#liveweb

Our assignment was to create an interactive self portrait. This was extremely difficult for me to decide on what to do. Initially I had been working on a emoji mosaic tutorial that I had found online only, because it seemed really complicated and was very interested in the idea. I soon realized though that it wasn’t actually very interactive. The time required to actually render the video was impossible due to the time taken to calculate the colors and find a suitable emoji for the pixel location. This made me think about another solution.

I struggle to find a way to make what I wanted to make without heavily using libraries. We were challenged with making it using pure javascript if possible. I was then reminded of a contract I had made before, which was a simple PhotoBooth application that had a few requirements that were similar to this. I was required to create a Photo Booth that would take a picture with the push of a button and load the previous pictures next to it, similar to a camera roll. The picture would then push the image to a DropBox account and save to the desktop.

This in and of itself was extremely complicated because of the need for interaction between the browser and the computer for security reasons. I didn’t want to have to address all those issues once again so I took the parts I liked and removed the parts I didn’t. This left me with the idea of creating a Photo Booth that would take pictures but would maintain the previous pictures without replacing them. I could then add filters now because I was no longer limited by a restriction of buttons as I had been before. I also wanted to make it seem as though it was a wall that you could hang your memories on for the future. I created a mini cork board for my project to simulate the feel I was looking for.

The next thing I wanted to add was the feeling of pictures so with some styling and some randomizations to the orientation I was able to create a feeling of pictures.

I also added the ability to move the pictures around that way you could organize it.

I think a nice step would be to add the ability of having the user log-in and from there be able to add actual experiences with friends. A really nice addition would be to find a way to allow this to work with the iPhone facetime camera so you could save the memories on the go as well.

LIVE SYNCHRONOUS SITES

For my live site I chose to use what I view as the standard in synchronous sites which is Gmail. Google has for years been providing a synchronous experience with Gmail using it to constantly grab your mail the moment it exists without having you reload the page ever. It has up to the date information the entire time you use it. They even include Gchat/Google Hangouts which allows for chat and video conferencing service within the mail app. I believe the only initial delay you have between mail being received and you seeing it in the inbox is the parsing and sorting of the mail based on its topic or sender.

I love and hate google products, the use of machine learning has improved the experience but at the cost of privacy. Everything you say and do is constantly monitored by google through the use of every single product they make creating a single cohesive environment. 

Code

So, this idea started from about 3 years ago. My university was national, and about to incorporate it without enough discussions with students. Big movement against this decision happened Unlike normal movement in the university lead by few closed groups, lots of individual students wanted to involve with this movement, result into unique things such as music festival and guerrilla installations. Administrative building was occupied with students, and people outside of school wanted to watch what is happening in school. My friends tried hard to broadcast the things, tried with some existing broadcasting systems, but always failed. 

 Since then, I thought about live streaming system in super light way, without having super server. Finally, I would have opportunity to hand on to build the system as a midterm for live web class.

Telling a story through various media. 

I tried with Twitter, and IRC. I used my language on Twitter, just because that how I usually keep my Twitter account. I use timeline for useful information, but my tweets are never useful, they are usually nothing, just whiny. After I posted my story, I got no replies on Twitter but two friends of mine sent me message about this tweet. 

live web assignment : portrait with html5 video

Article : Traveling without seeing

Hongkong, 2008

I know how boring it sounds like, but I don't like traveling that much. I just always feel like I am not so prepared to fully appreciate all the different things from usual things that I have.

 Despite of all my not-being-interested-in-traveling, I sometimes travel even across the border. What I found from not enough travelings to generalize somethings is actually, there are not many scary different things for travelers in this world.

Native people don't stare at different looking people anymore, even if so, whatever, you have tons of co-travelers. I can taste special local menu from McDonald if I want unique local experience, buy special limited edition from fancy brands. I can even fake my traveler identity with my smartphone instead of huge map and lonely planet, so why not? 

I personally think this point is the thing that has grown the traveling industry so much, people of course want unique experience, but also want that to be 'good, not that stressful', worth paying their one month salary. Even seeing experience, which is actually most secure experience among our senses, is being blocked with all the 'wired things' as the author mentioned. 

 I don't want to say this is just an extension of this current trend of secured traveling, because the device plays total different role depending on what it is doing. It can make people to be out of physical context ( if somebody is playing breaking bad in front of Tiananmen Square) or help the existence of the current (if somebody is search for the information about why Guggenheim is round unlike other galleries) .