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I’ve been asked by a few people how I did the latest news block at the bottom of every page on the TerraMedia website. It’s actually really simple when you get down to it, so here you go, all you need to know to do your own latest posts block, it could be used for anything from latest blog posts, latest images in an image gallery, new content, virtually anything.
Popularity: 30% [?]
I had an assignment due on Monday for KKB210: Computational Arts 1, where I had to create 3 computational art works. This has kept me pretty busy over the past week or so, especially since I had another assignment due on Tuesday, just a 1500-1800 word essay fortunately, so it didn’t take up too much time.
For full details on everything I’ve done for this assignment, have a look at my computational arts blog. I’ve learned a lot about various programming environments and languages in relation to computational arts and live-coding. In particular, I’ve found the Processing Development Environment and Quartz Composer quite interesting and fun to work with. Of course, Quartz Composer isn’t a programming environment, but a patching tool.
I have always been particularly interested in fractals and other forms of digital art, so the computational arts subjects at uni were particularly appealing to me, and thus far have been exactly what I was looking for.
I have made a few fractal animations previously, including one for my NSW Higher School Certificate that I synced up with music. On my second fractal animation, I created the music for it myself instead of using an existing piece. Using Quartz Composer and Processing, I am able to make very similar effects, though not fractals, and have them render and animate in real-time. Two of my artworks for KKB210 are actually live rendered animations based on audio input. You can have a look at them here and here. They are both available under feel free to edit them, redistribute them etc, just take note that it is an attribution, non-commercial, share-a-like license (full details are available on http://matthewbrown.net.au), so you do have say where you got it from if you are re-distributing it.
Now, while I am a novice at the whole live-rendered animations to music and the like, I am happy to do some for events where it is appropriate. Let me know at matt at stillaslife dot com.
Popularity: 41% [?]
I like my things to be organised, though as many will testify, my things appear quite the opposite, except of course for things such as my tax and other money related things.
For anyone that has seen my desks, aside from the keyboard and mouse space, they are piled with various papers, documents, letters, computer pieces, stationary and so on. However, there is order and organisation. Everything has a certain spot, they are just often buried in that spot.
My blog also needs to be organised. I have been using the dated archives as I like things to be available sequentially by time. I also have been using categories to categorise each post. However, posts often belong in multiple categories. This can make things somewhat difficult with my URL structure as it means I have to set the most appropriate category to go in the URL. I like this structure so I don’t want to change it.
Of course some posts are also related by things that do not have their own category, and in my opinion, shouldn’t. Tags don’t affect my URL structure, and allow me to create relations between multiple posts quite easily. This does create some duplicate content, but no more than putting posts in multiple categories.
Now, when reading about search engine optimisation and so on, I frequently see things saying that duplicate content is bad and has a negative effect on search results. I can see this being correct if its the same content on multiple domains, however, as you may have noticed, I have been tagging things for a while now. This doesn’t seem to have damaged my search results at all, if anything, it has improved them.
Using tags also allows for some other interesting things, such as tag clouds and related posts by tags. I’m not using tag clouds, but it is interesting to look at.
What are your thoughts on tagging, categories and so on? Do you prefer just one, or a combination of them?
Popularity: 13% [?]
All the way back in the start of March, I wrote about a new blog I was working on for my Computational Arts subject this semester, KKB210.
It is located at matthewbrown.net.au and as you may have noticed, the website has been live for a few weeks now. I hadn’t actually posted anything until last week, but as the blog is part of an assessment that is due in a couple of weeks, as well as being part of our final assessment due at the end of the semester, it will have a lot more going up on it soon.
Unfortunately I am currently unable to use Wordpress 2.5 for it as we are required to use a couple of plug-ins which aren’t completely compatible with 2.5 yet.
Hopefully I’ll be able to upgrade it soon as 2.5’s media library would be very useful for this particular blog.
What do you think of the design? It is intentionally simple, just because there is no reason to do a complex design. Once I get some computational works done from this subject, I may use some in the design, but at this stage theres nothing to include.
Popularity: 17% [?]
I was doing some research on podcasts yesterday for a website I am working on at the moment.
The site is using Drupal, so there is a podcast module already available, I was just doing some research on how other people are laying out their podcasts, doing their designs and so on. While doing this, I found some interesting tag clouds.
If you have a look at:
Have a look at the tag clouds and the top categories.
On Podcast.net, the 4th biggest category is “Religion and Philosophy.”
On Podcast Alley the 4th biggest category is “Religion and Spirituality.”
On The Pod Lounge, the tied second biggest tag is “Religion and Spirituality.”
At the time of writing this, 3 of the top 10 podcasts on Podcast Alley were religious podcasts, this has since changed though.
I just found it interesting that in a world where religion seems to be quite unpopular, particularly in my generation, not just Christianity, but religion in general, that some of the most popular podcasts and one of the largest genre’s is in fact religious.
I suppose in a way, religion is ideally suited to podcasting, since sermons can easily be recorded, and in many places have been getting recorded for a long time. So it’s just one extra step to upload them as a podcast.
What do you think?
Popularity: 17% [?]