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This is kind of nuts. Diana Smith creates CSS-only hand coded “paintings.” Here are the rules she sets for herself.

All elements must be typed out by hand

Only Atom text editor and Chrome Developer Tools allowed.

SVG use is limited, and all shapes can only use hand-plotted coordinates and bezier curves - without the aid of any graphics editor.

Never Seen Before History of Computers | Docubyte + Ink

Humanoid robotics and computer avatars could help treat social disorders

Researchers from the University of Bristol, in collaboration with colleagues at the Universities of Exeter, Montpellier and Naples Federico II, have developed a system to enable a robot or computer avatar to interact with a patient whilst playing a version of the mirror game, in which two players try to copy each other’s motion whilst playing with coloured balls that can move horizontally on a string.

The paper, part of the EU-funded AlterEgo project, is published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Initially the avatar is like an alter ego, created to look and move like the patient to enhance his or her feelings of attachment. Over time the avatar is slowly altered to become less similar, therefore helping with social rehabilitation.

The results show that players sharing similar movement features, or motor signature, interact and co-ordinate better. This can be used for rehabilitation of patients with serious social disorders as an avatar can be created to act like an alter ego, programmed to look and move like the patient to enhance his or her feelings of attachment.

Mario di Bernardo, Professor of Nonlinear Systems and Control from the Department of Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol, said: “It is very challenging to build an avatar that is intelligent enough to synchronise its motion with a human player, but our initial results are very exciting.”

The research used the principles of dynamical systems and feedback control theory to embed the avatar with enough ‘intelligence’ to synchronise and respond to the motion of the human player.