in.somniac | paul shen

This is the digital site of paul shen, a #hacker whose formal titles are computer scientist and interaction designer. I live for opportunities to create elegance, whether in code, in interactions, with visuals, with music, with hardware; the list continues. Visit my personal space at hackandsleep.

After graduation weekend, a couple of my friends and I took a trip to Yosemite National Park. We had a great time so I thought I’d jot down some notes for future travelers. I could tell you why you should go but I’m sure the internet has already done better.

Go to Yosemite

May 25, 2010

For my final art project, I’m working on programmatically generating scenes to be rendered in Sunflow. Lot of the work is placing objects where I want them. The following is just a way to use OpenGL to do your matrix multiplications and transformations.

glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
glPushMatrix();
glLoadIdentity();

// transformations go here

GLfloat modelMatrix[16];
glGetFloatv (GL_MODELVIEW_MATRIX, modelMatrix);
glPopMatrix();

Using OpenGL to calculate transformations

March 28, 2010

For my last college spring break, a group of my friends and I took a trip to Puerto Rico. I thought this was a good excuse to purchase my first compact camera. After doing a good amount of browsing, I settled with the Canon S90.

First impressions with the Canon S90

March 25, 2010

From Wikipedia,

Optical flow or optic flow is the pattern of apparent motion of objects, surfaces, and edges in a visual scene caused by the relative motion between an observer (an eye or a camera) and the scene.

The video above augments a water drop with a fluid simulation activated by the water’s optical flow. Meta, if you will. In a way, the augmentation shows something that is present but invisible, specifically the derivatives of the motion, the forces acting on the water. The water drop source video is on YouTube.

Augmenting with optical flow

March 3, 2010

This project is an attempt to create something beautiful and organic by modeling (and perhaps critiquing) the interaction between introverts and extraverts.

The central dimension of human personality

February 14, 2010