In 1961 I got a job in a computer factory because I thought it would be a growing field. Since then a lot of software has been developed to make computers easier to use. Now even children can put computers to good use. Because my grandson has had a long term interest in Neopets, I am exploring this site in order to have a common ground for discussing computers and worldly goals.

Drawing colorful screens one pixel at at time.

In the first image below, the lilac bands towards the corners emphasize the 64 pixel vertical lines (32 increasing intensity, 32 decreasing).

The narrower shaded lines are remnants of the previously drawn color band.

The blue center is the most recently drawn color when the screen shot was taken. Tiny fractions of a second later the blue would have extended horizontally one 64 pixel vertical line at a time and overlaid the lilac.

The second image was created by drawing a 48 pixel straight line, then an adjacent parallel line which starts at a slight offset, then repeats this a few hundred times before the next color is started in a slightly different position.

Again, each line is actually written one pixel at a time from a palette that increases the color intensity to max, then reverses through the palette of decreasing intensities.

The starting point for each line is in a portion of the upper right quadrant. Swapping the (x,y) co-ordinates to (y,x) fills the this quadrant. Writing the same color with all combinations of + and - (x,y) and (y,x) distributes the pattern symmetrically on the screen.

The curves are the result of each line's starting point coming from a cosine table modified to adjust for the number of pixels in the image size.

The basic idea was to make use of computers' inherent ability to repeat a series of calculations with small changes each time.

I marvel at the attractiveness of the many patterns I could not have made happen intentionally if some specific pattern had been my goal.