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Filed under: Fun, Web services

ASCII-O-Matic: ASCIIfy your photos

ASCII-O-MaticASCII-O-Matic is a fun web toy from Typorganism that will turn any photo you upload into fab ASCII art. There are many other such web sites and programs, but ASCII-O-Matic wraps it in a nice Flash interface and gives you a few extra options. You can choose black and white or color, and if you don't want ASCII it can also render an image out of blocks. Uploading is a tad limited, allowing only JPEGs and requiring you to resize your images to 60x50 pixels before uploading, but once you've uploaded your image you can generate HTML for pasting into a web page.

[Via #!/usr/bin/girl]

Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, E-mail

Spam Art

spam artWe all hate opening our emails, only to find out we are lucky enough to receive specials on Viagra, enlargement pills and devices, and notes from someone in Nigeria looking to give us $1Million.

Well, Alex Dragulescu has created something awesome and beautiful from all those bothersome spam messages.

Alex has created a program that takes the ASCII values that are found in in the text of spam messages, and tells it to determine the attributes and qualities to create unique Spam Plants. Alex has also developed a program that accepts junk email, and turns it into 3D Spam Architecture models using various keywords, patterns, and rhythms found in the text. Unfortunately Alex is keeping this software for himself. However, you can purchase prints of his spam work.

[Via CNet]

Filed under: Fun, Web services, Google

ASCII Maps: Google Maps for the terminal

ASCII MapsOkay, the title of this post is a complete lie—you can't get Google Maps in a terminal, at least not yet, but ASCII Maps is a fun Google Maps hack that kinda feels like it. ASCII Maps replaces Google Maps' map and satellite imagery with colorful ASCII versions. Scrolling around is agonizingly slow on my machine and it's liable to hurt your eyes after not much use, but it has most of Google Map's features like searching and zooming. Sadly, there are not ASCII driving directions.

[Via Waxy.org]

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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