Still going strong with the SVGs

So, I’ve been absent from posting to this page awhile, but here’s the scoop. I’m still Web Dev’ing and getting my SVG on. Just not as frequently as I want… mostly due to life not giving me enough hours in a day, and my post-40yo brain taking way too long to commit new code to rote.

Do you enjoy? I hope so. CodePen is teh b3st!

See the Pen Hex You SVG Animation by Noel Sufrin (@stimpygato) on CodePen.21121

Again with the SVGs

The Mystery Unravels

So, I am gettin’ my geek on and keeping true to my goal of making SVG’s more fun to look at. I so want to take advantage of their flexibility, and my penchant for B&W intricate stuff and animation. This ball of twine I SVG’d seemed like the best place to start. A ton of line data, and all the flexibility of easy to read code.

So without further adieu, here’s a little stroke animation attempt – in fact my first animation attempt – totally from scratch, with only a smidge of CSS and generous helping of original SVG line art.

Enjoy!

My First SVG Animation

Animation not happenin’? Click it first, and if that doesn’t do the trick, you might just want to upgrade that there browser of yours.

How did I do it, you say? With only these lil’ tidbits of CSS swirled into the top of the SVG file (edited in any Text Editor). I wrote a little code about it, here it go:

.twine {
stroke-dasharray: 700;
stroke-dashoffset: 0;
-webkit-animation: dash 24s ease-in-out both; /* Chrome, Safari, Opera */
animation: dash 24s ease-in-out both;
-webkit-animation-iteration-count: infinite; /* Chrome, Safari, Opera */
animation-iteration-count: infinite;
}

@-webkit-keyframes dash {
from {
stroke-dashoffset: 0;
}
to {
stroke-dashoffset: 1400;
}
}
@-moz-keyframes dash {
from {
stroke-dashoffset: 0;
}
to {
stroke-dashoffset: 1400;
}
}
@-o-keyframes dash {
from {
stroke-dashoffset: 0;
}
to {
stroke-dashoffset: 1400;
}
}
@keyframes dash {
from {
stroke-dashoffset: 0;
}
to {
stroke-dashoffset: 1400;
}
}

If you dig it, please feel free to leave a comment or Q. Thanks!

SVGs 4 U n’ Me!

Twiny Balls…

Want to get things rolling.

I swore I’d have my first SVG files uploaded by the end of the weekend, and once again it was an internal struggle to make it happen. Less technical, and more due to not wanting to put up something sucky. And personally, I love these pieces. 

What are SVGs? Scalable Vector Graphics. Scalable meaning as beeg or leetle as you please without losing quality. The Vector part refers to how it’s drawn by the computer on the screen using lines and coordinates, rather than a bunch of pixels that get blurrier as you zoom in. And that leaves Graphics, which is what you see below 🙂


Twiny Ball SVG by Noel Sufrin

Food for Thought

Sometimes the best way to punch kids in their brains is by making them think they’re breaking the rules. 

Let me ‘splain.

My daughter Alysia teaches language arts at a high school in New Mexico. Not the old one – the new one. So to say being an English teacher only a few miles from the border adds an extra dimension to her job is an understatement.

Some kids have parents who live in Mexico, but are US citizens by birth, so they are actually bused across the border every school day. Regardless of the situation, they come to class with the same blasé attitudes and teenage malcontent as any other American kid. 

So, Alysia wanted to engage them with a very current and edgy book titled Feed, by M.T. Anderson. Which is set in the near future and is told by a blasé kid who’s smart phone is embedded within his brain and all the social media and advertising is fed directly into his consciousness, 24-7.

Cool plot. But it needed parental approval since it got dicey with the language throughout… Due to the fact it was from a kid’s point of view.

This all came up because I had mentioned The Catcher in the Rye to her as being great introductory reading book for its generation. It spoke in their language and pulled no punches. But back to the parents.

Nope. Not enough sigs from the parents, so no cool book for the students. Bummer.

This didn’t slow them down much, as no sooner did those books become contraband, the majority were stolen from Alysia’s small repository. Sooner than later, kids were heard dropping lingo here and there and generally trying not to be null.

Case. Point. 

Set. Match.

Simple harmonic oscillator

New Clear Fusion

Forget the Benjamins.

It’s all about the Hamiltonians.

I’m reaching a tipping point, where I’m getting more energy out of the system than I put into it!

I’ve spent a solid month immersing myself in all things WordPress, forcing myself to recite poetry in PHP. And if code is poetry, I’m almost ready for my first recital and about a month from my first poetry slam.

But I’m mixing metaphors that I coulda use’d meta for. So, to keep a quantum of nerdiness involved, I’ll stick to the nuclear fusion metaphor like a gluon.

Anytime I learn something completely new I go through several phases.

First, let’s compare them to the classic phases of matter:

  • Solid
  • Liquid
  • Gas
  • Plasma

Like most people, we really only consider the first three phases of matter in nature.  But we forget the fourth, which is just as au natural as the others, but doesn’t come to mind as quickly – plasma.

No not the kind of plasma that gets you paid in cookies. The kind that keeps astronauts from communicating with ground control upon re-entry. The kind that forms “ball lightning”. The chunky soup of fusion!

And like the spark that creates it, fusion can produce massive amounts of energy with only a limited fuel supply.

Now let’s look at my creative learning process and how it mimics the phases of matter.

Solid. When I first observe an unknown system, I only see the big picture. The output. The result of all the inner workings. Like billions of tiny water molecules arranging themselves into beautifully exquisite patterns that are entirely to complex to be accidental. This almost freezes my mind! How can this occur? Is it magic?

