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March 11, 2011 3:38 PM

Play Katamari Damacy with any website.

I'd copy the javascript code into hyperlink for easy bookmarking, but metafilter seems to strip out javascript.

posted by empath (44 comments total)

Doesn't seem to work for me w/ Firefox 4.0 RC1/Win7.
posted by reptile at 3:41 PM on March 11, 2011

Might be bad timing, considering what you're likely to find on the front page of many websites today.
posted by saturday_morning at 3:42 PM on March 11, 2011 [12 favorites]

This is not working for me. I tried pasting it into the location bar after the web address, and tried it instead of the web address. What am I doing wrong?
posted by Jon_Evil at 3:42 PM on March 11, 2011

Oh wow, it even has the music!
posted by Memo at 3:45 PM on March 11, 2011

This is probably the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Thank you, empath, for understanding me so well.
posted by negative1 at 3:55 PM on March 11, 2011

very cool! who made this?
posted by sarastro at 3:55 PM on March 11, 2011

Could we perhaps get a bit of customer support here? I got a little ball and music, but had no idea how to roll the thing. No amount of clicking and keyboard mashing could elicit a response.
posted by bicyclefish at 3:56 PM on March 11, 2011

Right click the mouse to move the ball towards the cursor. Move the cursor to move where the ball is going toward.
posted by deezil at 3:58 PM on March 11, 2011

Ah, right-click, thank-you. My bad.

Who wants a copy of today's New York Times in rolled-up ball format?
posted by bicyclefish at 4:02 PM on March 11, 2011

As long as it's not like a rolled up newspaper, and you don't hit my like a bad puppy with it, sure.
posted by deezil at 4:04 PM on March 11, 2011

Yeah it's not working for me on Mac/Firefox. It sort of starts to do something on Chrome but never really quite gets there.
posted by danny the boy at 4:10 PM on March 11, 2011

It works with Mac/Safari, although no music.

Amusing for sure!
posted by hippybear at 4:16 PM on March 11, 2011

Awesome. Does it pick up images on any sites? I can only get it to collect words and buttons. (If it gets buttons, I assume it can get images, if the site doesn't hide them in css references, etc.)

Ah. I was able to get some of the ad images off Yahoo.com. Still playing ...
posted by mrgrimm at 4:17 PM on March 11, 2011

It picked up the images on Consumerist.com. None of the header, none of the flash elements, but all the text and all the images aside from that.
posted by hippybear at 4:21 PM on March 11, 2011

Doesn't seem to work in Safari.

Is the "location bar" the address bar?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:22 PM on March 11, 2011

Oh, try YouTube (particularly if logged in). All the thumbnails are grabbable, and the time bars behave quite oddly.

The ball only holds a limited number of objects though. I could only get up to 10 images or so.

(Also, the guy who does the Seinfeld re-cuts has a couple new ones (that aren't as good).)

Is the "location bar" the address bar?

Yes, and if it doesn't seem to work, wait 20 seconds. It takes 20-30 seconds to load for me. Works *OK* in Chrome 11.
posted by mrgrimm at 4:26 PM on March 11, 2011

ChurchHatesTucker: Try this: navigate to a website.... then paste in that code into the address bar, and then wait a bit. I got a pop-up window overlay on the website which let me know the code was working, and then I finally got a working rolling ball. It took maybe 30 seconds for everything to come together on my 3-year-old iMac.

It's not perfect, and it's certainly not as graphically intensive as the actual video game, but it's functional and amusing.
posted by hippybear at 4:26 PM on March 11, 2011

nothing is happening SOBBITY AND WOES
posted by elizardbits at 4:41 PM on March 11, 2011 [3 favorites]

Hrm. With Safari 5.0, I just get the loading box on youtube. On Techdirt, I get the ball, but can't make it do anything. (I'm on a Macbook, so I'm assuming right click=control click.)
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:49 PM on March 11, 2011

Just. Wow. How?? Wow.
Will it be a SXSW Interactive viral something-or-other?
posted by davel at 5:03 PM on March 11, 2011

