Here's an interesting idea-- to do a modem speed test thing, I need a unique (white noise) graphic, an image specifically designed to not easily be compressed by modem compression technology. I am thinking there are a couple of ways to do this-- either "draw" something really complicated and garbagey on the fly with the gd functions (i.e. create a new 100 x 100 JPG and then just draw a bunch of crap all over it), or, somehow figure out the JPG (or GIF, or PNG, or whatever) header, and then just generate random numbers and pour them into the data stream, as if it were the graphic image itself.
Any thoughts? The latter seems smarter/easier, but I suspect those graphic formats aren't as easy as just dropping a bunch of random numbers after a header... I'd probably have to figure out the structure, etc. Seems like a lot of work. The former (gd method) would be good but seems like a lot of coding and hassle and could be slow/server intensive.
This graphic will never be displayed, but it does need to be retrievable with the < img > tag.
BTW when this is done I'll probably write up a little article for PHPBuilder, or maybe the PHP magazine, on general speed test stuff for sites-- it's pretty cool how I'm implementing this bit of code.
best
Eric
