Today is the day before Thanksgiving and also the day Dan Shiffman visits! Many of us have been waiting for quite a while for him to come. We’ve all become pretty close with his ‘Nature of Code’ Processing book. I’ve also heard a lot about his instructional videos that go along with the book, so I’m super excited to see him speak in person. He spent most of the time talking about how he developed the book, all the work and struggles that come with publishing, and what his hopes were for the future in developing the book even further. It was really interesting to see how much work went into the book - not that I thought it was a breeze, but I guess I took a lot for granted. He also shared a little about his teaching and research in teaching. His latest work includes creating a system to easily tape a lecture by yourself. At the end of the talk, he talked a little about the genetic algorithm section of the ‘Nature of Code’. It was pretty amazing, and gives me even more motivation to make it to the end of the book so that I can explore it! He introduced us to BoxCar2D which is so so amazing. BoxCar2D is a system that uses shapes to randomly create different car configurations. The success of the configuration seems to be based on how far the car can make it on the specified course without falling apart. Each new generation tries to learn from the last so that as it continues to run, the car that’s created becomes ‘better and better’.

After Dan’s talk, we had Allison’s last CTOT class where the topic was political change and riots. We spent time talking about political activism on the web and how it may or may not be different from political activism in our physical environment, and even what’s considered political activism in each space. As always, it was super interesting and leaves me with a lot to think about.