Fun with Open Source – Electric Sheep

Once again, I am absolutely amazed at the amount of open source software available. Since most of my experience with open source has been directly related to fulfilling a need rather than just searching for and trying different things at leisure, I decided to see where a search like that might lead. Of course, the search result hits were pages long, but I stuck to the first page. One of the coolest pages I found was Datamation’s Open Source Software List: The UltimateList. It is an incredible 10 pages long and boasts an amazing 1,345 items. Each item on the list provides a brief description of the software with a link to its’ home-page. There are recommendations for everything that anyone, including business and enterprise, could possibly be looking for in an open source software solution.

Since fun was a requirement of this excursion, I chose a screensaver called Electric Sheep, which are not actual sheep shapes. Not so simply put, Electric Sheep is a self-perpetuating system for the production of algorithmic art (winner of the Lumen Prize).

From the website: Electric Sheep is a collaborative abstract artwork founded by Scott Draves. It's run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on almost anything. When these computers "sleep", the Electric Sheep comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as "sheep".

Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience.

The name is also a very cute pun, and one that I’m not going to explain, as it’s much more fun for you to “get it” yourself LOL. It was late at night when I chose this program, and it took me a moment for the “proverbial light-bulb” to come on. However, as with most “proverbial light bulbs” 99% of the enjoyment of that moment of understanding comes from the actual enlightenment (pardon this second pun, I couldn’t resist) rather than having someone explain it for you.

Electric Sheep is an organic genetic “Darwin” type algorithm system that creates images with mutations, cross-overs, and of course, crowd source code submissions (constantly evolving since 1999). This is an awesome example of what happens when “open source software” TRULY goes VIRAL.

Downloading and installing Electric Sheep was simple and quick. Electric Sheep is available for almost every platform, including, Mac, Windows, Linux, and as an app for iPad, Apple TV, and Android devices. As of this morning I haven’t had any sheep appear. I believe I may need to tweak my PC’s sleep or hibernate settings. According to the fact files, the screen saver needs to download the sheep into the cache file from the server. As I am a total proponent of both free and open source software, I decided to join the Gold membership which, like most open source software is a very small donation ($2 per month) that I am happy to make. I am excited about seeing this screensaver in action and contributing my votes…..  more will be revealed.