Don Hopkins' Gallery
My name is
Don Hopkins,
and I'm a hacker.
But not the evil kind that breaks into computers,
steals credit card numbers,
patents software,
or works for the NSA.
I'm into user interface and graphics programming, research and design.
For fun I create and play with interactive graphical toys.
In real life, I'm working at
Maxis
on a game designed by
Will Wright.
- Playing with real time
Cellular Automata
is as much fun as putting
grapes,
marshmellow peeps,
peppermint patties,
bars of soap,
and alluminum foil
in the microwave,
but much easier to clean up,
and don't smell bad!
- PseudoScientific Visualization
is a whimsical way of looking at deep and complex networks, like the map of the
ArpaNET.
Pseudo-Science meets Scientific Visualization:
get your free psychic reading now!
- I performed at the
Empowered
show at CHI'90, demonstrating
pie menus
and
pseudoscientific visualization
at breakneck speed!
- The
ScriptX DreamScape Demo
is a live performance I gave at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference,
that didn't crash! (If it did, I would have had to do push-ups on stage.)
- Narnia
is an Actualized Fantasy Screen Waster,
not to be confused with a virtual reality screen saver.
- I ported
SimCity
to
Unix
twice: first the
HyperLook
version on
NeWS,
then the multi player version on
X-Windows.
It won some awards, and toured with the
Electric Carnival
at Lollapalooza '94.
- The X11 SimCity Demo
is a good example of
pie menus
in action.
- Abbe Don helped me video tape this
HyperLook SimCity Demo
at the Exploratorium, that also shows many bizarre special effects you can get
by crossing
Cellular Automata
and PostScript!
- Bounce
is a real time visual programming language that I worked on for Levity
and Interval. It was originally called Body Electric, and was
designed by Chuck Blanchard at VPL for programming virtual reality.
- The Unix-Haters Handbook
chapter about the
X-Windows Disaster
was my attempt writing computer comedy.
- The NeWS Toolkit (TNT)
is an Open Look toolkit, that I helped develop at Sun. I used it to create
Pizzatool,
that lets you graphically order a pizza via fax!
- Levi Kruger
is a very talented artist, whose psychedellic artwork appears
on some of my
web pages!