From dxu at cs.brynmawr.edu Tue Dec 2 12:11:19 2008 From: dxu at cs.brynmawr.edu (Dianna Xu) Date: Tue Dec 2 08:13:31 2008 Subject: [Compsci] Ira Greenberg Talk Announcement Message-ID: Bryn Mawr College Computer Science presents Spaghetti, Bugs and Drips A Colloquium by Ira Greenberg Miami University Thursday, December 4, 4:00-5:00p (Tea at 3:30p) in Room 338, Park Science Building Abstract: Digital artist Ira Greenberg will discuss his journey from traditional painter to coder. Organized through examples of his work, including drawing, paintings, designs, 3D models, animations, and software, the talk will illustrate how he translated aesthetics principals across very diverse media. Ira will also share his thoughts on digital arts/digital media pedagogy, as described in his book Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art, friends of ED, 2007. Bio: With an eclectic background combining elements of painting and programming, Ira Greenberg has been a painter, 2D and 3D animator, print designer, web and interactive designer/developer, programmer, art director, creative director, managing director, art professor, and author. He wrote the first major language reference on the Processing language, Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art, friends of ED, 2007. Ira holds a BFA from Cornell University and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Ira has steadily exhibited his work, consulted within industry, and lectured widely throughout his career. He was affiliated with the Flywheel Gallery in Piermont, New York, and the Bowery Gallery in New York City. He was a managing director and creative director for H2O Associates in New York's Silicon Alley, where he helped build a new media division during the golden days of the dot-com boom and then barely parachuting back to safety in the ivory tower. Since then, he has been inciting students to create inspirational new media art; lecturing; and holding residencies at numerous institutions, including Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), University of Edinburgh (UK), University of Iowa, Seton Hall University; Monmouth University; University of California, Santa Barbara; Kutztown University; Moravian College; Lafayette College; Lehigh University; the Art Institute of Seattle; Studio Art Centers International (in Florence, Italy); and the City and Guilds of London Art School (UK). Currently, Ira is Associate Professor at Miami University (Ohio), where he has a joint appointment within the School of Fine Arts and Interactive Media Studies program. He is also an affiliate member of the Department of Computer Science and Systems Analysis. His research interests include aesthetics and computation, expressive programming, emergent forms, net-based art, artificial intelligence (and stupidity), physical computing, and computer art pedagogy (and anything else that tickles his fancy). One of his passions is torturing defenseless art students with trigonometry, algorithms, and object-oriented programming, and he is excited to spread this passion to the rest of the world. He is currently at work on a new Processing book due out spring 2009. Ira lives in charming Oxford, Ohio with his wife, Robin; his son, Ian; his daughter, Sophie; and their night prowler cat, Moonshadow. When not sitting aimlessly in front of his laptop, you can usually find Ira getting checked against the boards at the local ice rink. Dianna -- Dianna Xu Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science Bryn Mawr College 101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 (610) 526-6502 www.cs.brynmawr.edu/~dxu From dxu at cs.brynmawr.edu Tue Dec 2 12:12:05 2008 From: dxu at cs.brynmawr.edu (Dianna Xu) Date: Tue Dec 2 08:14:13 2008 Subject: [Compsci] Ira Greenberg Workshop Announcement Message-ID: Bryn Mawr College Computer Science and The Center for Science in Society presents Processing: A Hands-on Workshop A Workshop by Ira Greenberg Miami University Friday, December 5, 1:30-4:30p (Tea at 3:30p) in Room 231, Park Science Building Abstract: This hands-on workshop introduces the Processing programming language and environment. Participants will get a tour of the programming environment and learn how to code a simple particle engine in Processing. Other topics covered will include Processing and its relationship to Java, object-oriented principals in Processing, 3D, and extending Processing through both core and user-submitted libraries and tools. No prior programming experience is required. Bio: With an eclectic background combining elements of painting and programming, Ira Greenberg has been a painter, 2D and 3D animator, print designer, web and interactive designer/developer, programmer, art director, creative director, managing director, art professor, and author. He wrote the first major language reference on the Processing language, Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art, friends of ED, 2007. Ira holds a BFA from Cornell University and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Ira has steadily exhibited his