Sunday, August 8, 2010

Geek Writes Software, Part II

It's happened to everyone. You're sitting around, minding your own business, when suddenly you feel like drawing yourself a fancy design or two. But, alas, you find yourself with no paper, no pencil, no protractor, and--worst of all--no artistic talent whatsoever.

Fortunately, now you can relax, with Russ C's online Hoot-Nanny simulator. This program lets you--by setting just a few simple parameters--create an endless number of elaborate and mysterious patterns, all with that N-sided radial symmetry that you've found so elusive in the past. And the best part is, you get to pick the value of N yourself!

Implemented in JavaScript using the new HTML5 <canvas> tag, the Hoot-Nanny simulator works great in Firefox and Chrome. Unfortunately, it's so slow in Internet Explorer that users thereof will very quickly get bored and go back to playing FreeCell. Please submit your bug reports, lavish praise, and suggestions for future revisions as comments to this article.

3 comments:

  1. There is yet another Magic Designer Emulator software online. Check out this link:

    http://akatz712.freehostia.com/

    It has both a downloadable and installable Windows program, and a Browser version.

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  2. Not only are you my "new best friend", with the program such as this, you are also "MY HERO". I am playing with this, and it reminds me of my son's game of SPIROGRAPH (nearly 35 years ago) This is the high tech version of that. Keep your mind athinkin, we all benefit from it. Phyllis

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