The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Saturday, April 02, 2005

All that for something barely anyone saw

One of the problems of providing an RSS feed is that most of my readers read it and not the site here, thus the format change I did for April 1st was lost, along with most of my AdSense revenue (one of the few things I can report about is my gross earnings from Google, which to the nearest cent is $0.00)—I suppose I may get more revenue if I inline the ads, such as:

But I don't really want to do that (nor add ads to my RSS feed, so don't worry—well, except possibly for this entry but that depends on if your RSS agregator filters out the <SCRIPT> tag (it'll be interesting to see).

Anyway …

Last year's April Fools theme was greenbar printer paper, where (through the wonders of CSS) it appeared as if this was being printed out (in all caps no less) and it took me quite a while to find an appropriate image of greenbar paper for the background. This years idea was to do an old fasion monochrome monitor (green on black) with a slight resync problem (you can see a bright green line of the electron gun being swept across the screen). A bit easier to munge up than last year's imagry and one I could make myself.

At first I tried a paint program, but it was a rather primitive paint program and I had problems trying to do the 2048x100 image (2048 pixels wide to make sure it was wide enough not to repeat for anyone). Too many problems using the program, leading it to taking way too long.

It was then I remembered I had the GD library installed.

Trivial!

How trivial?

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include "gd.h"

int main(void)
{
  FILE       *fpout;
  gdImagePtr  imout;
  int         background;
  int         line[3];

  imout = gdImageCreate(2048,100);

  background = gdImageColorAllocate(imout,16, 32,16);
  line[0]    = gdImageColorAllocate(imout,16, 64,16);
  line[1]    = gdImageColorAllocate(imout,16, 96,16);
  line[2]    = gdImageColorAllocate(imout,16,128,16);

  gdImageLine(imout,0,13,2047,23,line[0]);
  gdImageLine(imout,0,14,2047,24,line[1]);
  gdImageLine(imout,0,15,2047,25,line[2]);
  gdImageLine(imout,0,16,2047,26,line[1]);
  gdImageLine(imout,0,17,2047,27,line[0]);

  fpout = fopen("vidline.png","wb");
  gdImagePng(imout,fpout);
  fclose(fpout);
  gdImageDestroy(imout);
  return(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

A crude attempt at anti-aliasing a beam across the page. Very poor results no matter how I did it. It was then I remembered my Foley-van Dam book (Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice by Foley, van Dam, Feiner and Hughes, 2nd Edition)—surely it must have a section on anti-aliasing lines. Indeed, § 3.17 had just what I wanted—code for drawing anti-aliased lines. A few minutes typing in the code (a page's worth) and I had myself one nice anti-aliased beam across the page.

int g_brightness[100];

/********************/

void init_colors(gdImagePtr img)
{
  int i;
  
  for (i = 0 ; i < 100 ; i++)
    g_brightness[i] = gdImageColorAllocate(img,16,132-i,16);
}

/******************/

void pset(gdImagePtr img,int x,int y,double dist)
{
  int    intensity;
  
  intensity = (int)(fabs(dist) / 1.5 * 100.0);
  gdImageSetPixel(img,x,y,g_brightness[intensity]);
}

/***********************/

void line(gdImagePtr img,int x1,int y1,int x2,int y2)
{
  int    dx;
  int    dy;
  int    incrE;
  int    incrNE;
  int    d;
  int    x;
  int    y;
  int    two_v_dx;
  double invDenom;
  double two_dx_invDenom;
  
  dx              = x2 - x1;
  dy              = y2 - y1;
  d               = 2 * dy - dx;
  incrE           = 2 * dy;
  incrNE          = 2 * (dy - dx);
  two_v_dx        = 0;		
  invDenom        = 1.0 / (2.0 * sqrt(dx*dx + dy+dy));
  two_dx_invDenom = 2.0 * (double)dx * invDenom;
  x               = x1;
  y               = y1;
  
