An interesting master thesis upon typography and computer based exploration was written by Andrea Novali. The 245 pages take the scope of computer based or computer generated typography and finishes with a concept for ‘illuminated natural letters’ (the big letters you will find in old books). The result is a script for the Mac OS X scripting IDE Nodebox, that you can re-use. It’s released under open source license. The thesis unfortunately is only available in Italian, but nevertheless I really suggest to download the poster or flip through the thesis to get the basic concept. The thesis is available over there.

You will download the thesis from the website of EXP, a non-profit and free research team focusing typographical aspects. They are interested in “reading processes, the influence of typeface’s irregularity on reading performances and the use of non linear writing in order to face complex problems” and got very interesting contents on their website, so go ahead.

A surprising toolkit from Natrium42. You can plug and control your DS and use it as a robot. To make use of it you wil need some fair amount to prerequisites. That is besides the DS itself the ability to run homebrew on it. In addition you need the DSerial2 and some tools like screwdriver etc. With the RoboDS you can place your DS onto some neat robotseat controllable via WiFi and webbrowser. Be sure to check out this amazing demo.

The toolkit costs 119$, available at the natrium-store and includes:

– 2 standard-size servos, double ball-bearing
– Wheels and caster
– Heavy-duty polycarbonate base (transparent, tinted black)
– Assembly hardware (bolts, servo brackets, etc…)
– 4 x AA NiMH batteries (total of 2500mAh, 4.8V), voltage is readable from DS
– Universal NiMH quick charger, 110-230V
– Power cables for Europe and America
– Car adapter
– Servo adapter for DSerial2

Via Watz came this link to the Digital Fabrication Pool Group on Flickr. Interesting things though, closing the gap – or making it a little smaller – between digital production and haptic enjoyment. For a first glimpse look at the picture of watz and pohflepp.

Object Prototypes

Laser cuts on wood

The Post Bitmap Scripter is an interesting project from the guys with that hard to remember name c71123.com. They unfortunatelly don’t have that tool ready to download or use, but the concept is really interesting. It makes abstract and reduced versions of bitmap or pixelfonts and converts it into lines. A very friendly approach. Just see the picture below.

“Typefaces undergo a complex degradation procedure to be displayed as accurately as possible on screen via bitmap font files. Written in Macromedia Director, the PostBitmapScripter (PBS) type generator attempts to work the opposite way by using a simplistic enhancement routine to attempt a recreation of the original typeface from bitmap sources.”

Update: Florian Jennett send me the link to a similar application.

The Kleinhenz Elektronik company from Munich in Germany produces this module Picotux 100 that runs a Linux on it. CPU has 55MHz and the basic version comes with 2 MB flash memory and Ethernet support. The operating system(OS) is a special distribution for microcontroller called uClinux. It supports the byte-order format Big Endian that is optimized for network performance. (A good explanation on byte order also at the German Wikipedia at Byte-Reihenfolge.) The basic version costs about 99 Euro and is available through worldwide shipping. If someone makes something fancy with it, feel free to leave a comment! Below are complete technical data.

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A wii-controller patch to get the Nintendo Wiimote control max-applications made by Masayuki Akamatsu.

Update: There is a newer version of a Nintendo Wii Remote Handler, called disis.aka.wiiremote, that is build upon that patch.

A first sample application (currently only available for Mac OS X) is the Wii Loop Machine done by Yann Seznec.

There have are lots sources on the topic of Agile Software Development. This kind of software development is the Zen of writing applications, games and websites. But where do I start?

Basics

There are a lot of websites, books and blogs dedicated to that topic. I just collected some essential reading on the web to get a first understanding of the concept of agile software development. First I recommend to grasp the model of iterative and incremental development to get an idea of continuous design and constant improvement.

A must have is the Agile Manifesto that really really provides the basic thoughts. Then you should take a quick look on two essays from Scott Ambler: Becoming Agile and Remaining Agile.

Dig Deeper

Now you’re done. You have a basic understanding on agile. If you want to dig deeper, than read about Extreme Programming (XP) or Agile Architecture Modelling.

There is also related reading on Digital Tools:

• Interview with Frank Westphal on Agile Software Development and Getting Things Done
• Re-use of Content and procedural vs. handcrafted gamedesign