ARPWatch/Log Watcher — A tool that monitors your network activity and keeps a record of IP/Mac address pairings and firewall logs. It will give a warning when it notices any suspicious activity, like any changes in Mac address or any connection attempt to the firewall. [via]
I must confess that I am an addict. I have become addicted to creating computer-generated images. Having recently posted about Processing and Oxidizer, I have found another image generator called “Context Free.”
Context Free “is a program that generates images from written instructions called a grammar. The program follows the instructions in a few seconds to create images that can contain millions of shapes.”
Creating images with the software is a piece of cake. One can download from a gallery of “grammar” files or create your own scripts. Downloaded scripts can have their output modified by entering a three-character code into the Context Free application, leading to millions of permutations of the work.
It’s a fascinating program to play around with and some of the output is simply stunning.
Best of all — the software is free, open-source and is available for Windows, OS X and various flavours of Unix.
The promise of advanced fabrication technology that can copy itself is a truly remarkable concept with far reaching implications.
Having read Smashing Magazine’s recent article, “35 Phenomenal Fractal Art Pictures” and being stunned by the images presented within, I wanted to have a go at creating my own fractal flame image.
A quick Google led me to the free OS X software, Oxidizer. A few minutes of experimenting and I was soon creating great fractal images of my own.
It’s great fun and I highly recommend you give it go. Post your best images in the comments.
A simple console shell which allows you to run SQL queries against an Apache logfile, something that can be very useful - especially at getting information which is not easily available via static logfile analysers. [via]
An installation consisting of around 64 head-size mirror objects. Each object moves its head in a particular way to give it different characteristics of human behaviour. Some chat amongst themselves, some shy away and others confidently move to grab your attention. When members of the audience occupy the space, the mirrors inquisitively follow someone that they find interesting. Having chosen their subject, they all synchronise and turn their heads towards them.
I am becoming increasingly impressed and intrigued by the multimedia produced with the Processing framework. There are some stunning artworks and videos emerging and it’s all serving to make me ever more curious about the capabilities of the system.
A lot of the work produced reminds me of the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST demo scene of the eighties and I find myself feeling terribly nostalgic.
But Processing isn’t just about art — the framework is also used for some very serious data visualisation too.
It’s all very impressive.
Further Reading:
The History of Visual Communication
Visualisations and Infographics
Information Aesthetics
I know I’m terribly late to the party with this but Cappuccino, an open source framework that makes it easy to build desktop-caliber applications that run in a web browser, looks pretty fscking awesome. I’m going to have to play with this.
A free, open-source tracking environment for FTIR-based multitouch tables. It has been written for Mac OS X Leopard and uses many of its core technologies, such as QuickTime, Core Animation, Core Image and the Accelerate framework, but also high-quality open-source libraries such as libdc1394 and OpenCV, in order to achieve good tracking performance. [via]
