Tim Cameron Ryan

• I’m enrolled in a class at Olin this semester called Real Products, Real Markets. Our first team project is to conceptualize, design, produce, and sell items cut from sheet metal, in just four weeks.

  This is one of our scrapped prototype ideas: Social Media Charm Bracelets. Luckily these made it on to our test cut sheet, since how else would I be able to publicly declare my sweet Pinterest cred.

  Posted 3 months ago

• 

  Reblogged 7 months ago from adora

• Controlling your mouse using an iPad and HTML5

  A friend recently showed me the JazzMutant Lemur, a swank multitouch audio controller for synthesizers, and asked how he might duplicate its functionality with an iPad. Though it would definitely be possible in Objective-C, I told him the quickest way to get started would be to make an HTML5 app. To demonstrate, I made a full-screen mouse controller on the iPad, which connects to a Python server on a computer using WebSockets.

  What you’ll need for iMousePad:

  • A Linux installation
  • An iPad (iOS 4.2+)
  • Both to be connected to the same network.

  Read More

  Posted 1 year ago

• Mug: JavaScript Compiler for the JVM »

  A few months ago I wrote about compiling CoffeeScript into Java. Since then I’ve wanted to use JavaScript on a few target platforms running Java, so I’ve developed a complete JavaScript compiler for the JVM.

  Rhino is the de-facto JavaScript interpreter for Java, but Mug has different priorities. There is no interpretation involved; all code is statically compiled before running. This has led to code running 2x as fast in some cases, compared to Rhino’s compiled mode. Mug’s standard library is comparatively small, just ~150k for its object classes and the default library. The biggest architectural difference is that Mug is modeled around CommonJS modules. Each compiled JavaScript file is an independent module and can be loaded using require. Java interacts with JavaScript via its exports object, and you can easily write modules entirely in Java to extend Mug’s capabilities.

  Mug implements much of the ECMAScript 3 spec right now, though it is still a work in progress. To get started, check out Mug on GitHub and the README. Let me know of any issues you find.

  And to show you what Mug is capable of, here’s my related project, Mug running on Android.

  Posted 1 year ago

• Like an easter egg, but for your internet »

  I love when I’m browsing high-profile websites, and I realize they’re using the Silk icon set. It’s like a hidden game.

  For additional points, find software that uses it.

  Posted 1 year ago

• Mug, a Java Compiler

  CoffeeScript is my favorite new language at the moment. It’s a syntatically light preprocessor to JavaScript, influenced by Python and Ruby, that exposes the niceties of JS’s loose typing and lambdas without gaudy vars and (function () { ... })s littering your code. Once you start using its comprehensions and loop structures, it feels silly to go back to scripting Java-inspired syntax on the web.

  Perhaps what I enjoy most about CoffeeScript is that it isn’t an entire language, just a syntax. Because of that, we can rather easily repurpose jashkenas’ work from compiling to JavaScript to any language—in this case, Java.

  You can interactively play with a demo of Mug, a CoffeeScript-to-Java Compiler. It can take a subset of CoffeeScript code and compile it to valid (albeit gaudy) Java source. The resulting code, however verbose, is 1:1 with its input, accompanied by some generated class structs and scope objects. Objects in JavaScript become glorified HashMaps, and type conversions are large switch structures.

  The results of such a hacky conversion are actually surprisingly fast on HotSpot. For the “Binary Trees” benchmark, the Mug compiled version runs about ~3–4x slower than V8 on my machine, but ~7x faster than Rhino, while still maintaining many of the benefits of a dynamic language (closures, prototypical inheritance, hashes, etc.) The question becomes you value the tradeoff of flexibility and speed.

  As a CoffeeScript compiler, Mug is obviously lacking the features of a complete JavaScript implementation. But just as CoffeeScript was meant to improve the experience of programming on the web, Mug could conceivably develop its own semantics and be a light preprocessor for Java. While there are many alternativesto programming the JVM, I expect that a class of “little languages” like CoffeeScript that compile into more familiar languages will start cropping up. Rather than reinvent the programming experience, these simply make the existing programming experience programmers are forced into easier for day-to-day use.

  Posted 1 year ago

• Passion Pit Pursuits

  Olin has these nifty things called “Passionate Pursuits” where you get to take an (essentially) one-credit course per semester on a topic of your choosing. For example:

  • Ice Skating
  • Pottery
  • Clay Shooting
  • Glassblowing
  • Piano lessons
  • Slam poetry
  • Cooking for Singles

  …you get the idea. You write up a proposal and get it approved though the Passionate Pursuits Board. You can even get funding, up to about $200, for lessons or equipment. It’s pretty ballin’.

  Naturally Olin classes are workload enough and I’ve put it off first semester. But half-semester classes having just ended, I decided that starting a Passionate Pursuit midway through a semester (despite doubling the number of hours per week I’d need to work at it) would be better than nothing. I decided, ultimately, a good use of my time would be guitar lessons, since it’s been on my To-Do list for years.

  Of course, the very week applications are due, I discover there’s no funding left. I’m left in the same boat as every other-last minute applicant. Whoops.

  …until I realize, wait, I already have a guitar.

  …and I already have lessons. It’s the Internet.

  So paperwork be damned, I’m going to learn how to play guitar by summer. Just like Facebook, it needn’t be written down to still be official. (gg.)

  Don’t you hate it when the only thing holding you back is thinking you need a reason?

  Posted 2 years ago

• LOAD “*”,8,1

  Any professional web presence demands your wordly thoughts be serialized in words!

  But what I really want, is to serialize my wordy thoughts into worlds.

  Posted 2 years ago

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