Ben Fry
@ben_fry
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Now using Mastodon: Founder @FathomInfo , co-founder @ProcessingOrg , lecturer @MIT .
Boston/Charlestown/Cambridge
Joined June 2009
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I have made the extremely difficult decision to resign from the Processing Foundation. I am absolutely heartbroken, and have not slept well for months.
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The very first release of Processing (revision 0001) was created exactly 20 years ago today. 🎂
Today we're launching 4.0 beta 1, the 277th release:
In the coming days, we'll also have a new site, a new PDE design, and Community Day events!
#processing4
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Finishing a celebratory week, today was my final round of immunotherapy, concluding 3½ years of cancer treatment
Friends helped a lot & my bride deserves far more than a just-bought pair of earrings
Here's to one more thing that's hopefully less…interesting the next few years
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🚨 🚀 A new Processing release! 🎁 🚢
Here's 4.0 alpha 4, with lots of stability fixes and improvements:
Recommended for most users (even though it's an alpha), especially those on macOS.
Have fun!
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Every cover of The New Yorker, from 1925 to 2018.
The horizontal line/artifact comes from the way that they re-run their first cover (and more recently, a variant of it) each year on their anniversary.
Much better up close:
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A business card sized CD with an alpha release of Processing from 2002… I think this might be exactly 20 years old today/this week.
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What does Wikipedia look like?
We've built an interactive map for exploring its topography:
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Just posted a second alpha release of Processing 4. 🤖
Would have been out a month ago but 1) Apple's ever-changing rules for signing and notarization are… something, and 2) we're in the midst of a pandemic.
But uh, enjoy! 🥳
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Been porting parts of Processing to Swift so I can make native things for watchOS and iOS… Just got these watch faces from Paul up and running 😍
(it's two dozen faces, cycling every couple seconds for debugging purposes)
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“Inexperienced” creators bring talents from domains where they *are* experienced, which is how interesting things happen & progress is made.
a reminder: if inexperienced creators are using your tool to churn out loads of half-baked garbage, your tool is a phenomenal success
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Processing 4 beta 4 has arrived 🤖
🪟 Scaling problems on Windows are resolved!
💻 Crazy fast Apple Silicon release (no OpenGL yet!)
🥧 Raspberry Pi is back (32- and 64-bit)
👾 Fixes for a few OpenGL regressions in beta 3
🎨 And even… a few new icons
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We just finished a tool for exploring the Facebook ads purchased by Russia to influence the 2016 election.
It shows how they effectively played multiple sides of inflammatory issues, using identical terms in opposite ways to stoke anger and mistrust:
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Here we go with a first *alpha* release for Processing 4!
Support for Java 11, OpenJDK, a new preprocessor, lots more under the hood… 👾💻💣
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This account was just brought to my attention and now I've lost part of my afternoon 👏🧡
Lots more fun to be found at #つぶやきProcessing
float t,r;
void setup(){size(720,720);noStroke();}
void draw(){
clear();
t+=.003;
for(r=0;r<6;r+=PI/2.5)
f(360,360,r,99);
}
void f(float x,float y,float r,float d){
if(d>5){
circle(x+=cos(r)*d,y+=sin(r)*d,d/9);
f(x,y,r+d*d+t,d*.8);
f(x,y,r-d*d-t,d*.8);
}
}
#つぶやきProcessing
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Comparing all six editions of Darwin's Origin of Species in “Track Changes” style:
Original sketch for ported to JS to celebrate the anniversary of Darwin's publication on 24 November in 1859.
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Part 1 of an oral history of
@ProcessingOrg
with
@REAS
,
@shiffman
, and me. Beautifully crafted into coherence by
@Lizstins
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New work: a tool for comparing mutations across different sarscov2 sequences:
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Just posted another pre-release of Processing 4! 🚀🦾🛰
Includes OpenGL updates, video working again on macOS, and lots of other fixes for reliability:
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“On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces” now ported to JavaScript:
http://t.co/2QuQukAnUC
http://t.co/pheZ9z65fa
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🚀 Processing 4 is here! 🚨
🎂 It's the 21st anniversary of release 0001
🤗 Added a Welcome screen
🌈 You should try the themes if you haven't already
🔡 …or maybe the sketch naming
🖼 …or the new windowRatio() function
🚄 …or an Apple Silicon version
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The Processing software and its community deserve better, and need a better home than the “Processing” Foundation.
