Personal effects: Can you see it? -- John Darrow's blog

"Can you see it?" said Mom tonight. "Huh?" I responded. She added something about showing it to people on a past trip to Hawaii to see if they could see it. I had no idea what she was talking about.

Then she turned a piece of paper toward me. It looked something like the following. In my handwriting below it was the note "Success!"


yuiopasdMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMqwe
sdMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoons.co
MqwertyuiopMsdMqwertyuiopMsdMqweryuioopMsMqweryuiooopMsMqweryuiooopM
iopasdMqweMtyuiopasdMqweMtyuiopasMqweeMtyiopasMqweeeMtyiopasMqweeeMt
yuiopasdMqwerMyuiopasdMqwerMyuiopsdMqqwerMyuopsddMqqwerMyuopsddMqqwe
sMxqwertyuiopasMxqwertyuiopasMxqwrtyuuiopasMqwrttyuuiopasMqwrttyuuio
MqwertyuiopasdMqwertyuiopasdMqweryuioopasdMqeryuuioopasdMqeryuuioopa
iopasdMqweMtyuiopasdMqweMtyuiopasMqweeMtyuioasMqqweeMtyuioasMqqweeMt
Mphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.
iopasdMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoons.com.JDMphoon

"Oh yeah!" I said with delight. I went over to join her in staring at each page in a stack of pages. These were a copy of my notes and sketches from the early '90s as I attempted to figure out how those "sterograms" worked, those colorful posters we saw at all the malls, where people would gather around and stare, waiting for their eyes to relax enough for them to see the 3D images. (So, can you see it, too? Let your eyes relax as if looking beyond the screen. The goal is to get any two M's to drift toward each other until they merge into one. An alternate approach: tug ever so slightly at the outer corners of your eyes to merge any two M's.)

After several more trips to the mall, I observed that every pixel was a repeat of a pixel off to its left. Pixels that appeared to be closer to the eye were copies of whatever pixels were a slightly shorter distance to the left. I figured the principle had to apply to something as simple as characters, too. Sure enough.

The example above is a recreation of that past experiment. I typed 14 "random" letters on each line and then repeated those 14 for the rest of each line. That established the "background depth." When I wanted to create the left edge of something that would appear closer to the eye, I typed whatever letter was 13 characters to the left and kept copying whatever was 13 characters to the left until I reached a right edge, where I'd resume copying whatever character was 14 to the left.

Soon after, I created the sphere (first diagram below) and more recently created the Phoon stereogram: