Self Portrait, Redux
My MO for every project I've worked on in CTWR518 so far has been to start on an idea, work on it until I've learned enough to realize why it won't work, and apply those lessons to a new idea.
Why break a streak?
My first crack at this, MikeSpace, wound up being too personal for me to be comfortable with, and too boring. The interactivitiy felt far too forced, and was (conceptually) not much more than high-tech flipping a page in a book.
So, I went back to the drawing board. I was thinking about my original idea, of representing how I represent myself in cyberspace. And then I was thinking about what a self portrait actually is. I interact with a lot of people, the vast majority of whom have never met me. In particular, I've been interacting a lot lately with my cell phone service provider, where the (unfortunate) person on the other end of the line only knows me as an increasingly irate 10 digit number. To the vast majority of entities I've come in contact with, I am just a string of digits.
Summary
I'm going to take all the various strings that represent me to different organisations, and combine them in to one long Mike Stein string. I'm then going to convert that to a binary string.
Users can enter there own string, or upload their own picture, in to the program I'm building. The program will break that string (or picture) down in to Binary, and compare it against the Mike Stein string. This will return a Mike Stein percentage, along the lines of "You are 61% Mike Stein!"
The program will then produce a tailored Mike Stein summary for the user, drawing on a database supplied by the real Mike Stein. Somebody who is 95% Mike Stein will get a different summary than somebody who is only 20% Mike Stein.
Intent
It's somewhat unnerving seeing yourself represented entirely by numbers, which is how most organistations we deal with see us. With one slip of a number, you become a totally different person. I hope to make people think about that. Also, the more people who learn about my irrational fear of maple syrup (it's really, really sticky) the better.
Schedule
By April 9th - Have the comparisson function up and running
By April 16 - Have the database summary function up and running
By April 23rd - Integrate first two steps in to a clean interface
Work already in progress
I've already created the Mike Stein binary string, and in doing so, I've gotten the root of the comparisson function running. I still need to add the upload and input function to it, but the meat of the function is built.