Joe Pietruch's Blog

I could watch this all day. Actually, for almost 3 days.
Pi3D: Version 1 (give it a moment or several)

I loaded a text file containing the first million decimals of pi into proce55ing.  I then created about 180 PiPoint objects to keep track of waveform values. I have an offset counter that keeps track of what point we’re on, and each PiPoint is smart enough to find out its y-value based on the offset counter and its distance from the front of the ribbon.

In actuality, the ribbon stays in place, while the values of pi tween through it. When the points change direction it means they’ve reached a whole decimal. The slope in between represents the difference between consecutive numerals. For example, if you take 3.14, the difference between 1 and 4 is three. So if you start at a ribbon value of 1 (the 1 in 3.14) and travel 1/3 of the distance between the 1 and the 4, you’ll arrive at a ribbon value of 2. Likewise, 2/3 of the distance gets you to 3, and 3/3 (all the distance) gets you all the way to 4.

A displacement of n in the offset counter is the same as no displacement but starting pi at 10*pi*n.  It’s really not mathematically significant at all, but it looks pretty cool.