work, consulted within industry, and lectured widely throughout his career. He was affiliated with the Flywheel Gallery in Piermont, New York, and the Bowery Gallery in New York City. He was a managing director and creative director for H2O Associates in New York's Silicon Alley, where he helped build a new media division during the golden days of the dot-com boom and then barely parachuting back to safety in the ivory tower. Since then, he has been inciting students to create inspirational new media art; lecturing; and holding residencies at numerous institutions, including Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland), University of Edinburgh (UK), University of Iowa, Seton Hall University; Monmouth University; University of California, Santa Barbara; Kutztown University; Moravian College; Lafayette College; Lehigh University; the Art Institute of Seattle; Studio Art Centers International (in Florence, Italy); and the City and Guilds of London Art School (UK). Currently, Ira is Associate Professor at Miami University (Ohio), where he has a joint appointment within the School of Fine Arts and Interactive Media Studies program. He is also an affiliate member of the Department of Computer Science and Systems Analysis. His research interests include aesthetics and computation, expressive programming, emergent forms, net-based art, artificial intelligence (and stupidity), physical computing, and computer art pedagogy (and anything else that tickles his fancy). One of his passions is torturing defenseless art students with trigonometry, algorithms, and object-oriented programming, and he is excited to spread this passion to the rest of the world. He is currently at work on a new Processing book due out spring 2009. Ira lives in charming Oxford, Ohio with his wife, Robin; his son, Ian; his daughter, Sophie; and their night prowler cat, Moonshadow. When not sitting aimlessly in front of his laptop, you can usually find Ira getting checked against the boards at the local ice rink. Dianna -- Dianna Xu Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science Bryn Mawr College 101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 (610) 526-6502 www.cs.brynmawr.edu/~dxu From dblank at brynmawr.edu Sun Dec 7 16:35:10 2008 From: dblank at brynmawr.edu (Douglas S. Blank) Date: Sun Dec 7 12:37:22 2008 Subject: [Compsci] FYI: Interested in graduate school in network theory? Message-ID: <493C418E.7000609@brynmawr.edu> Ph.D. Research Assistantships, starting in Fall 2009, are available in the study of social, biological, and technological networks in the Computer Science Department at the University of New Mexico. Cristopher Moore's research group uses both rigorous mathematical techniques and data-driven techniques from machine learning, statistical inference, and statistical physics to study networks. A few sample publications: A. Clauset, C. Moore, and M. E. J. Newman, ``Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networks.'' Nature, 2008. D. Achlioptas, A. Clauset, D. Kempe, and C. Moore, "On the bias of traceroute sampling: or, power-law degree distributions in regular graphs.'' Journal of the ACM, to appear; conference version in STOC. C. Moore, G. Ghoshal, and M. E. J. Newman, "Exact solutions for models of evolving networks with addition and deletion of nodes.'' Physical Review E, 2006. We work closely with Aaron Clauset (Santa Fe Institute) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), as well as many other collaborators. Our work is funded by the National Science Foundation and the McDonnell Foundation. The University of New Mexico's Computer Science department prides itself on interdisciplinary research. Other faculty relevant to our group include Tom Hayes (randomized algorithms and Markov chains), Jared Saia (distributed computing), Shuang Luan (approximation algorithms), Terran Lane (machine learning), and Melanie Moses (scaling in networks). If you would like to know more about our group, please contact Cris Moore at moore@cs.unm.edu. From kblessing at brynmawr.edu Tue Dec 9 11:49:29 2008 From: kblessing at brynmawr.edu (Kimberly Blessing) Date: Tue Dec 9 07:51:40 2008 Subject: [Compsci] 40 years ago today... Message-ID: <709901812.850911228841369165.JavaMail.root@ganesh.brynmawr.edu> Douglas Engelbart gave the "mother of all demos". >From http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/12/dayintech_1209 Computer scientist Douglas Engelbart kicks off the personal computer revolution with a product demonstration that is so amazing it inspires a generation of technologists. It will become known as "the mother of all demos." The presentation included the debut of the computer mouse, which Engelbart used to control an onscreen pointer in exactly the same way we do today. For a world used to thinking of computers as impersonal boxes that read punched cards, whir awhile, then spit out reams of teletype paper, this kind of real-time graphical control was amazing enough. But Engelbart went beyond merely demonstrating a new input device ? way beyond. His demo that day