spot blog

Electric Sheep Linux Client Release: 2.7b9

See the previous post for how to install it. If you have subscribed to our PPA, then your client will be auto-updated. The changelog is below. The important addition is support for authentication. If you create an account on the new drupal and then enter the same information into the "electricsheep-preferences" dialog, you'll get better bandwidth.

change default nickname to empty string to protect user privacy, instead of broadcasting USER envar. add a button to the preferences dialog that tests the current network settings (including if the user/password account is valid). use 20th percentile instead of median for deletion limit, ie protect fewer sheep. remove cvs version strings. follow http redirections vi -L option to curl. enable basic authentication (the user/password refers to the drupal on the sheep server). put the client version into the URL for the help page.

You may respond on the forum.

FLAM3 2.7.15 released

Get it here. Should appear in the launchpad soon. Changelog:

Added new interpolation types 'old' and 'older', for use in recreating old animations. 'linear' mode now does not rotate padded xforms (results in prettier symmetric singularities). switched to using a 'padding' flag instead of a 'just initialized' flag; padding flag used for implementation of 'old' and 'older' types. interpolation_space now deprecated, instead use interpolation_type. flam3_align is now idempotent (multiple applications do not change the control points.) Default number of temporal samples bumped to 1000. Removed CVS headers from source code (now using SVN). Default interpolation mode now log. Removed 'move' and 'split' vars. changes to flam3-genome: sequence mode now returns linear interpolation mode for all control points except first/last of edges - these cps will use the original interpolation mode; inter and rotate modes will now return padded genomes for all control points, all with linear interpolation specified. instead of centering sometimes reframe by golden mean plus noise.

The Drop (Not Going)

Last night at 3am I left home on foot and walked South of Houston into the Lower East Side. I found the address, and stuffed an envelope with four freshly burned DVDs under the door. It barely fit. I made sure it was too far in to retrieve, then double-checked the number over the door, and assuring myself the building looked familiar (whew). My friend was sound asleep, upstairs, and would grab the goods at 7am, then board a plane for Burning Man, to deliver them to the Robot Heart bus. As I walked home I realized how precarious the whole plan was...

The plan is not to go myself, but once again to send some sheep as proxy. This year Robot Heart Camp, an offshoot of Disorient, is taking a bus with a sound system, an LED-illuminated heart sculpture, and a Jumbotron video wall. Look for the sheep on the wall, and please send me any pictures you get :)

Thanks to Mike "Crack" for taking the goods at the last minute, and Lewis, Geo and the rest of the group. I will miss you and all my friends.

Burn Bright! Safety Third!

SXSW Panels

I've always wanted to attend SXSW and this is shaping up to be the year I finally make it. Now I just need the final push: if I get on a panel to speak about the Electric Sheep then I can't miss it :) The panels are partly chosen by public vote, so please take a minute to vote for both of ours: one and two. Thanks!

Siggraph Pix

Last year it was the kiosk. This year it was the giant screens!

Biophilic Fractals and the Visual Journey of Organic Screen-savers

Taylor and Sprott, two of the luminaries of chaos theory have written a paper titled "Biophilic Fractals and the Visual Journey of Organic Screen-savers" where-in they ask:

does exposure to fractals have a positive impact on our mental and physical condition?...It may eventually be possible, nonetheless, to produce fractals images that are even more effective at stress-reduction than natural scenes....Using images to manipulate the public's emotions (even if in a positive manner) might set off alarms for some. Certainly, an Orwellian future where we all assemble to stare at a communal fractal for a strictly allotted period does not seem very appealing. ... Meanwhile, visually-creative screen-savers such as Electric Sheep are an obvious strategy for increasing people’s exposure to these beautiful and potentially stress-reducing fractals.

I am really interested in the psycho-physiological effects of the Electric Sheep and especially of the vastly improved version Dreams in High Fidelity. Can these effects be measured? I would love to know and I am looking for collaborators who can help answer these questions. Please contact me if you know someone who might fit the bill.

The paper appears in Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences 12, 117-129 (2008), and includes a collection of Sheep to be voted on my the readership, the winners of which will then appear on the covers of next year's journal. Thanks guys!

3LD video

Quicktime video documentation of the show at 3LD, shot by Iz.