STRUCTURE SYNTH BASICS - HOW TO USE YOUR BRAIN

I enjoy fiddling with Structure Synth as a mental exercise.  I noticed in some of the examples a certain lack of elegance, and in the course of figuring out how things work I decided to clean up something I thought was executed in a shockingly crude way - building a hollow box. 

Here is the script, showing how to do the same thing in a more elegant way.  This can be applied to almost anything in life.  You can hammer away at it or you can stop and think.

// Two ways to build a hollow box:

// 1: brute force - define and locate

// each member

rule frame {

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x 5 z 5 } box

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x 5 z -5 } box

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x -5 z 5 } box

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x -5 z -5 } box

{ s 1 0.1 0.1 y 5 z 5 } box

{ s 1 0.1 0.1 y 5 z -5 } box

{ s 1 0.1 0.1 y -5 z 5 } box

{ s 1 0.1 0.1 y -5 z -5 } box

{ s 0.1 0.1 1 y 5 x 5 } box

{ s 0.1 0.1 1 y 5 x -5 } box

{ s 0.1 0.1 1 y -5 x 5 } box

{ s 0.1 0.1 1 y -5 x -5 } box

}

{ y 2 } frame

// 2: Use the program:

// create two frame members

rule mem {

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x 5 z 5 } box

{ s 0.1 1.1 0.1 x -5 z 5 } box

}

// make them into a square

rule sq
{

mem

{ rz 90 } mem

}

// make two squares and two sets

//of frame members into a hollow box

rule frame2
{

sq

{ z 1 } sq

{ rx 90 y 1} mem

{ rx -90 y -1} mem

}

// Here they are in a row.

mem

{x 2 } sq

{ x 4 } frame2

ONE UP ON IMDB

Maybe you are old enough, or have watched enough old TV shows, to know who Gale Gordon was.  He was best known for his roles as eternally flustered and flabbergasted authority figures opposite Lucille Ball on The Lucy Show and Eve Arden on Our Miss Brooks.  He also played Dennis the Menace's foil Mister Wilson for the final two seasons of the show, and had recurring roles in Make Room for Daddy and a number of other programs.  During the '30s and '40s he worked primarily in radio drama which is unfortunately not as definitively chronicled as video.  IMDb lists his first film appearance as an uncredited role as radio announce in the 1933 comedy Elmer the Great.  Yet here he is in a momentary appearance with Rochelle Hudson in Is My Face Red? (1932).  I may not be the first person to notice this but I am the first to make a big deal about what a hot-shot he is for doing so.  Take that, Internet Movie Database, you don't know everything.

STRUCTURE SYNTH BASICS 2

Here is a very simple thing that took me a while to figure out.  It makes a difference what order things are in, in a single set of brackets.  The script on the left changes the  size, then rotates it.  The one on the right rotates it and then changes the size. If I understand it correctly, it seems to apply changes in brackets from right to left. 

The complete script for this image (without the text, which I added in Gimp ) is:

{ rz 45 s 1 0.2 1 } box

 { x 2 s 1 0.2 1 rz 45 } box