Plotter Drawings: Five seconds of Donkey Kong

Woah, hey, it&#x27;s me! I wanted to share this on HN but wasn&#x27;t sure if it was kosher. I guess someone else did it for me!<p>I just started working on these last week and they were very well received on Twitter. Then, to my astonishment, Edward Tufte retweeted it!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;EdwardTufte&#x2F;status&#x2F;954537749234765825" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;EdwardTufte&#x2F;status&#x2F;954537749234765825</a><p>I have one of his books but didn&#x27;t realize he was on Twitter until that moment. I was blown away.<p>A lot of folks asked to buy one, so I made the page that this HN post links to on Sunday night. Within hours Tufte reached out to buy 3 of them! :-o I have 6 other buyers so far as well. So I&#x27;ve been busy fulfilling these requests and trying to figure out shipping and stuff.<p>Interestingly, about half of the buyers so far are in neuroscience.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.plos.org&#x2F;ploscompbiol&#x2F;article?id=10.1371&#x2F;journal.pcbi.1005268" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;journals.plos.org&#x2F;ploscompbiol&#x2F;article?id=10.1371&#x2F;jou...</a>

Very cool! I did a something using bitmaps a few months back ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mattbierner.com&#x2F;nes-memory&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mattbierner.com&#x2F;nes-memory&#x2F;</a> ) but I really like how he visualized changes here.<p>If anyone is interested in exploring something similar, here&#x27;s the simple fceux script I used to sample the memory of a running NES game: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mattbierner&#x2F;NES-Memory-Visualization&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;collector.lua" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;mattbierner&#x2F;NES-Memory-Visualization&#x2F;blob...</a>

What is going on with Mega Man? The other games look relatively atomic but Mega Man has obvious dependencies spanning memory locations...

This actually makes me think of a project I&#x27;m currently neck-deep in working on... Taking captured audio hardware register writes (in the form of a VGM file) and having a modern microcontroller actually replay them on an actual NES CPU. In other words... A hardware-based NES game music player. (Of course I&#x27;m not actually visualizing much, yet.)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=97jic_WRrwY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=97jic_WRrwY</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=eafaFr9Q_rU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=eafaFr9Q_rU</a>

This is wonderful! This is kinda like a project I&#x27;m working on where we&#x27;re instrumenting memory accesses across each memory cell in a data structure to be able to visually profile how the data structure is being used.<p>Plotting each cell individually over time had never occurred to me, and I&#x27;ll definitely try this!

I could listen to the plotter go for hours.

Late to the party, but just wanted to comment that I appreciated the namesake spelled out by social media icons in the footer. Some people put thought into all angles :)

Really cool! Reminds me of distellamap by Ben Fry (co-creator of Processing) - <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benfry.com&#x2F;distellamap&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benfry.com&#x2F;distellamap&#x2F;</a>

In reading these comments, I&#x27;m surprised about the naivety of typical HN reader with their relationship with the price of art.<p>I mean, a photo only costs like $10 to print an 8x10, why would the artist dare charge $200 or more?

$200 per print from a pen plotter?<p>I&#x27;m sorry but unless each print is hand-drawn or something, then $200 is a bit much. Especially if there&#x27;s masters sitting on a hard drive somewhere.