  pset(img,x,y    ,0.0);
  pset(img,x,y + 1,two_dx_invDenom);
  pset(img,x,y - 1,two_dx_invDenom);
  
  while(x < x2)
  {
    if (d < 0)
    {
      two_v_dx = d + dx;
      d += incrE;
      x++;
    }
    else
    {
      two_v_dx = d - dx;
      d += incrNE;
      x++;
      y++;
    }
  
    pset(img,x,y    ,two_v_dx * invDenom);
    pset(img,x,y + 1,two_dx_invDenom - two_v_dx * invDenom);
    pset(img,x,y - 1,two_dx_invDenom + two_v_dx * invDenom);
  }
}

See what I go through for stuff nobody will see?

Sigh.

(If you are curious to see the styles, and you are using Firefox, you can use the menu View/Page Style to select which style you want).

Science in action

Another unexplained phenomenon: Do you know of anyone who can explain why I can hold my car's remote keyless entry fob to my chin and have its range tripled, or even quadrupled? Try it. Yeah, it works. Really!

There's the challenge for this week, folks. A cavity-resonance, antenna effect, or just what? Let us know your theories … !

An Interesting Phenomenon—The James Randi Educational Foundation Newsletter

I don't have a theory, but I did decide to test the phenomenon (do doo de do do!) to see if it really happens. Casa New Jersey is at the end of a dead- end street with very little traffic, so it was a simple matter to park Lake Lumina (my car—there's a long story attached to the name) at the end of the street and using a 300′ tape measure, mark off the distances.

[Lake Lumina at the end of the street] [The front of Lake Lumina is pretty long]

The tape measure was tucked underneath the front driver wheel (a convenient anchor point), but given that I don't really know where the keyless entry fob antenna is on the car, the measurements I did take could be anywhere from +4′ to -15′. So, with that in mind …

At certain intervals, I held the keyless entry fob five different ways:

[Fob at waist height] [Fob at shoulder height] [Fob against my chin, mouth closed] [Fob against my chin, mouth open] [Fob above head level—the so called “Don Martin” pose]

I'm sure I looked silly to the neighbors, but it's silliness in the name of science! Undaunted, and with the help of wlofie (who was standing by Lake Lumina) who used hand signals to indicate if the doors locked or unlocked, I proceeded to look silly while seeing how far I could lock and unlock my car.

The keyless entry fob is the original unit that came with my car and as such is seven years old, still with the original battery. Also, the fifth stance, the so called “Don Martin” pose, was suggested halfway through the experiment and I neglected to take samples at the shorter distances. I started out going 20 feet per attempt, then as the signal appeared to drop out, started shortening the distances to locate where the signal dropped.

Now, onto the results:

The range of a keyless entry fob under different holding techniques
Distance Fob at waist height Fob at shoulder height Fob against my chin, mouth closed Fob against my chin, mouth open Fob above head level—the so called “Don Martin” pose
Distance Fob at waist height Fob at shoulder height Fob against my chin, mouth closed Fob against my chin, mouth open Fob above head level—the so called “Don Martin” pose
20′ Yes No Yes Yes (not tested)
40′ Yes No Yes Yes (not tested)
50′ No Yes Yes Yes (not tested)
55′ No No Yes No Yes
60′ No No No No Yes
70′ No No Yes Yes Yes (sporadic)
80′ No No Yes Yes Yes
90′ No No Yes (sporadic) No No
100′ No No No No No

Holding the keyless entry fob to my chin did extend the range to twice that of just pointing towards the car, but nowhere three or four times the claimed distance. Also, the “Don Martin” pose also extended the range about twice the distance. So it's hard to say if it's due to a cavity-resonance atenna effect, or just the higher altitude the fob was held at increased the range (and there is that spurious result at 90′—perhaps the signal reflected oddly?). Who knows? I just generated some data that can be used in coming up with a theory.

Now, off to email the results to the James Randi Educational Foundation …

Update on Tuesday, September 21ST, 2021

I finally get some closure on what is happening.

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