Comments on: Subservient Blips

By: Justin Blanton | Twittervision screensaver for Mac OS X

Justin Blanton | Twittervision screensaver for Mac OS X — Sun, 20 May 2007 04:21:20 +0000

[...] screensaver for Mac OS X. This may actually replace Jalkut’s Subservient Blips on my machine (at least for a short while; don’t hate me Dan) and temporarily temper my [...]

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 23:51:14 +0000

It’s ages since I did anything with screensavers, pre-NSUserDefaults days at least!
Because of this my config sheet doesn’t ‘remember’ it’s settings because I was using NSUserDefaults whereas screensavers apparently use ScreenSaverDefaults (thanks to CocoaDevCentral where a quick Google led me: http://www.cocoadevcentral.com/articles/000088.php)

Anyway, I’ve updated the project - the same download link above (http://www.fatbinary.com/SubservientBlips.zip) now gives you the ammended version!
Oh, the ammended project now has brighter colored blips! (Sorry! I liked them lighter! Maybe ‘blip darkness/lightness’ should be a setting too!)

Cheers
Ian

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 17:28:37 +0000

Cool Ian, I will have to check out your changes. I lost steam before I could get to any kind of configuration panel. Maybe I should make a public repository for this thing :)

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 12:05:40 +0000

Great fun!

I’ve added a Configure sheet so you can change the background color and toggle “Simulate Bug 1″ mode.
I’ve also added a debug executable to the project - download Saver Lab from here:
http://www.dozingcatsoftware.com/SaverLab/SaverLab173.zip
Pop it in your Applications folder and XCode should be able to launch it when you hit Debug.
Place a symlink in the ScreenSavers folder to your debug build and away you go, full debugging of the screensaver in a window!

You can get my additions here:
http://www.fatbinary.com/SubservientBlips.zip

Sorry about the sloppy code - I’m doing this in a coffee break at work ;)

Thanks again for the fun code everyone
Ian

By: dvb

dvb — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 23:27:45 +0000

Or, positively: “…I’d have the ability to … modify the colors of the cheese version.”

And that’s how it starts, my friend.

By: Simone Manganelli

Simone Manganelli — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:51:14 +0000

Lol, I would make my own version of the screensaver but I kind of doubt I’d have the ability to do anything beyond modify the colors of the cheese version. :P

– Simone

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:29:36 +0000

Hmm - I like gray so much I’ve updated the binary download to use it. I think it will be more universally appealing than the purple. No offense, David :) The gray really lets the colors punch out.

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:10:38 +0000

I just tried changing the background to gray and I quite like the look of it..

http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/images/DVBScreen6.png

By: Niels

Niels — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:07:32 +0000

Very spiffy screensaver. It definitely has a spacey sort of feel to it. Reminds me somewhat of the subtle and deceptively simple usage of lines and simple shapes in the game Homeworld. It would be nice to have some configuration options for colors and the like.

Great work, hope to see more :)

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 20:49:39 +0000

And Simon - as to the difference of opinion about the aesthetics - how about making your own version with the source code :)

I do think it would be cool to parameterize some of the details in a screen saver configuration panel.