
Inspirograph - WestCoastJustin
http://nathanfriend.io/inspirograph/
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NIL8
Cool! Nice work.

Here's a first-hand user's experience: It took me a bit to figure out how to
make it work. I thought I should click the pen hole and press my mouse key as
I move it around. Maybe a simple how-to description to get me started would be
helpful. Of course, I could just play with it a little more :)

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eps
Argh... It doesn't understand touch interface. That would've been a match made
in heaven.

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neil_s
Works with my stylus on a Surface Pro. Feels way more natural than doing it
with a mouse since I'm literally moving a pen in circles.

~~~
scott_karana
Stylus works as mouse, not touch, as far as web events are concerned. (IIRC)

So this won't work well on an iPad...

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pierrec
" _Inspirograph isn 't mobile friendly... yet! A beautiful, ad-free
Inspirograph app is in the works._"

Wonder if that will be free as well. How would one go about transforming a
(desktop) web app such as this one into an app for each mobile platform?

Edit: and here's the source:

[https://github.com/nfriend/inspirograph](https://github.com/nfriend/inspirograph)

Looks like a bit of framework bloat (in my opinion), this is really the kind
of thing that could cleanly be done with minimal frameworks and libraries. But
the source still looks nice (and there's even a windows screensaver version??)

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nilkn
This is something of a tangent, but this is kind of a cool visualization of
what is sometimes called a "spinorial" object -- an object which can undergo a
full rotation and yet not come back to its original state. Here the number of
rotations necessary to restore the original state depends on the number of
teeth on the gears.

A more classic spinorial object is a belt attached to, say, a book, or
apparently your own arm holding up an oriented plate:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_trick](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_trick)

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romsson
Great piece of work! Had lots of fun with it.. Reminds me some Twitter
visualizations we did a while ago
[http://romain.vuillemot.net/publications/visap13-spirograph-...](http://romain.vuillemot.net/publications/visap13-spirograph-
designs-ambient-display-tweets/) (hopefully Spirographs drawing are fully
automated in this case ;)

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baliex
This is my childhood, and the gallery is great!

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fredleblanc
Exactly this. It's such a simple concept (spirographs themselves), but using
this site put me into an almost trance-like calm. And clicking buttons to
choose the "plastic wheels" was even easier than finding them in the box.

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ipsin
I understand that it probably doesn't work with the intended aesthetic, but I
kept looking for a "make it go" button, because using a nub-mouse to wind the
gear around repeatedly is hard.

~~~
egeozcan
you can hold the left/right arrow keys

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feld
Instantly reminded me of using my brother's Spirograph when I was a kid, so
you definitely did this well :-)

[http://i.imgur.com/ARokLzv.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ARokLzv.jpg)

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yogiHacks
I've always loved that you can get such profound geometry out of spinographs:
flowers of life, toruses, and what look like pentagonal solar-magnetic
bands... a reality hack to be sure.

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theophrastus
This really is impressively done. (yet) liberated from the constrains of real
plastic begs elements of special significance. For instance, where's the
möbius gear?

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AriinPHD
I like the fact that while the site isn't mobile compatible, they actually
took the time to identify mobile visitors and give them a friendly warning
about it :)

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wtetzner
Click an drag isn't working for me in Firefox or Chrome. The arrow keys work
though. Am I doing something wrong?

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mhb
How can I get the moving gear to be on the outside of the fixed rings (the two
that have inside and outside teeth)?

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tempodox
That's a nice application of epicycloid graphs. Every programmer should have
her own implementation of it :)

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thomasfromcdnjs
Reminded me of school...

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sdoering
There goes my productivity. Way to cool...

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ramgorur
great work! reminds me of my childhood, thanks!

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bengali3
this is very nicely done

