In last week's class we were introduced to the concept of for loops to reduce repetitious code. According to Wikipedia a four loop "is a control flow statement for specifying iteration, which allows code to be executed repeatedly."
Here is an example of a for loop that I worked on in the help session last Friday:
We were asked to create three expressive words using Adobe Illustrator. The word(s) needs to visually depicting a story that revolves around the context of the word or phrase. This was a great exercise to get me more comfortable with Illustrator, which is a great tool to edit vector images. I look forward to continue to use and develop my skills in this software.
We were asked to define ourselves through typography by selecting 6 different typefaces, 3 serif and 3 san serif, that says something about myself for week 3 in visual language.
I truly love this font. It's so clean and simple and I love the pronounced horizontal serifs. I used to read Vogue when i was a teenager and I know that their logo is a take on this typeface, so it's very nostalgic for me
This is a homage to the time I spend in the scientific lab, doing research and writing papers. I spend probably half of my life reading and using this typeface. I know it's not beautiful, but I definitely have an affinity to this serif font.
I feel like the double lines and curves of this font is so soothing, especially in the italics form. The Olympics were always a remarkable and exciting time for me. I loved to watch my country's athletes compete and would often spend many hours in front of the television during the Olympic seasons.
For some reason I'm very drawn to the flatness of the x-height in this typeface. I feel like the name describes it all -- it's a very unique font. I'm not sure I've ever seen if anywhere, but when I found it, it immediately jumped out at me. I am definitely a retro individual and so I feel like this typeface suits me and my character well.
I guess I would refer to this as a sans serif font :) I think this is a font that hold such importance in our society and so I wanted to highlight it here. When I create anything I like to try to keep all individuals in mind that might come into contact with it. I want to strive to be inclusive and I think this font is a great reminder of that.
I think this may have been my favourite typeface that I stumbled across when putting together this assignment. It's so playful. I like the contrast in the letters and the fact that it's in all caps. I am definitely an individual that is, sometimes, BIGGER THAN LIFE, so I feel like this typeface is a great example of a visual characteristic of myself.
Here are all the typefaces that I highlighted above.
I'm new to New York and one of the items that caught my eye on the city streets when I moved here were these info booths called LinkNYC.Here's a picture I took of one in Midtown, Manhattan
LinkNYC
LinkNYC is a first-of-its-kind communications network that will replace over 7,500 pay phones across the five boroughs with new structures called Links. Each Link will provide super fast, free public Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging and a tablet for access to city services, maps and directions.
For this assignment we were to observe an interactive technology in public and so I decided to head back to one of these terminals to see how the general public used these devices.
First of all, I waited for a LONG time before someone even gave it a second look. It's too bad because they really are a very useful.
I saw, what appeared to be, a tourist walk up to one of LinkNYC's info booth after quite a bit of time. The first interaction that the individual had with the terminal was that they tried to interact with the large display on the side of the terminal where the ads are hosted to see if it was interactive. They aren't. Technology today, especially interactive technology, is often very focused around screens and touching and swiping them, so I guess this behaviour isn't entirely uncalled for here.
They quickly determined that the screen wasn't interactive and moved to the side of the terminal where there is a touch screen , a much smaller one, where you can use free WiFi and use the map feature to easily navigate to your next destination.
The tourist used the map function to determine where they needed to go next and proceeded on their way.
I do really think that these terminals are well designed.. It's very obvious what functions it allows you to do, once you get to section of the terminal shown in the picture above.
For our second assignment we were to create a simple application of digital or analog input and digital output. I choose to work with analog input and digital output because I was interested in using a potentiometer.
The potentiometer supplied the PWM (pulse width modulation) analog input and the DC motor received the digital output. The potentiometer was the component that determined the varying speed of the rotating disc as seen in the demo below:
I used the resources and kit supplied in the Arduino Starter Kit and amped the Motorized Pinwheel (pg 95 in the Arduino Projects Book) that was originally controlled via a digital input (button) to a circuit that was controlled from an analog input (potentiometer).
The difficultly that I had in this project was how to slow the speed of the motor. I observed the
Serial.println(motorSpeed)and tried to use the
map()function to map the min and max numbers I observed in the Serial Monitor to reduce the speed, but I had no luck with that. I will ask the professor and report back once I have a better idea of how to tackle this problem.
Below is the code that I used to program this circuit:
const int POT_PIN = A0;
const int MOTOR_PIN = 2;
int motorSpeed = 0;
int potVal = 0;
void setup() {
pinMode(MOTOR_PIN, OUTPUT);
//Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop()
{
potVal = analogRead(POT_PIN);
motorSpeed = map(potVal, 0, 1023, 127, 255);
analogWrite(MOTOR_PIN, motorSpeed);