Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 305 posts

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#191

Post by InDubioProRubio »

herghost wrote: post #183
hnlmorg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a few programs like this. The earliest one I recall was Neko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software) But I think there were sheep, dancing babies (ugh!!), something like Bonzi Buddy rings a bell (I once had to clean something named that off a colleague’s workstation when he reported it thinking it was malware). There was also toys like this on Linux and Unix too. Most famously xeyes. I miss the play…

There was also an application that took a screenshot of your current desktop and then gave you a bunch of weapons - bats, guns, bombs - and allowed you to smash it to pieces. That was nice sometimes.

Desktop Toys

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#192

Post by mixtureoftakes »

DustinBrett wrote: post #83
amethyst wrote: post #24

I still miss my desktop sheep every once in a while: https://github.com/Adrianotiger/desktopPet?tab=readme-ov-fil... Edit: the best part was running it a couple dozen times to get an entire flock walking, falling, and rolling all over your desktop, and watching everything grind to halt under CPU strain!

I added this to my website a while ago. You can open a terminal and summon as many as your computer can handle with something like `sheep 100`. https://dustinbrett.com/

very cool website! I did sheep 4000 and my pc immediately exploded

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#193

Post by Reason077 »

> "It's inspired by Nate Heagy's widget for the OS X Dashboard"

Bring back the Dashboard, Apple! The original Dashboard was dropped because of it's shaky technology foundations, but the UX was fantastic and much better than the widgets buried in the notification centre or cluttering the desktop that we have today.

Now that we have modern native Widgets on macOS X, they need a place where they can thrive, and look cool, and be quickly accessible. Dashboard!

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#194

Post by Bluestein »

ville wrote: post #147
perryizgr8 wrote: post #120

Reminds me of a toy that would let you break/destroy the screen with a variety of tools like hammer, drill, bomb, etc.

Desktop Toys! I remember playing with this on Windows 95, but it turns out it was made for Windows 3.1 initially. YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesM1fygKDs Internet archive: https://archive.org/details/desktoptoys_201911

TIL PowerToys was a 3.1 thing. Many thanks.-

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#195

Post by [deleted] »

pram wrote: post #61
alsetmusic wrote: post #56

I remember Docklings, a feature of early OSX that let devs put mini-apps in the Dock. I had one showing uptime, undoubtedly just piping the output from the CLI command. That was one of the early steps toward my interest in the CLI, which still wouldn’t be realized for a handful of years. This is a great throwback with more capability than those had. Very cool.

That came from NextStep. They’re still in Windowmaker if you want a nostalgia trip.

[deleted]

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#196

Post by Bluestein »

pram wrote: post #61
alsetmusic wrote: post #56

I remember Docklings, a feature of early OSX that let devs put mini-apps in the Dock. I had one showing uptime, undoubtedly just piping the output from the CLI command. That was one of the early steps toward my interest in the CLI, which still wouldn’t be realized for a handful of years. This is a great throwback with more capability than those had. Very cool.

That came from NextStep. They’re still in Windowmaker if you want a nostalgia trip.

NeXT (the whole proposition) was way ahead of its time ...

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#197

Post by moconnor »

hnlmorg wrote: post #117
pomian wrote: post #107

This reminds me of a Lara Croft desktop(?) Screensaver? She climbed onto the window's edges -that were open on your windows screen, rolled, jumped, etc. Sometimes made a comment about you not having cleaned up your desktop. It was a small executable, than ran with or without sound. It wasn't very random, but it made for an interactive mind distraction on a rough day. She also walked across the bottom of the screen, o…

There was a few programs like this. The earliest one I recall was Neko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software) But I think there were sheep, dancing babies (ugh!!), something like Bonzi Buddy rings a bell (I once had to clean something named that off a colleague’s workstation when he reported it thinking it was malware). There was also toys like this on Linux and Unix too. Most famously xeyes. I miss the play…

XRoach was a favourite to run on someone who left their machine unlocked (or their XServer display unprotected) - it makes cockroaches that hide underneath windows, so you only see them when you move or close a window. Then they all scuttled around and hid under other ones!

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#198

Post by eitland »

albert_e wrote: post #123

I want widgets on Windows desktop as well. I want clock, calendar, notes, CPU and system stats, pull out or slide out menus with shortcuts, quirky ones like this one. Instead what I have is ads. And copilot everywhere. With touch screen laptops today you can do so much more. My levono also folds 360 and let's me use it as a full touch screen desktop. There is so much potential for productivity hacks and interactive U…

There was a very good one, I think back in 2005 - 2007 as part of Google Desktop / Google Desktop Search.

That was back when Google was a respectable company that in addition to the mandatory EULA had a separate notice that informed very very cleary, something like:

  READ THIS CAREFULLY

  THIS IS NOT THE NORMAL YADDA YADDA
... and then a relatively description of what they were going to to and not.

It had an amazing RSS feed reader widget that would automagically subscribe to feeds from pages on sites I visited and present a relevant selection of links.

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#199

Post by davecahill »

moconnor wrote: post #197
hnlmorg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a few programs like this. The earliest one I recall was Neko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software) But I think there were sheep, dancing babies (ugh!!), something like Bonzi Buddy rings a bell (I once had to clean something named that off a colleague’s workstation when he reported it thinking it was malware). There was also toys like this on Linux and Unix too. Most famously xeyes. I miss the play…

XRoach was a favourite to run on someone who left their machine unlocked (or their XServer display unprotected) - it makes cockroaches that hide underneath windows, so you only see them when you move or close a window. Then they all scuttled around and hid under other ones!

Reminds me of: https://infosec.exchange/@paco/110772422266480371

Re: Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

#200

Post by hnlmorg »

winternewt wrote: post #173
hnlmorg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a few programs like this. The earliest one I recall was Neko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software) But I think there were sheep, dancing babies (ugh!!), something like Bonzi Buddy rings a bell (I once had to clean something named that off a colleague’s workstation when he reported it thinking it was malware). There was also toys like this on Linux and Unix too. Most famously xeyes. I miss the play…

I ran something called Dogz [1] which was a pretty advanced dog simulator. You could train the dog to perform tricks or punish it if it did something you didn't like. They claimed to use AI and it worked very well although I don't know how much much was placebo. In any case, I remember it as being well ahead of its time. [1] https://youtu.be/8eqLzcvVpiM

I had both Catz and Dogz but I don’t recall them ever interacting with the desktop.

Fun toy though. Kind of like a tamagotchi.

Post reply on HN