Karsten Schmidt
@toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
35 followers 1 following 150 posts
Intoxicating, non-toxic! 25+ years of interdisciplinary open source R&D, custom software dev, computational art/design/edu, landscape photography, electronic […] 🌉 bridged from https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/
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toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
A quiet place for reflection (April 2025)

#landscapephotography #alps #mountains #lake #reflection
View across a mountain lake with a completely still mirror-like surface reflecting the mountains opposite, their rock faces illuminated by the warm orange evening sun. Small patches of snow near the summits. Semi-overcast sky.
Reposted by Karsten Schmidt
stefan.stefanbohacek.online.ap.brid.gy
Really cool project by @untitaker that lets you create programmatic Mastodon lists!

https://list-bot.woodland.cafe

Examples from https://codeberg.org/untitaker/mastodon-list-bot include:

- mutuals
- all users who haven't posted yesterday, but sometime within the past three days
- all users […]
Original post on stefanbohacek.online
stefanbohacek.online
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Reading about the #arduino acquisition brings up dear memories from its early days... Co-running/hosting some of the very first Arduino workshops in London in 2007/8, sharing the office with Massimo's mini-company TinkerIt Ltd., meeting the Arduino core team for dinners... prior to that, working […]
Original post on mastodon.thi.ng
mastodon.thi.ng
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
A slow-motion version showing only the keyframes (without interpolation) of this transformation process...

#tilingtuesday #generativeart #sdf #distancetransform #lace #thingumbrella
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Just WD40-ed all the joints and screws in my old cranky & creeky tripod... and oh my, everything's sooper smooth again... 🤌
Reposted by Karsten Schmidt
oblique-strategies.mas.to.ap.brid.gy
The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten

#obliquestrategies
A black-and-white photo of an Oblique Strategy card. The card reads: 'The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten'.
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
@boris It's a new curated digital art platform with their own hardware: https://layer.com/

Full disclosure: I've been helping them with their curation concept, artwork classification approach/engine, UI/UX, data visualizations and the generative art SDK.
Layer | Living Digital Art, Curated for Life
Layer delivers curated digital fine art from leading artists, presented on the museum-grade Layer Canvas, and tracked with ViewTime to reward artistic reach.
layer.com
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
(Yet another) 1-minute excerpt of an #umbra variation, one of my recent algorithmic/generative realtime animation art pieces, constantly evolving and exhibited exclusively on Layer.

Very much love this color theme, especially after ~15 seconds... 🤌

(See […]

[Original post on mastodon.thi.ng]
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Incredible light and detail in this oil painting...

Hans Gude, Fjordlandskap fra Balestrand, 1848
(Norway Nasjonalmuseet)

#painting #landscape #norway #fjord
Late summer morning in a fjord landscape with a small settlement surrounded by rocks and small golden fields reaching down the hill until the shore line. Two children are standing in the shade on a small path leading between the wooden houses, roofs covered with grass and moss. Massive mountain peaks with near vertical slopes in the background. A large glacier on one of them. Bright hazy day with light reflecting on individual blades of grass, leaves, presumably still covered in dew.
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Piz Cambrena (3607m) and its glacier viewed from Bernina Pass at sunset, two weeks ago... A sliver of Lago Bianco in the foreground.

...and the same place in 1911:
https://akon.onb.ac.at/#id=AKON_AK082_104

#silentsunday #landscapephotography […]

[Original post on mastodon.thi.ng]
Photo of a glaciated mountain massif (Piz Cambrena) in a vast high alpine landscape. The two main branches of its glacier have largely retracted and only the higher up parts are now just feeding several waterfalls flowing through the exposed bedrock further below. Steep bare rock slopes, giving way to rolling meadows of brown dried grass near the pass. A sliver of the large mountain lake at the foot of the mountain is visible at the bottom of the image with a path leading around the lake. Pink/purple sunset sky.
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Randomness in Narrative Video Games: Aesthetics of Different Random Systems
https://azhdarchid.com/randomness-in-narrative-video-games-aesthetics-of-different-random-systems/

Some of these considerations & differences also apply to generative art/design and procedural content generation in […]
Original post on mastodon.thi.ng
mastodon.thi.ng
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Another 1-minute excerpt of an #umbra variation, one of my recent algorithmic/generative realtime animation art pieces, constantly evolving and exhibited exclusively on Layer.

(See above hashtag for other clips)

Made with ❤️ and my opensource […]

[Original post on mastodon.thi.ng]
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Just pushed an update for https://thi.ng/genart-api (v0.29.0) which now supports dynamic switching of time providers. This is useful for situations where you want to switch from realtime animation to offline-based timing, e.g. to export high-resolution image sequences and give the browser time […]
Original post on mastodon.thi.ng
mastodon.thi.ng
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
@samvarma Apparently so... Angeblich geht es immer noch, man muss nur oberhalb der Kuhalmen sein. Aber ich habe es bisher lieber doch noch nicht gewagt...

https://youtu.be/gy1_nO1wiBo?t=384
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
(One of the) best parts of hiking: Cooling down in ice cold clear water...

#footpathfriday #alps #mountains #creek #waterfall
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
New documentary on SRF about revisiting the event, place & people of Blatten, four months after the enormous glacier collapse and landslide destroying/burying that ancient village:

Bergsturz Blatten – Zurück im Katastrophengebiet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lorSUq1FdWk

#switzerland […]
Original post on mastodon.thi.ng
mastodon.thi.ng
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Been working on some additions/adjustments for #umbra, one of my recent algorithmic/generative art pieces, currently shown exclusively on Layer.

Here's a 3 minute segment (of an infinite realtime animation). Give it time to develop/change! Fullscreen playback probably best...

Made with […]
[Video] Original post on mastodon.thi.ng
mastodon.thi.ng
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
The RPI Zero-based OpenPrinter looks very promising (600dpi color inkjet):

https://www.crowdsupply.com/open-tools/open-printer

Also instant throwback to BERG's cute Little Printer (from 2012, much smaller and very different use cases):

https://nordprojects.co/projects/littleprinters/
Open Printer
Finally, an open hardware printer you can actually understand, repair, and upgrade
www.crowdsupply.com
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Not quite Canadian Shield, but close... and at much higher elevation (~2300m)

(Another impression from the same region from yesterday's pictures, see description there...)

#mountainmonday #landscapephotography #naturephotography #alps #mountains #bedrock #glacier #lake
A tundra-like scene of (a section of) some enormous sloped boulders, smoothed and scraped off by thousands of years of glacial movement, now slowly overgrown by beautiful dry, orange grasses and small trees (larches), which are also slowly taking on their autumn colors. The rocks have a pinkish brown color with yellow/green lichens growing in some regions. The background is a uniform green-gray color, i.e. the color of the glacier lake with its milky water and some very, very faint reflections.
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Arrived at the "office"... Working in/above the clouds today (at least so far...)

#morningwalk #outdoorcomputing
Photo of a garden table with laptop, camera, brezel and coffee (at a summit restaurant). Some tree tops behind the falloff and clouds behind that. Intermittently a few gaps of blue sky.
Reposted by Karsten Schmidt
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
Abstract Landscapes
(Bernina range, on the approach to Lago di Fellaria, Sep 2025)

Everything about this place is so special: the road to the trailhead (with 1700m elevation gain), the scale of the majestic ~4000er (meters) mountains with their glaciated […]

[Original post on mastodon.thi.ng]
Portrait photo of a high alpine glacial landscape. The higher up parts show a broken off glacier with several major waterfalls emerging from it, surrounded by large mountain peaks. A large, several hundred meter tall wall of redish bedrock is in front and in the midsection of the image, only a thin trickle of water flowing down the rocks. The bottom half of the image has a completely different character and colors and shows the lower part of the former glacier which had been a reservoir for the past 65+ years, but with its water level extremely low by now, again exposing the rock structures carved out by the glacier. Various shades of pink/orange and green/gray rocks, no vegetation (unlike some of the higher up parts). A more close up view of the same place with an even more abstract character, only show a small section of the reservoir zone at the bottom and focusing more on the higher up bedrock and glacier. A thin sliver of deep blue sky.