In the "something completely different" category today, anonwhat has created an image-to-ASCII art tutorial that takes in an image and, using PHP's GD functionality and a bit of logic, transforms it.

In this tutorial, we are going to create a simple web-based ASCII Art Generator. The concepts found in this tutorial can be applied to other languages. [It is] a simple ASCII Art Generator takes in an image, grayscales it, pixelates it, then prints out a character for each block on the pixelated image based on how “dark” the block is.

The tutorial walks you through the steps needed to make the simple script. It analyzes the image looking at the "blackness" (a combination of the values from imagecolorat and imagecolorsforindex). ACSII characters are then substituted for different "blackness" ranges with the result looking something like this.

In this new post to his blog Marco Tabini eloquently explains something that less and less seem to be able to understand - the tool is only a means to an end. It's more about the artist and the end result than the tool.

What is beautiful code? Ask ten people, and you will probably get ten different answers. Ask them what makes a programming language beautiful, and you've got yourself the beginnings of a holy war.

He compares code to art - the language is just a tool, the canvas an editor waiting to be filled with lines of artist-generated works. Because of PHP's wonderful flexibility, it can be molded to fit just about any need a coder might see fit and gives them the power they need to really dig into the code and about the "paint by numbers" sort fo things language like Ruby have to offer.

Marcus Whitney has a new post today with a bit more of an official announcement (thank just a mention) about the new offering from php|architect - their ART section.

He also mentions that he will be an editor on the project and is extending an invitation to all authors out there for article proposals. Yes, they are paying for the articles, deadlines/word counts aren't "outrageous", and it could lead to articles in the magazine itself. Check out their main page for more information.

Marcus Whitney has a new post today with a bit more of an official announcement (thank just a mention) about the new offering from php|architect - their ART section.

He also mentions that he will be an editor on the project and is extending an invitation to all authors out there for article proposals. Yes, they are paying for the articles, deadlines/word counts aren't "outrageous", and it could lead to articles in the magazine itself. Check out their main page for more information.

According to this new post from Scott Mattocks today, there's a new article in a new section of the php|archtiect site detailing the evolution of PHP-GTK.

The article looks at PHP-GTK from its humblest beginnings (the filesystem functions) out to what it is and what it's used for. There's also a brief discussion of where it's headed as well, including links to a few different resources on the topic.

According to this new post from Scott Mattocks today, there's a new article in a new section of the php|archtiect site detailing the evolution of PHP-GTK.

The article looks at PHP-GTK from its humblest beginnings (the filesystem functions) out to what it is and what it's used for. There's also a brief discussion of where it's headed as well, including links to a few different resources on the topic.