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Pop Quiz

S16;BM10,10R22F2G2L2BL4BU2L15G2BE2
H2BF2BG2L4H2E2R3U4R3L6R3D4R2E1R2
U1R2E1R2R1R2F1R2D1R2F1R2U4R3L6R3
D4L2R1G2F2R2

Does anyone have any idea the above represents and where it comes from?  If you don't know for sure, what would you guess it is?

Note: I know what it is, but before explaining it and tell you what I've been playing around with, I'm curious if the above jogs anyone's memory.  If I give to many details, it might spoil the responses. ;-)

[update] I've posted the work in progress and a bit of details here.

Published Saturday, April 23, 2005 4:51 PM by CorySmith
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Comments

# re: Pop Quiz

Saturday, April 23, 2005 5:53 PM by Alan Freeman
Yes, I feel quite certain I know, but I won't spoil it for you. I have IM'd my answer to you. Am I right?

# re: Pop Quiz

Saturday, April 23, 2005 7:17 PM by Richard Tallent
I'll hazard a guess: BASIC PLAY?

Doesn't seem to parse in my version of BASICA, however, so I'm probably way off...

# re: Pop Quiz

Saturday, April 23, 2005 8:50 PM by Cory Smith
Alan, our guess isn't correct... it's not a modem init string.

Richard, your sort of on the right track.

# re: Pop Quiz

Saturday, April 23, 2005 10:36 PM by Alan Freeman
Cory, could it be chess or checker moves in a computer version of Chess or Checkers, stored in a condensed format?

# re: Pop Quiz

Monday, April 25, 2005 1:28 PM by Jason
Simple....it is the next MegaMillion Powerball number, just encrypted. :-P

# Is that the R**** solution? re: Pop Quiz

Monday, April 25, 2005 1:55 PM by Justice
Cory, I tried to E-mail you my resposne via your form but it failed. I am thinking (without spoiling it too much) that what you have posted has to do with a 5 letter word starting with R? In fact, the solution to that 5 letter word?

Thinking in the 80s,
-Justice

# re: Pop Quiz

Monday, April 25, 2005 3:40 PM by Derick Bailey
looks like some kind of horrible spreadsheet thing, to me. :P

# re: Pop Quiz

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 2:29 PM by Cory Smith
Justice, not sure why the contact form failed. If you'd like, you could send an email to my IM contact (I know, it says no email), but I do that to help reduce spam ;-) And... it's not my primary email address, I check it every so often.

However, what I'm looking for in the answer doesn't start with an R, so it's probably OK to say it here. And.. as to your "Thinking in the 80s", your getting warm.

# re: Pop Quiz

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 5:29 PM by Sly W
Is it commands for the Logo turtle? If so, I have no idea what it would draw, sorry.

# re: Pop Quiz

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 5:47 PM by Cory Smith
Sly W, you have made the best guess so far. It is related to drawing and the technology in question is very similar in concept to turtle drawing. Now that I've confirmed this as being the nearest guess, I'll let this go on for a bit longer to see if anyone else can think of what it is. Look through some of the previous comments to gain further hints. I think there's now enough hints there that someone could, if they've ever seen this before, figure out what the answer is. ;-)

# re: Pop Quiz

Thursday, April 28, 2005 1:08 PM by Raj Chaudhuri
This is a command string for the old BASICA/GWBASIC DRAW command. This is how we did vectorg graphics back when SVG was a file extension for some obscure graphics format. Man, do I feel old...
From what I can remember, this draws a shape that looks like...I dunno, a chair or something.

# re: Pop Quiz

Thursday, April 28, 2005 4:46 PM by Cory Smith
I'm not sure that BASICA/GWBASIC had this feature or not... but this is a close enough guess that you win the prize. It is from a very early version of BASIC, in this case, on the RadioShack/Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer series of computers running Microsoft Extended BASIC. I'll follow up in another entry about why I'm bringing this up; however, for now I can just say that I've been playing with the idea of implementing this in .NET.

# re: Pop Quiz

Thursday, April 28, 2005 4:47 PM by Cory Smith
Oh yeah, I forgot to comment on how close you came to describing what this actually draws. In the next post, I'll put up a picture that shows it's output. (It's not a chair, but I could see how it could look somewhat like one.) ;-)

# re: Pop Quiz

Thursday, April 28, 2005 5:12 PM by Raj Chaudhuri
Okay, I downloaded a demo copy of PowerBASIC for DOS and checked this out. Looks more like an Alien Invader(TM) now.
Now that you mention the TRS CoCo, I seem to hazily recall a "first-person" alien invaders game, which used the S subcommand to draw the aliens at various sizes, giving the illusion of them coming closer. Could this shape be from that?

# re: Pop Quiz

Monday, May 02, 2005 2:22 PM by Raj Chaudhuri
Cory, take a look at http://spaces.msn.com/members/rajch/Blog/cns!1pG0u-M36SbYoxcMBWNDCyGw!120.entry

Your post came at a time when I needed an itch to scratch :-)

# re: Pop Quiz

Friday, May 06, 2005 5:52 AM by Cory Smith
Raj, no problem in posting your own implementation. It's interesting to see the different ways of doing this. I took more of a, what could be considered, brute force approach to the parsing but I feel is appropriate given what needed to be done. Also, the implementation that I've posted handles all of the Draw sub-commands (as far as I'm aware based on the documentation I have - for the Color Computer version) and remembers state between multiple commands. It wouldn't be too hard to add this to your implementation. I'm not sure what I, if anything, I want to do with this... as with yours, it was more of a diversion.
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