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🚨 Cancel your Saturday plans: new Processing alpha release just posted 🗓
🔡 Code completion is back!
📽 A new Movie Maker that creates MP4s and Animated GIFs!
🌈 And a (preliminary) new color scheme sure to bring out the cranks!
More here:
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The new iOS 11 Files app brings all your files together. You can easily browse, search, and organize all your files in one place.
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Have been running some numbers for
@ProcessingOrg
and today found that we've had 10,039,489 downloads in the last four years.
10 million!
(And that doesn't even include other projects like p5.js, the Android version, etc.)
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Taking a short break from the decline of democracy in America, I've just posted Processing 3.4. (On the download page soon.) Enjoy!
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We're hiring! We're looking for developers, designers, a producer/researcher, an operations/business manager role, & others…
Come make an impact with our pandemic work while spending time with curious & talented people: (more updates soon)
Please share!
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Perfect—simple & direct. Heliocentrism vs Geocentrism: built w/ Processing (via
@leilasedai
)
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Processing 4.0 beta 3 now posted!
Lots of bug fixes and updates, plus ✨themes🌈
(Still waiting for Apple to notarize the macOS version, that'll be posted soon.)
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Porting random things to JavaScript is my new Sudoku.
Built for a touch screen installation in December 2011, here's an interactive look at 120 years / 5,500 pages of annual reports:
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Processing 4.0 beta 8 now posted!
🦄 OpenGL working on Apple Silicon 🌈
…and lots of other fixes and updates. This brings us a lot closer to a final 4.0 release.
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New work! Our illustrated map of Trump/Russia (so far)
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We're very much back in the same place as when we started in 2001: coding is still too obtuse and oblique, and the only way to fix that is to reduce barriers that will make coding accessible to more people.
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For one of our Friday talks, Paul did a lecture on color, and we were so excited about it that we went a little overboard and created an entire app out of it.
It starts by explaining how color works, and ends with a palette making challenge 🤹♂️
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These images and effects from 1991's “Until the End of the World” by Wim Wenders feel several decades ahead of their time… Just stunning:
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Genius…
Reminds me of a developer in our studio who intentionally uses bad colors + default fonts in early prototypes, knowing that it's the quickest way to get design help.
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Been archiving old VHS tapes… some of these noise patterns from errors/overdubs/decay are just 😍
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With Facebook and Instagram offline all day, I was finally forced to take a break from social media long enough to focus on getting a new Processing release out.
Here's 4.0 beta 2!
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This is so batshit, I'm gonna have to start blogging again, just to find enough room to cover what a gross misuse of analytics this is, how disconnected it is from the reality of how people work & productivity, and how dangerous it is that it's been normalized by Microsoft.
Esoteric metrics based on analyzing extensive data about employee activities has been mostly the domain of fringe software vendors. Now it's built into MS 365.
A new feature to calculate 'productivity scores' turns Microsoft 365 into an full-fledged workplace surveillance tool:
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In today's episode of “what's this massive spike of interest in a 14-year-old project?” we have showing up on Reddit because someone found one of the prints at Goodwill and was like “what the hell is this?”
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TIL that ship cargo like sand or crushed ore can spontaneously liquify, endangering the ship & crew as it sloshes around. Worse, it may spontaneously turn solid again at one side, leaving the ship listing and taking on water. 10 ships lost each year:
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Paul is working on color schemes for Processing 4 and it's gonna be impossible to choose because they're all so cute:
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We've just launched Myriscope, a visual digest for scientific research:
It's built for easy visual scanning of arXiv and bioRxiv preprints to keep an eye on new research as it happens. Please share with your friends—and send us feedback!
