The grand 2024 Secret Santa Showcase

[XANA]

I am touched by this present, and I am grateful they decided to drop a gift down the chimney.

(They actually nailed my love of flying/planes, which I don't think I mentioned at all -- ETA: I just realized they probably used my tagline).

Thank you so much, mysterious Kiwi!

 

[Lemon Squeezer]

Thanks Santa for this cute little duck. Oh, to frolic with little ducklings in a meadow...

 

[Wol]

For my present, I received a whole zip file, containing a program for generating L-system fractals:

Spoiler: Provided README file

Text of interest underlined below:

This is a janky bunch of [...] code to draw fractals. I chose to write a program as I saw from your posts that you do Python. It has been tested exclusively on my own machine with Python 3.10.12. You need the following external modules:

PIL
docopt

You also need GhostScript for the EPS support.

I hope it works. I haven't had time to try and get things like the centering and sizes perfect- I think they both depend on the actual fractal being drawn. Nor have I been able to look at the relationship between what I see on the screen as its plotting the path and what ends up in the gif.

As long as it doesn't turn into a total PITA I would recommend getting it running cos its very satisfying watching them build up and it looks way better on the black background. I don't get why that turtle module doesn't include the background in the screenshots it takes and I wasn't gonna go down the rabbit hole of [directly] editing eps files.

An example command is as follows:

python draw_fractals.py RINGS --iterations=5 five_iterations_rings.gif

If you don't run it, I've included a bunch of screenshots plus output gifs for each supported fractal.

As this approach using Turtle draws the fractal being built up, and the number of steps increases exponentially, it does get very slow as the number of allowed steps increases, increase the hardcoded max steps at your own risk.

Please please please give some feedback in the thread and let me know which your favourite is.
[... I] really hope you like it.

If you prefer to twat about in numpy [...], this is probably more up your street: https://github.com/dl1683/FractalGeneration/blob/main/Fractals.py

Merry Christmas

It was a very interesting program. Honestly, I liked that the Hilbert Curve was included. Out of all the other fractals, it is quite simplistic yet very appealing and mesmerizing since it doesn't overlap with itself when being drawn.



Regarding the underlined text, since you recommended working on the program, I worked on fixing some portions of the program as a sort of easy-going exercise for the day. Some notable things I did:

• I was able to fix the background issue you mentioned. The issue with the background is that, since the program exports to PostScript, the background is not preserved in the output. I don't typically use Postscript for stuff, but it seems like the format is fundamentally intended to be a document format rather than an image format, so I imagine background is left to the document processor or whatever. A bit odd for that library to export a canvas/image to, but its okay I guess. In the program, I just made a new image with black background, loaded the image (in postscript) from the canvas with transparency, and then did an alpha composite before saving the frame. That seemed to work pretty well.
• I changed the color cycling such that the turtle uses a generator to get a color rather than a preset cyclical list of colors. I think it makes the color steps still look fairly even and makes it nice and configurable.
• Sizing + centering [for rendering] can be a problem when it comes to fractals using the turtling approach; you can only really know how it scales if you haven a proof for a formula. It seems it would be much easier to determine size and center a priori if one were to do iterations by iteratively substituting (smaller) elements on top of an initial polygon corresponding to the initial iteration or axiom. While the numpy implementation you linked is interesting, I do like the turtling this program does since I can see the things build like Langton's ant. So, I just added/implemented a global scaling formula which it seems like you tried to do at some point. If there were further work, one would probably try associating formulas to each spec (maybe to override the global/default one) and try experimenting with the scaling.
• I made it so fractals now consistently generate from the origin. It does mean they go off screen, but I'm okay with this if I just alter the scaling formula to my liking. Again, one should probably consider specific scaling.
• I mussed with the interpretation of arguments a little bit.
• I changed the animation format to WEBP rather than GIF. Nothing bad with GIF for this instance, but since GIF uses 8 bits per pixel and I'm using a color generator, I figured another format from either APNG or WEBP would work nicely and it ended up not being too hard to change.

Hopefully this isn't too critical of your work and my changes not too offensive. I really like the variety of fractals you put in here, some of which I didn't know, at least by name, and I appreciate the idea of this program. It's a welcome gift and unique surprise versus the other, typical kinds of things and media that people made, so thank you secret santa!

For those who download the archive, the program that secret santa gave is the one with the .orig suffix.

Spoiler: P.S. of caution for my secret santa/gifter

Make sure you check the media or accompanying metadata that you upload in the future. The eps files from the archive you uploaded in a text editor came with a specific field which you can probably see if you open them with a text editor. The one thing there is not outright cataclysmic but that's just so you know since it can give one a small, but potential clue.

 

[Corduroy Incognito]

Shout out to my Secret Santa. This is most definitely what is up!

Seriously though, I'm extremely grateful for this masterpiece!

