Apr
Building the ultimate (and cheap) web and art development toolset
Since I left UIUC in 2006, my spare time has been devoted to pretty much everything except making art/data visualizations. At my day job I get to play around with web technology, which has satisfied my curiosities, but I miss doing my own work.
Unfortunately I no longer have the resources of an art school at my disposal, and I’m not excited about dishing out hundreds of dollars for software. So I got to thinking: how can I build a decent art-making setup with mostly open-source/free tools?
Requirements: I need to be able to do everything I already know how to do, and I don’t necessarily want to spend months relearning new software that duplicates software I already use. It’s doesn’t all have to be free, but AFAP (as free as possible!) I also would like to stay compatible across OSes and use the least amount of hardware possible.
So here it is, my new art/datavis-development tool set. I’m still in the process of completing this task, but I’m going to chart my progress here. Doing this has convinced me to bail on Windows, but I’m sticking with OS X for Photoshop, and any other absolutely necessary commercial applications.
Hardware: (1) home-built Intel Core 2 Duo desktop/server with a 24” LCD, and (1) Apple MacBook.
Operating Systems: Ubuntu 8.04, Mac OS 10.5.
The Ubuntu machine:
- File Server with 500GB+ of RAID 0 storage
- Print Server
- Remote access with SSH and VNC
- Subversion server for project management
- Web server with LAMP/phpMyAdmin and Ruby on Rails
- Tomcat (maybe)
- Music playing and serving with either Rhythmbox or
Amarok - Photo management with flickrfs
- A place to work when a 13.1” screen won’t cut it.
The Mac will do:
- Adobe CS apps when I need them
- Windows in VMWare Fusion (for testing only)
- A place to work when carrying a 30 pound desktop won’t cut it.
Both machines will have:
- Processing
- Eclipse (Europa JEE) with:
- Web Tools Platform
- Aptana Studio (no more Dreamweaver!) with PHP and RoR Plugins
- Adobe Flex Builder
that should be enough to get started. Hopefully soon there will be some output from this new setup :)
Mar
Cleveland Rocks
Just returned from a great trip to Cleveland to visit family, and also enjoyed a complete day of music. First the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, then on to Music Saves to pick up a few records. Topped it off with They Might Be Giants at the Beachland Ballroom, where we managed to snag this incredibly fantastic poster. I’ll try to post some concert footage in the next day or two.
UPDATE: yessiree, the photos are posted here.
Feb
Hello World
After months of trouble and toil, a temporary site, and at least two delays, half a world away is alive and kicking again! I still have many items to load into the new site, and lots of remaining tweaks, but there’s enough here to launch.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Textpattern for being fantastic. It is heads and tails better than my old custom (and apparently hackable) system, which I coded in two nights during a blaze of fury in grad school. Note: do not code a website while in a grad school fury blaze. Especially impressive was Textpattern’s ease of integrating stuff from flickr and del.icio.us, just plugin and go.
While I’m thanking people, here’s to my wife for feeding the cat and putting up with me while I created this beast.
For now, check out some new things in my portfolio, and come back soon for more ranting, more works, photos, and other goodness. I’m also planning to launch some weekly features on my travails through web development, and my new fascination with “macro” photos. Cheers!