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So if anyone's up for having drinks later, you can join me to celebrate having reached the “discarded at Goodwill” stage of my career 🥳
In today's episode of “what's this massive spike of interest in a 14-year-old project?” we have showing up on Reddit because someone found one of the prints at Goodwill and was like “what the hell is this?”
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FBI Uncovers Al-Qaeda Plot To Just Sit Back And Enjoy Collapse Of United States
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Looking for an excuse to procrastinate this fine Friday? How about trying a fresh Processing release? Here comes 3.5.4…
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I hope folks aren't disappointed when OpenGL and 2D rendering are removed from the next release of Processing and we only support embroidery and knitting machines from here on out…
Delighted to announce that
#PEmbroider
,
@creativeinquiry
's library for computational embroidery in
@ProcessingOrg
, is now public! Huge gratitude to
@LingdongH
,
@mus_akos
, and our cohort of generous beta-testers for all their work.
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Super excited to share some new work:
It's our latest take on mapping enormous unstructured document collections. In this case, turning 100,000 journal articles into a navigable topographic map:
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…opens syllabus, scribbles in “Chrissy Teigen?” as guest lecturer on the day we'll be covering time series data in Information Design class this spring at MIT…
This is literally just a graph proving people had to google your dumbass to figure out who you are
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It was a strange experience; I was soon shocked to learn that the Foundation spent nearly $800,000 last year. $0 of that went to Processing 4.
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I may be an uncultured hack, but I didn't wake up this morning knowing that low contrast pixel art could look like this. 🤍💛🤎🖤
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If only there were a contraption—like a mechanical loom—that could automatically compare each email. A "difference engine" of sorts.
IMPOSSIBLE:
There R 691,200 seconds in 8 days. DIR Comey has thoroughly reviewed 650,000 emails in 8 days? An email / second? IMPOSSIBLE RT
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Did a talk about data & design, how it’s changed over the last 20 years, and what it suggests for healthcare data & design in the next 20.
A talk so incisive, so lauded, that it garnered a 👎 on YouTube before it received even a single 👍
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You know what that sounds like? The reason we started a Foundation in the first place. Two people is not enough for any of the Processing software projects (i.e. anything that lives at a domain.)
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Pleased that Paul has released my Ph.D. dissertation from its PDF prison:
(Somewhat less excited by the occasionally heavy-handed writing from a stressed & exhausted grad student.)
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The situation is especially difficult for me because it has been created by the people who most benefited from all that work I did, and from people I trusted as friends.
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I spend so, so much of the time working on
@ProcessingOrg
focused on improving how things work while making sure that any updates/improvements don't break old code.
It's nice to hear when it works! Usually I only hear back when it doesn't.
Thanks to the efforts of the people at
@ProcessingOrg
another sketch from 2017 runs again (4.0 beta1 on macOS): Sensory Con-Fusion, repo contains a presentation with some background:
#pcd2021
#pcd2021share
Happy Birthday,
#processing
!
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Get rich quick scheme: 1) Put thousands of hours into an open source project 2) 15+ years later, figure out how to ask for support
Today, we launched Processing Foundation Memberships! We wrote about it here: Join here:
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My least favorite design/visualization writing is the oversubscribed genre of (usually context free) critique of other people's work.
So this piece, from
@MissSarahLeo
at The Economist is a welcome alternative, where she reworks *their own* past projects
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⚡️ Just released: Processing 4 alpha 5 🌟
This one includes more Video and Sound fixes for macOS, brings back JavaFX support, and includes many other fixes and updates. Enjoy!
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I finished the Steve Jobs book by Isaacson, but instead of feeling inspired to never look backwards/live in the future/innovate above everything, I wound up feeling nostalgic and tracking down used books.
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It's a depressing outcome following the $10 million windfall of donations. It's just co-opting the work that I've done for 22 years:
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First beta of Processing 3.0 is here! 3.0? Details Test! Share! Yay!
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Our installation for
@StateStreet
that depicts the growth of the world financial system (and its subsequent complexity) since 1790 has been ported from large-format touch screen to desktop size using JavaScript & WebGL
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Back in 2017, I was diagnosed with cancer just weeks after my second child was born. I took a break from participating directly with the Board.
