IsaacW

[Freakin]

Do you keep changing your avatar, or I am just seeing it differently?

Freakin

[IsaacW]

Haha! You too, find the patterns in the static?

[lorinda]

I finally worked out it, very nice /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Lori

[IsaacW]

Anyway, it changes everytime it is loaded. As an Intarweb nerd who used to blog, I got pretty good at PHP coding. So, I hacked up a script to randomly "staticify" a bunch of avatar images that I store on my webserver. It randomly selects a signal level and a noise level and tweaks the image pixels randomly up and down to generate the final image. Sometimes it has a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) so the image is fairly clear, and sometimes it has a low SNR so the image is buried in the static. Also, the base image is randomly selected from a set of 13.

[lorinda]

If you refresh this thread a lot with both of your images in, you get the same image, but the second one is always slightly clearer.

Lori

[IsaacW]

Interesting, my browser (Firefox) just displays the same image for the second one. I assume that since the URL is the same it doesn't bother to reload it.

What browser are you using?

Also, if it's the case that your browser is loading the image twice, that could be a pretty big "non-random" find in the PHP RNG /images/graemlins/shocked.gif

[lorinda]

I'm on IE for now sadly.

I'll check to see if it's just the light, but certainly it's the same image.

Edit: Must be the light, now I have three to look at /images/graemlins/smile.gif
Sorry to panic you.

Lori

[IsaacW]

Eh, it wouldn't panic me, it would panic the PHP developers. Anyway, I selected the ranges of signal and noise levels so that it can change a lot, and so that a lot of the time the image just barely sticks out over the static. All those random pixels can make your brain do some strange things, I bet.

I'm just glad someone noticed it /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[emonrad87]

Damn it, Isaac, you suck. Now i'm just sitting here refreshing the page over and over.


Seriously tho, that's pretty cool.