Cardiff Kook Pranks at Your Fingertips, Thanks to Cell Phone App

statue sports just about every week, thanks to the of pranksters who have made a habit of dressing it up. All that attention has taken its toll, and the statute is now undergoing repairs. That might cause a hiatus in the Cardiff Kook’s , perhaps leaving some locals longing for those weekly wacky getups. Well, now there’s an app for that.

Olivenhain resident Randy Ullrich has designed an iPhone app that lets you put your face—or anyone’s face—on the Cardiff Kook statue, and then dress it up in dozens of costumes. You can also add cartoonish speech bubbles, and then share the picture with your buddies via Facebook or email.

“When I had the idea for it, I was shocked to learn that nobody had already done it,” said Ullrich, who lived in Cardiff back in the '90s. “When I lived in Cardiff, we didn’t have the Kook yet, but given how much people enjoy dressing it up, this just seemed like a good idea. It’s virtual vandalism.”  

Realizing he had a novel concept on his hands, he got to work. Ullrich, who has been engineering software for years and is the CEO of RapDevPro, modified one of his similar apps called FaceOnPic, which lets you superimpose your face on everything from the Mona Lisa to Mount Rushmore.

Perhaps the biggest challenge, he said, was managing to photograph the Cardiff Kook on a day it was not dressed up.

“My wife went twice and then gave up,” he said. “So I started going, and it ended up taking about four attempts.”

The app, simply called Cardiff Kook, costs 99 cents to download—though a free version will become available Aug. 1.

Ullrich has kept locals largely in mind while developing this app, and may at some point incorporate other resident icons, such as mosaic. Keeping with that theme, Ullrich has elected to give back to community by donating five percent of his net proceeds to the San Diego County Public Library system.

“I definitely welcome feedback,” he added. “If there’s a costume people want to see for the Cardiff Kook, I want to hear about it.”