Chương 76: Book 2 - Chapter 4 B

The next afternoon, Matt drove Grandma, Grandpa and me to the Architect's office. He invited me to show him the artwork. I rolled it out on a big table.

"Here you go, Mr Benz." He peered at it closely, "It's just random gray dots, how is this art?" Grandma and Grandpa watched with a smile as I handed him a smaller one, inside a clear protective plastic sheet, the kind for holding papers in a binder.

"Look at the image, then look past it at your reflection, or something thats deeper in your view, than the surface of the picture."

"Well I'll be," he exclaimed.

"It's a wolf jumping over a log!" He quickly went through the stack of other images, naming them off as he saw them, then he yelled out the door.

"Charlie, bring the thumbtacks!" With Charlie's help, he thumbtacked the big printout against the wall and stood back so he could see it all.

"Absolutely amazing. Show me how you make these," he insisted. He had a Mac, so I put in my ArtStudio disk and showed him the pictures that were saved on it.

"I see the image of the wolf, but how do you make it 3D?" he asked, staring at the screen intently.

"My autostereogram program. It takes the picture and then processes it."

"Fascinating! Show me." I inserted the disk with the autostereogram program in his external drive. I wondered if everyone had a second drive but me as I selected the picture.

"As you can see once I pick the picture, I select random. It generates a finished picture, which we can look at and then print."

"Why do you select random?"

"The random is the mask setting. We can actually use the repetition of other images as the mask."

"Show me," he said again peering closely at the screen.

"I have a picture of a maple leaf. Here I'll select image instead of random, then pick the maple leaf." The image generated, and if you didn't know what you were looking for, it looked like a wallpaper of slightly different maple leaves. He peered closer, "Ah ha, I still see the image, no problem. You could even use a company logo for this. I must have this software, where did you get it?"

"I wrote it." He looked back at me, a puzzled gleam in his eyes.

"You wrote it?"

"Sure, I had the idea, wrote the program, and drew the pictures."

"I want to buy a copy of the program."

"Um, why?" I asked.

"I want to use this for other clients."

"I'm not really ready to sell it yet. There aren't a lot of uses for autostereograms."

"That's too long of a name. It needs something shorter, punchier."

"Magic Eye Pictures?" I offered. He snapped his fingers.

"Very good, that will work. Now how would you like to collaborate on a book?"

"What book?" Grandpa asked.

"The Magic Eye: The Mayo Tulsa Mural Collection," he said, arms spreading grandly.

"Sure, why not. It's not like I'm too busy with college, writing software and chess tournaments." He ignored the sarcasm completely.

"Excellent, it's agreed!" he declared. I sighed and rolled my eyes as he just smirked. He knew it was sarcasm and continued full speed ahead anyway.

"Alright, we can do a book," I capitulated.

"But you'll need to get a high quality color printer. We can't publish this in shades of gray."

"And you will need to modify your program to work with a color computer screen," he negotiated. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"And you will need to provide images for the murals. I'll have to create the 3D image by hand unless you think you can do it yourself."

"Show me how you do it."

"Say please," Grandma scolded, tired of his demanding nature.

"Show me how you do it, please," he corrected with a sheepish smile. I gave him a smile, and ejected the autostereogram program, inserting another disk.

"I wrote this software too. It's called ArtStudio. I create each image by hand first using the 16 shades of gray." I clicked on the first little square.

"I mapped a key on the keyboard to each shade so I can swap between them rapidly with one hand, while clicking the box with the mouse in the other." He watched intently as I rapidly created a donut shaped picture, where lighter shades were nearer, and darker shades farther away.

"You're right, I can't do that. I'll find the images, and you can create the 3D version.

"I wrote this program specifically to create and edit digital images. I've been adding a few features, but it's really limited by the hardware."

"What kind of hardware would make it work better?"

"Something with more RAM and a more powerful CPU. Both will improve what can be done. Beyond that, there's a 20 megabyte limitation built into the Mac. That's the largest storage device it can handle. But for the resolution of this screen we are looking at pictures that are only a few hundred kilobytes in size."

"So a bigger monitor?"

"A bigger screen doesn't really make a difference for processing images. It's like adding more blank pages to the back of a book and hoping the font gets bigger."

"I'll order a 286 with a color screen when they come out."

"Okay, and I'll update the program. I do have a way to print in grayscale that you can colorize."

"There's a printer attached, so show me." Using the autostereogram program I converted the donut picture and selected a modified print option. Instead of printing shades of gray, it printed a letter for each shade. After it printed, he looked at the mass of letters.

"What does this mean?"

"Select a color for each letter. There are 18, color in a spot according to the letter." He sent it off to Charlie to have him do the work. When Charlie came back, we could see the image but it wasn't a great effect. I turned off the maple leaf overlay and went back to random dot. When Charlie finished the second time, it was a much better effect.

"I see how using this a tile installer could follow the plan. Unfortunately this will be excessively expensive to do even once, much less on every level," he commented.

"Don't worry, I have a plan for that." I printed out several more for him to use for practice, knowing that he would try lots of variations to see what worked best. When it was finally time to go, he begged, "Please leave your programs so I can play with them?"

"Sorry, Mr Benz, but until they get copyright protection I'm not giving them out. Once they are protected, I'd be happy to sell you a copy."

"Just take it out of my share of the book profits," he said.

"It'll be a few weeks, not forever," I reassured him as we left. As soon as I got back I called the Lawyer.

"Hi Jeff, I've got a new piece of software I need copyrighted."

"Hi John, shall I send an associate over to get it?"

"No, I'll bring it over later. I have to write and print the user manual."

"Great, I'll put in the schedule for this afternoon. I'm glad you called. We've had an offer for Civilization."

"What's the offer?" I asked.

"Ten thousand dollars!" he said, thinking that would impress me.

"Is that the advance?"

"Um no. It's a buyout of the game."

"Jeff, if this game sells a million copies, why wouldn't I want at least a deal where I got a buck for every game?"

"It's fun, but how many people have computers?"

"More every day, and it's just going to grow. Plus, this game has great upgrade potential. Make sure any deal you bring to me doesn't sign away any trademarks for the name of the game, the design rights or future sequels."

"Okay, I made note of that. Do you really think it's going to be that big of a seller?"

"I think it'll be huge. Let me ask you, Jeff. How many hours have you spent playing it?"

"Alright, it's going to be huge," he agreed with a smile in his voice.

"I'll be able to do a color version for IBM computers before the end of the year. That's where the real home game market money is."

"Too bad you didn't program it for the Commodore 64. Everyone I know has one."

"They won't survive the coming IBM compatible machines, plus they can't run Civilization."

"If you say so," he said.

"By the way, the company who's interested, what kind of software do they publish?"

"Actually they are book publishers, and want to move into the software field."

"No wonder they have no clue," I expressed.

"I've contacted some other companies, but nobody has made an appointment to see the software demonstrated yet."

"I do wonder if it would be easier to just start my own company. I'd just have to rent an office, hire a graphic artist, a marketer and somebody to handle outsourcing production."

"There is a company who was very interested but they are on the verge of going under. It's a good company. They are just having cash flow issues and can't make an offer."

"Perfect, Jeff! Get me in touch with them. Let them know I'm interested in an acquisition and that I need a copy of their balance sheet." He seemed genuinely surprised.

"Is that something you can afford?" he asked.

"Jeff, you see that big hotel across the street?" I laughed.

"I don't just live there. We bought it with cash and are fully renovating it with cash. A little software company that's about to fold is no problem."

"Okay, John. I'll get right on that."

"Thanks, Jeff, talk to you later."