Liquid. Slowly, I turn up the heat, and look closely at the structure as it changes and melts. And now I have a pool of water where there was just moments ago latticework of amazing crystals. All the patterns are gone, and I’m left with a bucket of H2O. I can’t make any sense of this! I need help. I’m drowning in ignorance!

But I force myself to dive in, and sink or swim. Sure it’s cold at first, but I acclimate quickly and before I know it I’m treading water! (and mixing metaphors again) Soon enough, I get the flow. I feel the current and decide to heat things up a bit more. Adding some chemicals to the pool to stabilize the pH(P) too.

Gas. Now things are really heating up and I can see the steam rising from the surface. I understand the process. I could probably even sublimate, but I’d be getting ahead of myself.

Plasma. Instead I turn up the heat even more, watching the water molecules behave much differently. The individual atoms start dictating new formations and kicking out some serious plasma energy.

This is where the spark of fusion arrives in a glorious epiphany! I see not the structure, but the components. I’ve observed the various states or phases and see all the pieces working as one regardless of phase.

I can harness the power and use it for the benefit of mankind. I can further experiment with other exotic phases of matter like Bose-Einstein Condensates, and push the envelope of what matter can do!

WordPress is my new heavy water, and it sure tastes better than the Kool Aid everyone else is drinking.

Road to Jupiter by Stimpygato

The Road to Jupiter

A fresh coat of paint for your brain.

You know that feeling. An old dingy room with poor lighting and a wall color two decades out of style. Age-baked two shades darker than its original color. Making you feel sleepy and uninspired the second you walk into it. That’s what my desktop background felt like after staring at it for half of my waking hours.

It’s funny how you let that go when you’re busy, but I was well overdue for a fresh image to please my peepers. So, I whipped this up and I thought I’d go ahead and share it with y’unz too! A spiffy free custom background image download with a custom massive planetary injection plus a bonus Jovian moon at no extra charge! *not available in all states.

This is a readily available free desktop image I found on the Interwebz and Photoshopped a lil’ bit as you may have guessed.

Want this image as your desktop with Windows 7 or 8?

Click HERE.

When the full size version appears:

  1. Right-click the image
  2. Choose Set as Desktop Background…

Time to Make the Donuts

Quick status update:

orange_donutWordPress is really all that.

I like it.

A lot.

I would even say I like it better than Drupal, although I understand it less… right now.

Sure, I get the whole CMS dilly and what not. I get everyone’s alignment with whatever CMS they currently use. But I’m in the unusual position of acting as a solo Web Dev, and using three separate CMS systems. Furthermore, Drupal really counts as three CMS’s on its own, and I have sites I maintain it Drupal 5, Drupal 6, plus another handful are Drupal 7. Gotta love those core updates! …Oh, and there’s a proprietary e-commerce CMS in the mix too, but at least that one’s cash positive 😉

So when I say I understand it less, I mean on the deeper technical side. The bashrc side. The command line front line so to speak. Unfortunately, this has slowed down my initial creative mojo, and has me all boiled up into a blister!

I’ve jumped into WordPress head first, like I have with a lot of things that I’ve ended up grasping pretty thoroughly in the long run, such as gee-tar playin’, drawin’, vidjo editin’, cookin’ and so on. Many of these are still passions of mine. Because sometimes, when you have to eat, you learn to cook. And sometimes, when you learn to cook, you have fun cookin’!

I plan on devouring the WordPress Codex (God, rest its soul), and delving deeper into PHP, JSON, and really getting into the Loop, wp-cli stye and what not.

Hopefully the epiphanies will be plenty, and I’ll be able to apply them in real-time and maybe even convert a few old sites along the way.

Fingers crossed.

Oh, hey… didn’t somebody say something about donuts?

Donuts, mmmmmm…

Leonardo da Vinci ASCII art

Oxymoron – The story of an outgoing introvert.

Artistic nerds.

We’re all a bit alike.

We’re intrigued by organic patterns that are evident in nature and often pleasing to us on a sublime level. The golden ration didn’t just fascinate Dan Brown. A whole slew of artists, philosophers, theologians, mathematicians, scientists are intrigued by it. and that’s just one of many cool numbers!

Patterns are evidence of a higher order.

We feel compelled to understand these patterns. To be able to fold it and unfold it. To rearrange it. To disassemble and reassemble it. Never upset when it isn’t the same as before, but happy or intrigued by the new variation.

We’ve made it our own.

It’s no accident that these clues are given to us. Evidence hidden in the stars. In our very essence. As above, so below.

I know you are, but what am I?

The creative among us struggle to express this. The patterns speak to us. And we want to shout it out to the world! Through artwork, music, literature. We unravel the music into chords, notes, harmonics. We filter the white light and take only the specific spectrum we need to create a unique palette. These methods are the key and legend to those who follow.

Code.

Our very core is a generator, and we’re fueled by this natural resource. A free renewable resource that anyone can use endlessly! But not everyone is programmed to access it. Wiring can be funny like that. In know mine’s intermittent at best. Just like I’m not programmed to enjoy taxes or reality TV 100% of the time.

The lineage of geeky artisans is great

Although I don’t yet have a history-book-worthy creation to my credit (yet), I’m still happy to share space with them right here on this web page! It’s mine, and I can do what I want.

Here are a few noteables that come to mind.

Have some of your own? Feel free to share in the comments!

  • Leonardo da Vinci
  • Danny Elfman 
  • Thomas Dolby
  • Brian May
  • Will I Am
  • Elon Musk
  • Nicola Tesla
  • Mozart
  • David Lynch
  • Andy Warhol
  • M.C. Escher
  • Skunk Baxter