On 10/08/2025 17:52, Richard Heathfield wrote:
[I wrote:]

I could understand 1 peterbaiting/day, but keep some sense
[of] proportion!

I do try, and I do have other calls on my time. In my defence, I> snip aggressively, and I try to skip over obvious repetitions.

Yes, thanks for that.

But hey! You want other topics to be discussed here? Great! Bring
'em on! People engage with Peter because in comp.theory he's the
only show in town. Why not find something more interesting to chat
about? Shouldn't be hard, right?

OK. SWMBO and I send out a family Christmas card each year, and
we try very hard to be different and interesting. You may think it's too
early to be thinking about that, but printing is much cheaper now than in November/December. In recent years, we've sent out CDs of my music,
fractal images that resemble Xmas trees, topical jokes*, never-ending
cards, and much besides. We're in need of a Bright Idea. Something
vaguely mathematical or computery, but understandable by non-scientists,
would be ideal. Needs to be not too hard for us to make, as we need
to make ~100 copies.

___
* One of those, which I pass on free of charge, dating from many years
ago, showed Santa typing away at a terminal, connected to a cable,
which contained a couple of parcel-shaped bulges, and a caption
"This new-fangled e-mail makes my job much easier!". That could
probably be updated somehow.

--
Andy Walker, Nottingham.
Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Bizet

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On 10/08/2025 20:32, Andy Walker wrote:

On 10/08/2025 17:52, Richard Heathfield wrote:
[I wrote:]

I could understand 1 peterbaiting/day, but keep some sense
[of] proportion!

I do try, and I do have other calls on my time. In my defence,

snip aggressively, and I try to skip over obvious repetitions.

    Yes, thanks for that.

But hey! You want other topics to be discussed here? Great! Bring
'em on! People engage with Peter because in comp.theory he's the
only show in town. Why not find something more interesting to chat
about? Shouldn't be hard, right?

OK. SWMBO and I send out a family Christmas card each year,
and we try very hard to be different and interesting. You may
think it's too early to be thinking about that, but printing
is much cheaper now than in November/December. In recent
years, we've sent out CDs of my music, fractal images that
resemble Xmas trees, topical jokes*, never-ending cards, and
much besides. We're in need of a Bright Idea. Something
vaguely mathematical or computery, but understandable by
non-scientists, would be ideal. Needs to be not too hard for
us to make, as we need to make ~100 copies.

In the hope of keeping it comp.theory-related, why not write a
maze generator? (No, bear with me! It gets better, I promise.)

It's not hard to do. Mine:

$ ./maze2d
Usage: maze2d filename width height scale seed
-1 for seed means 'use clock'.

is only 350 lines of C (plus a primitive BMP lib I wrote), so it
shouldn't take long. I did it the hard way, but nowadays an AI
will probably oblige if you ask nicely.

Figure out exactly how big a (readable) maze fits on an A4 sheet.

Then generate a custom maze for each recipient (hence the seed),
alpha-blend it onto a photograph of the recipient, print it, and
fold it into Christmas card shape.

First one to post it back with a correct red-pen-on-paper
solution of their maze wins a bottle of malt. (How you handle
that is up to you. I would invite people to post their solutions
but not mention the whisky, so that when it comes it's a nice
surprise.)


How did I do?

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

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On 10/08/2025 22:26, Richard Heathfield wrote:

In the hope of keeping it comp.theory-related, why not write a maze generator? (No, bear with me! It gets better, I promise.)
It's not hard to do.

Indeed. I did one yonks ago for a combinatoricist colleague
who was "into" Prim and Wilson and all that jazz. Wiki has a good
page on the various methods.

Mine: [...]
is only 350 lines of C (plus a primitive BMP lib I wrote), so it
shouldn't take long. I did it the hard way, but nowadays an AI will
probably oblige if you ask nicely.

It's decades since I wrote any serious C. I fell out of love
with the language, and knew I had a problem when I found myself writing
huge shell scripts with Sed and Bc inserts to do the arithmetic. But
around 2003 I was "saved" by the advent of Algol68G, and could start
writing nice programs again.

Figure out exactly how big a (readable) maze fits on an A4 sheet.

How many A4 Xmas cards do /you/ get? A6 more like it.

Then generate a custom maze for each recipient (hence the seed),
alpha-blend it onto a photograph of the recipient, print it, and
fold it into Christmas card shape.

Snags: (a) We don't have photos of some recipients; (b)
some are corporate; (c) in case I wasn't clear, commercial card
printing is v cheap if you want 100+ copies of one card, daft if
you want 100+ different cards; (d) your scheme requires a lot of
work for each recipient. Apart from those, good idea. Many years
ago we briefly contemplated printing a route from our house to
theirs. Too much work, and not interesting to neighbours.

First one to post it back with a correct red-pen-on-paper solution
of their maze wins a bottle of malt. [...]

Gives an unfair advantage to neighbours over recipients in
foreign parts [and those with slow postal services].

How did I do?

Thanks for playing.

--
Andy Walker, Nottingham.
Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Couperin

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On 11/08/2025 00:24, Andy Walker wrote:

On 10/08/2025 22:26, Richard Heathfield wrote:

<snip>

Figure out exactly how big a (readable) maze fits on an A4 sheet.

    How many A4 Xmas cards do /you/ get?

Several each year, from DIYers..

A6 more like it.

Tonight for 3 whole points... how many folds in A4 would that be?

    Snags:  (a) We don't have photos of some recipients;

nice landscapes/Christmas scenes are widely available on the Web

(b)
some are corporate;

So are dark, Satanic landscapes, I guess...

(c) in case I wasn't clear, commercial card
printing is v cheap if you want 100+ copies of one card, daft if
you want 100+ different cards;

In case I wasn't clear, this can be done at home, fun for all the
family.

