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 can preview some sample puzzles […]

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 longer available, nor relevant, […]

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 mention of π sends you […]

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 listed Beatles and […]

   New additions to my collection of useless but fun toys for your webcam include the amazing Kaleido Cam, and the uncanny Alien Cam. These are in addition to my already popular Instant Ascii Cam (see previous post), which has received quite a few visitors since I rolled it out this past weekend. The KaleidoCam […]

Tonight I’m working on a Flash-based web app that turns your webcam into an ascii cam. If you have a webcam (or a built-in webcam, as on a Mac Book pro), you can play with it here. Bear in mind I’ll be working on it over the weekend, and it may go loopy from time […]

I made this mosaic today. It’s Gene Simmons, made of kittens. The photos were recent additions to Flickr that had the tag “kittens”. Not all of them are actually of kittens. There’s a cool photo in the upper middle showing recent “top searches”, and a few burlesque dancers mixed in with the kitties. My friend […]

A few folks have asked if I was affected by yesterdays layoffs at Yahoo! The short answer is no but yes. While everyone can’t help but be affected in some way by layoffs, I was not actually laid off, nor was anyone I work with directly. I’m still slogging away, with far more work than […]

A few times each year – once or twice a semester at Art Center, I get to explain to the uninitiated what a “variable” really is. Not the mysterious x from high school algebra, whose contents are unknown, and which we must decipher — even though there is no tangible reward! No, not an annoying […]

If you’re interested in the puzzles on this website, and would like to learn more about what goes into making them, you may enjoy the article I wrote for this month’s Mung Being magazine, where I am the resident puzzle constructor. The article amounts to a FAQ, or IAQ (infrequently asked questions) for the puzzle […]