OK, well, Flashbelt is done. (With the possible exception of the bar that people are going to tonight. We’ll see. It depends on what’s going on later.)
I was totally and completely blown away by the last presenter: Jared Tarbell‘s work is absolutely positively phenomenal. Words can’t really do it justice, and honestly, I don’t even think looking at the websites can do it justice. The art is good. Awesome even, but the way he creates it is what will totally blow your mind.
In the middle of the presentation, (as if, somehow, ridiculously, it wasn’t enough,) Jared gave away a few of his prints to audience members who answered various questions sprinkled he in. At some point he asked a question summing two three-digit numbers (assuming you knew the fibonacci sequence), and I wasn’t quick enough to be the first. At that point I resigned myself to not getting one of these amazing prints. But then he asked a logic question that I blurted out the answer to without thinking, and suddenly I was at the podium gratefully accepting this amazing piece of art! Highlight of the conference.
It gets better. After his presentation was a “mixer” where I stick around and talked to a bunch of people I’d met throughout the week. Eventually I was standing near Jared and thanked him again for the print. He then asked me if I’d fixed my actionscript bug. I was taken aback for a minute, not knowing what he was talking about, and then realized that he’d been sitting next to me in another panel on Monday, and had been looking over my shoulder while I was debugging the latest version of Go Tetris!. I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea who it was sitting next to me at the time, and I’m pretty sure I even gave him a card.
I’m totally starstruck right now.
Wow. I was looking at some of the stuff on complexification.net. It looked familiar to me. Sure enough, some of his stuff has been ported to XScreensaver and is already in regular rotation on my computer. :)
hmm. I wonder if I have his stuff on my computer at work also…