{"id":7225,"date":"2026-02-16T22:17:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T22:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/?p=7225"},"modified":"2026-02-16T22:54:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T22:54:45","slug":"the-hal-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/the-hal-project\/","title":{"rendered":"The HAL Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n      <div class=\"video-wrapper\">\n        <div class=\"video-container\">\n          <iframe src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yKkE3nuIELI?rel=0&showinfo=0&modestbranding=1&wmode=transparent&theme=light\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n    \n<h2>Updated 16\/02\/26<\/h2>\n<p>Here we go, another update and you guessed it! This time I thought my screen had blown up!!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8158\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-content\/uploads\/tv-hiss.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p>I install\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/MacOS_Tahoe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Tahoe<\/a> and &gt; POP &lt; &#8211; there does my trusty screensaver &#8211; first the sound keep sticking, which is <em>very<\/em> HAL, then a few hours later when I went into the screen saver settings, my second monitor gave up the ghost. Luckily I knew exactly what was up. I still have no idea why apple doesn&#8217;t natively let us use our own videos for screensavers.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d actually forgotten about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wallper.app\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Aerial<\/a> &#8211; it had been a while and I don&#8217;t read my own posts. So I had a little dive into alternatives and even ended up buying one called <a href=\"https:\/\/cindori.com\/store\/backdrop\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">BackDrop<\/a> which definitely wasn&#8217;t what I was looking for &#8211; although it worked nicely (mainly for video wallpapers rather than screensavers) but there was no way to load multiple videos randomly and independently on each of my screens. Can&#8217;t remember why I didn&#8217;t like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wallper.app\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Wallper<\/a> &#8211; probably user error but I think it was the two monitor, multiple videos issue again&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Good new HAL fans &#8211; we have a beta fix for Aerial on Tahoe!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Read the installation carefully and download the main zip.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/AerialScreensaver\/AerialCompanion\/releases\/tag\/v3.9.9a6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">https:\/\/github.com\/AerialScreensaver\/AerialCompanion\/releases\/tag\/v3.9.9a6<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Off you go, until next time.<\/p>\n<h2>Updated 18\/11\/23<\/h2>\n<p>After upgrading my Laptop to one with a M1 processor I was finally able to run the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/?s=hal+9000\">HAL 9000<\/a> 4K screensaver &#8211; which looked amazing and was using <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.screensaversplanet.com\/screensavers\/savehollywood-1047\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Savehollywood<\/a> to randomly play the videos.<\/em> All brilliant until that is I upgrade my OS. The the first thing to break whenever I do aMAC upgrade (and the first thing I like to fix) is ALWAYS my HAL screensaver. To cut a very long and boring story short, I&#8217;ve just updated to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/macos\/sonoma\/14.1.1 (23B81)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Sonoma OS 14.1.1<\/a> and you guessed it &#8211; FFS &#8211; where&#8217;s HAL?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7623\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_2587-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"HAl screen saver\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1701\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_2587-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_2587-320x213.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Anyways &#8211; here&#8217;s the fix: <a href=\"https:\/\/aerialscreensaver.github.io\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Aerial<\/a> &#8211; a free and open-source Mac screen saver. Follow the instructions and put the videos in a your user\/shared folder. If you get stuck, drop me a line.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>A graphic recreation of the computer from the film 2001: a space odyssey \u2013 The HAL Project 4K Remaster release<\/h2>\n<p>I can&#8217;t tell you how excited I was to find the 4K re-release of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/TheHALProject\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Joe&#8217;s epic HAL 9000 Project<\/a>. Basically ever since I can remember, I&#8217;ve had a HAL screensaver &#8211; the moment I found it &#8211; I installed it. Although, admittedly I&#8217;ve never actually managed to watch <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Space Odyssey 2001<\/a> all the way through without falling asleep! However, I have always been in love with the special effects which manage to hypnotise me every time I watch any clips.<\/p>\n<h2>How to install The HAL Project 4K Remaster&#8230;<\/h2>\n<p>So having watched a few of Joe&#8217;s videos on his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/TheHALProject\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">youtube channel<\/a> (which is now the only official place to find The HAL Project ) and fallen asleep into a blissful like coma, I set about looking for instructions on how to install the new screensaver. After digging around for instructions and after being initially disappointed I stumbled upon a proper fluffy fix, which for now seems to be the best and only way to get a screen saver onto your computer. If anyone knows better then please let me know via the comments below.<\/p>\n<p><em>Basically use <a href=\"https:\/\/www.4kdownload.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">4K Video Downloader<\/a> (or similar &#8211; I ended up <a href=\"https:\/\/snapdownloader.com\/downloads\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">snapdownloader<\/a>) to grab the 86 clips from from Joe&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=htr7K97i9yY&amp;list=PLgAimzKJeFui7y-6XaLSqKN2_Jb9C9IgU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">YouTube<\/a> channel and then to display them (randomly) as a screensaver install, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.screensaversplanet.com\/screensavers\/savehollywood-1047\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Savehollywood<\/a> for Mac or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.screensaversplanet.com\/screensavers\/video-screensaver-1713\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">videoscreensaver<\/a> for Windows to play the videos randomly. I downloaded\u00a0 .movs @ 4k. This seems to be the best way to get HAL up and running for the moment. There are many different versions of the videos to download, including long play versions where all the clips are edited together, dark mode versions, versions with and without sound, versions with flat graphics, or with a glow effect, there are also a few aspect ratios and resolutions to choose from. Joe&#8217;s work is incredible.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I ended up downloading the lowest resolution possible, sorry Joe but my 2015 macbook pro struggles with full screen 4K on two monitors &#8211; so I went super low-rent and converted to 480p &#8211; I kinda like the low res retro pixels you get and so does my laptop. I have no idea whether playing video loops on your computer as screensaver\u00a0 is a good idea for your graphics card or not.\u00a0 But I don&#8217;t care &#8211; I am just so happy to have HAL back. Each time he appears, I smile to myself and feel a little bit of healthy respect and fear for my computer.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7240\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-content\/uploads\/hal-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1440\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-content\/uploads\/hal-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-content\/uploads\/hal-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Joe offers all of his work for FREE &#8211; however you can always <a href=\"https:\/\/ko-fi.com\/joecreative\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">donate to Joe\u00a0<\/a> if you want to.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to install the HAL Project 4K Remaster video screensaver&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,66,61,89,39,88,79,105,109,69,29,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-random-mix","category-animation","category-artworks","category-documentaries","category-films","category-more-than-3-mins","category-now-you-know","category-oh-this-is-good","category-reference","category-space","category-video-of-the-week","category-vintage",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7225"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8166,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7225\/revisions\/8166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluffytech.co.uk\/fluff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}