Processing

Calendarer!

By Ben Nitkin on

My schedule for this semester!
Lookit! Ain't it clean?

It's been a long time since I've written here. Nine weeks interning, two weeks in Colorado and three weeks camping put me away from this site for a while. I've made many things between then and now, and now I can write about it! On to the projects. 

As the school year began, I found myself frustrated with scheduling. My schedule is simple enough. I plugged it into my calendar, memorized it, and voila. (Except that I keep going to the wrong room. Someone put one of my SparkE classes on the CivE floor.)

But, I'm living in a house with a few others and want to keep track of their schedules, too. I want to know when they'll be free for events and whatnot. 

Launch Timer

By Ben Nitkin on

The countdown, showing a positive time.
Doesn't it look cool?

Last night, NASA sent LADEE, an atmospheric observation satellite, to the moon. Satellites are pretty cool. It launched from Virginia, about 100 miles from Lafayette college. A satellite that I can see going to space is much cooler. 

Last night, some friends and I headed to Pardee, a great big building with a tall south-facing windows. We burned a few hours playing games and waiting for the launch. I decided to code a little something. 

Gamma Logic Gate Simulation

By Ben Nitkin on

Wait a minute. Is gamma not a thing? You have alphas, then betas. So my first proper release will be named gamma. Deal with it.

Anyhow, I've cleaned up the simulator a lot since last time. There are a ton of new checks, and some new features, too. Inputs, for instance, will remain associated with Outputs even if a second output is dragged through the binding area.

As far as new features, the simulator now includes grid spacing (Gates jump to line up with each other, so you get pretty right angles). By default, Gates are 30 pixels across. Setting their inputs to be 1/4 of that height apart from each other allows for a grid spacing of 7.5 pixels. There are a few modes: by default, a grid's drawn, and grid spacing is enforced. The grid and spacing can both be disabled, though, for a cleaner mode (no grid drawn) and a freeform one (no spacing enforced).

Wires!

By Ben Nitkin on

One bug down!

I had Gates reassociate their hotspots whenever the gate moved. I also reassociated hotspots whenever they were moved. Problem is, Hotspots are placed relative to Objects, so they never move. The exception is the tail end of the wire. So, the Hotspot on the wire's tail associated fine, but the one connected to the head was never told to reassociate, so it would never connect to anything. Adding a few lines to tell the head to associate too worked perfectly.

Wires are now bidirectional and working!

Working simulation!

By Ben Nitkin on

This year, in digital circuits, I learned about digital circuits. Surprise. This year in CS, I learned about subclassing, data structures, and program flow. Together, I made a logic simulator.

Fundamentally speaking, digital circuits are made up of discrete components. Ganged together, these simple components are capable of realizing complex tasks.

Beta Logic Gate Simulation

By Ben Nitkin on

This weekend, I decided to throw out my previous logic simulator and make a new one based on what I'd learned. It's still in beta, but I got it to simulate an SR latch, and I'm proud. I'm going to sleep now, but wanted to tell the world about my success. Latches are awesome.

Reading this diagram: Red is false, green is true. The triangles are inverters; the blazes are OR gates (I'll pretty them up later). The flags on the right are inputs; the flags on the left are outputs. The green circles are inputs and outputs - the points where gates associate with each other. They're only shown for debugging.

More later. I promise.

Yin-yang

By Ben Nitkin on

I'm still looking for a decent logo. Eventually, I hope to use a stylized blue brick. That name has a story behind it, and it evokes tinkering, so I'm keeping it. (This site was Rock Lizard for a spell, cause that's what Evan and I wrote.) One idea I had before invoking the new name way a yin-yang type thing. (As the favicon illustrates, I like little mathematical graphics.)

Alpha Logic Gate Simulation

By Ben Nitkin on

In ECE211 (that's Digital Circuits I, for those of you who don't go to Lafayette), we've been working with digital circuits. Surprising, right?

I was frustrated that I needed to draw out these complicated circuits by hand, and that the paper never gave me any helpful feedback. So I decided to write a logic gate simulator, using my favorite language for graphics, Processing.

Favicon

By Ben Nitkin on

This is a personal site, for logging the various projects and such that I do. Since it came online last month, I've been working to brand the site to bring it away from default Drupal. Creating a theme helped, but I'm still using default icons. I want some sort of logo to identify things I make as my work, but I'm not sure what. In short: branding a site takes time.

In the meantime, I wrote a short Processing sketch to generate a cool looking favicon, which I may replace after deciding on a logo. The sketch draws a throbber (like the one that YouTube shows as it loads), which is pushed to the left as its drawn. The result is a fading helix.

A static version of the favicon on the left, and the animated version should show on the left side of the address bar or tab.