My Time at Recurse Center

I’ve spent the last two-and-a-half months at the Recurse Center, where I’ve been learning to code better. Here’s a collection of some things I made, learned, and did during my time there.

Large Projects

• I’m working on a project to generate traditional Irish dance tunes using a neural network, with the help of Jack Kelly. Here’s the Github repository, though it’s currently very much a work in progress. There’s the potential for several blog posts on this; we’ll see how many I get around to writing.
• I’m working on a little webapp to explore interlocking patterns found in Balinese gamelan music, along with Daniel Manesh.

Small Projects

• I made a little tool to aid in composing palindromes. There's not too much going on yet, but while I have some additional features in mind, this project is currently low priority.
• I started work on a fretboard diagram generator for fretted string instruments; it’s very much incomplete at this point.
• Exploring the p5js .lerp() method with Yaniv Brener, created a program that morphs between regular polygons (demo | code)

Creative Coding

Every Wednesday afternoon, there’s a creative coding event at RC, where we’re given one or two prompts, people disperse to interpret the prompts either alone or in pairs, and everyone involved gathers a couple hours later to share what they came up with. Most of these were put together in an hour and a half.

• For the prompt “embrace ambiguity”, created a non-binary adaptation of Conway’s Game of Life with Daniel Manesh (demo | code)
• For the prompt “only a part, not the whole”, created whatever this is with Kathrin Hagemann (demo)
• For the prompt “the inconsistency principle”, created a possessed drawing app with Yaniv Brener (demo | code)
• For the dual prompts “make a one-button game” and “you can only make one dot at a time”, made this raindrop piano thing with Liv Märtens (demo | code - there’s more to it than first meets the eye!)
• For the dual prompts “emphasize differences” and “make a clock”, created a thing with Chris Geekie (demo | code)
• For the dual prompts “slow preparation, fast execution” and [something about an iterative, tiling pattern], made this rather unforgiving pattern generator inspired by the Jacquard Loom with Angad Singh and Liv Märtens (demo | code)
• For the prompts “incorporate bugs” and [something about a face], made this whack-a-mole game with creepy-crawlies with Brendon Kierle (demo | code - pace Daniel!)
• For the prompts “create a lens” and “once the search has begun, something will be found”, made a pair of glasses (demo | code - the original idea was to have garbled text become clear when the glasses passed over it, but I only got as far as making the “lens” switch between two images)
• For the prompts [something about making trees] and [a list of the hex codes for five different colours], made this cartoony tree thing with Yaniv Brener (demo | code)
• For the prompt “make a clock”, created a radiocarbon dating simulation with Addie Barron (code)

Other Things

I spent the first two months trying, to various degrees, to avoid unnecessary typing due to tendinitis and possibly carpal tunnel syndrome, which I’ve been coping with for several years now. I’ve learned more about ergonomics/posture, and I bought an Ergodox keyboard (which I love, but I’m not sure how much of a difference it’s making) and a standing desk (which made a huge difference). Each of these could make a blog post - if there’s one in particular you’re interested in, let me know, and I’ll try to get to it when I can!