RasterWeb!

Tracking Maps

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2013-07-02

I’ve had a few people ask how I create the maps showing where I’ve been recently, so here’s a quick tutorial on the process.

I’ve got Google Latitude installed on my phone, and it runs constantly tracking my location, and the data is saved to Google’s servers. (Note: If you’re paranoid about being tracked, you can stop reading now.)

Google Latitude

Every now and then I log into www.google.com/latitude using my desktop browser, click on ‘View location History’ to get a map of my travels, and then choose the date and a time frame.

Map

I’ll often do the last 30 days (which is the maximum) but for this map I did just two days to show all the traveling I did over a weekend. (Minneapolis and back!)

Once you’ve got the date and time frame set, you’ll see your map. Just resize it, position it, and do a screen capture, and you’re all set!

Wikipedia has a good write-up about Google Latitude.

Update: It seems Latitude will be shut down on August 9th, 2013. Sorry, kids! I’ll be investigating other ways of doing this.

Tags data, geo, maps

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From Processing To Painting

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2013-06-23
9 Comments on From Processing To Painting

I’d been working on using Processing to create these grid patterns using circles of varying diameters for a while now, but moving from the digital world to the physical world is something I first started experimenting with last fall when I was attempting to win a laser cutter. While I love laser cut wood, I wanted to try applying the idea to something different, and it’s been a long time since I put paint on canvas, so…

More info on this series of painting (titled annular) can be found on the project page, but the basic process involves running a Processing sketch, using the output to cut stencils, and then painting using the stencils.

Cutting a Stencil

The Processing sketch outputs a PDF file, which is a vector file easily opened in Inkscape and adjusted to the correct size. I then save out the file as a DXF to load into Silhouette Studio to cut the stencils. (I could use the laser cutter, but the laser cutter is at Milwaukee Makerspace and the Silhouette is in my basement, so it’s more convenient for pieces 12″x12″ or smaller.)

The stencils are cut from old posters that a local printer was discarding. I hate wasting things, and the posters are a great source of strong paper that can be easily cut to size and run through the Silhouette.

Art!

I’m pretty happy with how these turned out, and I’ll be creating more of these. Ultimately it would be nice to have 64 of these, but that’ll depend on funding. (And yes, these pieces will be for sale.)

Don’t forget to check out the project page for annular where there’s more info on the concept behind these pieces and plenty more photos.

Tags art, cameo, paintings, processing, silhouette

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June 18th

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2013-06-18

Cake!

Well, I made it one more year… Take that, Silenus!

Cake courtesy of OpenClipArt.

Tags birthday

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Flying Car – First Place!

Flying Car 2013

Well, it certainly has been a busy couple of weeks!

If you remember what was going on a month ago, I was selected to build a robot for the Flying Car Milwaukee event which took place on June 7th, 2013.

I actually finished the robot on time, presented it at the event, and won first place, which consisted of the lovely trophy you see pictured above, and $1,000. Sweet!

I’ll have a full write-up of the robot and the event soon, but just wanted to drop this post as a “whew!” mark to indicate, yeah, it all happened.

Oh, my friend Dena Nord also won first place in the design competition with her poster that featured an augmented reality component. Congrats, Dena!

In the last few weeks I also spoke at WordCamp, finished a series of paintings (post to come), took a FCPX class, filmed a TV commercial, and went to work nearly every day.

And oh yeah, I packed everything I own and moved! (Hence the boxes surrounding the trophy on the new mantle. We still need to finish unpacking.)