chalkmarrow's Recent Projects

Keyboard Cat

Keyboard Cat - Scratch Style If you're not familiar with the whole Keyboard Cat Internet phenomenon, you'll probably have to Google it. But anyway, this is our Scratch version of it :)

Wordcloud

Word Cloud -- This was an attempt to make something like what you see at www.wordle.net, where words are assembled randomly but have a size that is related to how often the word appears. In response to question on Karenb's excellent ScratchEd site http://scratched.media.mit.edu/discussions/how-do-i/word-cloud-scratch This example depicts a (highly edited) list of words from a poem you might recognize. The four mode buttons at top control whether the words are horizontal+vertical, just horizontal, just vertical, or random angle. The wordsUnique list includes the list of words, and the freq list contains the frequency of use for each word. Just plug your own data into the wordsUnique and freq lists to make your own. I used this website to generate my data: http://www.mytranslate.com/wordfrequency.htm Maybe some enterprising Scratcher can come up with a remix that actually sorts and creates the frequency list itself :) Download and set single step to "turbo speed" for best results. I've left the "search rectangle" slightly visible so you can see how it works.

pi_/_2

Just some rectangles for Design Studio's Rectangle gallery. If you press the green flag while things are moving, you can get different start positions. It's a feature, not a bug. Really. OK. It's a bug.

eReader

An experiment in prototyping a user interface for an eBook reader in Scratch. Inspired by Goch's "Blake" project. Click and drag to scroll. Click underlined text to see notes. Click images for close-ups. Mouseover menu near bottom to go page-by-page. Click button on right for backlighting :) Takes a while to load because of the graphics and audio.

Bescratched

A simplified Scratch version of the well-known game Bejeweled. ----- Try to get 3 or more markers in a row, either across or up-and-down, to destroy them. Click and drag to switch a marker with its neighbor. The more markers destroyed in a turn, the more points you get. Each move must create at least one 3-in-a-row. If there are no more valid moves, stop the clock to get at least a few more points. --- This project is the result of my mentioning in the forums that someone should make something like this. Turns out to be a lot harder than a thought. It is bloatware because I had to do some things by brute force to get the execution time down to something reasonable.

ThoughtSquibs

Sort of a conceptual yellow sticky note sort of thing. Drag the little thought squibs around, maybe next to the topic circles (which you can double click to change). Click on a squib to open it. Type your text (left arrow to backspace), or choose its color and smiley face. Click on the x to close. Import your own pictures and stuff for the background and save it or share it with others. Use the recycle bin to recycle your thoughts. Or type a bad memory into a squib, then gleefully watch it get recycled.

FireflyVortices

For the Design Studio "Bizarro World" gallery. In this world, fireflies move around in little tornadoes as a defense mechanism to confuse bats, whose acoustic sensors interpret the formation as a giant deadly cone-fern. The fireflies also leave fluorescent trails in the air in response to nearby crickets, thereby lighting the way for nocturnal predators that feed on crickets. Move jar around to catch fireflies. Dump jar on ground to release them. As with the real world, this project works smoother when downloaded.

rain

for Design Studies "Seeing Words." The word "rain." rain sound from Arctura at Freesound.org

loop

for Design Studio's "Seeing Words." The word "loop." Experiment with mouse.

difficult

for Design Studios' "Seeing Words." The word "difficult." move mouse from bottom to top. works a lot smoother offline.

chronological

for the design studio gallery: the word "chronological"

Haiku: Octopus

Abstract visual representation of a famous poem by the poet Basho. --- My other Haiku project was a bit silly, and I really do like Haiku, so I thought I would make a more serious one. The translation is something I came up with based on other English translations, which generally do not try to shoehorn the words into 5-7-5 syllables (Japanese Haiku is not based on syllable count, but more like a "syllable length" that we don't have in English). -- Music by Nine Inch Nails (Ghosts), which they published under the creative commons. --

Nerd Haiku

Design studio project re Haiku. Generates really random nerdy Haiku. Please remix and make your own. You just need to change the text in the 5 and 7 syllable sprites. This project uses my bamboo project plus Jens music and a button from an old I Ching project. -- v3 with even more nerdy goodness.

ConferenceSlides-IP

Slides for one of the Friday panel sessions at the July, 2008 Scratch@MIT conference.

Three Moths (Sensor Board) v3

This is a sensor board project that I finished up at the Scratch Conference. In general, the program figures out the location of a light sensor (hooked up to resistance-A input) that is held up against the screen. The three moths then fly to that location. The project includes info re how it works. ---- This is presented so that you can see a demo of what it looks like if you don't have a sensor board. Sorry for the quality of the video; I'm just figuring out the shareware I downloaded to make the animated gif. If you just want to use the project and remix it, you can delete the "shell" and "demo" sprites and it will still work.