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New server for krazydad

Wednesday, August 29th, 2007

Today I’ve moved Krazydad from it’s old hosting provider, TotalChoice hosting, to DreamHost. The move has been pretty painless, but if you spot anything broken, let me know. I’ve been using DreamHost for my other website, Coverpop, for a while now, and I like it much better. For about one quarter the price of what […]

Crop circles: real ones

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

Kool Scatcat sent me this photo of actual crop circles. Apparently, in parts of the US, crops are actually grown in circles to optimize irrigation. There is a single sprinkler in the center of each one. UPDATE: Craig Kaplan wrote me the following note Jim, I wanted to pass on a couple of notes regarding […]

Crop circles: Collections

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

There are lots of websites that contain collections of crop circles, and I’ve been using a handful of them. Crop Circle Connector is a community-oriented site which contains an individual page or two for most recent circles. Visitors to the site can file “field reports”, so the site is full of anecdotal information. These anecdotes […]

Crop circles: An introduction

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

If you read this blog regularly, you know that a lot of the things I make involve circles. My fascination with circles and radial symmetry has extended to kaleidoscopes, fibonacci spirals, music, card tricks, spinning wheels of lunch, and so on. You may also know that I am prone to develop short term obsessions, which […]

A Plague of Viral Apps

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

It’s interesting to search for facebook groups that contain the title “app”. What you’ll find (especially after page 1) is page after page of predominantly negative group names, such as “Against any more damn Facebook apps!!!” “All the apps ruined facebook” “All The Facebook Apps. Are Gay” “All these “apps” make facebook feel like myspace…” […]

Fun with Facebook & Yahoo!

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

My latest project for my employer (Yahoo! Music) was pleasantly unexpected on a number of levels. It’s an application for Facebook, called Yahoo! Music Videos. If you’re on Facebook, check it out!. If you’re not on Facebook, check out Facebook! It’s kind of like MySpace, but not as ugly. UPDATE: The first two reviews for […]

Utility is overrated.

Sunday, June 24th, 2007

There are few questions that suck the joy out of a room faster than this one: “What good is it?” As the creator of innumerable software toys that serve no useful function, I find this type of question, and its close relatives (which include “what did you make that for?”, “how are you gonna monetize […]

Sound and Light with jbum

Thursday, May 24th, 2007

Things I talked about at last night’s Creative Talk at Yahoo! in Santa Monica, and some relevant links. A magic trick: http://www.krazydad.com/mindpower/ Can software make you cry? My search for meaning in computer-generated art. Randomness http://krazydad.com/bestiary/bestiary_random_pixels.html https://blog.krazydad.com/2005/05/04/three-johns-on-randomness/ Information Theory and Perception https://blog.krazydad.com/2005/05/19/entropy-motion-graphics/ https://blog.krazydad.com/2005/08/01/information-theory-and-art/ Kaleidoscopes https://blog.krazydad.com/2007/04/16/kaleidoscope-842/ http://krazydad.com/windows_freebies.php Complexity without randomness https://blog.krazydad.com/2007/04/02/fibonacci-logos/ Computer generated circular art http://www.flickr.com/photos/krazydad/sets/95767/ […]

Presto!

Sunday, May 13th, 2007

From my post on Geek Dad: Doing magic with your kids is one of the more excellent things you can do as a father. For one thing, kids are a truly appreciative audience, and if you’re an amateur like me, probably the only truly appreciative audience you will ever actually get! Also, kids can be […]

See KrazyDad @ Yahoo!, Santa Monica

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

I’ll be giving a free lecture on the “Creative Use of Flash” at Yahoo! in Santa Monica, on Wednesday, May 23rd. You can get the full event details here. This is the first installment of a “Creative Talks” lecture series that is being put together by Yahoo! creatives Jeff Hurlow and Jens Jonason. I haven’t […]