See Spot and his electric sheep

Spot Draves' presentation of his electric sheep was one of the best presentations I attended at last February's O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Electric Sheep is a screen saver that uses a distributed computing model (a la SETI@home) to create and render new "sheep."

When the screen-saver is activated, the screen goes black and an animated 'sheep' appears. Behind the scenes, the screen-saver contacts a server and joins the parallel computation of new sheep.

Every fifteen minutes 24/7 a new sheep is born and distributed to all clients for display. Each sheep is an animated fractal flame.

The sheep are amazingly beautiful, and hearing Spot speak about his work is great. Lucky for you, if you're in NYC tonight you can experience it yourself. Spot will be doing his presentation at the dorkbot-nyc gathering. Also there will be a presentation on "Gameboy Hacks" at the same meeting! It's a geek's delight! Wednesday, May 5, 7pm at Location One in SoHo (NYC).