colr.org

This is scrumptious: whizbang color thingy from colr.org. Choose an image you like from the web, copy the address into the "image url" box then go down and click "random from image" and you will get a color palette. When you get one you like, tag it with any combination of words or phrases. You can see my palettes by entering "taz" into the "Tags:" box and clicking "go".

You can add tags to other people's palettes, as well, and also tag the colors themselves. Greatest little color toy I've seen in ages; go have fun (and if you make some palettes, why not add a comment here to tell us what tags to looks for!)

Posted by taz on May 6, 2005 at 04:56 AM in Color, Color toys, Web tools, Web Toys | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack

"Daughter of Bodyborders", and more!

For any of you who were following the CSS experiment in trying to use a body border as a background for a sidebar, headsfromspace has done the legwork on this (bless his polyvalved little alien heart!), and, as I feared, there's not much to be done about the problem in IE5, but he's come up with an alternative using a wrapper, and it's just as easy and simple as the original idea. Have a look at "Daughter of Bodyborders". It looks like this should work just about everywhere.

I've been far too into the blue/brown/grey/green muted thing lately, I think, so I wanted to come up with something pretty and lighthearted and a little exotic. I'm very happy with the results of my efforts in the set "Sea of Stories". I think these are pretty damn charming, and what's cute is that when you stack the first and third tiles, you get a little scalloped edge, as you can see in this example box.

I also need to mention that Anne has tipped me off to a great little pattern toy called Image Styles which you can download and try out. I've been having a party on my screen playing with it, though I've only scratched the surface of possibilities, I think. You can generate backgrounds with all sorts of effects with this, and you can also load up an existing image or pattern and go to work mutating that, with lots of fun results. It would have taken me quite some time to figure that out, though, so I'll quote Anne on how to do this:

"Start with a background tile of any size. Open a new image in the program the exact size of the background tile. Next scroll down the "effects" window on the right and click "image file" click image file again at the top of the new box and load in the background tile you're using. Next, click "add" at the bottom, then scroll down the effects list to "kaleidiscope" and click that. Now play with the sliding bars. As you make a change you can see what it would look like on a web page say, by hitting preview. To get out of preview click the esc (escape) key. Isn't it cool?"

The answer is "Yes!". Way cool.

Everybody loves creepy dolls. It's just an immutable rule of the Internet. We love creepy dolls and kittens. So go play with Scotland's Odd Wee Babydolls Who Just Aren't Quite Right from Shane. Silly, silly boy.

Posted by taz on August 25, 2004 at 03:10 AM in CSS, My Layouts, Patterns, Silly, Web Toys | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Late to the Party

I have a couple of links today that I suppose everyone in the world has seen except for me: The terribly, terribly wonderful Fly Guy (from the same lovely genius who gave us Tile Machine), and the wonderfully, wonderfully terrible My Cat Hates You. If you've seen these (and you probably have) - sorry! (but isn't this a nice chance to visit again?). If you haven't, you can send your thanks directly to me in the form of frankincense and myrrh, because I've just about run out. Especially the myrrh; running really low.

And the new kids on the block today are a set of fun little flippy patterns called 52 Pickup.

Posted by taz on June 24, 2004 at 05:23 AM in Projects, Silly, Web Toys | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

It's "About" Time

Surprise! I finally filled in the information on my "about" page - I just pretty much went with the TypePad template on this, because I figured if I waited to design my own page it would be at least three more months before I ever got around to it. Actually, it's kind of a shame that I went ahead and bit the bullet on this, because I had this nice image all set up to put there. I've been trying to find the site where I made that, but in the meantime, you can have fun with Ryland Sanders' Church Sign Generator, or the Caution Sign Generator, the Prison Road Sign Generator, or the Fortune Cookie Fortune Generator (yum. here's mine), as well as many more from Spare Some Change, a site serving as a resource search engine and portal for the homeless.

Posted by taz on June 10, 2004 at 05:49 AM in Silly, Site News, Web Toys | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Kao-ani, anyone?

Did you know about Kao-Ani, or little Japanese animated avatars, sometimes called "blobs"? I really didn't until I read this Metafilter post (every letter in the first comment leads to a different kao-ani site). There's a nice explanation of the basic idea of kao-ani here, and the Metafilter post has a link to a kao-ani maker. You can find another nice kao-ani creator at Blinkiemakers (click "enter", then view fifth link: IE only).

Posted by taz on June 10, 2004 at 12:00 AM in Meme, Silly, Web Toys | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack