Talk:2601: Instructions

Turtle graphics

So these are instructions for a turtle graphics program. The audio is drawn from https://xkcd.com/2601/radio.mp3, a 9 hour 7 minute 12 second long audio file It's generated by feeding turtle code into a text-to-speech program, but idk which language or which program. If you can convert the speech back to text, somehow without ruining the formatting (or just do a lot of editing with regex until it looks right), you could feed it into a turtle graphics program and get the resulting drawing.

I don't know what the current image on this page is. Is that the drawing you get by following these instructions? 172.70.100.4 20:58, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Wait I see now, that is the actual image for the comic. It just gets covered up by the button so I can't see it. 172.70.126.87 21:03, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Ah, it looks like someone realized it's actually longer than that. After downloading it, I found it to be 131,329,389 bytes. The Windows Properties viewer claims it is 8h41m08s in length, but that's wrong. It is actually 9h07m06s. By the way, the code is in the Logo language. He seems to have copied this from a book, but I don't know which one. 172.70.100.4 21:12, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Worth taking a look at? I can start looking for books that contain that text162.158.107.52 21:39, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

The automatic speech system is using standard punctuation processing, meaning that critical marks for the code aren't being announced. You can't get the code from the samples without filling in the blanks after getting a transcript. N (talk) 22:19, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

The MP3 file ends with this text: "I even talk to turtles at times. But you need to understand LOGO to appreciate the great, great things that have been created. We spend so much of our life typing, looking, but never ever seeing." 162.158.222.151 21:17, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

april fools' comic? GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e (talk) 21:18, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I think it's an April Fool's joke. 108.162.238.148 21:20, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Well is it 2022/04/01 141.101.77.189 21:26, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I think mine's broken. I don't get it. 172.70.130.91 21:29, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

You press the radio button, it selects it, then you can press it a zillion times in any pattern and all it ever does is blink the entire image. Nothing else ever appears other than the radio button, and there’s never any sound so pressing the speaker in the corner to supposedly turn it on or off is also completely pointless.172.70.126.65 23:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Given the alt text "happy little turtles" and the tone of the narration I assume we're supposed to pretend the narrator is Bob Ross guiding us to creating an artistic masterpiece with Logo 172.70.211.72 21:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Guys, it's been HOURS and the transcription is still incomplete. Step it up! 172.70.162.77 21:37, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Not even sure what the transcript should be. I did my best162.158.107.52 21:41, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I have a feeling this might be one of the longest transcripts on the site. 108.162.245.43 21:57, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Up until someone automates the process, I'll be working on the transcript and saving it in exkcd in parts (: Don't worry too much about edit overrides, I'll be transcribing in a google doc to avoid that! --Wielder of the Staple Gun (talk) 21:53, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

The sections about turtles between the code blocks seems to be from

Interesting Facts About Turtles A Little Nature Study by a Scientist that will Interest Old and Young Naturalists Alike By Randle C. Rosenberger M. D., Professor of Hygiene and Bacteriology, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pa. https://archive.org/stream/foreststream861916newy/foreststream861916newy_djvu.txt

The uni.xkcd version of this comic also just shows the turtle like this article. So much for uses two April Fools comics against each other ;) 172.70.114.77 22:44, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I ran the MP3 through Amazon Transcribe. It can do only 4 hours at a time, so I had to split the original file. I went from start to 03:59:59, 03:59:59 to 07:59:58, and 07:59:58 to end. Amazon Transcribe also gave me some subtitle files (index 1). They have time codes in them. So if someone wanted to note the times of the little quips, and host the audio file somewhere where links to the middle of the file can be generated (like YouTube), that could be cool. Below are the transcriptions for analysis. Replace X with 1, 2, or 3; and replace Y with json, srt, or vtt. Pgn674 (talk) 23:15, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

https://pgn674.s3.amazonaws.com/xkcd-2601/xkcd-2601-X.Y

No need to host anything special. Let's say we want to jump to time code 02:35:14.840 from the vtt subtitle file #1 (line 7084, subtitle 1771). 2*60*60+35*60+14=9314. Subtract a few seconds, and make a link like this. Click here to learn about turtle noises: https://xkcd.com/2601/radio.mp3#t=9310 Pgn674 (talk) 23:48, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I went and found all mentions of "turtle", extracted those lines, and generated links to them. Programmatically. If anyone wants to go through and do some manual review and fine tuning, go ahead. Pgn674 (talk) 00:57, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I threw Adobe Premiere Pro at it: https://anonfiles.com/pbYfK7Sax4/radio_csv; and https://anonfiles.com/35YbKeScxe/radio_txt are the results. Note: these transcribe until 07:01:28:19. I am currently in the process of making APP suffer more and churn out the last two hours. --ẞ qwertz (talk) 23:54, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

