zero point nine

Video demonstrating my first “experiment” with the Android Market. An answer to a question nobody asked– “What if you made an Android program launcher in 3D?”

Video updated with most recent version running on Honeycomb, 6/2011

It was, to be frank, a gigantic pain in the ass coding the motion for this, since there seems to be no Tweener-like class written in Java (Java, not processing…). Anyone know of one?

Built using min3D.

free version

almost-free version :T

As the geek sits down to learn a new programming language or new programming platform, the first thing he or she must do is learn to make a program that successfully prints the words “Hello, world!” to the screen.

The main significance of this first minor feat as it relates to the programmer is not epistemological, technical, or temporal, but psychological. Crossing the — shall we call it the “Hello world” threshold? — brings with it the realization of the existence of a universe of infinite possibilities. But also the burden and intolerable vertigo that comes with that sense of unlimited freedom.

For, alas, there is no standard “second program” for the geek aspirant to sit down to write. The programmer is on her own. Of the potentially infinite paths that lie in front of her, which will she choose?

Actually though, the most common second program chosen with pedagogical motives in mind — I would submit — would be that venerated bouncing ball, colored 0xFF0000. If you come from a Flash background, you probably know of it well.

Here’s mine, on the Android platform- (Sure wish I could’ve used Flash 10.1… ;)

Cylinders shaped with randomized 3D cubic Bezier splines and sine waves. Later it would be nice to develop on the tentacle movement a good deal more with kinematics and possibly springs… And I agree, Robert Hodgins’ work is the shit (like here, for example).

Coded in Java with the Processing library.