3 ms·

Does anyone know of any similar ideas for an interactive animals/pets for your desktop? This is the best thing I could find so far to put on an extra monitor.

by proee 2y ago

Does anyone know of any similar ideas for an interactive animals/pets for your desktop? This is the best thing I could find so far to put on an extra monitor. Note you can click to interact with the penguins and also feed them. https://www.petpenguins.com/ https://www.petpenguins.com/

bazzargh 2y ago
Neko has been around for decades now (but was cuter I think back when the desktop resolution matched the cat) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software)
- reaperducer 2y ago
  Not quite the same thing, but it's at least a cat. And it's in the menu bar. https://kyome.io/runcat/index.html?lang=en https://kyome.io/runcat/index.html?lang=en
- rkowalick 2y ago
  This actually works quite well: https://github.com/mdonoughe/neko-mac/issues/5#issuecomment-1823257147 https://github.com/mdonoughe/neko-mac/issues/5#issuecomment-...
- lioeters 2y ago
  An article about Neko and historical archive: https://github.com/eliot-akira/neko https://github.com/eliot-akira/neko
amelius 2y ago
> Does anyone know of any similar ideas for an interactive animals/pets for your desktop? Maybe try Bonzi Buddy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  Trojanware aside, bonzibuddy was so much fun.
nxobject 2y ago
I’m genuinely interested to see whether we can throw a little ML at simulating dumb virtual desktop pets… we ought to have made some progress in the last two decades.
- proee 2y ago
  Agree. Remember those amazing fish screen savers back in the 90's. Those blew my mind. I have not seen any modern versions of that. Someone please take my money.
  - ideasphere 2y ago
    https://www.serenescreen.com/v2/ https://www.serenescreen.com/v2/ Jim Sachs’ Serene Screen is still going strong. I have it running on Apple Silicon, no problems.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  This might be how the Singularity comes about: Anthropic or OpenAI release a "Desktop companion" (a la "Clippy") ... (Which somewhere deep in the EULA grants then rights to crawl your hard drives to train their models ... ... after all, with the coming "data starvation" our PCs might be the last frontier? Insane amounts of (varied) data and some free, distributed compute. What's not to like, from their perspective? Edited: "CatGPT" will bring about the Singularity :)
coldcache 2y ago
Desktop goose [1] was mildly popular a few years ago [1] - https://samperson.itch.io/desktop-goose https://samperson.itch.io/desktop-goose
eieio 2y ago
A friend of mine made a little desktop pet for the last Ludum Dare (big game jam): https://jontopielski.itch.io/desktop-daemon https://jontopielski.itch.io/desktop-daemon Windows only though, so maybe not what you're looking for
seltzered_ 2y ago
On multiple platforms (Linux included) there was gdancer , a dancing visualizer plug-in for the xmms mp3 player: http://web.archive.org/web/20050101124624/http://www.figz.com/gdancer/themes.php http://web.archive.org/web/20050101124624/http://www.figz.co...

by proee 2y ago

bazzargh 2y ago

Neko has been around for decades now (but was cuter I think back when the desktop resolution matched the cat) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software)

reaperducer 2y ago
Not quite the same thing, but it's at least a cat. And it's in the menu bar. https://kyome.io/runcat/index.html?lang=en https://kyome.io/runcat/index.html?lang=en
rkowalick 2y ago
This actually works quite well: https://github.com/mdonoughe/neko-mac/issues/5#issuecomment-1823257147 https://github.com/mdonoughe/neko-mac/issues/5#issuecomment-...
lioeters 2y ago
An article about Neko and historical archive: https://github.com/eliot-akira/neko https://github.com/eliot-akira/neko

amelius 2y ago

> Does anyone know of any similar ideas for an interactive animals/pets for your desktop? Maybe try Bonzi Buddy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy

dyauspitr 2y ago
Trojanware aside, bonzibuddy was so much fun.

nxobject 2y ago

I’m genuinely interested to see whether we can throw a little ML at simulating dumb virtual desktop pets… we ought to have made some progress in the last two decades.

proee 2y ago
Agree. Remember those amazing fish screen savers back in the 90's. Those blew my mind. I have not seen any modern versions of that. Someone please take my money.
- ideasphere 2y ago
  https://www.serenescreen.com/v2/ https://www.serenescreen.com/v2/ Jim Sachs’ Serene Screen is still going strong. I have it running on Apple Silicon, no problems.
Bluestein 2y ago
This might be how the Singularity comes about: Anthropic or OpenAI release a "Desktop companion" (a la "Clippy") ... (Which somewhere deep in the EULA grants then rights to crawl your hard drives to train their models ... ... after all, with the coming "data starvation" our PCs might be the last frontier? Insane amounts of (varied) data and some free, distributed compute. What's not to like, from their perspective? Edited: "CatGPT" will bring about the Singularity :)

coldcache 2y ago

Desktop goose [1] was mildly popular a few years ago [1] - https://samperson.itch.io/desktop-goose https://samperson.itch.io/desktop-goose

eieio 2y ago

A friend of mine made a little desktop pet for the last Ludum Dare (big game jam): https://jontopielski.itch.io/desktop-daemon https://jontopielski.itch.io/desktop-daemon Windows only though, so maybe not what you're looking for

seltzered_ 2y ago

On multiple platforms (Linux included) there was gdancer , a dancing visualizer plug-in for the xmms mp3 player: http://web.archive.org/web/20050101124624/http://www.figz.com/gdancer/themes.php http://web.archive.org/web/20050101124624/http://www.figz.co...