Yeah, this doesn't work for me either under IE or Firefox... it almost immediately just shows a "javascript broken" icon on the status bar. Sounds like a cool idea but either the code is hopelessly broken or the idea needs better execution.
posted by crapmatic at 5:05 PM on March 11, 2011

Lame, doesn't work. Tried it on XP/Firefox 3 + IE8, Windows 7/Firefox 3.6 + IE8. Tried a bunch of sites. Too bad, it sounds really fun.
posted by Craig at 5:08 PM on March 11, 2011

If I append ";void(0)" to the end of the javascript url to make it load on FF4 (OSX). But even then, or in Safari, I couldn't actually roll anything up, even little bits of punctuation. Sad!
posted by hattifattener at 5:16 PM on March 11, 2011

I got it to work not in Firefox on Mac but under Safari. It is hilarious. I should play video games more often.
posted by theredpen at 5:20 PM on March 11, 2011

Not working on FF4 or Safari.
posted by zardoz at 6:07 PM on March 11, 2011

Worked on a Mac/Chrome
posted by arcticwoman at 6:18 PM on March 11, 2011

Works in my chrome... it does take a while.

Fun. I did like the astroids one better... Pew Pew!
posted by stratastar at 6:45 PM on March 11, 2011

404, server down, did not work on lynx/ubuntu
posted by 3mendo at 7:32 PM on March 11, 2011

Came up in Mac/Chrome, I have no idea how to control anything. I also don't know what the hell Calamari Democracy is, is it the new Guns N Roses record?
posted by King Bee at 9:01 PM on March 11, 2011

404 here, i've been unable to connect for a few hours
posted by askmehow at 9:06 PM on March 11, 2011

Oh god, I wanted this so badly I made a pained noise when it didn't work.
posted by troublewithwolves at 9:32 PM on March 11, 2011 [2 favorites]

Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to ec2-50-17-2-177.compute-1.amazonaws.com
Suggestions:
Access a cached copy of ec2-­50-­17-­2-­177.­compute-­1.­amazonaws.­com
Go to www.­amazonaws.­com
Try reloading: ec2-­50-­17-­2-­177.­compute-­1.­amazonaws.­com


I don't get it. What is the link supposed to be?
posted by dunkadunc at 10:09 PM on March 11, 2011

i really really wish this would work!
posted by addelburgh at 10:20 PM on March 11, 2011

I think maybe the EC2 instance it was hosted on ran out of quarters
posted by hattifattener at 10:42 PM on March 11, 2011

The server at ec2-50-17-2-177.compute-1.amazonaws.com is taking too long to respond.

Damn it - WANT!!
posted by Space Kitty at 12:09 AM on March 12, 2011

Try http://kathack.com/ .
posted by divabat at 1:59 AM on March 12, 2011 [5 favorites]

Can't get anything to happen on either Safari or FF/Mac.
That kathack.com thing doesn't seem to do anything either.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:30 AM on March 12, 2011

kathack worked for me. I turned it into a bookmarklet and it seems to work fine in Chrome 10 on Windows.
posted by yerfatma at 6:07 AM on March 12, 2011

The kathack worked for me in Safari and Chrome, better in Chrome though.
posted by dripdripdrop at 9:36 AM on March 12, 2011

Damn. Maybe I should give Chrome a try.
posted by SLC Mom at 9:43 AM on March 12, 2011

I was so psyched that I'd finally really find out what katamari damacy was.

Someone here once described Wikipedia as 'a great katamari damacy for information', and I've been fascinated by it as a metaphor ever since.
posted by lodurr at 7:18 PM on March 13, 2011

This works fine for me on Firefox/3.6.12 and Windows XP. I was sure I would need something more bleeding-edge. No music, though.

Twitter is a great site to play around with this.
posted by grouse at 9:57 PM on March 14, 2011

... aaaand, now the main link appears to be a photo album page. oh, well.
posted by lodurr at 5:33 AM on March 16, 2011

Link should be to kathack.com. Flagged.
posted by grouse at 5:48 AM on March 16, 2011 [1 favorite]