Electric Sheep
What the hell is an electric sheep? In short it is software for some really slick screensavers.
In their words
“Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver run by thousands of people all over the world. It can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers “sleep”, the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as “sheep”.”
Now before you stop reading this thinking that it is just another crappy screensaver take a look at some of these screenshots. These pictures don’t really do it justice, but they give you an idea.
You can view video samples at there website here
So now to get started. Head over to http://www.electricsheep.org/index.cgi?&menu=download and download the correct program.
Now if you set it as your screensaver you wont see any cool effects right off the bat. You could sit there and wait for them to download, or you could download a group to start off.
Head on over to http://sheepserver.dreamhosters.com/megapacks/ to download a starter pack. After you download one of these, unzip it to the correct install directory which by default is
Windows: “c:\windows\system32\electricsheep-cache\mpeg”
Mac OS X: “~/Library/Application Support/ElectricSheep”
Linux: “~/.sheep”
You can also view all the ones you have downloaded here as well as remove any you don’t like. What?! No I dont think you will need to be doing that.
While the screensaver is running, press up or down and a little sheep appears. This little sheep is a voting system. Pressing up sends a vote for yes, and down for no. So if you see any you really like or don’t like vote them.
For more information check out their main website at http://electricsheep.org/