Category: Technology

I was messing around with animation this past week. It’s always been an interesting process to me, and I’ve messed with a few hand-drawn animation apps on the iPad in the past. However, any small skill in drawing left me a long time ago. I also had a particular goal that amounted to animating with a vector image I had built using Inkscape.

Lo and behold, I discovered the concept of vector tweening. It’s essentially an interpolative animation process that takes advantage of the mathematical niceties of vector images. Instead of needing to draw every individual frame, you can “skip” frames. You tell your animation software that at frame 6 your vector assets should look this way, and at frame 12 they should look that way. A little voodoo occurs (which I assume could be tweaked depending on the software), and you get all the frames between 6 and 12 automatically generated.

This was an amazing find. After a bit of searching, I installed Synfig. A few minutes later, I found the ability to save an Inkscape project as a Synfig animation project. In other words, the image I’d created became vector assets that could be animated using this new tool. Within twenty minutes I learned enough basics to make my little animation, and the rest was tediously adjusting points.¹You can see the number of control points that get created when you convert text to a vector image in Inkscape. Luckily, I didn’t have to touch those, but moving an object with that many control points does make for a bit of a slow process.

This was a really interesting process. I love getting new tiny tools under my belt, and this is just another I might be able to bank on in the future. Regardless, I had a good time and learned something new about the world.

Footnotes

• 1
  You can see the number of control points that get created when you convert text to a vector image in Inkscape. Luckily, I didn’t have to touch those, but moving an object with that many control points does make for a bit of a slow process.

There are some excellent tools for organizing all aspects of an entity, whether it’s a single person, a hobby project, or an entire business. Services like Notion have come into vogue as trendy startups available to the masses, with a promise for greater expansion. I got into the world of Notion last year when I accepted a new role at work, which required greater coordination of people and projects. While my resulting setup was vital to my success, it’s put me in a bummer of a position nearly a year later.

I’ve been revisiting A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Django, which goes through the Django library, a Python tool for developing websites. I had tried it a year or two ago, but it just didn’t click. This time around I’ve found greater success precisely because many of the code examples are outdated and will not run without modification. While I may have more to say about using Django some other time, this experience has instead made me consider the efficacy of teaching using poor or broken examples.

Right around Christmas last year, Erin showed some interest in VR. My guess is it was fueled by talk on Cortex, where CGP Grey has discussed what he considers to be the vital acquisition of an Oculus Quest 2. I was totally on board with getting one, but our Christmas spending had been accounted for. Also, they were out of stock everywhere.

The other week it popped back into my mind, so on a whim I got one from Best Buy to surprise Erin. It’s been a hit. However, it’s worth considering both the present and future of VR, and specifically Oculus, now that we have seen the light.

A coworker told me about Advent of Code last week. It’s an independently run site that provides an advent calendar of programming puzzles. Similar to sites like Project Euler, they are of varying difficulty and not designed to be completed in any particular language.

So far, the puzzles have been clever and fun. There is a central plot for the entire month of needing to get a currency of star coins to pay for your post-Christmas vacation. I take it not as tone-deafness to the pandemic, but more of wishful thinking for a better 2021. They’re cute premises.

Anyone who like programming puzzles will enjoy these; I highly recommend them. I came to it a few days late (and if you’re reading this post, you’re behind too!) But it’s reasonable to do two in a day, and you’ll probably want to!

Of course I’ve been using Python for all of them so far, but I could totally see myself using the puzzles as a way to learn another language; they’re overall more accessible (and engaging) than Project Euler.

I’ve started using the wonderful app Ferrite on my iPad to edit podcasts. While I still love Ardour, and it is a powerful program for bigger edits, Ferrite is very clean and meant for podcasts, as opposed to being a tool designed for music production that podcasters try to use.