#Selfish!
I used to love BYTE (in the 'old' days) before they turned into another
computer products review magazine – packed with mind-stretching stuff, neat
algorithms, and real hardware how-to articles. (Kilobaud, too) I don't even
waste time reading it anymore.
I found the April '78 issue. I remember programming the "Serendipitous
Circles" algorithm myself. I could't find the original 8/77 article :(- maybe
it's in the room I can't get into without a forklift. <g>
The GEB was inspired as an exercise with the 3DS booleans. I was trying to
make solid objects formed from individual letters, such that as you rotated the
object, the view thru the object would form different letters in succession.
(Start with a solid extruded letter, place another one in the same space but
rotated somewhat, then calc a boolean intersection.) Unfortunately, I could not
at the time get 3DS to successfully complete the booleans required. Then I
tried using AME (Advanced Modeling Extension) for AutoCAD, which is far more
suited for this. I had remembered the book cover (couldn't find mine at the
time) and decided to use their (artistic) idea as a test of the process. Let
me know what you think. One thing I found out pretty quickly is there is a
huge space of possible letter combinations that are unusable due to the
geometry.
BTW, have you seen Schattschneider's book "M.C. Escher – Visions of Symmetry"?
It has reproductions from Escher's notebooks and all of his symmetrical
drawings, a lot of them never published before. The book tries to explain why
and how Escher developed his art. Well worth reading! The guy would have been
even more of a wonder with a computer. (On the other hand, he might have spent
so much time installing software and getting video drivers to work and never
doing anything noteworthy.)
JKJ (book reviewing again)