2005.03.27
Been working on a "art toy" version of that snark, boojum applet, where text is used as a stencil to see the image behind. Here's the latest version, currently at version "0.5". The java applet itself (what you click on) is largely complete, except for some work with fonts, but I haven't yet set up the infrastructure to let people upload their own images, so for now they're stuck with Bush waving a little flag. You can change the text though, along with a bunch of other settings.
Feedback welcome, especially on the interface. This is never going to be a super-serious tool, but I would like to make it so people might find it actually useful (because it's not that much fun as a toy). It still require some graphics knowledge to take full advantage of it, like making, cropping, and resizing screenshots for use elsewhere. I used a development version of the program for kisrael.com's new header image. Reaction has been mixed, since it's a little nifty (if "trying to hard" according to Ksenia) but might not go with the site's beloved stark look. So the new header might not last, but we'll see.
Also I'm open to suggestions for the name of the toy...internally it's still called "wordcut". I wasn't sure if that was very descriptive, so I also thought about "photoword" or "wordstencil". Then I remembered my old tradition of prefixing things I wrote with "k/", so maybe the current choice of "k/stencil" isn't too bad. If a bit egotistical. What do you think, go with the "k/" or something more universal and descriptive?
Car of the Moment
So Scion showed off a new concept car recently --
the "t2B", for "Tall Two-Box". I don't know how much of that is going into production, but it's interesting...it even has a video projector for the rear window. The looks are very distinctive, another "look at me" car like the xB. Autoblog already wrote up
R2-D2 versus the Scion t2B. Also, the banner on the side here is from
my entry to their
Show us your Scion for swag contest...I was a little shameless in my entry writeup, but I think it shows a lot more enthusiasm than the other posts so far.