(d) your scheme requires a lot of
work for each recipient.

script it right and it's a cinch.

(a) maze generation - automatable
(b) alpha blending - automatable
(c) batch printing - automatable

The only hard bit is choosing the pix for each recipient whose
fizzog is unavailable, and if they're not worth the few seconds
that takes, strike them off the list because you clearly don't
like them very much. Bonus: saves on postage.

But no, it's the kind of idea you either jump at or jump on, and
you clearly haven't yelled with delight, so forget it. If you're
limited to 100 copies of the same card, you can't personalise them.

Cryptogram, maybe?

*
Q
LNZ
WPFSI
QVDPTPN
DLWWFGVYD
PVYZJTT,GNN
LTFMYIVJQIQJX
PFMYIVNTWHJTT.V
JPNTQZJSIIYPNDMYW
NNPJBJP,QFLMFLMTNZN
SQYFLFLMQIJP,SDTTNSBN
OFLZFLIPOVYFTT,GJOIYFQV
YPF
QIG
JQX
PFL
MMNNW
ZFTT.


--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

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On 11/08/2025 02:50, Richard Heathfield wrote:

On 11/08/2025 00:24, Andy Walker wrote:

[...]

(c) in case I wasn't clear, commercial card
printing is v cheap if you want 100+ copies of one card, daft if
you want 100+ different cards;

In case I wasn't clear, this can be done at home, fun for all the family.

The part of "all the family" that is still at home is SWMBO and me. We've had our fun over the decades, but now want the easy life. Commercial printing is cheaper and better quality than we can achieve, and no trouble.

(d) your scheme requires a lot of
work for each recipient.

script it right and it's a cinch.
(a) maze generation - automatable
(b) alpha blending - automatable
(c) batch printing - automatable

Yes, yes, and up to a point. The point being when one of the inks
runs out, or there’s a card jam, or .... You may have access to a better printer than we poor pensioners can afford [fx: violins].

[...]

But no, it's the kind of idea you either jump at or jump on, and you
clearly haven't yelled with delight, so forget it. If you're limited to 100 copies of the same card, you can't personalise them.

As previously noted, we've thought about personalising them, but it's hard to get the quality and a workable scheme. If they're personalised, you also have a responsibility to select an appropriate persona for each recipient.

I may also have misled you. SWMBO and I are mathematicians with also
a CS and scientific bent; but the recipients aren't [with exceptions for (eg) former colleagues]. So we like our cards to have a maths/CS/science slant, but be OK for most recipients, who won't want to be bothered with [eg] mazes [tho' a few will have children of the right age]. It's a fine balance.

Cryptogram, maybe?

Thanks. I'll bear it in mind. May be usable, as it can be worked into a pretty picture that will look OK on the mantelpiece as well as giving the teenage recipients something to work out.

--
Andy Walker, Nottingham.
Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Duphly

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On 12/08/2025 00:45, Andy Walker wrote:

<snip>

Cryptogram, maybe?

    Thanks.  I'll bear it in mind.  May be usable, as it can be
worked into
a pretty picture that will look OK on the mantelpiece as well as
giving the
teenage recipients something to work out.

Oh, I should perhaps have warned you that deciphering my example
might not be quite as trivial as cryptograms are supposed to be.

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

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On 12/08/2025 04:48, Richard Heathfield wrote:

Cryptogram, maybe?

     Thanks.  I'll bear it in mind.  May be usable, as it can be worked into
a pretty picture that will look OK on the mantelpiece as well as giving the >> teenage recipients something to work out.

Oh, I should perhaps have warned you that deciphering my example
might not be quite as trivial as cryptograms are supposed to be.

Oh. I should perhaps have been clearer that I meant the /idea/
of a cryptogram, not specifically your example [which I have not yet
tried to decipher]. Logic/maths/etc for the general public has to be
/very/ simple; SWMBO vetoed a proposed card that featured an Xmas
tree packed as five pieces that filled an 8x8 box and "reassembled"
into a 7x9 rectangle on the grounds, probably correct, that most
people don't realise that 7x9 < 8x8, wouldn't see that there was a
problem if they did realise that, wouldn't care if they did see it,
and otherwise have probably seen the "trick" before.

--
Andy Walker, Nottingham.
Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Duphly

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On 12/08/2025 14:42, Andy Walker wrote:

SWMBO vetoed a proposed card that featured an Xmas
tree packed as five pieces that filled an 8x8 box and "reassembled"
into a 7x9 rectangle on the grounds, probably correct, that most
people don't realise that 7x9 < 8x8, wouldn't see that there was a
problem if they did realise that

Your spec is undecidable. Do you want a cool CS idea, or don't you?

One possible way out is to split your list into two:

* - the lass who likes puzzles (send her the 8x8/7x9), and

* - everyone else, for whom Woolworths do some very nice box sets
of cards... robins, snowmen, jolly men in red coats, the odd
camel or shepherd, complete with envelopes.

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

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On 12/08/2025 18:57, Richard Heathfield wrote:

Your spec is undecidable. Do you want a cool CS idea, or don't you?

I want ideas for Christmas cards that has a CS [or similar]
slant but can [also] just be enjoyed by non-CS people as a pretty
picture or as a puzzle for those interested. As previously noted,
we've also used ideas such as cartoons, music, ..., but there's no
point asking for ideas about those in this group. We've managed
to do our own cards for several decades now, but we seem to have
used up all the most obvious ideas. That's why I appreciate your
suggestion of a cryptogram.

[...] Woolworths do some very nice box sets of cards... '

I expect they do, but not in the UK. Their store locator
tells me that the nearest is in Sydney [Oz], which I don't believe,
but there certainly isn't one in walking range from here.

--
Andy Walker, Nottingham.
Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Handel

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