More recently, engineers have been trading these amazing, noisy, cantankerous machines in for laser printers, and this is how I come to have two of them in my house.
#PETER PLOTTER DRAWING 1965 COMPUTER MANUAL#
Even better was playing with the manual control buttons, turning the machine into a massive electronic etch-a-sketch. When I was a kid I loved watching plotters draw plans. I’ve been lucky enough to inherit two HP plotters ( Draftpro and 7585B) from my father’s Civil Engineering company. Peter pointed me to the excellent book Introduction to Computing and Programming with Java: A Multimedia Approach, and I haven’t really looked back since. With the “what language” decision aside, everything became much easier. So learning Java should quickly improve my After Effects scripting
#PETER PLOTTER DRAWING 1965 COMPUTER PORTABLE#
Processing is built in Java, so my knowledge in Java is portable to Processing.Through discussions with Peter I decided to learn Java, for the following reasons: I’d previously looked at Processing as a learning environment, but my lack of foundation knowledge made even its simplified style confusing. Eventually the discussion turned to my lack of programming knowledge and how this severely erodes both my usefulness to society and my status as an übergeek. Peter and I have been talking quite a lot about generative visuals and interactive VJing/installations. I knew that the code existed, I’ve been able to hack existing PHP, SQL and Javascript to make it do what I want, and I’m very keen on After Effects expressions, but I’ve never really taken the time to properly learn the fundamentals of programming. Growing up there was always a computer in the house, and he encouraged me to learn BASIC as a kid, but for some reason it never really stuck.
To compound the shame, my father (a civil engineer) has been programming since the 70s. It’s analogous to a revhead admitting that he doesn’t know the first thing about stripping down engines. That someone with so much generalised computer knowledge – and who incidentally spends so much of his time in front of 3 monitors and surrounded by shiny stuff – is unable to fully control the machines that take up his so much of his time. This often comes as a slight shock to those who know me.