
Electric Sheep on Ubuntu Linux 17.10 - blaze33
https://blog.openbloc.fr/compiling-electric-sheep-on-ubuntu-linux-17-10/
======
DonHopkins
I have spent so many hours staring at Electric Sheep, thinking and wondering
about how it works, that I finally looked it up, and found the papers about
it!

It took less time to read the papers than it took to stare at the screen all
day tripping out and wondering, but I like to do both.

The Flame Algorithm

Flames are algorithmically generated images and animations. The software was
originally written in 1992 and released as open source, aka free software.
Over the years it has been greatly expanded, and is now widely used to create
art and special effects. The shape and color of each image is specified by a
long string of numbers - a genetic code of sorts.

[http://flam3.com/](http://flam3.com/)

The Fractal Flame Algorithm

[http://flam3.com/flame.pdf](http://flam3.com/flame.pdf)

Evolution and Collective Intelligence of the Electric Sheep

[http://draves.org/aoae07/draves-aoae07.pdf](http://draves.org/aoae07/draves-
aoae07.pdf)

The Electric Sheep and their Dreams in High Fidelity

[http://draves.org/npar06/npar06draves.pdf](http://draves.org/npar06/npar06draves.pdf)

infinite evolving crowdsourced artwork

[https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep](https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep)

Copyright Spotworks LLC GPL2 Licensed see
[https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep/blob/master/cli...](https://github.com/scottdraves/electricsheep/blob/master/client_generic/COPYING)

2015.05 moved from code.google.com repo 2011.01.30 based on revision 1546 on
sf.net

The Electric Sheep is a cyborg mind. It harnesses the collective intelligence
of 450,000 computers and people to create abstract art with mathematics and
Darwinian evolution. The result is seamless, organic, and infinite. See also
[http://electricsheep.org](http://electricsheep.org) and
[http://scottdraves.com](http://scottdraves.com) .

The rendering engine is a separate project at
[https://github.com/scottdraves/flam3](https://github.com/scottdraves/flam3)

------
w-ll
Can the author of Milkdrop please open source or release another version
purely as a a/visualizer.

~~~
azeirah
Milkdrop _is_ open-source :)

[http://www.geisswerks.com/about_milkdrop.html](http://www.geisswerks.com/about_milkdrop.html)

------
yellowapple
Electric Sheep ships with Slackware, which I've always found to be a really
cool little feature. Certainly one less thing to install :)

~~~
morganvachon
Slackware is perhaps the most underrated current Linux distro. Not much has
changed on the surface in the past decade or more, yet underneath it's a
thoroughly modern system that is just fine for daily use.

I find it amusing that Electric Sheep must be compiled by the user for Ubuntu
(the "user friendly" Linux) yet is one-click-easy to install on Windows and
macOS, and is installed by default on Slackware.

------
CaliforniaKarl
I just learned about checkinstall. That’s really cool!

~~~
TheArcane
Me too! Is this how deb packages are usually made?

~~~
_joel
No, generally there is a debian directory with things like rules, control
file, copyright etc.

A .deb is basically a tarball with some manifest information. You can build
'non-standard' packages in this way (also see FPM[1] - which will do this and
more rpm etc). However if you ever want to upstream a package, there are
guidelines that debian produce around this.

[1] [https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm](https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm)

------
spot
the main website:
[https://gold.electricsheep.org/](https://gold.electricsheep.org/) (there are
installers for mac and windows)

------
PascLeRasc
I'm gonna highjack this thread to ask if anyone has any recommendations for
scifi books to read after DADOES and Neuromancer. I sped-read them both after
seeing the new Blade Runner and absolutely loving it and both of those books,
though PKD's writing is a little 'different'.

~~~
letlambda
If you want to delve into PKD's... different thinking. A Scanner Darkly, and
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich.

If you want another sci-fi detective noir, Altered Carbon fits the bill.

~~~
robocat
There are some PKD stories that have fallen into public domain - read them
here:

[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/33399?sort_order=rele...](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/33399?sort_order=release_date)

(PS: does 33399 have some relevance to PKD? Paranoia seems relevant!)

~~~
robin_reala
Standard Ebooks has a nice PD edition of those:
[https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/philip-k-dick/short-
fictio...](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/philip-k-dick/short-fiction)

------
IpV8
Man thats a throwback!

~~~
spot
what's new is the subscription version in high definition. it's 10x better
than it was...

~~~
DonHopkins
No, it's 1.0e+10 better! ;)

At one point I though you'd completely changed the algorithm and put in a new
rendering engine or something, because it started doing stuff like I'd never
seen it do anything like before.

But it kept on doing even more stuff like I'd never seen it do anything like
before, so I asked you about it, and you said no you hadn't rewritten it, and
what it looks like is out of your hands and no longer under your control at
this point.

~~~
spot
thanks don!

------
encryptThrow32
If you want make Fractal Flames (which is the algorithm that makes Electric
Sheep videos) try apophysis7x

This is a windows tool that works sufficiently well with wine.
[https://sourceforge.net/projects/apophysis7x/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/apophysis7x/)

------
mmjaa
I love it, but I hate the registration options and I do not want to pay $$ for
this.

Maybe I'd be happier if there were a 'mine bitcoin' option instead?

------
leggomylibro
I like the name, but...do the computers _care_ about the sheep?

------
chris_wot
I needed to run automake --install-missing

------
flukus
So it's a screensaver, with voting?

~~~
DonHopkins
And sheep shagging!

~~~
chris_wot
Are you the same Don Hopkins who ported SimCity?

~~~
DonHopkins
Yep. Spot and I hung out together at CMU, when he was working with Andy Witkin
doing amazing graphics stuff, and I was working with Brad Myers doing Lisp
user interface stuff. That was when I finally bit the bullet and learned
X-Windows so I could hate it better, and started porting SimCity from NeWS to
TCL/Tk. (The unix-haters X-Windows chapter was the result of that.)

[https://www.cmu.edu/homepage/creativity/2012/winter/spot-
on....](https://www.cmu.edu/homepage/creativity/2012/winter/spot-on.shtml)

[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aw/people.html](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aw/people.html)

[http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/69](http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/69)

[http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-
haters/x-windows/disast...](http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-
haters/x-windows/disaster.html)

