
Deterministic Pixels - brudgers
http://darrennewton.com/2015/01/04/deterministic-pixels
======
zachrose
Nice. In 2005 the artist Allan McCollum made software to design 31 billion
shapes, with the intention to have at least one shape per person for a long
time.

Not usable the way identicons are, but the shapes are pleasing.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shapes_Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shapes_Project)

~~~
ArekDymalski
>made software

On the artist's webpage there's following note in the footer:

"Note: Contrary to some errors made in certain press articles, McCollum's
Shapes are not "generated" in a computer with an invented or scripted
"program." Every shape is laboriously created by the artist using Adobe
Illustrator — a common, everyday graphics program — by drawing little parts,
cutting and pasting the parts into bigger parts, then cutting and pasting
those parts into even bigger parts, and so on, and keeping track according to
a written protocol, to insure against repetitions. The first exhibition of the
project, in 2006, took around two years to complete."

Anyway, thanks for a very interesting link.

EDIT: More info on the tedious labor involved:
[http://allanmccollum.net/amcnet2/album/shapes/shapesworkshee...](http://allanmccollum.net/amcnet2/album/shapes/shapesworksheet.html)

~~~
reagency
So, they are generated in a computer using an invented program, but the mid
level graphics API is implemented on his hand, instead of wholly inside the
computer.

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drcode
It would be fun to take the "square" identicons and run them through a pixel
scaler to make them more organic
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hqx](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hqx)

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leni536
It would be nice seeing something like this at self-signed https sites
generated from the public key of the given site (a visual public key
fingerprint), instead of scaring me away with a huge warning.

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underwater
I've always liked autometically generated avatars in theory. But in practice
they never seem that useful because there's nothing recognizable in the image
for me to subconsciously recognize.

Secret had an interesting take on this. They had a limited set of simple
icons, like boats or rockets, and then dynamically colored them. They were
easy enough to recognize so patterns became more apparent.

~~~
shultays
We should just pull a random cat image from google, chances are very likely
that each user will get a new one.

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RelaxBox
I feel like I've been seeing Racket come up more often recently. It's
interesting to me that it seems to be winning the scheme wars when there are
other excellent distros out there (such as Chicken and Gambit). Has anyone
shipped any software with Racket? I'd be curious to hear about it in real
world scenarios (e.g., long-running processes and deployment).

~~~
brudgers
The Racket website at racket-land.org is served by Racket [and mostly written
in it, too]. HN is [or at least was] written In Arc and Arc is/was written on
top of Racket [or one of its predecessors].

If Racket is winning it may be because its ties to acadamia provide a stable
working group who can work on it as part of their day job and a constant
stream of grad students who implement their work in it.

~~~
hieronymusN
[http://racket-lang.org/](http://racket-lang.org/)

