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Duplogrifier

I’ve been wondering for a while if I could represent a picture with Duplo pixels in a way that would do it justice.

Introducing the Duplogrifier!

Duplogrifier will take any JPEG and turn it into an arrangement of 2×2 Duplo bricks. Now truth be told, the answer to my original question is “no”. There are not enough colors available and it would take a obscene amount of bricks to build something visually acceptable. However it leads to some fairly cool results.

2015-04-15: added 6 more “pixel” colors.

You can play with it here:

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Markov chains music generation

Here’s a project I’ve had on the back-burner for many years. Following the natural progression of generating stuff based on Markov chains, I decided a while ago to port the algorithm to music.

Music presents many challenges that I haven’t been able to address well so far. As a result, what the algorithm produces always had a bitter unfinished aftertaste to me, hence why I haven’t published anything about it for years.

  • Music is multidimensional, time is relevant and needs it own analysis and subsequent generation
  • The interconnectedness of different instruments from the piece is important as well.
  • Random generation even based on Markov chains fails to produce any structure. The pieces all sound like a long solo without chorus or any other repetition that would give us what we strive for: anticipation. In other words, it’s perfect for jazz.

I’m hoping that publishing this will give me the kick in the nuts necessary to keep improving it. Without further ado, here’s what I have so far.


Future improvements:

  • add to corpus
  • clean pieces analyzed of noise
  • try to infuse structure
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More Dr. Meter fun

Finger

Arm

Hair

Salt

Nutella (gross)

Peanut

Serrated knife blade

Ballpoint pen

Printed beer logo

Cloth

Melting snow

[flv:http://ben.akrin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/temp.flv http://ben.akrin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-Shot-2013-02-24-at-11.53.58-PM.png 640 426]