So... what language is this? I'm hearing: PENUP, PENDOWN, SETHEADING (N) (N), SETXY (N) (N), FORWARD (N) - all of which are standard LOGO commands. But I'm also hearing something that sounds like CUBIC (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N), though it could also be QBIT, or text-to-speech for something like "^3". Either way it's NOT a standard LOGO command, so suggests it's a variant. Does not seem to be KTurtle, POOL, UCBLogo. QLogo, FMSLogo, and then I got bored searching. --172.69.71.91 00:37, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

In the automatic transcription it has "Two cubic colon X one colon Y one colon X two"... which would be TO CUBIC :X1 :Y1 :X2 ... so it is defined above. 162.158.107.230 01:15, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, some of the commands seem to be defined at the top. CUBIC at the top, SQUARE maybe somewhere else. So a shortcut to decyphering it might be to just extract and render all the cubes from the "CUBIC" and "SQUARE" commands, given their values. But what format are the cubes? Are they even the coordinates of cubes? For both commands, the six numbers seem to be in the format A B A B A B where the As and Bs are similar or even in some cases identical, which seems a strange thing for a cube:

SetXY -443 412
PenDown
Square -443 405 -443 397 -444 390

The definition seems to be something like:

ToCubic : X1 : Y1 : X2 : Y2 : Ex : Ey --- Parameter definitions?
local Make " X0 XCor  --- Local variable definitions?
Local Make " Y0 YCor
Local Make " ErrX1 Lerp : X0 : X 0.25
local Make " ErrY1 Lerp : Y0 : Ey 0.25
Local Make " ErrX2 Lerp : X0 : Ex 0.75
Local Make " ErrY2 Lerp : Y0 : Ey 0.75
IfElse
  Or
    LessP : picks error Dist : ErrX1 : ErrY1 : X1 : Y1 
    LessP : picks error Dist : ErrX2 : ErrY2 : X2 : Y2
[
    Local Make " Qx0 mix : X0 : X1
    Local Make " Qy0 mix : Y0 : Y1
    Local Make " Qx1 mix : X1 : X2
    Local Make " qy1 Mix : Y1 : Y2
    Local Make " Qx2 mix : X2 : EX
    Local Make " Qy2 mix : Y2 : Ey
    Local Make " Lx0 mix : Qx0 : QX1
    Local Make " Ly0 mix : Qy0 : QY1
    Local Make " Lx1 Mix : Qx1 : Qx2
    Local Make " Ly1 Mix : qy1 : Q
    Local Make " PmX Mix : Lx0 : Lx1
    Local Make " PmY Mix : Ly0 : LY1
    Cubic : Qx0 : qy0 : Lx0 : Ly0 : PmX : PmY
    Cubic : Lx1 : Ly1 : Qx2 : Qy2 : Ex : Ey
]
[
    SetXY : Ex : Ey
]

Least, that's what it sounds like, but I suspect round brackets and suchlike are not spoken aloud :( --108.162.221.95 01:54, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Feels like the speech processing is lossy, so generating the code will be a lengthy labor of love transcribing it, then debugging it, trying to fill the gaps. The code may also have been fed through an automated "Bob Ross filter" which may have lost even more data. --172.69.71.91 00:37, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

About a quarter of the way into the text is the line "You know, I'm beginning to suspect it's turtles all the way down!" 162.158.78.215 00:46, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

it's concerning that the only real way we'll be able to figure this comic out is to compile the entire 9 hour computer-generated voice speech. youtube.com/watch?v=miLcaqq2Zpk (talk) 01:40, 2 April 2022 (UTC)