Using Prime Numbers to Generate Backgrounds 180
bpeh123 pointed out an article about generating organically tiled backgrounds inspired by the life cycle of cicadas. The trick is to overlay multiple background tiles with prime widths thus generating a series that does not repeat for a sufficiently long period. This introduces a seeming irregularity and makes the background appear much more natural.
1 is not prime (Score:3, Insightful)
Their article: "that is,1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, and so on"
Wikipedia: "2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13. .
TL;DR (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:TL;DR (Score:4, Insightful)
How about: Designer discovers new way to use special properties of primes to create more realistic tiled background images.
C'mon, the results are actually pretty cool.
Re:Fuck you slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
He's not the only one, bucky. No need to be an ass. I don't have the problem with the post anonymously checkbox, but I have not been able to click on any off-site links for a week, using Firefox 3.6.16. Internet Exploder works, but I'm not using that POS.
Re:Ow. That made my brain hurt. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you do not understand something does not make it wrong. Birds haven't "evolved" a boom/bust cycle, that's not how that works. It's the standard predator/prey boom/bust cycle. Birds don't spend vast periods of time underground, you know. Curtains are natural, "natural" here taking the meaning of "organic" rather than "patterned.
Please, don't be one of those guys who tries to prove how smart they are by attempting to find fault with the article. It does not make you look as smart as you think. The fact that you hurt your brain trying to comprehend something the rest of us had no trouble understanding actually makes you look pretty dumb.
Re:Really learned a LOT from that one (Score:5, Insightful)
> if I had known you could specify more than one image for backgrounds, I would have figured this one out on my own
You may want to read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus [wikipedia.org]
I have been doing layered images for over 4-5 years (multiple divs with backgrounds layered over one another) to come up with cool effects. But I would have never come up with this. I had been thinking about tiles and the non-random-ness for quite a while too. This didn't occur to me. Now that someone put this together - sure it's simple. But that's the genius of it.
My hats are off - simple, efficient, brilliant.
Re:Fuck you slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
The new UI has been getting more buggy every week rather than less buggy. Off site links not working, clicking 'score' to view how things are moderated collapsing the comment, scrolling issues, clicking anywhere on the comment navigating to the parent, weird highlighting when submitting a comment... and that's just off the top of my head and coming from someone who was initially supportive of the changes. All on FF4.0
Re:Ow. That made my brain hurt. (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, your third and fourth paragraphs display utter ignorance of biology.
Why are you even here? This article was very well articulated, and more important, useful, unlike your reply.