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Ecosystem

Improved version of the Male Female code… use the keyboard to play with the system…
Males and Females are attracted to food and to each other.
If they are mating, they cannot eat.
If they eat, they grow and become slower.
The have to be close to another member of the opposite sex to pair up and go to the mating area.
Their kids will inherit some properties from the parents:
– How horny or how hungry they are (inversely proportional).
– How fast they go and how big they are (also inversely proportional)
These factors influence how much food the eat, how fast they get to the mating area, how attracted they are to members of the opposite sex, and how long they live.
The mating are is where they have kids. The kids inherit the properties of the parents.
So eventually the population should tend to an “optimal” level of horniness, hunger, speed and size – since only those with the right genes will reproduce.
Well… that is the intention 🙂

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The Sphere – assembly time

The trek continues…

After hours of preparing the files in Maya, exporting them to Rhino, then arranging them in Illustrator, I got what I needed to send them to the laser printer.


Went down to
Canal Plastics and bought the material (1.5mm thick clear plastic)
Submitted the files to
AMS (Advanced Media Services from NYU).
BUT – the job was too big… It would take 12 hours to cut the entire sphere. So I had to simplify the project and submitted only 1/8th of the sphere…
Figured out that joining pieces together in the real world is a lot harder than it seems… software is sooooo much easier… heheehh…
In any case – happy that what was supposed to match up did and looks all right despite the unjoined rings in the center.

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Surface Topology – Milling Excercise

Finally we got our milling projects back! Fascinating to see the virtual become real… we often forget how hard it is to do things in the real world… and how messed up “we” are… thinking that the virtual is easier!!


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Nature of Code progress

Rewriting the Male Female program into an ecosystem… added food, birth, death and dna (weight, speed, health, and lifespan).
Next step is to introduce attraction between males and females, going to mating area and finally inheritance.

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The Sphere – assembly figured out!

After quite some trying to decide how to name, extrude and connect each ring segment of the Sphere I finally changed strategy to notched connections and came up with a naming convention to recognize each piece when they are laser cut.
The Maya MEL script I used for the initial setup lines can be found HERE and the “methodology” used HERE.
Now just have to figure out what are the tolerances on the laser cutter for 1/16″ plexy to finish the rings, export to Rhino then to Illustrator and finally to the Laser Printer itself.
Here are some pictures of today’s progress:

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Google Analytics

I have recently included Google Analytics on my blog and now I am addicted to it… you can track where people are coming from to see your blog, how often they come back, what page they read and much more.
Maybe not such a novelty but I found it fascinating and very easy to implement… check it out HERE!
And it seems like the more I post, the most visitors I get – obvious? Sure… but fascinating to see how it spreads. At first it was only people in Brazil and here in NY… now somehow it is reaching as far out as Japan, Indonesia, India…
Yeah yeah… geeky… but very cool 🙂

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My Google Maps

So Google has this new feature – My Maps – create your own map and post your points of interest… post geocoded photos… and even videos I’ve heard… Going to work on that to see how it plays out…
You can check it out

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Extraordinary People – Daniel Tammet

Worth watching this entire video…

Doing math with shapes, effortlessly – could this be the future of computing? What if computers could “number crunch” looking at shapes instead of actual numbers? Could be a very interesting way of looking at complex problems dealing with turbulence and multiple variable systems such as weather forecasting.

Also, at the very end it has an image of Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum kinetic building actually moving!