for thinking people
October 25, 2021
Translating texts into other forms of art is something that fascinates me. Especially when some sort of semi-random, computer-mediated process is involved. There’s something idealistic about it, having to do with aesthetics, beauty, and the meaning behind art which, remember, is holistic. And so, Text to Art is a little program I put together to explore this very thing: How turning a text – a poem, a novel, or a simple sentence – into a visual design would look like.
June 14, 2021
If you enjoy word games, you’re going to like this. If you enjoy word games and you’re fascinated by the idea of a semi-randomly generated narrative that continues “forever”, you’re going to love this! Word Journey is my latest game – and program; and literary effort – that bridges these two aspects together.
The game goal of Word Journey is very simple: You are given the definition of a random word, and you must guess what the word is, gathering points and racing against the clock. But that’s not all! Every time you correctly guess the word, a sentence relevant to the word is added to the stack, generating a theoretically infinite semi-random narrative! When you run out of time (there is also a “Zen Mode”, without time constraints) you can export the text to a file.
Sounds great? I think so too 😉
May 10, 2021
We live in the time of “now, gimme, I want something new”. Everything seems to lose its value immediately – material or not. Long gone are the days of old programs or computer games where the product remained the same. And that’s great, right? Or… is it? Because when there is no need to change something, when you fix something that isn’t broken, then constant updates only lead to mediocrity.
Just ask yourself, how many times one of your Android apps updated itself and the newer iteration proved to be inferior? Perhaps you ended up with a bloated app that did the same thing, only now it took more space on your phone. If you were more unlucky, the app might have even messed up something in your workflow, which made it harder for you to use it.
As someone who has experienced this from both sides of the equation – as a user as well as programmer – I can confirm two things:
As I said, I’ve been there myself. I’ve even made the mistake myself – thankfully only briefly, however. As I’ve mentioned in my post on why I stopped working on my Android apps, at some point I got enough of mediocrity and stupidity, and thought “fuck it, I’m done”.
But let’s take a closer look, to see how this perceived need for constant updates operates, and why it’s so insidious – both in terms of programming and in how it affects us socially.
