things, I was shocked to realize Christmas is next week.

Egad.

Nevertheless, I’ve a little treat for you: Do-it-yourself polka dotted Christmas wrap and digital wallpaper, made with Processing. A sample’s below.

Take your pick of default sizes: 960 x 600 pixels or 1280 x 800 pixels.
Christmas polka dots
I learned a few things while making this project:

  • What they say about coding is true: You’re more apt to learn something if you’ve got a project in mind.
  • The initial bits of Processing are pretty easy to understand. But then there’s trying to grok random (not so bad) and shuffle (oy).
  • Coffee is good. Sleep is better.

To try Processing for yourself, copy my code from Github and paste it into the Processing.js Web IDE, or download Processing and tweak it locally.

Creative Commons LicenseThe code is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Ever wonder what the most popular links are within your circle of friends and trusted sources?

Web Trend Map, a new interactive site, let’s you do that. Created by designer Craig Mod and information architect iA Inc., the website maps selected Twitter users and displays the trending links among those users off to the side.

The site was sorely lacking in food-related maps, so in the spirit of my most recent post, I made one.

Are there any food bloggers/makers/photographers you love who are on Twitter? Let me know and I’ll consider them for inclusion.

Craig and iA write more about the thinking behing Web Trend Map on their site. And if the words “web trend map” sound familiar, it’s ’cause iA Inc. is the company behind the popular Web trends infographic, now available as a poster.