Fuse This
Not really magic, but Janus likes to think of it that way, which is good enough for my topic-selection purposes. Anyway, if you like those stereo-isogram thingies where you fuse the two images to make a three-dimensional picture pop off the page, here’s one rendered entirely in ASCII: stereo.txt. Complete with an uplifting message crafted just for obsessives who spend time weblogging when they should be doing something more productive.
June 25th, 2004 at 6:55 am
Hey, I don’t think the link is working or is it supposed to be just lines of nonsensical text? Or, do I need a special program?
June 25th, 2004 at 8:04 am
No, that’s what you’re supposed to see. Now you have to “fuse” it, in the sense of focusing on a point well beyond the computer screen, causing your left-eye and right-eye versions of the page to separate. Doing so, you’ll see four R’s at the bottom of the screen. When you’ve fused it properly, the left R as seen by the right eye and the right R as seen by the left eye will be superimposed on each other. At this point, the center of the text on the page itself will seem to “fuse”, giving a three-dimensional illusion in which two phrases will “pop out”, appearing to be closer to you than the background text.
Some people have a hard time achieving this effect. I find it pretty easy, but I’ve always enjoyed staring off into space for long stretches looking at nothing in particular.