The Story of PixelWhimsy™

Hi,  I’m Eric Jorgensen, the author of PixelWhimsy.  The most important thing I want you to know about this product is that it was written by a real dad for his real children.   I have five kids and all of them as toddlers had an insatiable desire to get up on my lap and use the computer just like their dad.   Back in 1995, when my first toddler wanted to use the computer, I opened up a copy of notepad so he could bang away at the keyboard.  This worked fine for about 30 seconds, which is about the time it took him to get bored or to accidentally exit the program.  So I moved from notepad to MS paint, and then to games that I could find, but all of these were too hard

to use for a toddler and could not keep his interest.    I’m a software developer, and I had been writing some games at the time, so I decided to write a program just for toddlers.   It would be simple to use, it would be safe for babies, and it would promote learning and experimentation to keep their interest.   The result of my effort was Flabbergasted!, a quirky extravaganza of graphics and sound that won ZDNet’s best Kindergarten and Preschool shareware award back in 1996.

Flabbergasted! had a brief and illustrious life among a small community of devoted fans, but I left it to pursue other career paths and since it was a DOS game, it sort of faded away as Windows became popular.   Flabbergasted! was not forgotten, however, and in 2006, some old friends and fans encouraged me to write a version for windows.  An old spark woke up inside me and I decided to do it.    I wrote a new version from scratch to take advantage of the latest technology and offer new features not possible on older computers.    I even gave the new version a new and unique name: PixelWhimsy.  The result of all my efforts was released to the public on Dec 30^th, 2007, almost exactly one year after I started it.

PixelWhimsy downloadable from this site as a free playable demo. I’ve put my best effort, creativity, and skill into this product and I think that you will enjoy it as much as your children will.   PixelWhimsy has fans of all ages.   So please, take it for a spin, have some fun, and let me know what you like and what you think could be better. 

-e

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