I wanted an excuse to learn something about web-site design with modern tools. Having just retired from a technical job involving lots of computing this looked like a way of keeping some of my skills gently exercised in an area that I may find useful.
I was also at the time using some of my computing skills and creative urges to play around with Generative Art, that is, using mathematical algorithms to create abstract images.
These images created may be aesthetically pleasing in themselves (you will have to judge that). It also occurred to me they also illustrate in a very visual way some of the fundamental ideas of computing and indeed the related mathematics. I started wondering whether there might be a route to teaching programming, particularly perhaps to those with otherwise little interest in this direction.
The difficulty for those with no programming background is knowing where to start. So, why not just document my own learning curve, so others can follow and avoid some of the holes into which I pitched head-first? Doing it all as a web site means that I can climb two learning curves at the same time, and let others follow my progress.
This website is very much under construction and continuous change - and I hope will remain so for for a long time.
All the images on this website are copyright Michael McEllin, unless otherwise noted. Feel free to download the Processing programs and use, modify and redistribute them, as long as you acknowledge my contribution. Please note that all the programs on this web site come with a health warning: they are not intended to be polished "end-user" software, that is, constructed for use by people who do not understand what goes on inside the program. They are intended to be used for experimenting with the program code: if you want to see the variety of images it is possible to produce you will have to understand and change the code itself.
I suggest that you start with the Artful Computing page