I was thinking more along the lines of the most compressible path...ie., the shortest set of instructions that can produce the pattern. Sort of like knitting patterns, "knit one, pearl two." It seems like he must be figuring out some reasonably simple step sequences to make it all work.
Most of this activity takes place in the ski resort of Les Arcs, where I own an apartment and spend most of the winter.
On average they take about 10 hours to really do it properly, some are a little unfinished, if my feet get cold or hurt too much.
The setting out is done using handheld orienteering compass and distance determination using pace counting or measuring tape. Curves are either judged or arcs of circle using a clothes line attached to an anchor at the centre
Designs are chosen from the world of geometry or "crop circles". Some are named eg Mandelbrot set, Koch curve, Sierpinski triangle are 3 of my favorites.
Unbelievable, especially considering that it is going to be short lived. Similar but more elaborate - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga5s_qYgJS8 They destroy it at the end :(
I'm wiling to bet you could, and for a lot of money. If you did have the above mentioned robot to make it a push-button exercise, I'm pretty sure that there would be farmers on with prominent fields near motorway and tourist site willing.
It's almost green advertising, 100% biodegradable and with a reusable robot.
No. Nothing is sacred.
my friends and i did a pretty decent scale mario in college [0]. it got decent coverage and was actually pretty cool. that said... these obviously blow mine out of the water. :)
rorrr's message is unnecessarily rude, but I don't think he's wrong.
It's a very interesting feat, but it's just a showcase of his realizations, unrelated to computers or science. His thought process or his planning for making such patterns would probably fit here more than this post.
I don't think it's a problem either, because such posts are rare, but I would be disappointed if Hacker News was filled with this kind of post.
It has prodded at least one HN reader to speculate about making these patterns with robots[1], and another to wonder about solving shortest path[2]. Sounds like "of interest to hackers". This is late Saturday and peoples' interests wander further afield than optimizing CDNs.
[1] Can you make a business selling robots that let a ski resort decorate itself? Can you sell ads on unused winter pastures?
[2] If you consider each footprint to be a salesman's stop, then I think the answer is "Yes, but…"
