Talk:2601: Instructions
Turtle graphics
So these are instructions for a turtle graphics program. The audio is drawn from https://xkcd.com/2601/radio.mp3, a 9 hour 7 minute 12 second long audio file It's generated by feeding turtle code into a text-to-speech program, but idk which language or which program. If you can convert the speech back to text, somehow without ruining the formatting (or just do a lot of editing with regex until it looks right), you could feed it into a turtle graphics program and get the resulting drawing.
I don't know what the current image on this page is. Is that the drawing you get by following these instructions? 172.70.100.4 20:58, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
- Wait I see now, that is the actual image for the comic. It just gets covered up by the button so I can't see it. 172.70.126.87 21:03, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
- Ah, it looks like someone realized it's actually longer than that. After downloading it, I found it to be 131,329,389 bytes. The Windows Properties viewer claims it is 8h41m08s in length, but that's wrong. It is actually 9h07m06s. By the way, the code is in the Logo language. He seems to have copied this from a book, but I don't know which one. 172.70.100.4 21:12, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
- Worth taking a look at? I can start looking for books that contain that text162.158.107.52 21:39, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
- The automatic speech system is using standard punctuation processing, meaning that critical marks for the code aren't being announced. You can't get the code from the samples without filling in the blanks after getting a transcript. N (talk) 22:19, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
The MP3 file ends with this text: "I even talk to turtles at times. But you need to understand LOGO to appreciate the great, great things that have been created. We spend so much of our life typing, looking, but never ever seeing." 162.158.222.151 21:17, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
april fools' comic? GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e (talk) 21:18, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
I think it's an April Fool's joke. 108.162.238.148 21:20, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
- Well is it 2022/04/01 141.101.77.189 21:26, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
I think mine's broken. I don't get it. 172.70.130.91 21:29, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
- You press the radio button, it selects it, then you can press it a zillion times in any pattern and all it ever does is blink the entire image. Nothing else ever appears other than the radio button, and there’s never any sound so pressing the speaker in the corner to supposedly turn it on or off is also completely pointless.172.70.126.65 23:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Given the alt text "happy little turtles" and the tone of the narration I assume we're supposed to pretend the narrator is Bob Ross guiding us to creating an artistic masterpiece with Logo 172.70.211.72 21:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Guys, it's been HOURS and the transcription is still incomplete. Step it up! 172.70.162.77 21:37, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
- Not even sure what the transcript should be. I did my best162.158.107.52 21:41, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
- I have a feeling this might be one of the longest transcripts on the site. 108.162.245.43 21:57, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Up until someone automates the process, I'll be working on the transcript and saving it in exkcd in parts (: Don't worry too much about edit overrides, I'll be transcribing in a google doc to avoid that! --Wielder of the Staple Gun (talk) 21:53, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
- The sections about turtles between the code blocks seems to be from
Interesting Facts About Turtles A Little Nature Study by a Scientist that will Interest Old and Young Naturalists Alike By Randle C. Rosenberger M. D., Professor of Hygiene and Bacteriology, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pa. https://archive.org/stream/foreststream861916newy/foreststream861916newy_djvu.txt
The uni.xkcd version of this comic also just shows the turtle like this article. So much for uses two April Fools comics against each other ;) 172.70.114.77 22:44, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
