Access day one

Today, Projects 3A, 3B, and 3K in the green book. (These are projects 12A and 12B if you have the enormous green book.) Please complete A and B and mail them to yourself before Wednesday's class.

Alive Day

I encourage all students to attend the Alive Day showing in AA 158 (across from the computer lab) at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 20. Marine Michael Jernigan, one of the wounded Iraq veterans featured in the HBO program, is a student on this campus, and he will be speaking at this event.

final project and Logo inspiration

Click here for details on your final project.
Due date: Friday, May 9, at 6 p.m.

Great art sites:

Very colorful and inspiring! click

Lots of color and 3D click

Give these plenty of time to load! click

Old favorites click

for Monday, April 21 and Wednesday, April 23

Today we will talk more about x-y geometry in Logo. Then you can choose to use either x-y or turtle geometry in your program.

We will also talk about random numbers. This means choosing a number by chance, not knowing in advance what it will be. This is how computers simulate playing cards and rolling dice. (Cards and dice are truly random, in a fair game; in a computer, since it's a program, it's pseudo-random.)

See page 10 of the handout for a random walk. See the program bug for a simple, silly example.

Working by yourself or with your partner, write a program surprise with (at least!) these three elements:

• randomly chosen regular polygon or star


• drawn in a randomly chosen location


• in a randomly chosen color

You'll need three sets of if statements to make this work. See page 10 for one set of if statements.

I usually prefer to work with a set of colors that I have chosen in advance, but you can make your colors completely random — the post below this one tells how.

Suggestion: work on the three required elements separately, then combine them. Everything you need to know is in the Logo handout! The beauty of programming is that you don't have to do it in a prescribed way; you are free to invent your own alternative way of doing things.

Submit your work by showing it to me at your desk, then copying the text of your program (with all its procedures) into an e-mail to me. If you work with another student, then make sure that both programmers send me the e-mail.

Random colors, filling an enclosed space

I usually do random colors by selecting one from a set of several using if statments (e.g., if :rn = 2 [...set pen to second color choice...]), but here's a way of making your color even more unknown:

to randomColor

make "myRed random 256
make "myGreen random 256
make "myBlue random 256

setpc (list :myRed :myGreen :myBlue)
setfc (list :myRed :myGreen :myBlue)

end

Here are methods for making a square frame in the center of the screen and then filling with random colors:

to centerSquare

penup

; go to lower right corner of square
bk 300 rt 90 fd 300 lt 90
pendown
repeat 4 [fd 600 lt 90]

; back to center
penup
fd 300 lt 90 fd 300 rt 90

end

to centerSquareColors
hideturtle
clearscreen
repeat 100 [
randomColor
centerSquare
fill
wait 75
]
showturtle
end


Logo day 3

Objective 1: to understand the idea of writing a procedure rather than commanding the turtle one line at a time.

Objective 2: using a procedure within a procedure and a loop, make a flower out of a squiggle. Like this:

to squiggle
... your code for a squiggle here ...
end

to flower
repeat X [
squiggle
rt Y
... or lt Y ...
... optional fd N or bk N ...
... or some combination of these ...
]
end

Certain choices for X and Y will guarantee a wonderful rotational symmetry. But what are they? Figure that out.

Objective 3: a word flower. I will show you a simple example.

Objective 5: to enhance our drawings with color that is changed by the program.

Logo day 1

Today I will bring hard copies of my minimum opus on Logo, which you may also view here — click.

In case you're at a machine without Logo, download this, which is MSW Logo by George Mills et al.

I do hope that you will find this art site as inspirational as I do.

Here's a concise list of commands for Logo, which is taken from this wonderful complete college course in computing with Logo.

You can also read Brian Harvey's books online (scroll down the page) — click. Serious fun.