Pixel Inventor Goes Back To the Drawing Board 304
lawpoop writes "Russell Kirsch, inventor of the square pixel, goes back to the drawing board. In the 1950s, he was part of a team that developed the square pixel. '"Squares was the logical thing to do," Kirsch says. "Of course, the logical thing was not the only possibility but we used squares. It was something very foolish that everyone in the world has been suffering from ever since.' Now retired and living in Portland, Oregon, Kirsch recently set out to make amends. Inspired by the mosaic builders of antiquity who constructed scenes of stunning detail with bits of tile, Kirsch has written a program that turns the chunky, clunky squares of a digital image into a smoother picture made of variably shaped pixels.'"
He didn't invent this (Score:3, Funny)
Somebody addressed this problem a long time ago, I see it on CSI every week.
Hmmm... (Score:2, Funny)
Really, square pixels are an invention? Meh. And he might want to credit Georges Seurat for his new direction.
Re:Invented the pixel? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Funny)
From what I could tell, his solution to square pixels is smaller square pixels in certain arrangements... oh, that and not calling them smaller pixels.
Re:Invented the pixel? (Score:5, Funny)
Jeebus!! Invented the pixel. I'll be damned. :-P
That's nothing. What about the guy back in the 40s that invented the color blue!
No, no... They didn't have color in the 1940s. Just look at the movies from back then...
Without benefit of square pixels, (Score:5, Funny)
I would never have known that the Japanese have blurry genitals.
Re:Suffering ? (Score:4, Funny)
"Why are we suffering from it since so ?
I did not read the article, so.."
You couldn't have read it with your square pixel screen, anyway.
Favorite graphic designer story (Score:5, Funny)
Working in the web division of a semi-fine jewelry retailer.
graphic artist: Do you know computers?
me: I should hope so. Do you have a question?
graphic artist: Yes. It's with Photoshop.
me: Ok, I might be able to help. What's the problem?
graphic artist: Ok, let me zoom in here. You see what I have here? (zoomed in so that the pixels were big blocks on the screen.) Everything is really blocky.
me: Understandable at this view level.
graphic artist: Well, it's not working for me. I need to be able to get a smaller shape in here but it's all too blocky.
me: Let me get this straight. You want to get a shape in the image smaller than a pixel?
graphic artist: *beaming* Exactly! How do I do that?
me: I'll look into it. *slowly edged away*
And she was getting paid three times what I was. Things like this make me want to lock myself in the server room, trip the halon and wait for the blackness to take me.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, we could go to 400 PPI next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, three worked out pretty well, and four is the next number after three. So let's play it safe. Let's make a thicker aloe strip and call it the Mach3SuperTurbo. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!
You think it's crazy? It is crazy. But I don't give a shit. From now on, we're the ones who have the edge in the PPI game. Are they the best a man can get? Fuck, no. Sycraft-fu is the best a man can get.
What part of this don't you understand? If 200 PPI is good, and 300 PPI is better, obviously 500 PPI would make us the best fucking display that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the display game by clinging to the 200 PPI industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, 500 PPI is the biggest chance of all.
Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my ass with it. They don't tell me what to invent--I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick 200 more PPI in there. I don't care how. Make the Pixels so thin they're invisible. Put some on the stand. I don't care if they have to cram the 500th pixel in diagonally to the other four hundred, just do it!
Re:Invented the pixel? (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, you jest, but I remember the first time I saw footage from WWII that was in colour and being stunned, because it was so vivid.
And, then there was the Russian guy [quazen.com] who created colour photos in 1909 using techniques he created himself.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Nonsense!
I looked at the embedded exif data of the pictures on the site you link to.
The images are from early 2010.
Re:Favorite graphic designer story (Score:1, Funny)
Things like this make me want to lock myself in the server room, trip the halon and wait for the blackness to take me.
You must be new at this. Here's a more appropriate (in a BOfH sense) solution:
- pull up some tiles in the server room
- turn off the lights
- tell the designer there's free latte in there
- wait for the thump, pull the halon and run
Cleanup with quicklime optional. :)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Funny)
*golf clap*
Re:Suffering ? (Score:2, Funny)
Blurry, hexagonal pixels are also not optimal for structured light experiments.