Bonus points to anyone who can explain what FFmpeg logo means. (Yes it's on-topic to my off-topic topic.)

uhh, it's a green waveform?

No waveform function can have two different Y values for one X. So it's not a waveform.

Another hint: It has to do more with pictures than audio, but is still related.

And here I was thinking it was rotated 45° so it would fit in a square better...

Fitting in a square; that's actually pretty insightful.

I'll give.

The Fourier transform can only be applied to 1 dimensional data. The change in amplitude of audio samples over time is what is fed into it for MP3s. But pictures are 2 dimensional. So what JPEG did was to break each picture into squares, 8x8 being the most common. Then they needed a standardized way to linearize the pixels in that block. Keep in mind the Fourier transform works best when the next sample fed into it is closely related to the previous. So what's the path through an 8x8 grid which most closely relates each next sample to the previous.

There's your answer!

Watch out, or Tom will banish you to the math thread.

There's a Math thread?!

Would you guys stop copying/pasting Google search results to make you sound smart. lol

I've known the fact about the JPEG/MPEG macroblock encoding path since 1992 (got a copy of Micrografx Picture Publisher which included this new JPEG image format and I had to know how it worked). When I saw the FFmpeg logo I was so overjoyed that I got it. Been wanting to share that bit of info with someone for a couple years now.

Now if only you'd share the fact that you're bbigwyres or however you spell his name.