How many times have you had to select some text and then choose a new font for it over and over (and over, and over) until you decided which one looked best?
Well, there IS a better way.
FlippingTypical.com is a simple web-app that shows whatever you type in every font on your system, at the same time!
Goodbye tedium; hello FlippingTypical!
I had more fonts on my system than this, of course, but I think it’s enough to give the idea.
Well, this is quite cool, but there’s not really a whole lot to say. It’s art, right, made on a typewriter (by artist Keira Rathbone in this case)!
(Okay, I’ll add one thing - it looks HARD!)
This is my favorite piece shown in the article - the topic matter just "WORKS, man"!
Here’s a zoom-out view showing the whole thing. I’m diggin’ it!
Here’s a simpler piece (and I don’t mean simpler to do - those circles must be MURDER! I wonder if she’s done a typewriter…
FreeApps is a definite boon for installing a clean PC, but it can also come in handy any time you need several of the more popular, free apps quickly (like to have a friend them).
FreeApps lists many free apps in numerous categories. Choose the ones you want, click the DOWNLOAD button, and download a single installer for all of your selections!
That’s all there is too it!
This is kind of an overview of the way it works.
There are lots of apps to choose from, and the list is growing…
Thare also lots of categories - 15 of them as of this writing!
Crayola; how many people can even think of the name without practically smelling the waxy scent and remembering the joy of being able to select from as many as 64 or 240(!) different colors?
Here’s a slideshow showing the making of Crayola Crayons - I love this stuff!
I’m totally tempted by this to buy like a billion boxes of crayons and beat the record!
Speaking of that distinct "Crayola" scent - does focusing on this picture make you almost smell it?
From looking at the slideshow, this guy appears to make all of the red crayons, from start to finish!
- Original Story & Slideshow on CNet.com -
If you like fractals, you’ll recognize a 2D representation of the famous Mandelbrot set - recognized as the most complex mathematical object in existence (though generated by shockingly simplistic formulas).
Translating this object into 3D has been elusive for thirty years, but looks like it’s been accomplished - at least visually, and the results are awesome!
There’s even a program to let you explore this fascinating object in the privacy of your own PC!
This is a view of the entire object - and is available in a HUGE 4500 x 4500 pixel rendering!
Here’s a zoom-in to one area of the fractal - being a fractal, of course the zooming can continue inward forever…
Someone took a slightly different approach and backlit this image that shows an area with an eerie backlight.
- Original Article on The Frictional Games blog -
- Link to MathFuncRender to explore the object yourself -
Got something to say to a lot of people, but need to keep it under wraps from everyone else? Sweet, I want to know too!
Er… I mean, then NORBT might be a cool tool to consider.
Norbt lets you create a completely encrypted web-page where you specify a question of your choosing and an answer to match. The only people who can read the page are those who know the exact password you specified (the people at Norbt say that even they can’t get to it unless you give them the password)!
If you want to see how it works, I provided a simple example page to to try out. If you can’t answer the question, you’re not welcome here.
Of course we’re KIDDING on not being welcome here, but if you can’t answer the question, you’re truly missing out on one of the finer things IN Life, the Universe, and Everything.
The Norbt page you create has reminders of it’s reference number and a button to manage (edit, etc) the details (which takes an unrelated password of your choosing).
They even give you a QR Code for the Norbt (which, as my QR is a little rusty and I’m not able to read on site, I suspect is just a repeat of the URL as it is translated beneath the code).
- Norbt Main Site -
( to create your own Norbt pages )
I’m not sure why, but I always like these little webapps that let you build a police profile, avatar, or, in this case, a face that looks like a Picasso.
It’s out of character but I actually named this post after the app (I was in a weird mood - maybe it was the Picasso effect). Anyway, the webapp site is called MrPicassoHead, and it’s just what it sounds like - a Picassofied Mr. Potato Head.
Hey! I bet there’s a site for that too!
You start with a blank canvas and then add eyes, nose, etc from nine choices each.
Sometimes the choices are a little abstract, but I think that’s to be expected given the app’s name!
Some of the eyes are a bit wiggy, but they’re also the most recognizibly Picasso-esque feature in the program.
And here, my dear readers, is my final masterpiece!
Anybody know where I can sell a Picasso-style piece for a few million in cash?
This site is supposed to be a Twitter tool, but I find it fun as a stand-alone toy.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the computer translation experiment that translated "The Spirit is Willing, but the Flesh is Weak" into Russian and back and ended up with "The Vodka is Desirable, but the Meat is Rotten". That’s the idea here - translate things across numerous languages and back again to see what you get.
You could even use it to build email sig lines.
Or you could use it to encode your Twitter phrases.
You can choose which languages to translate through, and they’re used in random order
Sometimes you really have to wonder how a translation came about!
Roger HQ, that’s a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…
Well, I’m not sure how it translated, but I have to agree with the final conclusion! (Note, by the way, that because of the random order of the translations, just re-translating can give completely different results)
Kwout (presumably pronounced "Quote") is a website that takes imagemap captures (text or anything else) from other websites - and it does it in a really cool way!
First you specify the page you want to "quote" and you get an image of that page and you select which part of the page you want to quote.
Then you can choose to email the generated imagemap, Twitter it, post it to your site, etc. You even get options for some nifty visual improvements!
The interface is simple, just enter the address to the page you want to "quote"
Kwout will go grab an image of the page so you can select the section of interest (fortunately, you can just drag that message window out of the way)
Next you’re presented with options for your imagemap, like shadows, background color, border, etc
Then you get your imagemap, just like you specified!
Text-Image is an old-school type converter from the days before computers had graphics.
The app has some settings you can tweak to improve results, and the demos below only used 130 characters across, but you can go up to 500. Overall, I’m pretty impressed with the results!
If you have a pic that could use some old-school pizazz, here’s one way to do it!
To demo the webapp, I used an image of the 86Words news guy…
Because of the format of the 86Words site, I used a screnshoot of the result, but you can grab it in ascii or even grab the HTML that draws it
(Click to enlarge)
As a final test, here’s a picture I took of a balloon my wife and I took a ride on last year
(Click to enlarge)
