Above: The Soul of a New Machine

Isn’t that what the world of programming is like though? It’s ninety-five percent unthreatening typing activities, with a final five percent of 1970’s punk behaviour. And I mean really punk – it could be anything from low-level annoyance to core-wars style worms that destroy all information. This makes programming mostly harmless, just like the pipe-wrench is mostly not deadly.

For me, the work on this project has been really slow going, and I’ve found it very long and arduous to work with the code in this fashion. One of the earlier references in this series of posts was the book Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, where the major characters are confronted with a spreading virus that destroys the ability for people to speak, transfers a religious belief system into their mind, and makes them run off to join a weird cult. This gets referred to by one of the characters as neuro-lingustic hacking.

This project’s aim has been about using computer tools to examine my pattern of lingustic use. The resulting experimentation with code has convinced me that, in no small way, I should be concentrating on actually making bodies of text rather than dividing my time between attempting to code and and attempting to write. The idea of a reflective tool for text is still a fantastic idea that needs further experimentation, but I’m not sure that I can do it justice between my skill in programming and my desire to create well-crafted sentences.

To that extent, this module has been mostly harmless to me. I’m no longer interested in programming in the way that I was prior to starting it, but I’m not going to rule out the idea of finishing off this project (see the Evaulation PDF) later on in the year. But I can’t breathe true life into the project in the way that a good programmer can. The MV/8000, pictured at the top of this post, was made famous by Tracey Kidder in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Soul of a New Machine.

This book, so-titled because of the attention to detail that the dedicated team of engineers and programmers put into this early computer breathed life into a hard-pushed project, is a clear line of demarkation between between writing as an activity and programming. In-house documents from the producers of the MV/8000 (aka the Eagle) are nowhere near as exciting as Kidder’s prose, and would not have propelled either the Eagle, Kidder, or the cast of characters Kidder wrote about to anywhere near the level of fame and notoriety they still had twenty years later.

There will always be a need for textual framing of events, objects, and movements. In the next phase of my studies, I’ll be looking at the Star and Shadow’s volunteer workers, and framing that within a context of grass-roots arts activities, whilst working on the final project for the course. Both of these will projects will take the form of texts that can be read, so there’s good call for me to concentrate on something other than code. And, whilst one of my main aims when coming on the course was to develop my skills as a coder, finding out over the length of this module that I need to direct my energies into something else has been mostly harmless.

In this post I’ll be talking about the specific programming decisions and techniques I used. But don’t don’t get too excited – I’m pretty sure that the techniques I used are either hack jobs or very low-complexity stuff. My original idea was to create a program that read words and then sorted them. This is a very simple idea and does not have a great deal to explain; I wished to make the computer do the hard work of counting for me, rather than me doing the hard work for computers, as actually turned out in this module.

As the stated aim for the project was to read from a text file I assumed that the best way of doing this was to break apart the text and load it into a string array. One of the first big mistakes I made in this area was to assume that the string array would be a two-dimensional array – after all, I was counting lots of different things, rather than making something like a time-graph for one thing. Right?

No. A 2D array was far too complex for me, and didn’t actually do what I needed. If a regular (one-dimensional) array has storage for an item at each defined point, a 2D array has a list of arrays, each with storage at a defined point. That storage can be used for one defined type of data, like integers, floats, or strings. As I was determined to count specific words that I had chosen, the idea of a 2D array was overkill. Not only that, but the method I was using to break up the text and read it wasn’t really compatible.

Another big error was wandering into regular expression-land with a dazed look on my face. Perhaps if my project was more technically acute, there might have been some call for the use of regular expressions, but as the code was merely sifting through an array of strings it was much better to do a straight comparison using relational operators. In the current level of code I have been using an ‘if’ statement with a ‘directly equals’ (==) comparison.

I was convinced for a long time that regex was what I should be doing, but the documentation for regex is so dense and tough that I think you have to have some sort of special programming gene to be able to get your head round it. Every time I looked at it I found all of it so dense and unwieldy that I couldn’t get into it, and I found that the examples it came with were not something that really matched up with what Processing could use. The few times I did have success with regex and Processing were using the match() command, which seemed to behave in a way that I didn’t expect, although on closer reading of the documentation it was nearly as it said on the tin.

Moving onto discussion the actual production of a graphical output, this was something I started working on first. My working practice with Processing might not have been the most methodical, but I find that when I get stuck working on something within Processing I tend to pop open a new window and then start chewing on it in a separate bit of code. Pretty soon I have enormous amounts of windows open in Processing and I can’t remember what I was doing with half of them.

See what I mean?

For the graphical output I started working on modular blocks of code that I could call from elsewhere in the program. This approach mostly worked, but when I started compiling code together in one big bloc (what I’ve saved as version 3 in the repository of code) I found the way I had of fading in and out the text caused some sort of massive slowdown in the program.

