MemoryBook



[NOTE: tap or click on the "Prelude" icon (upper left-hand side of the main screen) first for navigation instructions]

[NOTE: the "+" and "-" icons at the bottom right of the screen in each chapter (such as the "Prelude") will allow you to alter the size of the font for easy reading]


Another sabbatical from Columbia, another media-book app finished (previous ones include My Music Book and My Book of Dreams). This one is designed for tablet devices with that whole 'integrated music/text/graphics' experience. You can get the app here:




Usage notes:

Tap (or click) on any of the 'chapter' icons on the main screen to read a chapter. The whole main screen scrolls left-and-right; tap or click and drag it to see. In each individual chapter nearly all of the text-areas scroll vertically. As with the main screen, tap or click and drag on the text-area to see more of the writing. The following controls will be at the bottom of the chapter screen:


In the text, I make occasional references to web-links. These appear as words in red typeface. As described in the "Prelude", I decided not to make them active links in the text itself. If you go to this page: you will see all of the links associated with the chapters that have them.


[NOTE: If you are having problems running the application, check here]




This "book-thing" (as I'm calling it) is one of the more self-indulgent things I've done. This is the initial text from the "Prelude" chapter: I'm pretty happy with the way it came out, though, and I hope other people are able to enjoy it. Several of my original testers suggested that a mechanism for other readers to share their own memories might be interesting. I've got some ideas, so stay tuned!

As I've said before about these things, I'm much more a composer than an author or a computer-graphics person. I do like the sounds! For the geekily-inclined, I programmed this using the RTcmix synthesis and signal-processing language, working within the openFrameworks development package. All of the sounds (except one) are generated in real time from a small set of sample-recordings I made of my Steinway piano, inherited from my musician-grandfather. The joy of digital signal processing!

If you're interested in seeing the source code (Xcode and Eclipse projects), here it is:




I hope you enjoy the MemoryBook! Let me know what you think, if you want.


Brad Garton
garton-at-columbia.edu
Summer, 2014