in San Francisco's Brooks Hall also premiered "what you see is what you get" editing, text and graphics displayed on a single screen, shared-screen videoconferencing, outlining, windows, version control, context-sensitive help and hyperlinks. Bam! What's more, it was likely the first appearance of computer-generated slides, complete with bullet lists and Engelbart reading aloud every word onscreen. Fortunately, the proto-PowerPoint section only made up a small fraction of his otherwise understated and impressive tour de force. And though it took years for the industry to catch up, many later computer scientists acknowledged their debt to Engelbart. The demo was the fruit of nearly 10 years' work into ways that computers might be used to help ordinary people work better on intellectual tasks. And by "intellectual," Engelbart wasn't thinking of analyzing data on nuclear fission experiments, he was thinking of ordinary office workers whose jobs involved writing memos, looking up information, filing things, communicating with others, persuading groups of people through presentations, and working collaboratively to solve difficult problems. While most computer scientists concentrated on making computers smart (artificial intelligence), Engelbart was interested in how computers could make humans smarter, or what he called augmented intelligence. The initial inspiration for Engelbart's life work came in the mid-1940s, when he was an electronics technician for the U.S. Navy. Looking at a radar screen, and perhaps inspired by Vannevar Bush's groundbreaking essay "As We May Think," Engelbart imagined a radarlike display that would let people manipulate symbols and concepts instead of merely monitoring bogies and blips. At the Stanford Research Institute, a think-tank?research-lab offshoot of Stanford University, Engelbart was finally able to set up a lab, the Augmentation Research Center, to develop his ideas on computer-assisted intelligence. By 1968, the lab had developed a complete system, which the researchers called NLS (a somewhat oblique abbreviation for oNLine System). The system included an SDS 940 mainframe computer with 12 time-sharing terminals ? each of which had a keyboard, a cathode-ray?tube display, a mouse and a strange five-key "chord key set" for operators to enter commands. The SRI team ate their own dog food, too: They used NLS for their daily work, including using it to write and organize the code that ran NLS itself. NLS was more difficult to learn than today's graphical user interfaces, but for an adept user it was remarkably fast and efficient. Watching the film of Engelbart's demo, even a modern-day computer user might feel envious at the speed and ease with which he moved words, sentences and outline headings on the page. Helping Engelbart make the demo a success was a team of engineers back at SRI headquarters in Menlo Park. The computers were connected to Brooks Hall with a microwave link and two high-speed 1,200-baud modem lines (which were capable of not quite 1,200 bits per second, or about 0.3 percent the speed of a modern DSL line). And a young Stewart Brand ? who would shortly launch The Whole Earth Catalog ? operated one of the cameras in Menlo Park. Brand, along with others, would later take Engelbart's ideas about computers, add a dose of psychedelia and populism, and kick off the personal computer revolution in earnest. Engelbart's career never again hit quite such a high note, and his ambitious visions for computer-assisted collaboration were never fully realized. While the tech industry enthusiastically adopted the mouse and many other innovations from his lab, few people carried forward the idea of making computers tools for collaborative problem-solving. Now 83 years old, Engelbart is still committed to his program ? and still uses a version of NLS on his computer at home. President Bill Clinton honored Engelbart in 2000 with the National Medal of Technology for his groundbreaking work in "creating the foundations of personal computing." An event at Stanford Tuesday commemorates the 40th anniversary of the historic demo. From neilbert at brynmawr.edu Wed Dec 10 11:34:49 2008 From: neilbert at brynmawr.edu (Natasha Eilbert) Date: Wed Dec 10 07:37:03 2008 Subject: [Compsci] CS End of Year and Graphics Tea TOMORROW! In-Reply-To: <52700555.78621228577120772.JavaMail.root@ganesh.brynmawr.edu> Message-ID: <547672392.1253651228926889296.JavaMail.root@ganesh.brynmawr.edu> Hello all! Come on over to the Computer Science End of Year / Graphics Festival Screening combination Tea! We'll be hanging out, having fun, and eating yummy food. Also, we'll be enjoying the end of the year, computer science, and watching some fun computer graphics short films from the SIGGRAPH festival. So come along, hang out, and meet computer science majors -- or just come for the movies! We welcome everyone to come; you _don't_ have to be a CS major/minor. When: 4:30pm TOMORROW Thursday, December 11, 2008 Where: Intro CS Lab (Park 231) Hope you can make it! Natasha and Julia (Your friendly CS major reps)