http://www.krazydad.com/blog Interactive art, experimental software toys, screensavers and games by Jim Bumgardner. Thu, 08 May 2008 21:37:01 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Spinning Oracle is a magic trick derived from my Wheel of Lunch project that wlil give you about 60 seconds of amusement. The effectiveness of magic is greatly reduced when tricks are performed more than once -- so try to resist the temptation to view the trick twice. Instead, ... http://www.krazydad.com/blog/2008/05/08/the-spinning-oracle/ You may notice in the blog articles below, a little "W" icon next to some of the Wikipedia links, and a little film-strip icon next to some YouTube links. Those are placed by Apture, a blog-annotation service I'm beta-testing that allows you to preview that content without leaving the ... http://www.krazydad.com/blog/2008/05/06/apture-feedback-goes-here/ The Computer History Museum in San Francisco has some very cool video of a pristine reproduction of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 in operation, which you can see on their website. Although Babbage never completed one of these machines, former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold has had one built for his ... http://www.krazydad.com/blog/2008/05/02/babbages-difference-engine-no-2/ Grand Theft Auto IV, released today, is being advertised with an interesting campaign that seems to be using mostly very large surfaces, such as the sides of buildings and the backgrounds of popular websites. I couldn't help but notice the huge image they used to take over the background on the ... http://www.krazydad.com/blog/2008/04/29/gta-iv-acquires-all-remaining-real-estate-before-acquiring-all-remaining-dollars/ Bebe Barron is no longer with us. “Bebe was the last of the pioneering composers of classical studio electronic music. She was a close friend, an enthusiastic colleague, and a most gracious lady. ” writes composer and teacher Barry Schrader, to his mailing list of electro-acoustic music fans. ... http://www.krazydad.com/blog/2008/04/23/bebe-barron-1925-2008/ I make these things all the time, but don't know what to do with them.... Click here... put on some headphones, and press the 'full screen' button for a little trance... http://www.krazydad.com/blog/2008/04/08/mandala-of-the-day/ I'm working on a set of Slitherlink puzzles based on the Islamic-inspired tiling shown here, from Ensor Holiday's book "Altair Design". The pattern contains tiles with 4,5,6,7 and 8 sides, which makes the puzzle a little more interesting than my previous Slitherlinks, which only use tiles with 4 sides. You ... http://www.krazydad.com/blog/2008/03/28/altair-slitherlinks/ I am sometimes asked by my art college students for a good book to introduce them to programming, that explains the basic concepts (such as functions and variables) and that is written for creative people, rather than computer science majors. Unfortunately, the book that worked so well for me is no ... http://www.krazydad.com/blog/2008/03/27/want-to-make-code-art-heres-your-book/ This is my attempt to make some eye candy roughly in the style of James Whitney's wonderful 1966 movie, Lapis, which can occasionally be spotted on Youtube. If you're interested in making stuff like this, just remember, it all starts with π. If you're a mathophobe, and even the barest ... http://www.krazydad.com/blog/2008/03/20/happy-belated-pi-day/ If you have a myspace account, you'll want to check out the app I've been working on this week, Y! Music Videos. This OpenSocial app displays a list of music videos, which are selected based on the information you have put in your myspace profile (specifically, your "favorite music"). So if you've ... http://www.krazydad.com/blog/2008/03/13/y-music-videos-for-myspace/