A simple tool written with Ruby and TeX to create large arithmetic expressions for a given number, like this:
or this:
There's an on-line version here where you can experiment with it for yourself. It's currently on a self-hosted server, though, so please be gentle!
Alternatively, you can fork the git repo or simply download the zipfile and run the script locally.
To generate images with the script, you need to have TeX installed, plus the helper utilities
texi2dvi and dvipng. On Ubuntu, you can install this with
sudo apt-get install texinfo texlive dvipng.
The basic command is
ruby number_obfuscator.rb [n] [d] [format]
where n is the number you want to obfuscate, d is the depth (try 3 for a fairly simple expression, or 6 for a really nasty one) and format is either tex or png. If you don't specify a format, the formula will be output as a Ruby expression. If you specify png, the file will be saved as obfuscated.png.
In addition to invoking the script from the commandline, you can also load it from another Ruby script, like this:
require './number_obfuscator'
e = Obfuscator.generate(n, d)
Obfuscator.makePNG(e, 'output.png')
A separate CGI script, number_obfuscator_cgi.rb, is provided for running on a webserver. Once you have it running (which is outside the scope of this README file, sorry) it's just a matter of calling it with a GET request, passing the n and d parameters, as demonstrated by the on-line demo linked to above. Configuring your server to use mod_ruby is strongly recommended.
That's it, have fun! And please let me know if it doesn't work, or if you have any improvement suggestions..