I ran the MP3 through Amazon Transcribe. It can do only 4 hours at a time, so I had to split the original file. I went from start to 03:59:59, 03:59:59 to 07:59:58, and 07:59:58 to end. Amazon Transcribe also gave me some subtitle files (index 1). They have time codes in them. So if someone wanted to note the times of the little quips, and host the audio file somewhere where links to the middle of the file can be generated (like YouTube), that could be cool. Below are the transcriptions for analysis. Replace X with 1, 2, or 3; and replace Y with json, srt, or vtt. Pgn674 (talk) 23:15, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
https://pgn674.s3.amazonaws.com/xkcd-2601/xkcd-2601-X.Y
- No need to host anything special. Let's say we want to jump to time code 02:35:14.840 from the vtt subtitle file #1 (line 7084, subtitle 1771). 2*60*60+35*60+14=9314. Subtract a few seconds, and make a link like this. Click here to learn about turtle noises: https://xkcd.com/2601/radio.mp3#t=9310 Pgn674 (talk) 23:48, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
I threw Adobe Premiere Pro at it: https://anonfiles.com/pbYfK7Sax4/radio_csv; and https://anonfiles.com/35YbKeScxe/radio_txt are the results. Note: these transcribe until 07:01:28:19. I am currently in the process of making APP suffer more and churn out the last two hours. --ẞ qwertz (talk) 23:54, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
So... what language is this? I'm hearing: PENUP, PENDOWN, SETHEADING (N) (N), SETXY (N) (N), FORWARD (N) - all of which are standard LOGO commands. But I'm also hearing something that sounds like CUBIC (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N), though it could also be QBIT, or text-to-speech for something like "^3". Either way it's NOT a standard LOGO command, so suggests it's a variant. Does not seem to be KTurtle, POOL, UCBLogo. QLogo, FMSLogo, and then I got bored searching. --172.69.71.91 00:37, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
- In the automatic transcription it has "Two cubic colon X one colon Y one colon X two"... which would be TO CUBIC :X1 :Y1 :X2 ... so it is defined above. 162.158.107.230 01:15, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
- Yes, some of the commands seem to be defined at the top. CUBIC at the top, SQUARE maybe somewhere else. So a shortcut to decyphering it might be to just extract and render all the cubes from the "CUBIC" and "SQUARE" commands, given their values. But what format are the cubes? Are they even the coordinates of cubes? For both commands, the six numbers seem to be in the format A B A B A B where the As and Bs are similar or even in some cases identical, which seems a strange thing for a cube:
SetXY -443 412 PenDown Square -443 405 -443 397 -444 390
The definition seems to be something like:
ToCubic : X1 : Y1 : X2 : Y2 : Ex : Ey --- Parameter definitions? local Make " X0 XCor --- Local variable definitions? Local Make " Y0 YCor Local Make " ErrX1 Lerp : X0 : X 0.25 local Make " ErrY1 Lerp : Y0 : Ey 0.25 Local Make " ErrX2 Lerp : X0 : Ex 0.75 Local Make " ErrY2 Lerp : Y0 : Ey 0.75 IfElse Or LessP : picks error Dist : ErrX1 : ErrY1 : X1 : Y1 LessP : picks error Dist : ErrX2 : ErrY2 : X2 : Y2 [ Local Make " Qx0 mix : X0 : X1 Local Make " Qy0 mix : Y0 : Y1 Local Make " Qx1 mix : X1 : X2 Local Make " qy1 Mix : Y1 : Y2 Local Make " Qx2 mix : X2 : EX Local Make " Qy2 mix : Y2 : Ey Local Make " Lx0 mix : Qx0 : QX1 Local Make " Ly0 mix : Qy0 : QY1 Local Make " Lx1 Mix : Qx1 : Qx2 Local Make " Ly1 Mix : qy1 : Q Local Make " PmX Mix : Lx0 : Lx1 Local Make " PmY Mix : Ly0 : LY1 Cubic : Qx0 : qy0 : Lx0 : Ly0 : PmX : PmY Cubic : Lx1 : Ly1 : Qx2 : Qy2 : Ex : Ey ] [ SetXY : Ex : Ey ]
Least, that's what it sounds like, but I suspect round brackets and suchlike are not spoken aloud :( --108.162.221.95 01:54, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
Feels like the speech processing is lossy, so generating the code will be a lengthy labor of love transcribing it, then debugging it, trying to fill the gaps. The code may also have been fed through an automated "Bob Ross filter" which may have lost even more data. --172.69.71.91 00:37, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
About a quarter of the way into the text is the line "You know, I'm beginning to suspect it's turtles all the way down!" 162.158.78.215 00:46, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
it's concerning that the only real way we'll be able to figure this comic out is to compile the entire 9 hour computer-generated voice speech. youtube.com/watch?v=miLcaqq2Zpk (talk) 01:40, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
