Adopt a snowflake

Adopt a snowflake!

Who created this site?

Why?

Because! (However, since many will consider that an incomplete answer, the following alternative is offered: because it's fun!)

How long has this site been online?

Were the snowflakes all drawn by hand?

No, that would have been quite impractical. Each day approximately 10,000 to 20,000 new snowflakes are viewed. The site creator has been accused of having too much free time on his hands, but there is no way he could have drawn that many snowflakes even if he didn't have anything else to do.

Well then, how are the snowflakes drawn?

The snowflakes are automatically generated by a program that uses simple geometry. An irregular (but bilaterally symmetrical) quadrilateral or hexagon is randomly generated. This shape is placed on each of six evenly spaced axes around the central point, with the line of symmetry falling on the axis. The shape is drawn with lines of random shades of grey and random thicknesses. This process is repeated 2 to 8 times for each flake.

Can you say that again in plain English?

Ummmm, will you?

Are all the snowflakes really unique?

Probably. No steps are taken to prevent duplicates. However, the number of random factors involved create at least 1,777,664,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different snowflakes. The chances of duplicates appearing for a casual observer are extremely slim. Of course, there may be many that look very very similar, but are actually different in very tiny ways.

Where do the snowflakes that are not adopted go?

Poor little things ... they melt away, never to be seen again! Well, not really. The temporary files that are created are erased automatically after about 17 minutes.

What programming language is used for this website?

Why are you wasting my time with this website?