I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

Tag: Coding

I’m no good at it, but I try my hand every now and then.

Some random music

Posted by on in Making things, TechLeave a comment
Randomly generated music created using Processing Code

I actually made this quite a while ago, but decided to revisit it as I thought that I might do a little more in Processing this year. I know I’ve said that before. There’s no guarantee that I will in 2020, but I might.

I was always quite pleased with this sketch though. It was fun and interesting to play with. Above is just a video of the sketch in action as I can’t work out how to embed the sketch here so it can be played. I’d like to be able to do that too, but it might take me a little while for me to figure it out.

Anyway, if I managed to do anything else with Processing then I’ll share it too. That is, if it’s good enough.

Pythonista 2.0 is a massive leap forward

Posted by on in Making things, Mobile Applications, TechLeave a comment

There’s loads of new things to explore in the latest version. Here’s what’s new:

  • Pythonista is now compatible with all iOS screen sizes — from iPhone 4 to iPad Pro, and everything in-between.
  • For larger projects, you can now use multiple editor tabs to switch between related files more quickly.
  • The Pythonista app extension allows you to run Python scripts within other apps, using the standard iOS share sheet.
  • New and refined color themes are available in the settings; selecting a different theme now changes the entire app’s UI instead of just syntax highlighting.
  • The file browser and editor have much better support for non-Python files. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Markdown files are syntax-highlighted in the editor, Zip archives can be extracted, and a QuickLook preview is available for most common file types, e.g. images, PDFs, and audio/video.
  • Additional templates are available in the improved “new file” menu. You can also import photos from your camera roll as image files there.
  • The console’s interactive prompt is now syntax-highlighted, and provides better support for Bluetooth keyboards (you can use the up/down keys to navigate the command history).
  • You can now read the (pure Python) source code of the included standard library (and third-party modules) directly in the app. Simply enable the “Show Standard Library” setting if you’re interested in looking “under the hood”.
  • The UI editor contains a much improved inspector panel, undo/redo support, the possibility to set custom attributes, and a lot of other refinements.
  • The new traceback navigator allows you to get a lot more information about errors in your programs. When an exception occurs, a brief summary is shown at the top of the screen, and the line where the exception occurred is highlighted in the editor. By tapping on the exception summary, you can navigate the entire traceback, even if the source of the exception is in a different file. You can also tap the `<…` marker in the editor to inspect variable values in the selected stack frame.
  • The editor actions (“wrench”) menu has been improved significantly. You can now assign custom icons and colors to your script shortcuts. It’s also possible to invoke the standard iOS share sheet from the actions menu. If you have an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus (with 3D Touch), you can launch shortcuts directly from the homescreen by pressing the Pythonista icon.
  • The improved asset picker (`[+]` button) contains more free image and sound effect collections that can be used with the `scene`, `ui`, and `sound` modules. The UI for opening the asset picker is also consistent between iPad and iPhone now.
  • When the cursor is inside a color string (e.g. ‘#ff0000’ or ‘red’) or built-in image name, a preview overlay is shown automatically. You can also tap the preview overlay to select a different color or image.
  • The new *Highlight All* option in the copy/paste menu allows you to quickly find all occurrences of a word (e.g. variable name), without typing anything in the search bar.
  • You can adjust the indentation of a selected block of code more easily with the new `⇥ Indent` menu items (in the copy/paste menu).
  • iPad only: The extended keyboard has a more compact layout by default. If you prefer a larger keyboard with an additional number row, you can enable this in the settings.
  • The completely revamped `scene` module gives you a lot more possibilities for building 2D games and animations in Pythonista. You can even use custom OpenGL fragment shaders. Lots of new sample code and a tutorial for building a simple game are available in the included *Examples* folder.

So I probably need to revisit some of my old projects and maybe even finish them!

Processing 3 and the new sound library

Posted by on in Creative Process, Making things, TechLeave a comment

The last time I used Processing I was messing around with the minim library for sound. Now, in version 3, there’s the new sound library and it looks (and sounds) amazing!

I’ve only played with it a little but so far the example code looks really straightforward to read and understand. I might even start making a few things myself! Who knows.

Getting to grips with Processing 3

Posted by on in Creative Process, Making things, Sounds, TechLeave a comment

I’ve been getting back into Processing 3. As I said when it first arrived, it’s been a while since I made things with Processing, but this version looks so much better than what’s gone before. Installing libraries and tools is now just so easy. It’s amazing. It feels like I really need to get back to making some stuff with Processing again.

Science Museum: Ada Lovelace

Posted by on in Exhibitions, History, People, PlacesLeave a comment

I was quite surprised that it was actually quite a small exhibition for a character as important as Ada Lovelace. Even so, it was a nice little exhibition with some interesting facts. I’m sure they could’ve found more, I’m sure they could’ve got hold of more stuff about her, but anyway, I’m glad that they at least had an exhibition about her. That’s something.

Processing 3 arrives

Posted by on in Creative Process, TechLeave a comment

I do like Processing, although it’s been a while since I made anything with it. It looks like Processing is getting even better, with a new user interface which they’re continuing to develop post 3.0.

This comes on the heals of Codepoems, a new IDE for Processing, which I was considering trying out. I’ve no idea of whether or not Codepoems will work with Processing 3, that’s probably the next step for me.

Getting to grips with Editorial workflows 

Posted by on in Mobile Applications, Tech, Work, WritingLeave a comment

I’ve been using Editorial for a while now and never really got to grips with using the workflow functionality in it. That is up until now. I found an actual use for workflows. I won’t bore you with what I’m using workflows for, but I’ve start using it in some very simple ways. Just using simple dialogues and markdown to record information.

It works. It saves me time, and it’s useful. That’s a good combination as far as I’m concerned. I’m hoping that I’ll continue to find new ways to make use of Editorial’s workflow as it has loads of capabilities, and as yet I’m just scratching the surface of what it can do.

So, hopefully you’ll be hearing more about my use of Editorial workflows in the not too distant future. Who knows, I may even share a few!

Make Hack Do at the Science Museum

Posted by on in Events, Tech

Make Hack Do at the Science museum
Nice to see Ototo here too
and this awesome piano

This is where I was on the last Saturday of this show at the Science Museum. It was good. Smaller than I expected, but a reasonable amount of stuff to see. Of course there were the usual things like 3D printing and that, but good to see some soft circuit stuff, and more experimental things too. I like that the science museum try this stuff out.