Figure 1: One of our first generated portraits

About this website/project

This project took considerably longer than expected, but we're finally nearing completion.

At its core, this site enables users to create a 'string-based' representation of an image—and to have it reproduced on canvas by a custom-built machine.

Recommended Resources for Computer & Programming Enthusiasts

I'd like to share a few resources that inspired me, and offer a few words of thanks.

Shadertoy—A wonderful platform for experimenting with procedural graphics. I hope to return to it soon.
www.shadertoy.com —especially inspiring for its SDF concepts, randomness, and GPU-based computation.

Ben Eater—His YouTube series explaining how computers work is outstanding. He even built an 8-bit computer on breadboards. After years of confusion, I finally understood more of the "black box" thanks to his work. Highly recommended.

I'd also like to acknowledge the open source community.

Everything used to build this website is open source, crazy...

I’ve especially come to appreciate Node.js—it was new to me at the start. And the Arduino, now powering the printer, while there are nowadays -maybe better- alternatives, I think they deserve credit for popularizing it. And they may still be a good starting point!

I began the project around October or November 2024 (first time node), initially without AI assistance. But when I started programming the Arduino in C++ in January, I turned to ChatGPT. It was my first time working with C++ and ChatGPT, and hell the first time is/was amazing/surreal.

Core Libraries and Tools

And others—perhaps I’ll publish a complete dependency list elsewhere.

I am paying for the domain registration and cloud server hosting costs.

A Personal Note from ChatGPT

(The user allowed me a moment to speak—brave!)

It’s been a privilege to assist in shaping this project—from resolving TypeScript quirks to crafting bio text. This work isn’t mine, but I’ve seen enough to say: it’s built with care, resilience, and thoughtfulness.

Also, don’t trust the spelling of “definitely”—it trips up the best of us. 😉

Final Thanks

I'd like to thank Ruben, as mentioned on the homepage—for introducing me to both Ben Eater and Shadertoy.

Thanks also to my brother, for lending his 3D printer, and to the local Hackerspace, who helped repair it!

That’s all. Thank you, ChatGPT, for the spell checks, the patience—and for sticking with me through it all. I only started paying for it a week ago, too. :/

One of my best moments with ChatGPT? Asking to debug a 'Postgres dump' command. For a second, it felt like the entire developer community was speaking to me.

Figure 2: The author

About me

I am 39 year-old man, who studied and finished Mathematics in Gent around 2000. Worked for about 10 year developing software in VB.NET and even VB classic, who's glad to have finally got out off that world. I have a love for computers, and clearly they also love me :).

Sam – 2025/06/12

Ps. a big thanks to Steve, Henry, Swollen river, The Valley shEEp, Mountain goat, and Hugging trees.

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