I was exploring circle packing in Processing, ok what is circle packing may you ask?
Circle packing is a geometric arrangement of circles within a given space, such that no two circles overlap and they often fill the space as efficiently as possible. This concept is used in various fields, including mathematics, computer science, and art. In mathematics, circle packing is studied for its connections to graph theory and optimization. In computer science, it’s used in algorithms for generating complex structures, such as meshes or layouts. In art, circle packing can be used to create visually appealing patterns and designs.
At the same time I decided to submit my Mount Fuji to the Noble Numbat Wallpaper Competition.
I thought I could make a neat mascot wallpaper myself using circle packing.
So I started by tracing manually to vectorize the numbat shape from the following Wikipedia image by Martin Pot.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Numbat.jpg
Once I decided the shape and the shading for the back and front leg and other features I run the circle packing algorithm (using the release date 2024/04/25 as seed) for the numbat shape and the negative space. After I did a gradient using using Ubuntu official colors namely Ubuntu orange ⏺ (#E95420) and Canonical Light aubergine ⏺ (#77216F). After showing several versions to my wife and some small adjustments later I decided it was finished. The light version at least.
Being sometimes a night owl myself I decided to create a dark version to use from 18:00 to 6:00. This version the soap bubbles because black holes and you can see the circle packing in the numbat too. There is a subtle small sharingan style ubuntu logo on the eye. This dark version greatly reduces the overall brightness of the screen, trust me for someone who has astigmatism this is very good to use at night in a darkroom. I dog feed it and created an xml for the timed wallpaper. (you can get it below)
After using Mount Fuji, something I captured from the natural beauty of Japan I decided to use a Japanese name on my human/artificial creation as a balancing act.
The official name scheme of an Ubuntu release is “Ubuntu X.YY” with X representing the year (minus 2000) and YY representing the month of eventual release within in that year. Since the actual release date is not known until it’s ready and humans tend to prefer names rather than numbers, a set of codenames are used by developers and testers during the buildup to a release.
The 24.04 LTS (Long Term Support) Version has the Noble (Adjective) Numbat (Animal) codename.
The Numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus) is an endangered marsupial from open woodlands in western Australia. It is also called the banded anteater, because it eats termites. In Japanese Numbat is Nanbatto.
In Japanese culture, the concept of “noble” is associated with qualities like honor, dignity, elegance (“iki”), and refinement, rather than royalty. Being noble involves embodying these traits in behavior and attitude, similar to the concept of “fuwafuwa,” which describes things as soft, fluffy, and gentle. Both ideas emphasize elegance and subtlety, conveying a sense of inner peace and harmony, like the softness of baby cheeks or the fluffy hair of an animal.
Finally the code (xml) for the timed wallpaper.
Create the file Fuwafuwa_nanbatto_san_by_amaral.xml in /usr/share/backgrounds/ (you might need to use sudo)
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<background>
<starttime>
<year>2024</year>
<month>1</month>
<day>1</day>
<hour>6</hour>
<minute>0</minute>
<second>0</second>
</starttime>
<static>
<file>/usr/share/backgrounds/Fuwafuwa_nanbatto_san_by_amaral-light.png</file>
<duration>43200</duration>
</static>
<transition type="overlay">
<duration>0.5</duration>
<from>/usr/share/backgrounds/Fuwafuwa_nanbatto_san_by_amaral-light.png</from>
<to>/usr/share/backgrounds/Fuwafuwa_nanbatto_san_by_amaral-dark.png</to>
</transition>
<static>
<file>/usr/share/backgrounds/Fuwafuwa_nanbatto_san_by_amaral-dark.png</file>
<duration>43200</duration>
</static>
<transition type="overlay">
<duration>0.5</duration>
<from>/usr/share/backgrounds/Fuwafuwa_nanbatto_san_by_amaral-dark.png</from>
<to>/usr/share/backgrounds/Fuwafuwa_nanbatto_san_by_amaral-light.png</to>
</transition>
</background>
After that add the following wallpaper entry to the file /usr/share/gnome-background-properties/noble-wallpapers.xml (you might need to use sudo again)
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<wallpaper deleted="false">
<name>Fuwafuwa nanbatto san (daytime/night time)</name>
<filename>/usr/share/backgrounds/Fuwafuwa_nanbatto_san_by_amaral.xml</filename>
<options>zoom</options>
</wallpaper>