Here's my attempt to transcribe the first 11 minutes of this monstrosity or so: (I haven't run any of the transcribed code for the record.) --172.68.118.59 02:12, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
Partial Transcript |
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# 0:00:00 # And here we want to show you that you can program a picture right along with us. We'll use a single color, some unorthodox functions, and each line we'll put a bit of nature's masterpieces right here on our canvas. Today we'll have them run all the functions across the stream, right now, that you need to program along with us. Starting with a simple one: TO DIST :X0 :Y0 :X1 :Y1 LOCAL MAKE "RX DIFFERENCE :X1 :X0 LOCAL MAKE "RY DIFFERENCE :Y1 :Y0 OUTPUT SQRT SUM PRODUCT "RX "RX PRODUCT "RY "RY END # 0:00:50 # There we go. Just like that. TO LERP :A :B :T OUTPUT SUM :A PRODUCT :T DIFFERENCE :B :A END # 0:01:05 # One more done, no pressure. TO MIX :A :B OUTPUT LERP :A :B 0.5 END # 0:01:15 # Really makes our programming life easier. TO CUBIC :X1 :Y1 :X2 :Y2 :EX :EY LOCAL MAKE "X0 XCOR LOCAL MAKE "Y0 YCOR LOCAL MAKE "ERRX1 LERP :X0 :EX 0.25 LOCAL MAKE "ERRY1 LERP :Y0 :EY 0.25 LOCAL MAKE "ERRX2 LERP :X0 :EX 0.75 LOCAL MAKE "ERRY2 LERP :Y0 :EY 0.75 IFORELSE LESSP :PXERR (DIST :ERRX1 :ERRY1 :X1 :Y1) LESSP :PXERR (DIST :ERRX2 :ERRY2 :X2 :Y2) [ LOCAL MAKE "QX0 MIX :X0 :X1 LOCAL MAKE "QY0 MIX :Y0 :Y1 LOCAL MAKE "QX1 MIX :X1 :X2 LOCAL MAKE "QY1 MIX :Y1 :Y2 LOCAL MAKE "QX2 MIX :X2 :EX LOCAL MAKE "QY2 MIX :Y2 :EY LOCAL MAKE "LX0 MIX :QX0 :QX1 LOCAL MAKE "LY0 MIX :QY0 :QY1 LOCAL MAKE "LX1 MIX :QX1 :QX2 LOCAL MAKE "LY1 MIX :QY1 :QY2 LOCAL MAKE "PMX MIX :LX0 :LX1 LOCAL MAKE "PMY MIX :LY0 :LY1 CUBIC :QX0 :QY0 :LX0 :LY0 :PMX :PMY CUBIC :LX1 :LY1 :QX2 :QY2 :EX :EY ] [ SET X Y :EX :EY ] END # 0:04:16 # I think there's a programmer hidden at the bottom of every single one of us. MAKE "PXERR 0.5 # 0:04:25 # Let me show you what is going on up here. CLEAR SCREEN WINDOW PENUP SET X Y -473 391 # 0:04:38 # I've just covered the entire canvas with just a bit of white. PENDOWN # 0:04:44 # We start with a vision in our hearts and we put it on canvas. CUBIC -469 424 -458 416 -456 389 PENUP SET X Y -471 400 PENDOWN SET HEADING 87 FORWARD 14 PENUP SET X Y -443 412 PENDOWN CUBIC -443 405 -443 397 -444 390 PENUP SET X Y -442 400 PENDOWN SET HEADING 84 FORWARD 10 PENUP SET X Y -431 409 PENDOWN CUBIC -432 403 -432 397 -431 390 PENUP SET X Y -427 392 PENDOWN CUBIC -422 419 -415 416 -412 391 PENUP SET X Y -426 400 PENDOWN CUBIC -422 400 -418 401 -414 401 PENUP SET X Y -409 410 PENDOWN CUBIC -408 404 -408 398 -408 391 PENUP SET X Y -409 409 PENDOWN CUBIC -395 421 -390 396 -408 403 PENUP SET X Y -393 410 PENDOWN CUBIC -392 405 -392 399 -392 393 PENUP SET X Y -393 411 PENDOWN CUBIC -380 419 -377 400 -392 402 PENUP SET X Y -372 391 PENDOWN CUBIC -371 402 -374 400 -377 408 PENUP SET X Y -372 400 PENDOWN SET HEADING 37 FORWARD 13 PENUP SET X Y -471 380 PENDOWN CUBIC -471 366 -480 357 -460 361 PENUP SET X Y -457 379 PENDOWN CUBIC -457 372 -457 366 -457 360 PENUP SET X Y -448 379 PENDOWN SET HEADING 179 FORWARD 19 PENUP # 0:09:30 # Miriam Webster defines a turtle as: noun, any of an order (Testudines synonym Chelonia) of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine reptiles that have a toothless horny beak and a shell of bony dermal plates usually covered with horny shields enclosing the trunk and into which the head, limbs, and tail usually may be withdrawn. SET X Y -454 378 PENDOWN CUBIC -449 379 -444 380 -440 380 PENUP SET X Y -434 379 PENDOWN SET HEADING 179 FORWARD 16 PENUP SET X Y -439 378 CUBIC -434 379 -430 380 -425 380 PENUP SET X Y -425 377 PENDOWN CUBIC -424 367 -431 356 -415 360 PENUP SET X Y -400 380 PENDOWN CUBIC -404 379 -413 382 -412 376 CUBIC -410 360 -416 356 -400 360 PENUP SET X Y -412 368 PENDOWN CUBIC -409 369 -406 370 -403 370 PENUP SET X Y -376 380 PENDOWN SET HEADING 178 FORWARD 21 PENUP SET X Y -383 378 PENDOWN CUBIC -379 379 -374 380 -369 381 PENUP SET X Y -366 379 PENDOWN CUBIC -365 372 -366 366 -366 360 PENUP SET X Y -366 379 PENDOWN CUBIC -353 384 -349 375 -363 371 CUBIC -358 372 -356 365 -353 361 PENUP SET X Y -338 379 PENDOWN CUBIC -341 378 -351 381 -350 376 CUBIC -348 359 -355 358 -336 361 PENUP SET X Y -350 370 PENDOWN CUBIC -347 370 -344 370 -341 370 PENUP SET X Y -320 379 PENDOWN CUBIC -338 381 -331 375 -333 362 CUBIC -332 358 -323 362 -320 361 PENUP SET X Y -332 370 PENDOWN SET HEADING 89 FORWARD 7 SET HEADING -79 FORWARD 1 PENUP SET X Y -474 336 PENDOWN CUBIC -473 329 -473 322 -474 316 PENUP SET X Y -473 327 PENDOWN SET HEADING 85 FORWARD 11 PERNUP SET X Y -461 338 PENDOWN CUBIC -461 331 -461 323 -460 316 PENUP # 0:16:03 # Here are some interesting notes from interesting facts about turtles. |