☞

June 11, 2012 10:44 AM

pointer
posted by ND¢ (55 comments total)

Wow, that's fascinating and an interesting (and not too hard to program) trick, if you had enough photos of pointing people to place on a x/y grid.
posted by mathowie at 10:46 AM on June 11, 2012

Pointedly pointless. I award it three points!
posted by xingcat at 10:46 AM on June 11, 2012 [3 favorites]

Okay, that's kind of clever. I definitely got a grin out of the first image that came up for me.
posted by figurant at 10:50 AM on June 11, 2012

I call foul. Some of these people are clearly making a #1 sign. That is not pointing.
posted by Etrigan at 10:52 AM on June 11, 2012

it's not doing anything for me (7, chrome).
posted by rebent at 10:53 AM on June 11, 2012 [9 favorites]

Disturbingly entertaining
posted by Baethan at 10:53 AM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

The resolution seems pretty good. In order to get that many photos they had to extract the pointing from each photo either via a program or something like MechanicalTurk. If the former, I'd like some info.
posted by DU at 10:54 AM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it's broken in Chrome for Win7 for me as well. Works fine in FF though.
posted by brundlefly at 10:54 AM on June 11, 2012

Sorry, I don't support Internet Explorer - please use Firefox or Chrome.

Huh. Is there really anything happening here that IE can't do or are they just lazy brogrammers?
posted by rh at 10:55 AM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

    My
  Pointed
  comment
 
   ."".
   |  |
   |  |
   |  |
   |  |--.--._ 
   |  | _|  | `|
   |  /` )  |  |
   | /  /'--:__/
   |/  /       |
   (  ' \      |
    \    `.   /
     |       |
     |       |

posted by mazola at 10:58 AM on June 11, 2012 [3 favorites]

Maybe they don't have access to IE to test it. I know I'd have no chance in hell of making something work in IE from any computer I control.
posted by DU at 10:59 AM on June 11, 2012

Gloriously stupid! I approve.
posted by furiousthought at 10:59 AM on June 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

Does absolutely nothing on chrome. Can someone say what this is supposed to be doing?
posted by empath at 11:04 AM on June 11, 2012

Pointing.
posted by maryr at 11:04 AM on June 11, 2012 [3 favorites]

20 favorites to the first person who finds a middle finger.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:05 AM on June 11, 2012

Can someone say what this is supposed to be doing?

It loads a picture of someone pointing at your pointer. Different pictures for different placements of the pointer, presumably from public access candid photo sites. It's a cool effect.
posted by endless_forms at 11:07 AM on June 11, 2012

I'm using chrome version 10.9, OS X Lion, blah blah, whatever, and it works well for me.
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:09 AM on June 11, 2012

Why only light-skinned fingers?
posted by acidic at 11:10 AM on June 11, 2012

20 favorites to the first person who finds a middle finger.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:05 AM on June 11 [+] [!]


Here ya go.
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:15 AM on June 11, 2012 [20 favorites]

Well that's clever. Here's the main Javascript. On a two minute look I think he's using a Canvas to catch the mouse, then waiting for the mouse to move and then stop moving for a bit before deciding you've put the pointer somewhere new. Then it loads the image. The images have names like N0136_302_188.jpg.

The extra bit is mapping a pointer location to an image name. I didn't pull it all apart but he builds a Voronoi diagram using a JSON database of coordinates to filenames. That's all you really need to say "find me the image that's closest to this point". There's a total of 901 images. It'd be easy to hand-code that image set, I suspect there's no image recognition going on to create that database.
posted by Nelson at 11:17 AM on June 11, 2012 [4 favorites]

Another middle finger...
posted by AwkwardPause at 11:19 AM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

The whois data points to Jonathan Puckey as the author, part of Moniker, a design studio. Lots of neat art on those pages.
posted by Nelson at 11:20 AM on June 11, 2012

Huh. Is there really anything happening here that IE can't do or are they just lazy brogrammers?

