Electric sheep
Thanks to a link on 2lmc spool, I installed the truly wonderful Electric Sheep screensaver. In fact, it’s a rather superior species of screen saver, in which your own computer becomes part of a huge network of interconnected machines collaboratively creating and rendering lovely fractal-like, abstract, moving images, which constantly shift and morph into one another. These images are called sheep. What’s more, if you like one of the images you see you can vote for it by pressing the up arrow. The votes are then used as part of a weighting process in a genetic algorithm to breed more sheep. Popular sheep live longer (and presumably reproduce more), and so the sheep evolve into ever more beautiful forms.
The still images on the site really don’t do it justice, so it’s worth trying it out for yourself. However, you do need a pretty decent network connection, and you have to be patient while waiting for the first one to appear. Then you’ll be sitting in front of the screen for hours, wide-eyed and saying, “Oh, man—-look at all the pretty patterns and colours. Those electric sheep are really hoopy froods.”
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I've used various electric sheep images for my desktop wallpaper for a long time.----- Ohh this is new. And I particularly like your closing argument.
Reminds me of how I used to sit for HOURS and watch the Geiss screensaver morph and meld and swirl around my screen. Hypnotic stuff.
by Gordon @ 26/08/2005 7:09 am • Permalink •
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I used to be obsessed with watching the SETI screensaver chug away. Then I realised how geeky that made me look.
So I stopped talking about it. Damnit.
by Ben @ 26/08/2005 10:08 am • Permalink •
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Hehe, 'hoopy frood'. Adams references always make me giggle.
I had been to the 'Electric Sheep' website before, and never really paid any attention to what it was all about (I'm probably ADD). Now that I understand it, tho, I'll be downloading it and running it on the Powerbook for sure.
by bitweever @ 26/08/2005 4:08 pm • Permalink •
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Oh dear!
by Jonathan Briggs @ 26/08/2005 6:09 pm • Permalink •
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That's stonking. I've already put it on my work PC - and I've left it online over the weekend to pick up as much stuff as possible.
Very, very sexy...
by Lyle @ 27/08/2005 3:08 pm • Permalink •
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All: Once you've installed it, you'll be hooked. I don't normally use a screen saver because however pretty it is (like Flurry on Mac OS X), it's basically the same thing over and over again. But Electric Sheep is constantly changing, and---as Lyle said---very, very sexy.
by bsag @ 27/08/2005 3:09 pm • Permalink •
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I don't want to come across all holier-than-thou, because what anyone does with their redundant CPU cycles is their own business, so I'll just mention Grid.org and be on my way.
by David @ 28/08/2005 11:09 am • Permalink •
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