Don Hopkins' Gallery

My name is Don Hopkins, and I'm a hacker. But not the evil kind that breaks into computers, steals credit card numbers, patents software, or works for the NSA. I'm into user interface and graphics programming, research and design. For fun I create and play with interactive graphical toys. In real life, I'm working at Maxis on a game designed by Will Wright.

Playing with real time Cellular Automata is as much fun as putting grapes, marshmellow peeps, peppermint patties, bars of soap, and alluminum foil in the microwave, but much easier to clean up, and don't smell bad!
PseudoScientific Visualization is a whimsical way of looking at deep and complex networks, like the map of the ArpaNET. Pseudo-Science meets Scientific Visualization: get your free psychic reading now!
I performed at the Empowered show at CHI'90, demonstrating pie menus and pseudoscientific visualization at breakneck speed!
The ScriptX DreamScape Demo is a live performance I gave at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, that didn't crash! (If it did, I would have had to do push-ups on stage.)
Narnia is an Actualized Fantasy Screen Waster, not to be confused with a virtual reality screen saver.
I ported SimCity to Unix twice: first the HyperLook version on NeWS, then the multi player version on X-Windows. It won some awards, and toured with the Electric Carnival at Lollapalooza '94.
The X11 SimCity Demo is a good example of pie menus in action.
Abbe Don helped me video tape this HyperLook SimCity Demo at the Exploratorium, that also shows many bizarre special effects you can get by crossing Cellular Automata and PostScript!
Bounce is a real time visual programming language that I worked on for Levity and Interval. It was originally called Body Electric, and was designed by Chuck Blanchard at VPL for programming virtual reality.
The Unix-Haters Handbook chapter about the X-Windows Disaster was my attempt writing computer comedy.
The NeWS Toolkit (TNT) is an Open Look toolkit, that I helped develop at Sun. I used it to create Pizzatool, that lets you graphically order a pizza via fax!
Levi Kruger is a very talented artist, whose psychedellic artwork appears on some of my web pages!