After much experimenting the cause was not the fact that the text was fading in, but the fact that I had two different PFont’s being called, one inside a function, and one inside the main setup. Debugging this problem was pretty much the only time I felt successful at solving a problem during the entire run of the module, and after changing the way the typefont call worked the program was back up to speed.

Finally, after much unsuccessful toil and experimentation with what amounted to The Wrong Stuff, I ended up with a program that could count through a text and produce a small graph whilst doing so, and then output a text file that contained the ‘count’ of all the words searched for. This program, whilst technically fulfilling the brief I wrote for myself, is still a long way away from what I would like. For instance, the idea of changing the words searched for or the text would involve the user diving into the code and being prepared to edit it. This is not the ideal usage for most people, but as the code is written for a target audience of one (myself) I think I can handle it.

I have also not prepared a sketch to show what can be done with the output of the program as yet, despite making some mock-ups.  Here, however, is the original sketches from my notebook about the depiction of the program:

At some point in my research I experimented with using Apple’s Automator program to collate and collect text files from a specific directory. I was less than successful with this, and the results of the script actually ended up meaning I had to restart my machine. However, in the spirit of completeness, I am including those results along with my other code in this blog post.

Applescript application (OS X Only): basic-text-scan

Online repository of Processing Sketches for this project

ADDENDUM: Production list of Processing Sketches, in reverse order:

Buttons_test
Buttons_test-090428a.zip
I_dont_understand_match
basic_tech2
experimental_envisioning
fake_values
fake_values_2
match_test
orange_text_example
orange_text_example-090428a.zip
orange_text_test
orange_text_test.zip
printreader_again
printreader_again-090428a.zip
roma
roma_two
slight_succes2
slight_success
version_1
version_2
version_3
word_lines
basic_tech/.DS_Store
basic_tech2.pde
basic_tech/basic_tech2/basic_tech2.pde
Buttons_test.pde
conjoining_list.pde
data
basic_tech/Buttons_test/.DS_Store
basic_tech/Buttons_test/Buttons_test.pde
basic_tech/Buttons_test/conjoining_list.pde
Serif-200.vlw
basic_tech/Buttons_test/data/Serif-200.vlw
basic_tech/Buttons_test-090428a.zip
experimental_envisioning.pde
basic_tech/experimental_envisioning/experimental_envisioning.pde
conjoining_list.pde
fake_values.pde
basic_tech/fake_values/conjoining_list.pde
basic_tech/fake_values/fake_values.pde
applet
fake_values_2-090502a.zip
fake_values_2-090502b.zip
fake_values_2.pde
basic_tech/fake_values_2/.DS_Store
fake_values_2.jar
fake_values_2.java
fake_values_2.pde
index.html
loading.gif
basic_tech/fake_values_2/applet/fake_values_2.jar
basic_tech/fake_values_2/applet/fake_values_2.java
basic_tech/fake_values_2/applet/fake_values_2.pde
basic_tech/fake_values_2/applet/index.html
basic_tech/fake_values_2/applet/loading.gif
basic_tech/fake_values_2/fake_values_2-090502a.zip
basic_tech/fake_values_2/fake_values_2-090502b.zip
basic_tech/fake_values_2/fake_values_2.pde
I_dont_understand_match.pde
basic_tech/I_dont_understand_match/I_dont_understand_match.pde
match_test.pde
basic_tech/match_test/match_test.pde
data
orange_text_example.pde
basic_tech/orange_text_example/.DS_Store
Georgia-Bold-16.vlw
basic_tech/orange_text_example/data/Georgia-Bold-16.vlw
basic_tech/orange_text_example/orange_text_example.pde
basic_tech/orange_text_example-090428a.zip
conjoining_list.pde
data
orange_text_test
orange_text_test-090513a.zip
orange_text_test-090525a.zip
orange_text_test.pde
positions.txt
basic_tech/orange_text_test/.DS_Store
basic_tech/orange_text_test/conjoining_list.pde
Georgia-Bold-16.vlw
it.txt
terribletest.txt
basic_tech/orange_text_test/data/Georgia-Bold-16.vlw
basic_tech/orange_text_test/data/it.txt
basic_tech/orange_text_test/data/terribletest.txt
conjoining_list.pde
data
orange_text_test.pde
basic_tech/orange_text_test/orange_text_test/.DS_Store
basic_tech/orange_text_test/orange_text_test/conjoining_list.pde
Georgia-Bold-16.vlw
it.txt
basic_tech/orange_text_test/orange_text_test/data/Georgia-Bold-16.vlw
basic_tech/orange_text_test/orange_text_test/data/it.txt
basic_tech/orange_text_test/orange_text_test/orange_text_test.pde
basic_tech/orange_text_test/orange_text_test-090513a.zip
basic_tech/orange_text_test/orange_text_test-090525a.zip
basic_tech/orange_text_test/orange_text_test.pde
basic_tech/orange_text_test/positions.txt
basic_tech/orange_text_test.zip
data
positions.rtf
positions.txt
printreader_again.pde
positions.txt
basic_tech/printreader_again/data/positions.txt
basic_tech/printreader_again/positions.rtf
basic_tech/printreader_again/positions.txt
basic_tech/printreader_again/printreader_again.pde
basic_tech/printreader_again-090428a.zip
roma_movie
roma_movie.pde
basic_tech/roma/roma_movie/roma_movie.pde
roma_two.pde
basic_tech/roma_two/roma_two.pde
slight_succes2.pde
basic_tech/slight_succes2/slight_succes2.pde
slight_success.pde
basic_tech/slight_success/slight_success.pde
version_1-090422a.zip
version_1.pde
basic_tech/version_1/version_1-090422a.zip
basic_tech/version_1/version_1.pde
button_class.pde
conjoining_list.pde
data
version_2.pde
basic_tech/version_2/.DS_Store
basic_tech/version_2/button_class.pde
basic_tech/version_2/conjoining_list.pde
basic_tech/version_2/version_2.pde
button_class.pde
conjoining_list.pde
data
version_3.pde
basic_tech/version_3/button_class.pde
basic_tech/version_3/conjoining_list.pde
basic_tech/version_3/version_3.pde
conjoining_list.pde
word_lines.pde
basic_tech/word_lines/conjoining_list.pde
basic_tech/word_lines/word_lines.pde

