Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?

Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by simonsarris on Sunday October 20, 2024 @12:40PM (#41896595)

I like inserting art, like the header to https://simonsarris.com

A village pops up. There is no point to it. You can click to make more houses. You can right-click to drag things around. When I touch it again I think I'll add a sun and moon that track the time of day for wherever the user is located. Actually the footer has art too, each page has a semi-randomly assigned illustration from public-domain (old) art that I've found. Like drawings from James McNeill Whistler, for instance. I use his illustrations in 'useful' websites too.

Actually, I experimented with the sun/moon a few years ago, in this version: https://simonsarris.github.io/simeville/

If you left-click drag the sun downwards, you'll see the moon come up. That one is open source, but the code is quite slapdash compared to the new one. Also you have to click ITS TIME TO BUILD to get the buildings.

In general I think websites could be a lot more pretty (gorgeous even), silly, interesting, and a lot less corporate chic than they currently are.

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by sshine on Sunday October 20, 2024 @01:45PM (#41897108)

I like having this kind of animation on my homepage, too.

Currently I just have an animated GIF background, but I've had some animated ASCII art in the past.

I'm currently working on animating a fractal drawn with HTML Canvas.

Your houses and pencil style are very cute, I feel inspired to make something similar.

I'd like if clicking in the same place would grow whatever's there.

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by gazook89 on Tuesday October 22, 2024 @09:22PM (#41920663)

For graphics, check out KM Alexander

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by yurishimo on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @05:41AM (#41923413)

Im totally using some of these on my next personal site redesign! The charm is fantastic and cozy <3

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by Halfwhit on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @06:13AM (#41923556)

I really went down the rabbit hole reading the history of the map brushes, thanks for sharing!

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by laksmanv on Tuesday October 22, 2024 @03:59PM (#41918082)

I have to agree, I really miss the 90's when websites had more of a fun artistic creative and personality feel than templated. I see the use for both, but I miss it :)

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by elevatedastalt on Tuesday October 22, 2024 @09:27PM (#41920706)

If the moon is rising when the sun sets, it will be a full moon. But your graphic shows a partial phase :)

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by dotancohen on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @07:40AM (#41923933)

On Earth, with a single Sun.

But apparently this planet has some very strong radiation protection, possibly synthetic, that blocks out the strong ultraviolet light from their second Sun. That ultraviolet is reflected back in the visible spectrum from the surface of their moon though - thus giving the appearance of a crescent during the entire cycle. The "dark side" is still lit, just lit less.

That was fun ))

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by abc-1 on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @02:41AM (#41922445)

Beautiful personal site!

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by amunozo on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @03:57AM (#41922838)

Your webpage is gorgeous, congrats!

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by BearGrass on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @05:13AM (#41923268)

Your website is very cute. I live on a certain floor of a building, and although the content of the site has no meaning to me, I kept looking at it for a long time, as if I were reading a novel.

Thank you for sharing.

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by Uptrenda on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @06:33AM (#41923636)

I like this a lot. Beautiful, creative, really quite charming.

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by edding4500 on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @07:41AM (#41923943)

I love the page. I find it very inspiring :)

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by propagate97 on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @12:38PM (#41926720)

I like it, and I agree with you. Websites follow some simple design rules, some from typesetting, some new especially for the Web. Not least because of the behaviour of base components and the availability of styling libraries that keep their own smell around no matter what one does.

I like to draw on my websites too. I write a gpu-rendered background for basically any website I make for fun.

https://gtblank.org

https://ungut.at

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by atmosx on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @02:24PM (#41927883)

Wow awesome! Reminded me of Cucinelli's AI website: https://www.brunellocucinelli.ai/ which is one of the best one I've seen. It's dedicated to Mr Cucinelli's life and beliefs. The aesthetics are similar.

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Re:Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've... by johtso on Thursday October 24, 2024 @06:34PM (#41940535)

Cute! I wonder how hard it would be, rather than having the houses "bounce" up, to make some kind of CSS animation that would look a bit like they were being sketched, some kind of gradual reveal..

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