Re: XScreensaver is still a thing

Adam from spikydinosaur mentioned XScreensaver.

I normally don’t use screensavers since they invented screens that can turn themselves off (I don’t wanna power cycle them too much but it’s a good safety net for when I forget it on) but I remember screensavers fondly.

The built in screen savers in Windows 3.11 like Starfield Simulation, and at school we had the Flying Toasters collection. Then I learned to make some of my own, like random walks and tesselations, and then I had the collection of Star Wars screen savers (not something I would’ve bought deliberately but it was a bonus disc on a package of Scumm classic games like Fate of Atlantis and Sam&Max [and DOTT which I already had]) and they were almost all good. My fave, but a narrow lead since the overall field was so great, was the rebel alliance clock (the one they use when they’re afraid the Death Star is gonna burninate Yavin IV).

When I moved to XFree86 (later known as Xorg) we of course used Jamie’s screensaver collection. I liked a lot of them, like the ones where it moves around pieces of your screen and what not, and when the Matrix movie came out the Matrix style “digital rain” was fun to look at. At this point I was no longer using screensavers, in favor of dpms, but it was sometimes fun to just start one to look at for a while.

Ans then it happened (and now we’re getting to the point of this li’l memory line rant). Without any fanfare or announcement, the XScreensaver collection one day silently included the greatest piece of art of all time.

I’m talking, of course, of popsquares.

Mondrian immediately proceeded to eat his heart out. Neoplasticism perfected. Temporal persistence of vision ultimately realized. So hypnotic. So relaxing. So beautiful. So awesome. I’d spend hours just looking at popsquares. I still sometimes (last Saturday, nine days ago, most recently) take a look at it, if only for a few minutes these days.

Because I know that I can fall in completely if I let myself go.

Digital Rain

My one page comic about neoplasticism, from the page 100 project