19
Feb
2011
Both sides of the story
I’m setting a reading list for a debate amongst my students about Australian energy policy. It’s likely to be relatively abstract discussion as none of us has access to, or expertise in, the specific data.
I’ve already got
and
 |
WHY vs WHY Nuclear Power Barry Brook (YES) vs Ian Lowe (NO) |
| and | |
 |
Sustainable Energy – without the hot air, David JC MacKay |
as the main texts for the debate. The first book is specifically Australian, but the second is UK focused (but only really from a data point of view). I’d like to include some contrarian texts too, the two that come to mind are
 |
The False Promise of Green Energy , by Andrew Morriss, William T. Bogart and Roger E. Meiners |
| and | |
 |
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves , by Matt Ridley |
but I haven’t read either of them, and I’d be interested to hear what other people recommend, and what they think of the books mentioned.
The current motion for the debate is: “this house believes that Australia’s energy supply mix is doing just fine the way it is” and I’m a bit worried that nobody will come to support the motion with any enthusiasm.
I’ll be posting more studio related bits as it gets going, but I’d love some suggestions.
8
Apr
2010
Teaching texture mapping
This seems like a great way to teach texturing. People often struggle to start using UVW maps, and it is probably because it is a pretty unintuitive thing to do. We don’t skin animals much any more, and not many novelty Christmas jumpers are knitted so putting skins back on is even less likely.
This diy toy kit lets people make something, and hold it in their hands, and then put it back into the computer a few times until it is perfect.
Take a look at the archive, there are hundreds!
I have a feeling that once you’d made a couple of these then you’d have a good grasp of how to unfold wonder woman to put an awesome tattoo of an eagle on her thigh.
It might even build into a bigger teaching scheme for animation, camera matching, compositing. Anything…
28
Oct
2009
engaging with processing
brave students play with the noise
I did an introduction to programming as a part of the design process to the Brookes second year architects this morning.
The presentation material that went with the lecture is here.
Hopefully the message that it is possible to do cool fun stuff without being a mega geek and hiding your bedroom came across.
3
Apr
2009
Go Kawakita’s thesis – genetic algorithms in ecotect
Go Kawakita now works for Foster & Partners, but last year I was one of his thesis supervisors when he was doing his masters in energy efficient & sustainable design at Oxford Brookes.
His thesis was about the use of evolutionary algorithms to explore design options, more specifically with evaluation driven by environmental parameters. His project work was focused around finding widow configurations that satisfied certain lighting criteria, using ecotect analysis as the fitness evaluation.
He doesn’t have any server space, so I’m putting his work up here.
this is the thesis pdf (low res raster images for small file)
28
Feb
2009
scribble by function video
 |
|
| scribble by function | Scribble By Function from ben doherty on Vimeo. |
This is a video of the scribble tutorial.
It takes you through creating geometry ‘byFunction’ so that you have a new level of control. Then it covers ‘graph functions’, and how they can be used as any other function to provide data to a standard input.
The quality is a bit ropey, but that comes form the compression. the capture is beautiful, so if anyone knows about compressing screen shots from premier pro then let me know!