Hey!

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

Highlights

• A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates - Audio Edition
• feedsin.space, a service to manage RSS feeds for the fediverse.
• The Secret Broadcast, a (mostly) auto-generated podcast. It's basically a numbers station, but as a podcast. It reads encrypted messages as a sequence of letters, and it has some music and other things added too. If you want, you can submit a message, and it will be encrpyted and read in an episode.
• Before Dawn is 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 and administer botsin.space, a Mastodon server for 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.

Bots

I've made a lot of bots. My early bots were on Twitter, but now I mostly build them on Mastodon. 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!

• A system for randomly timed bot posts
• A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates - Audio Edition: An audio edition of a book that is one million numbers.
• feedsin.space -- RSS feeds on the fediverse
• How I maintain botsin.space
• SpaceJamCheck in the New York Times: I was interviewed in the NYT as part of an article about the Space Jam website and my Twitter bot @SpaceJamCheck.
• Emoji Fireplace app: I made an app version of my emoji yule log for Android devices.
• Audio Sweetener Bot: Here's a bot that posts audio clips from the BBC Sound Effects Archive.
• November Rain Bot: I made a bot that posts frames from the November Rain video. It'll only run for the month of November. It runs in rough order, so the bot starts at the start of the video, and it should end on the last frame.
• Tall Boy: I made a p5.js sketch that is a rendition of those inflatable dancers you see in front of stores and in other random places
• Pitchers and Catchers: I made a website to let you know when Spring Training starts
• The Secret Broadcast: The Secret Broadcast is a numbers station podcast. The content of the podcast is encrypted messages. You can submit a message and it will be read as an encrypted sequence of letters and numbers, and which can be decrypted with a key only available to you and anyone you share it with.
• Emily Dickinson's Herbarium: I made a bot that posts images from Emily Dickinson's collection of pressed flowers and botanical samples.
• moire: I made another screensaver on glitch before adding it to Before Dawn, it's a neat experiment with moire patterns and colors.
• 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.

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.