Broadway and John LLR Station Mural, Part 2b

LinkLightRailBwayJohnMosaic

This edit involved both Photoshop and Affinity Design.

In photoshop, as discussed earlier, I added the Obeebo dance steps sculpture from further up Broadway as if it were a zen garden at the foot of the station where the Central Coop will someday be built.

Continue reading Broadway and John LLR Station Mural, Part 2b

Annoying JavaScript Functions

A quick little JavaScript to cycle through an array of hex colors. Installs an interval function to change the background color every second.

// Variables

// install an interval function update_colors() and run it every 1000 milliseconds (once a second)

var closeInterval = window.setInterval(update_colors, 1000);

// global variable to control where we are in the array of colors

var step = 0;

// this is our array of colors

var ColorCycle = [
 "#838a85",
 "#bbaa99",
 "#c6ceb6",
 "#9fb1a2",
 "#748f8b"
];

Everything’s set up. There is no need for a window.onload() function because we’ve installed this as an interval function. That takes care of making sure we aren’t executing on null document objects.

function update_colors() {
 
 // Call a utility function that changes the background color
 
 swap_colors(step);
 
 // step is where we hold the value of the current item in the array
 
 step++;
 
 // Let's not go outside the bounds of the array, please
 
 if (step > ColorCycle.length) {
 step = 0;
 }

}

There we go. All that’s left is a little utility function to do the actual swapping.

function swap_colors(new_color) {
 
 // Change the page background
 
 document.body.style.background = ColorCycle[new_color];
 
 // This necessary for the first time through, but it seems to be unnecessary
 // for subsequent passes. I'm a little bit confused by this, but okay.
 // Changing the background color of the Section object inside <body>
 
var section_style = document.querySelector("section");
 section_style.style.background = ColorCycle[new_color]; 
 
 }

So, as I mention in the comment, changing the “section” object background seems to be necessary since I’ve given it its own background definition in the style sheet. I suppose I could have just not given the section object a style, which would eliminate the need to change the background, but that’s okay, because now I know how to change an object’s background when it’s different than the body background.

Next, I will work on making the transitions between colors less jarring by writing a nice function that will blend colors.

iTunes Album Cover Art

nancy_rosewood_cover

Build album cover art for my friend Nance’s 1991 solo acoustic EP.

Background layer is a simple repeating pattern of a wood texture I grabbed from image search. Above that layer is a wood-textured cube, also snagged through image search. (This one clearly has copyright issues, but nothing that can’t be quickly salvaged by an iPhone and a trip to Ikea.)

I am testing out new tools. I used to use Photoshop and Freehand, back when there was Freehand. I’m unhappy with Adobe’s subscription model, so I use Pixelmator (which I absolutely love) and I’m trial-ing Affinity Designer. Affinity’s skew tool is a little wonky (and took me an hour to find because it’s so well hidden) but I expect I just need to fiddle with it some more. Anyway, the perspective is a little off on the rotation and skew of “Rosewood” but this was good enough for the intended use.

I spent the rest of the morning digitizing the audio from a cassette tape into Audio Hijack and editing that into MP3s with Fission.