I continue to be impressed with ArtRage, the free painting program from Ambient Design Ltd. This is my latest creation. It’s a Modigliani copy (this time no tracing). The original painting is appropriately titled “Girl with Brown Hair.” As you can tell… I’m not a painter, but the point is that the software is good, fun and easy to use.
These are linked to everywhere already, but since I think they show a possible trend in future software/AI, here they are. Smart Sites. They aren’t amazing, but they have open ended input and try to react no matter what you type. It’s not a new concept, but with more powerful computers and people with more time, I think they’ll become more popular:
1. The Subservient Chicken – Sponsored by Burger King this is an odd chicken that does “stuff.” You can tell him to do pretty much anything.
2. Let them sing it for you – Type in the lyrics and have famous people sing it back to you.
Right now, it’s only two. I’m sure there are plenty of others, if you know of them, feel free to post them in the comments.
[update] corrected URL on the Subservient Chicken
I have a question. If OS X is Unix-like, why does it have to be restarted almost every time I do a software update?
I have a Linux server (also Unix-like) that has been up for hundreds of days at a time without having to be restarted for fairly major updates including updating PHP, Apache, mySQL, the hostname, perl and dozens of other software packages.
What is it about OS X that requires it to be restarted for updates?
That’s right and class is in session… well, almost. I’ve begun preparation and will soon commence teaching Dreamweaver MX 2004 classes all day, one day a week, three weeks of the month every other month.
Prepare to be illuminated as I log my first experience as an ‘official’ teacher.
Just to prove that my my entire world is not things digital, check out the review I did of the Insect Skateboads Dragonfly on Silverfish Longboarding. 
Looking for a quick way to lose all your Firefox bookmarks, saved passwords, history and preferences? Just download a nightly build and install it without backing everything up first. *Poof* You’re starting afresh. I did it today–I should have known better and backed up my profile folder, but now that everything’s gone, it’s actually kind of nice starting over with a clean browser. If only I could do the same with email…
On another note… are you looking for another way to disconnect yourself from the real world (see yesterday’s article)? If so, check out ArtRage. It’s a free progam for Windows that comes closer to emulating real-world painting than anything else I’ve seen. This is an image I painted of my wife, Jenny, using the trace feature–it’s only part cheating 🙂
My job is in computer graphics, design and also involves some programming. For the past couple years, there’s been a recurring theme to conversations about what I do which has gradually grown to become something that really bothers me.
Basically it comes down to this–what will I have to show for my work 20 or 30 years down the road? It’s pretty safe to say that none of the websites I’ve created will be online anymore, it’s doubtful if the CD-ROM based training will exist or even function on future computers, the community of almost 1000 people I?ve brought together will probably be gone (though hopefully many of the friendships will remain) and most of the other projects I have worked on will be entirely irrelevant since they all deal heavily with very ephemeral ideas and products.
It could be argued that the type of work I do is the building blocks of the Internet (in whatever form it ends up being) of the future, and that that is a tangible enough result of my work. Really though, the Internet itself is such a big intangible that I don’t count it as something I?ll be able to look back on and feel like it?s something I accomplished.
I?d like to be able to physically touch something?hold in my hand and say ?I made this.? I want to be able to have something to hand down to my kids from when I was younger. I don?t feel the need to change history or to alter the course of science, but I do feel the need to get my hands dirty?make something, have something to show for all the thousands of hours I spend trying to make a living.
Where else will you find at least 8 thrift stores within a 4 mile radius? How about 20 quick cash stores? Newport News, Virginia. The one and only. I love this town…
I’m currently trying to set up a Flash Socket Server so I can experiment with some more interactive, live updating applications. I’ve found two free XML socket servers so far – Enhydra (a general purpose, open source socket server written in Java) and Oregano (an xml socket server geared specifically towards Flash, also in Java and open source) and I’ve also found this XML resource for general XML / Flash questions.
The journey has just begun. If you have examples of Flash apps using an XML socket server or resources, I’d be interested…