HF Secret Santa 2014: Better Late Than Never Edition
- Thread starter Tress
- Start date
Yeah, Tress said in a private message that it said it'd arrived, but I didn't get anything. So confused. And it's armadillo related. Of COURSE I'm going to like it. Not sure how much it'll be used as a drink/bottle holder, but it's now a permanent resident on my desk. Not sure what to call him, yet. Can't call him Dill, since that's the stuffed animal.
I considered that one as well, but reviewers seemed to think TPE was a little harder to follow with its "hard-copy hyperlinks."
This doesn't rule out my getting it later for my own perusal, of course.
--Patrick
Ah, the sweetness of seeing messages on Steam about free games. @ThatNickGuy was awesome and hooked me up with THREE games on Steam: The Banner Saga, Kingdom Rush, and Ace Patrol - Pacific Skies. That's a crazy, fantastic slew of gifts! Thanks!
You are very welcome, last year's recipient also received a LEGO minifigure, so it is now a tradition. The pound sign thing is the symbol for Oslo's public transportation company Ruter, these highly reflective things are meant to hang on a bag or bike for increased visibility (as they have long periods of darkness), I grabbed several from a ticket station, I hope they were meant to be free. I also made an assumption that you or someone you like has a smartphone that can make use of the cardboard.So I came home to find a package waiting for me!!
Nope - there should still be a box on it's way... possibly there today, but no tracking (cheap bastards don't track non-rush international ordes), so I'm not sure.@Dirona I got your card today! Thank you~ Is this the part 2 I've been waiting for?
I am so excited for the mail to come now!
Dave
Staff member
Posted anonymously in the wrong thread:
@Officer_Charon, your gift has been shipped and should arrive on Tuesday the 22nd
@Officer_Charon, your gift has been shipped and should arrive on Tuesday the 22nd
I'm glad you liked it.
Thanks go to @stienman, who provided a sounding board for the idea, @Far who supplied the original image, @HCGLNS who helped me figure out how to replace @Squidleybits avatar, Phoebe the Customer Support Hero at Zazzle for helping me figure out a copyright issue, and AndreaMosaic for providing the freeware that generated the final image.
The image was created by taking a screenshot of the website, blurring it a bit, and then inserting the original Durr picture over the top of it. The avatars were scraped from Halforums using a VBscript I adapted for the purpose. I manually cleared out all of the null avatars and at least some of the duplicate avatars. That left me with 316 images. I used AndreaMosaic to create the final image out of 10000 tiles. The settings I used were: no tile rotation, no tile overlap, no duplicates within 5 cells, 7% color shift, and must use every tile at least once*. The final image was 6400x6400 and intended to be printed on a 32"x32" square poster. (This actually wasn't the biggest option!) I submitted the image to Zazzle... and had it rejected! There were 2 avatars, out of the 316, that were at issue. I removed 1 of the avatars that belonged to an inactive user and replaced the other with a @HCGLNS approved image.
*Although it looks like everyone was included, there were only two avatars that I specifically looked at to make sure they were used -- that of Dave and that of North Ranger. I believe each avatar only appears once.
Here is a scaled reproduction of the image:
...and nothing of value was lost.
--Patrick
(well what do I know, I don't Sports, but I wasn't about to pass up the chance to make the comment)
The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were the first to really turn cheerleading sexy, and they've striven to maintain the reputation ever since.
The team, however, can suck a bag of dicks
But that might just be my personal feeling.
This needs an "AMAZING!" rating. Great job!
There is going to be some duplication since there are fewer avatars than mosaic cells. The difference is that there aren't areas that are solid blocks of a single avatar.
If it helps, here is a link to the original:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qniegl15jvk7nlz/durr with background Mosaic05.jpg?dl=0
I was actually surprised at how many of the lo-res images were recognizable.
Also, I can verify that it makes a great conversation-starter when set as the wallpaper of a work computer.
--Patrick
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I was too. Mine was a bit tough but I wasn't looking in the blue section. I figured it would be in the black section.
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
Glad you liked you received your gift gusto, there are two other gifts on there way from Amazon. They probably won't arrive in time for Xmas though. When they arrive then I shall reveal myself.
Two MORE?! You really went all out!
thanks Seej! Also, the address on the package, can I write a thank you note to said address??
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
@Enresshou patience... What with your trip and all. But fret not, it's taken care of.
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
@Officer_Charon, according to the tracking information your gift should arrive sometime today
Dave
Staff member
Call out to @Officer_Charon & @Enresshou.
I don't think that's required anymore, since I've been getting alerts about anonymous tagging.
That was supposed to say YES.