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Not Yet…, originally uploaded by Pete Hindle.
I’m still using Processing for making stuff - this is an image from one of my latest batch of sketches.
Reader, I was fugged.
I was walking back through town when I felt somebody touch my arm. I turned, and saw a lady in her early thirties, not unattractive, who started by saying “Excuse me.” A polite greeting, which was appropriate as I didn’t know who she was. Perhaps she thought she knew me, or maybe I’d dropped something and she was going to tell me.
“I couldn’t help notice that you had a limp” she continued. At this point my expression must have hardened. I expected to be offered a lucky glass bead for a pound, but it was what she said next that really surprised me.
“I’m a Christian, and I would like your permission to pray for you.”
I could have said a lot of stuff. It would have been the nicest thing to say “why, thanks”, and move on, but that’s not really what I was thinking. It would have been Quakerly of me to say “you should do what you think you need to do”, and then move on. But I dislike being singled out because I’m different from the herd. I don’t like being the object of misplaced charity. And I don’t want to think about how many times this had done this to other, more vulnerable people.
So I looked this woman in the eye, and drawled the world “no” in a manner left no doubt that I thought very poorly of her, turned, and left.
Inside I was furious. I’d been trapped into a position that I would never want to be; I either ratified her choice of faith or had to act like an asshole. And there was nothing I could do about it - it’s like a version of the question “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?“, to which there is never going to be a good answer.
The term “charity mugger“, or “chugger” came into being to describe those people who stand on street corners and used people’s guilty conscience to goad them into signing direct debits to charity. I’m coining the word fugger to describe somebody forcing you to acquiesce to their faith - and although next time I’m going to try to be more considerate to their beliefs, heaven help them if they think they’ll get off as lightly.
Books
Technology
Miscellaneous
Rubbish
Clothes
How annoying woul it b if you ouln’t writ proprly?
Th answr, as I’m fining out, is ‘vry’. For som rason, a row of kys on my laptop has just stopp working. I’v alraly tri to tak it apart an put it bak togthr again, with th hlp of my goo frin Brian ggr, but to no avail. My prvious flowing txt, whih I was so prou of, is now lik th mok-yslxia of Basul or an Irvin Wlsh haratr, an ras lik th ant of a man punh in th mouth.
This oms at a rally ba tim for m; whil I’m stuk at hom, prtty muh unabl to gt aroun apart from th oasionally hobbl, I hav ha to turn own th han to work in an xhibition at th Balti. I was to b pai tn pouns an hour to typ sribptiv txt about th popl who am into th gallry, but my blast lg mant that it was just too painful to sit in on spot. Not only that, but whr as a month ago I was rgularly travlling thirty mils a ay unr my own stam (not on publi transport or by ar) I am now barly abl to mak my way vry far at all.
I’ll upat th st on I know what I shoul o nxt. For now, this has bn an xpnsiv friay th thirtns.
See that, above? That’s something I’ve wanted to do for years.
If you understand Processing, the programming language that pretty much foremost amongst the art/coding subset, you usually have a pretty good grasp of mathematics. Personally, despite my grade B at GCSE, I’m pretty shakey. That’s why it took me at least two years to be able to draw a bunch of dots in a circle, using Processing.
I am happy I’ve done it though; it means that I’m no longer banging my head against it as a problem that is beyond me. One more thing I can cross of my list of things that I want to do with Processing.
I’ve written in more depth about the mathematics behind the program, and posted a video of it in action, at my vimeo page. If you’d like to find out about what it’s about, read that. I’ve also uploaded the source code and the program itself as a stand-alone application for Windows, OS X and Linux, and you can download that below.
draw_a_circle2 (source files and apps)
UPDATE: The Vimeo page seems to have completely failed me (again) and so I’ve put a version up on Flickr using their new video function. If it doesn’t embed in the RSS feed, check out my photo page over there.
As mentioned below (I think…) I’m in the process of recovering from having a dislocated kneecap. This meant that for about two weeks I could hardly walk, so I holed up at my girlfriends folk’s house with a stack of books from Amazon.
Usually, we like to feel that our lives are heading somewhere. Going forward, pushing on, making progress - but being forced into doing nothing was not such a bad thing for me. I find it easy to fill my time with distractions, and the fact that I was unable to go out and waste my time meant I was truly concentrating on my studies.
When not studying I also found some time to make a few decisions, and do some paperwork. One of those decisions was to get rid of my mobile phone contract, which led to being put on hold with T-Mobile for about fifteen minutes. Rather than spend that time with a phone glued to my head, I put the phone on speaker and got on with some work.
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I LIVE!, originally uploaded by Pete Hindle.
I’m unable to do most things at the minute, as I’m recovering from an injury to my leg. This means that I’m in bed, in Whitburn, mostly without the internet.
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combinant_dots, originally uploaded by Pete Hindle.
I was curious as to how the ‘gallery’ function worked, after seeing Brenda’s beautiful collection of images called ‘Fence‘. Most of these images are of the time that myself and the other people from the Waygood’s Radio Club.
For a long time, I had a website under the alias petehindle.textdriven.com, which suited me fine. I love the written word, and I like to do a lot of things with computers that really rely on having a firm grip on the power of the written word. Hence, I felt, having the word ‘textdriven’ really let other people know that I was going to be writing.
But I know that some people are not as word-oriented as I am. Topsy, for instance, really functions as a visual person, and I have to wonder if perhaps I should include more of my cameraphone wanderings within my blog-posts.