Well, I wasted far too much time browsing through the Processing web site. What a brilliant language! Java's great in many ways, but I've never got very far with graphics - slow to program & slow to execute. Processing seems to achieve a huge variety of functionality & effects in very few lines of code.
I've downloaded the IDE and played with a few programs. Looked at most of the intersting-looking examples on the web site & plugged a small number into the IDE. Spent a while on pointillism, playing around with the parameters, trying to merge it with bits of the ASCII art video processor. Really trying to come up with a good profile picture that doesn't look too much like me!
I couldn't get Processing to do video capture, though. Reading the site, it seems a minefield. Seems to rely on vdig, which is no longer available. Or on qtjava.dll which doesn't appear to ship with Quicktime any more. Luckily, I don't think the book needs a chapter on video, but it would be nice...
The other really interesting discovery was the Arduino board - "a physical computing platform based on a simple I/O board and a development environment that implements the Processing/Wiring language". This looks to be just what I need to control my central heating. The older control system ran in Clipper under MSDOS 2.11 on a laptop nailed to the wall, but stopped working when a rat gnawed the control wires, shorting a vital component. The Arduino might help me get going on a web-enabled solution...
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