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This brings back high school memories of performing Gaussian blurring of 2-bit grayscale hand drawn sprites drawn on graphing paper. Yes, I got bored in class! I did use a calculator for assistance. :) I never knew there was such a remarkably simple kernel that provides good scaling!

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Very cool. I did something similar (but much less advanced) in math class where I generated something like a height map by "randomly" (I'd really just pick numbers that seemed good) assigning values to a grid and then subdividing the grid and linearly interpolating between points plus another "random" offset with a range that gets divided with each subdivision. It was a good way to pass time for someone who would rather have been playing dwarf fortress but only slightly understood the math behind perlin noise.

The fact that you were studying Gaussian blurring in high school amazes me. Which kind of school, if I may ask? Is a standard program?

The "Yes, I got bored" part suggests that it wasn't in the program and he was studying it on his own.

Public school at Tippecanoe County (home of Purdue University), Indiana, USA. The math program was actually pretty good, along with the arts, and a few other areas. It definitely helped to be in a University City area. We got lab equipment from Purdue for a variety of science classes and some great teachers.

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