Hey!

Hey, I'm Colin Mitchell. I build art and other things on the internet.

Highlights

• My newest project is Before Dawn, a screensaver library built on web technology. You can write your own screensaver using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. It runs on Windows, OSX, and maybe even Linux -- Please try it out! If you write a screensaver, please submit a pull request to add it to the main collection. I also wrote a little about how I ended up writing a screensaver tool.
• I am exploring the world of screensavers and writing about it.
• I maintain chatterbot, a ruby library for building Twitter bots.
• I built gopherpedia, a gopher interface to Wikipedia. Yes, gopher gopherpedia.com really works, but there is also a web-based interface.
• I build a lot of random websites, including a random name generator (with API), a website to remind you how old you are, and a recycling schedule reminder for my town.

Twitter Bots

I make a lot of Twitter bots. Some of my favorites are @botgle, @wayback_exe, and @EarthRoverBot. You can read about all of my bots in detail in my list of projects, or check out this list on Twitter.

Activity

Here's some recent projects of mine. You can see a more complete list on my projects page. You can be *instantly notified* of any new project I post here by subscribing to this RSS feed. Please subscribe!

• Before Dawn v0.9.25: Before Dawn has been updated with a couple new features and new screensavers. In particular, you can specify that you only want to run screensavers on a single monitor -- which is a handy way to keep your CPU load lower.
• p5.js fullscreen starter on glitch: I made a p5.js starter project on glitch with a full screen toggle. Then I used that project to write a version of the old mystify screensaver.
• Before Dawn v0.9.14: I rewrote Before Dawn to use Vue.js, fixed a pile of bugs, and improved perfomance.
• Nice Gradients: I made a screensaver that slowly updates color gradients on your screen. It's part of Before Dawn but I also wanted to put a copy of it on my website.
• Before Dawn v0.9.11: I continue to plug away at Before Dawn. It is getting very stable and usuable now. I've added a bunch of screensavers and have plans to add even more.
• Editorialize Chrome Plugin: I made a simple Chrome plugin which replaces any text on a NY Times editorial with poop emoji. The source code is on github
• Lonely Computer: I wrote about a screensaver that reacts to noise.
• Defrag: I wrote a little bit about a screensaver that defragments your screen.
• Atari Attract Mode: I added an Atari Attract Mode to Before Dawn. It cycles the screen through low luminosity colors.
• @IndyDaySpeech: I made a bot that tweets the speech from Independence Day every 4th of July. The source code is available on github
• @eliza on mastodon: I made another bot for Mastodon, this one is a chatbot version of ELIZA
• @loveletter on mastodon: I've been exploring Mastodon as a social network so naturally I made a bot for it. I'm running a bot-friendly instance at botsin.space too.
• The Journey of EarthRoverBot: A bit about the travels of EarthRoverBot
• Before Dawn: I made a screensaver tool called Before Dawn! I wrote a little about screensavers too.
• Trump Administration Twitter Archives: I wrote some code to generate archives of realDonaldTrump tweets, along with several Trump admin accounts. The archive should be constantly updated any time someone tweets. I made this before realizing that the trump twitter archive has made its data available on github but it might still be handy.

Code

Many of my projects have their source code available on my github page.

Writing

I don't blog much anymore, but you can catch up on my old posts any time you like. Some of my favorite posts include The Public Art of Amazon Reviews, a list of the most common place names in the United States and a post about gopher and my early experiences on the internet.

Contact

Feel free to email me at colin @ this domain dot com or message me on Twitter (my DMs are open)