This list was outputted using the command “find basic_tech -exec ls  {} ; | open -tf” in the OS X Terminal.

Pop tarts are a form of sugary pastry sold by Kellogg’s. The achieved a small amount of notoriety in the early 1990’s, in the UK at least, for burning the hands of a kid who’d microwaved his. The site of this child, waving his bandaged hands at the camera, was probably a sigte of great pathos for many people. I never saw it. I did, however, hang out a lot in Stevenage, with people who knew the poor pop-tart scarred kid, and therefore pop tarts are forever linked in my mind to people doing unpitying renditions of the words “I didn’t know it was going to be hot” in the most moronic Stevenage accent possible.

According to wikipedia, the US Forces dropped 2.4 million pop-tarts on Afghanistan in 2001. Currently, you can only buy two out of the total of forty-three flavours of pop tarts in the UK, those being Chocolate and Strawberry. There is no information on wikipedia as to what flavours native Afghan’s received in 2001.

My presentation was done with the entire aim of reproducing my thinking structure. I did consider adding a distracting audio element to it as well, in order to allow people to experience the jarring cuts in concentration I seem to suffer, but I thought that it would be taking it a little far, and anyway, I needed to be talking about my program, rather than anything else. Sadly, as noted in part one, I didn’t have a great deal of success to talk about.

In terms of the presentation and it’s marking, I have to feel some regret that I couldn’t have produced a working version of the program at that point. Nor that I could show a clarity of aesthetic; however, I think my aesthetic sympathies during the course of the taught module have run more towards the conceptual idea as represented by text rather than the visual. What use is the visual in the age of repetitive machine-produce images? And how can the aesthetic idea compete against the barrage of the new?

I think that the best of communication in this period is to resort to clear thinking and simple communication. To that end, showing text to others is the clearest way, so that your thought processes can be evaluated in a simple way at the leisure of others. Whilst I have some issues with essays as a form of academic measurement, I do not have a problem with a longer or shorter form of idea and expression; where original thought can be laid out for the use of others.

It is this projects aim of laying out original thought in a special way that I have been aiming for. My lack of ability to achieve that with programming is not the issue for me, except in terms of earning marks (and without those marks I’ll not pass the course, something which does give me ‘the fear’). What I have achieved is an ability to deal with and understand lumps of text that I have generated. You can read the presentation as I planned it in the attached file, and I’ll discuss the knock-on affects of this text assimilation in part three, the grandiose titled “Life, NCL.AC.UK and Everything”.

PDF Download of Presentation:

basic_tech_pres
ADDENDUM: The reason that this article/blogpost talks about poptarts – as I forgot to mention why I spiralled off into such a diversion – is stress. During times of biological and physiological stress our bodies seek out sugary and fatty foods, which are not necessarily the best thing for us to eat at such times. However, having just moved, I treated myself to a packet of Pop Tarts whilst restocking my kitchen, and found myself hooked on their sugar content. In between starting woefully at code that I was growing to loath, I occupied the vacant space in my belly with glucose and inverted syrup, and felt almost like a true hacker (although the last true hacker I met was just coming off a vegetarian rice-only diet, which is far away from the stereotypical programmers food consumption as depicted in media).