If I'm not being paid to support it there's zero chance I'd open IE to test anything web-based I made.
posted by odinsdream at 11:26 AM on June 11, 2012 [5 favorites]

how something that stupid can make me laugh is beyond me...
posted by HuronBob at 11:30 AM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

and..extra points for the "post title" ND¢. Nicely played!
posted by HuronBob at 11:42 AM on June 11, 2012

In my experience, IE9 is pretty reliable with CSS3 and all that. it probably works just fine in that browser.
posted by maxwelton at 11:51 AM on June 11, 2012

A point in every direction is the same as no point at all.
posted by Banky_Edwards at 11:55 AM on June 11, 2012 [6 favorites]

Interesting. Works beautifully on the iPad.
posted by empath at 11:58 AM on June 11, 2012

The rule 34 version of this will be interesting, assuming photos exist that could work for top corner pointing without Photoshop.
posted by Blue Meanie at 11:59 AM on June 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

The rule 34 version of this will be interesting, assuming photos exist that could work for top corner pointing without Photoshop.

Bah! Came here to say that every single photo used for this needs to be that of someone pointing to their genitalia, clothed or not, even the corners. Especially the corners.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:04 PM on June 11, 2012

Most of those pointers cause runtime failures when dereferenced.
posted by clvrmnky at 12:17 PM on June 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

Works fine in Chrome for me. Had to quit playing around though, as I encountered at least one mildly NSFW image.
posted by xedrik at 12:22 PM on June 11, 2012

ZOMG.
posted by jeffamaphone at 12:31 PM on June 11, 2012

The real hard part was applying a functional Random Peener Exclusion algorithm to the online image search.
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:32 PM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Here's a youtube breakdown of how it's made: pointerpointer.com's use of voronoi, canvas, and javascript
posted by drmanhattan at 12:33 PM on June 11, 2012 [4 favorites]

I don't point. I curs(e).
posted by yellowbinder at 12:40 PM on June 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

Pointless on Chrome/Win 7.

Worked fine on Opera though.

Pull my finger...
posted by Skygazer at 12:41 PM on June 11, 2012

Furry Pointer
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 12:43 PM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Dear me, this is all very impolite. Also, I initially viewed the site in Chrome, in which you are given a millisecond flash of the image. Sometimes this is for the best. My favorite, so far (with pointer located somewhere in the northeast pixel quadrant) was this dude with his (almost mistakable for a finger) tongue out, and both index fingers pointed skyward, with a door-ajar County Jail paddywagon in the not-so-distance.

99% of the other photos were of red-eyed post-adolescents pre-gaming it with digital cameras and red Solo cups in the shot. Woohoo!
posted by obscurator at 12:54 PM on June 11, 2012

Top left corner made me laugh.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:59 PM on June 11, 2012

Crashed my browser. Invalid pointer.
posted by benito.strauss at 1:25 PM on June 11, 2012 [3 favorites]

This does something?
posted by hwestiii at 1:41 PM on June 11, 2012

Why only light-skinned fingers?
posted by acidic at 7:10 PM on June 11

Oh, give it a fucking rest.

Aside from that there were a couple of black fingers in the first three pics I got.
posted by Decani at 1:46 PM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Okay, there was one where the dude was not pointing at my mousepointer, rather it was a gangsign/sideways vulcan double-split-finger, and my arrow was in between the fingers.

Not sure what to make of that.
posted by exlotuseater at 1:55 PM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Do any of the other corners work besides top-left?
posted by en forme de poire at 2:24 PM on June 11, 2012

en forme de poire: Do any of the other corners work besides top-left?

Nope, just that one corner, from what I can tell. Most of the bottom edge seems to be devoid of pictures, too, but the top and sides appear to be reliable pointers. :D
posted by surazal at 2:28 PM on June 11, 2012

Why only light-skinned fingers?

idk prolly racism tho
posted by grog at 3:56 PM on June 11, 2012 [2 favorites]

Is there a point to this?
posted by sharpener at 4:25 PM on June 11, 2012

I saw blood and had to quit.
posted by koucha at 7:09 PM on June 11, 2012

That's a lot of bros there.
posted by acb at 7:18 PM on June 11, 2012

I'd have thought he'd have put at least one Pointer dog in there.
posted by arcticseal at 8:08 PM on June 11, 2012

20 favorites to the first person who finds a middle finger.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:05 AM on June 11 [+] [!]


Here ya go.
posted by FirstMateKate at 11:15 AM on June 11 [20 favorites +] [!]



Heh.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:08 PM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

I like this. This makes me smile.
posted by Lukenlogs at 9:59 PM on June 11, 2012

That's a lot of white dudes pointing.
posted by latkes at 11:54 PM on June 11, 2012

I don't point. I curs(e).

I ncurse, myself, but there's room in this crazy old world for all of us, isn't there?
posted by stebulus at 8:25 AM on June 12, 2012