did you figure out yr problem with random videos yet?

sort of! in processing, there’s a draw() function that refreshes at the framerate (around 30 times a second), so i had random() inside the draw() function, meaning it was making 30 random numbers a second, essentially calling a ton of clips at once.

my friend jacob helped me though, we put everything in the right place (had to use a counter, blah blah), so the random number was only generated once every 5 (or whatever) seconds.

i was initially planning on using a kinect interface + a projector, now it’s looking like i’m going to use the laptop display and the iSight to track the brightest pixel (i guess i’ll just have people wave around their cell phones), and that will trigger which subset of videos will be selected (and which specific clip will be played back). still havin some issues but my eyes are falling out of my brain and also i got other thangs to do, so i’m gonna put it on hold for the rest of tonight, hopefully shoot more footage tomorrow & tuesday, and spend tuesday studying for spanish and finishing the project and not sleeping. college !

yo woods I know a fair amount about processing and minim, not so much video stuff.. when is this due? would a weekend study sess be of any use?

yes please ! that would be wonderful.

i actually figured out the video issue, so the minim shit is pretty much all i need to work on at this point.

saturday/sunday? you tha best

i have not made a comic in a while because i have spent all of my free time studying and also learning how to use processing for a video art project.

if you are familiar with processing (specifically the minim library for audio playback and opencv or gsvideo libraries for video playback), and could help me, i would be forever indebted to you.

essentially, i would like to be able to play back a clip, randomly chosen from a folder (i know how to do this), but then after some duration, play a different clip. this seems very straightforward in my head but for some reason is impossible to code (which makes this all the more frustrating).

if you aren’t familiar with processing, i recommend you download it (it’s free!), because it’s kind of an amazing program (plus there’s an almost infinite number of open source libraries and examples to look at) and is relatively straightforward except for when it’s not.

i am very tired and have a lot of work left to do. 

also i realized that i am graduating soon which is a thing, but most importantly: i won’t have access to fancy scanners after i graduate (because my school is jerks), so i will be hoping to get the second installation of && in print soon.

Anonymous asked: Why are you so hard on yourself?

at best, it’s because i believe that everyone always has the potential to do better, that we create personal myths about limitation that allow us to be lazy and deny personal accountability. i would rather say “i fucked up” than “i can’t do this”.

at worst, it’s because i hate myself and i will never be happy or satisfied by any thing in my life, or anything that i have done.

it probably drifts back and forth between those two poles, who knows. 

Anonymous asked: why do you only have four fingers on your right hand sorry if thats intrusive

nope, not intrusive.

it is/was a birth defect actually. i was born with five fingers on my right hand, but one of them (my pointer finger) was abnormally big and i didn’t have motor control of it so it literally just got in the way. i was a baby when all this happened, which was lucky because i had surgery before the “grasping” stage (which apparently happens in babies), so i have pretty normal functionality. 

i guess it has something to do with my positioning in the womb? because it’s environmental, not genetic (similar afflictions exist/are genetic, but the effects tend to be mirrored (i.e. both hands/fingers would have abnormal growth), but for me it’s just my right hand).

i have had this conversation countless times in person, but i don’t think i’ve ever mentioned it on the internet, so i’m going to use this as a platform to talk about it a lil more in depth than i usually do! thanks for askin.

i don’t know how i feel about my hand: i mostly feel indifferent (i feel more or less the same way about my right hand and my left hand: they are my hands). i wasn’t really picked on for it as a kid. i am pretty sure that my cousin and sister stood up for me when i was really little and some kid was being mean (i don’t think at the time i knew that he was being mean to me, because i was so young). i think later in life kids made fun of it, but they were generally unfunny assholes, so i didn’t take it personally. they made jokes about my hand looking different than theirs because they were stupid and/or not clever.

since it was my pointer finger, my middle finger and thumb are bigger than average too. there’s a surgery i can get that would straighten my middle finger, but i don’t think i’ll ever get it. it’s funny, because i’ve been reading anarchist essays about NORMALIZING BODY TYPES VIA MEDICINE (flesh machine is the book (available free online), it’s fucking rad), but that doesn’t really mimic my experience. my parents and the doctor i went to (who was a g, apparently my parents went to a ton of doctors who had no idea what it was, and then finally visited him and he was like BLAM, MACRODACTYLY. knew it immediately) never really pressured me into getting it. we decided to wait until i was 18 and then i could decide to get the surgery or not. i’m glad i waited that long (mostly because i didn’t know how to feel: i didn’t feel particularly strongly one way or the other, because i felt generally indifferent about my hand), and i didn’t end up getting it. also, i would have lost some of the functionality of the finger, essentially for aesthetic purposes, and for me, it didn’t seem to be worth it (but i totally understand why anyone would want to get the surgery).

my right hand is largely functional (the ring and pinky finger are normal-sized (those are the fingers used for more coarse motor skills (like, gripping something to carry it vs. using a pen or sewing (which are fine motor skills, done by your pointer and middle finger)))), but i am a lefty, and there are a lot (within a small category) of things that i can’t do with my right hand/that require both.

i only think about my hand sometimes. and when i do, if i think about people who have two hands that look the same (“normal” hands, if you will), i am kind of amazed. it’s strange to think that something that does or could cause me a lot of anxiety literally does not exist for other people. but i guess having anxiety about your body is not an uncommon experience. 

which makes me bummed honestly. again, not shaming anyone for having those feelings, i just hate that we are socialized to dislike our bodies if they don’t look like most of the bodies we see. 

guilt and/or shame is a generally useless emotion. why do we make ourselves feel terrible about our bodies if this is an anxiety that we all experience? why are we so hung up hating the things we can’t change (ignoring the ones we can, mind you), that we hate each other?

i guess if i’ve “learned” anything from growing up with a hand that looks different from other hands, it’s the idea of physical limitation and, ironically enough, the similarity of ourselves as a species. physical limitation, as i had to confront (as we all do, in our own ways) the actual limit of what i can and can’t do. and learned the difference between real and imagined limitations. and, as far as similarity, maybe it’s partly from the questions people sometimes ask, but there is some implication that my experience (having four fingers) is totally different from that of someone who has “normal” fingers/hands. and while, in some respects there are differences, on an overarching level, i would say that our fundamental experience (the types of issues we face) are remarkably similar. and, looking within our species and looking across species, it is absurd to think that some minor variation from some “normative” type characterizes that individual or organism as somehow totally different from the rest of its species. 

huzzbuzz asked: if you were to get them, what would your knuckle tattoos say?

oo! my friend eliza used to do “knucktat wednesday” on the tweeter.

also, a fact about me is: i have four fingers on my right hand (three fingers + a thumb), so knucktats for me work differently. BUT, the answer is:

FUN TIME

or maybe DUM LYFE

ask me one or several questions and i will try to answer them to the best of my abilities!