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Happy 15th birthday to
@ProcessingOrg
this month. First used publicly in August 2001 as part of a workshop in Japan:
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Casey and I started the Foundation with Dan as a way to make the Processing project more sustainable. For years it had been just Casey and me, supporting thousands and thousands of users.
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Slack has hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and a multi-billion dollar valuation. They have plenty of money & can make design a priority. The government, not so much.
More important, the “design” is the easiest thing to fix in Hawaii. Our values are much tougher.
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This year, the proposed Foundation budget is around $1.2 million. But for Processing, there is budget for just two people: one developer, one community lead.
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“Perseverance porn goes w/ the rise of a GoFundMe economy that relies on personal narrative over collective policy…”
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Two people is not enough to sustain the current community, but more importantly, not enough to move the project in new directions—more languages, platforms, devices; broadening the audience further.
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I have continued to work on the Processing software since resigning from the Foundation—since walking away only punishes our users—but it's too depressing. There's no future in this current structure.
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Time for you to take a break from worrying about the election & create something instead. A new Processing release:
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TIL that tectonic plates move at roughly the rate that fingernails grow.
Or as our host
@mikamckinnon
put it, “every time you cut your nails, we're one step closer to an earthquake.”
#scifoo
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I know I'm not good at Instagram, but I still feel like this is a little harsh.
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We've created an interactive map of Bob Ross.
See the forest for the happy little trees:
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Processing 3.0.1 fixes lots of bugs: adds ARM support and a Raspbian image courtesy
@mrgohai
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From the outset, the project was always a 50-50 split between internal (software development) and external (the community, the documentation, examples, etc). The Foundation has lost all sense of balance.
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Creating (and promoting, and maintaining) a free version of TurboTax is near the top of my list for things I'm gonna do when I have a billion dollars.
These rent-seeking motherf*kers at Intuit with their garbage products and the paid politicians that enable them have got to go.
New: Juuuust in time for Tax Day.
The for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system.
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Out for brunch and “Hey Jude” starts playing.
Unprompted, our not-quite-two-year-old starts yelling “Lexa! Lexa!” to skip to the next song.
See you in Vancouver this April for my deeply unpopular TED Talk: “Paul McCartney/Beatles resistance is a conferred genetic trait.”
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Couldn't sleep the other night so I ported my diagram of how the genetic code works to JavaScript:
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Incredibly intuitive & useful explanation of an incredibly unintuitive & hard topic: the Fourier transform.
I've used FFT, DFT, DCT, etc. for a long time but still learned several things here:
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I'm angry and upset to see that the Free Software Foundation has reinstated Richard Stallman to the board.
This is a messy issue that requires far more than a tweet, but in the meantime, we're looking into alternatives to the GPL/LGPL for
@ProcessingOrg
.
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Just posted a couple simple examples for the class on how to make & use maps with p5.js. Here's the link, in case they're useful for anyone else:
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There have been two million downloads of even just the 4.0 releases, and there remains consistently about 100,000 unique users a month.
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Building the software and supporting the community; both in years past when it was an unknown project, or in more recent years when keeping things working wasn't always *fun*, but was still *important* for that community.
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“Nodding the head does not row the boat” (is my favorite new Irish proverb)
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Just posted a simple p5.js Mode for Processing 3.2. Have fun! More details here:
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Out of nowhere, this same 3-year-old informs me that she has just returned from an orange planet in her spaceship. 🚀 RIP John Glenn.
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Posted a new Processing 4 beta:
🌄 16 new gradient-flavored themes
🐛 Many, many bug fixes
🔡 New sketch naming options
🧑🎨 Major refinements to the visual design
🚨 Processing 4 is close! ⏲ Help us test! 🚀
Download links and more details:
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Love to see
@ProcessingOrg
used in projects like this “grotto of 1.35 billion surfaces” made from 7 tons of sand:
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Well pour me a Zima: the 90s are back. Apple is discontinuing support for OpenGL.
If you need me, I'll be wearing a comfortable flannel and seeking answers to this policy shift in the profundity of Pearl Jam's TEN.
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