 

[Blazeuser56]

Shout out to my Secret Santa for this piece of art!

 

[Deezy]

I got this cute art of Bijou on a mushroom. Thank you Secret Santa! I know I didn’t give you too much to work with, but this is lovely and I’m so happy with it!

 

[Killing and Eating People]

Sorry if this is too graphic but I straight up jorked it and also coomed to this 4 times today already

The subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness. The understated distortion.

 

[Cedric_Eff]

My secret Santa gave me an an bear bearing arms!


Arigato Secret Santa! Thank you!

 

[ita]

I’ve been getting some pretty bad news lately, and this gift was genuinely a shining light that really cheered me up. It’s a couple of papercraft soyjaks pogging at a body of water. How cute is that!? Absolute masterpiece of mixed media. Seriously though, it’s an interesting and heartwarming feeling to realize that a stranger out there in the world sat down and took the time to make this funny personalized thing for another complete stranger, purely just for fun. Thank you anon, truly.

 

[Layton Mysteries]

I got a whole interactive puzzle my Santa programmed. It is wonderful! If anyone else wants to solve it, I'll upload the zips here, if not, you can see the spoiler to see what it looks like.

Spoiler: Hints from Secret Santa

Spoiler: Hint1

Marching involves clicking and dragging. There will be indication if done correctly.

Spoiler: Hint2

The times are important, You're not Gen-Z, are you?

Spoiler: Hint3

Start with the dots on the left.

Spoiler: Hint4

The upper left corner of the star is the last place.

Spoiler: Hint5

You probably encountered a bug or 2... Go through the secret santa organizer.

Spoiler: Message for after solving

It's intended Layton-style minigame, on a shoe-string budget Thanks for trying it out, and I wish you the best!

Spoiler: Screenshots from Me

I love the little sparkle effects that come off the trails of your mouse and the snow effects! It gave me some error message about a file missing when I ran it, but everything seemed to work fine (if there was supposed to be audio there wasn't, but I don't think there was, it just caused the audio icon to pop up in my taskbar so I wasn't for sure if there was supposed to be something playing). I had to disable GPU acceleration as well, because it crashed on opening if it was trying to use the GPU. It really reminds me of the cinematic mid-cut-scene puzzles in Azran Legacy & Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright (the final azran legacy puzzle and the bell tower puzzle if you have played them), and now I just want to see the Professor solving supernatural Lovecraftian mysteries.
To my Secret Santa, thank you very much, I hope you enjoyed making it because I enjoyed getting it and it is an impressive gift! I am curious how you made it, and what hint 2 means.

 

[Mao Hao Hao]

I got a fun little board game, with a ton of my interests throughout. I love it so much, especially the stegosaurus! The DDOS attack is a nice touch too. I'll have to give it a go when I'm not at work, but I love the effort and detail that's gone into it, thanks secret santa!
Merry Christmas to my fellow Kiwis, and I hope everyone has a very festive time.

 

[Najarala]

I got this awesome drawing of my favourite two lolcows; Anisa and her husband, from my secret santa! I especially love the christmas rendition of Anisa's shitty tattoos lmao

Thank you very much to my secret santa, I have to laugh everytime I look at it It's absolutely perfect

Happy holidays to all of you!

 

[part timer]

My Secret Santa made me this absolutely DIVINE piece of art depicting space marine BossManJack fighting off THOSE FUCKING RATS DOOD spilling forth from RIGGER Uncle NurglEddie

Just amazing, I laughed hard when I realised that it was 40k x BMJ crossover

Thank you so much Santa! I will definitely be plastering this all over the place DTPN!

 

[Sooty Soot]

have all the gifts been handed out yet?

 

[Forgotten Beast]

My secret Santa went beyond the call of duty and made me an Almanac from the wizard Amonar the Unwise, documenting various fantastic (and creative) creatures.
This is my favorite:

Thank you Santa, this is exactly the kind of thing I love, I couldn't be happier with my gift, you read me like a book. I'm going to hang it in the refrigerator of my soul.

Additional thanks to everyone involved with this year's Secret Santa!

 

[Hellwalker]

have all the gifts been handed out yet?

I'm still waiting for my gift. Haven't gotten it yet.

 

[Helvetia]

whoever this was, I'm gonna kiss you.

 

[Hellfire Club]

I love it so much, thanks a lot secret santa for your effort and attention to details

I learned today that Queensland is also a Bananaland. However mine is not in australia

All the rats and mices (it is ok i love them all) made my hearth warm.

Thanks thanks thanks i wish you a merry xmas, santa

 

[Premium Gonzo]

have all the gifts been handed out yet?

Nope they are still working through them, @TheCuntler will update if you've not received your gift yet just be patient.

 

[Fermented Biden]

I don't care if it's not gonna be Christmas in 4 days, I'll be wearing this profile picture year-round! Good day, sirs!