In which Alex attempts to learn OpenGL | Animated Water Mesh

Here's a quick animation I rendered in OpenGl, it was actually the first time I created something using the "raw" language, versus using a beautiful shell, like Processing or Cinder to do all the horrible matrix like stuff for me. It was incredibly frustrating, since I would spend hours implementing something that I knew how to do in a single line using one of the interfaces (grrr!)

Not a pointless exercise though, since I understand the underlying processes of the language SO MUCH BETTER now, and it'll make it significantly easier to work with it in the future. The basin is a static mesh I imported and rendered, whereas the water is dynamically generated, (and I recalculate the normals/mesh data every frame). I'll post a video as soon as I can convince my poor hp to do so without shutting off in agony :)

From Russia with Love | Colorizing the Sergei Mikhailovichn Prokudin-Gorskii Collection

A quick Computational Photography project, I took Gorskii's original BW negatives from the Library of Congress and wrote an algorithm to colorize them so they could be seen as intended. (check out the rest of the images after the break, or go for the long haul at the computational photography blog)

Designing for the iPad | InDesign to ePub

When I was working for Annenberg this summer, one of the projects I always had on the back burner was their effort to go green. This typically included turning off the light, surreptitiously hiding the 50 printed copies of 11x17 floorplans that got changed at the last minute at the bottom of the paper recycle, and diligently placing the separate components of  my 4 daily super fancy Californian lattes in the appropriate bins.

But being the true CS major I am, and looking around the barely tamed chaos of my small assistant desk; littered with brochures, pamphlets, and general swag (my boss Charles' off work wardrobe is almost solely comprised of free USC stuff), I couldn't help but think why do we have some much paper??

Since we also hand out iPads like candy, I figured we should also have the Emergency Procedure brochure I designed could be sent out as an epub. Not only is it paperless distribution, but it would rack up the count of relevant things the general public actually uses the iPads for to 2. 

The problem is, I wanted to retain my beautiful layout/images from the original brochure when porting it over.

(Here's some of the spreads from the original document, intended for print)

Laser Cut Rings | Takemoto + Wolfe

We just got a brand new shiny laser cutter, so Cara, Ethan, Kiera and I created some simple things to put it through its paces. We threw the files together in Illustrator and tested all of the acrylic colors that Scott ordered

Kiera and I made some WOLFE silhouette rings, knuckle dusters, dangerous looking pendants, and bismuth pendants/rings (from the most awesome Gunnerkrigg Court). Kiera took photos of the yellow versions for clarity

Cara and Ethan (well mostly Cara) did Takemoto rings in Kanji, Hirigana, and Helvetica