phrebh

Programs :: Screen Savers

These are some Windows screensavers that I’ve created over the years for no apparent reason other than I could. They’re pretty basic, so don’t expect a lot of setting options…or any, really.

Blue Screen of Death

I wrote this screensaver as a continuation of a series of computer-related jokes we used to play on each other at work. The message is a real Windows error.

Lants

This screensaver is based off a piece of code I wrote in QBasic after reading an article on Chaos Theory. In the 1980’s, Chris Langton created a series of rules to look into purpose. The rules govern the behavior of an ant as it moves through life. The interesting thing is that no matter where the ant starts or what it encounters, it will always go back to variations of the same pattern.

The rules are:

• Go forward one pixel.
• If you are on a light pixel, change it to dark and turn right.
• If you are on a dark pixel, change it to light and turn left.

• Repeat.

Mathtri

This screensaver is also based upon Chaos Theory. It shows Serpinski’s Triangle in a rotating color pallette. There are a couple of ways to produce the pattern, but the neatest is the one used here. Draw the points of a triangle on a piece of paper and label them “1,2”, “3,4”, and “5,6”, respectively. Arbitrarily put the pen on the paper, inside the triangle (it will work outside, too). Roll a six-sided die. Put a new dot at the midpoint between your dot and the corresponding point of the triangle. Roll the die again and put a dot at the midpoint between your new dot and the corresponding point of the triangle. Do this a few thousand time and you’ll get the pattern.