>> from art import text2art
>> from itertools import batched
>> 
>> riddle = "Find the triple digits: ⯌oɢњ"
>> solution = "".join(
..     chr(int("".join(b)))
..     for b in batched("".join(str(ord(i)) for i in riddle[-4:]), 3)
.. )
>> print(text2art(solution, font="Delta Corps Priest 1"))


       ▄███████▄ ▄██   ▄       ███        ▄████████    ▄████████ 
      ███    ███ ███   ██▄ ▀█████████▄   ███    ███   ███    ███ 
      ███    ███ ███▄▄▄███    ▀███▀▀██   ███    █▀    ███    ███ 
      ███    ███ ▀▀▀▀▀▀███     ███   ▀  ▄███▄▄▄      ▄███▄▄▄▄██▀ 
     ▀█████████▀  ▄██   ███     ███     ▀▀███▀▀▀     ▀▀███▀▀▀▀▀   
      ███        ███   ███     ███       ███    █▄  ▀███████████ 
      ███        ███   ███     ███       ███    ███   ███    ███ 
     ▄████▀       ▀█████▀     ▄████▀     ██████████   ███    ███ 
                                                      ███    ███ 

You stumble into a dimly lit room. As your eyes slowly adapt to the low light, you begin to see some kind of graffiti on the wall. An orange glow emits from the crooked text. A person is standing in front of it and seems to write some more small text above it. Suddenly you hear a fairly deep voice, talking to the person. You cannot quite make out where the voice is coming from, but it sounds like its coming from the floor…

Deep Voice: … Wait… What? That font does not even exist in art!
Person: …
Deep Voice: What did you say? Oh, you just think it looks nice?
Person: *nods*
Deep Voice (Annoyed): Well, I do, too, but then why did you include that… unreadable code at the top? Just to look smart?
Deep Voice: Also, what kind of riddle is that when the solution is right there?
Person: *looks at his feet*
Deep Voice: sighs Oh you. Well, let’s see how many people will want to come in here.
Ahem, well, where was I? Oh look, we do have a visitor.

While speaking these last few words, the voice slowly travels towards you. You can see a dim, shimmering light on the ground at its approximate location… As it comes closer, you realize that it’s actually a small, slightly glowing bird!

Bird: Welcome to our place. I’m Pyter and that guy standing over there is called Peter.
Peter: *grins and waves*
Pyter (the bird): He’s a software and data engineer from Austria.
And, as you can notice right away he really enjoys writing about Python, as well as in Python, if that makes sense.
Peter: *nods in approval*
Pyter: However, he seems to miss compilers an aweful lot sometimes - oh what did you say? No, I don’t believe he actually hates himself. However, he is a big proponent of type hints and type checking tools like mypy as well as the absolute king of all open source projects, beartype! Oh, you enjoy those as well? Delightful!

Pyter (the bird) hops from left to right while thinking out loud. Peter just goes back to scribbling stuff at the wall, ignoring everything else around him.

🐦 What else, what else… Well, as a data engineer in his daytime job, he’s always working on these sewage… I mean, data pipelines. Hah, same thing, more often than not.

The bird sounds amused, or maybe just annoyed. You cannot quite tell, as you are too caught up by its piercing, disapproving stare. The tiny black eyes just seem to look right through you.

🐦 As a data engineer, he knows how to use everything from spark, to pandas and dask, and more recently polars and if needed even bare SQL.

As he says that, the little creature taps their small foot on the ground, as if he wanted to stress his words.

🐦 He also can’t seem to live without CI/CD… he always rambles about devops, dataops, mlops… I’m sure you’ll find some kind of -ops to talk about. Ops ops ops.

He hops, hops, hops and laughs with his weirdly deep voice.

🐦 Other than that, he does like to dabble in other languages as well. Don’t you tell Guido about it. Just before you barged… ahem, I mean… walked in here, he told me it often feels mind-blowing how much you can take away from creating just a single tiny project in a different language, and how much it can improve your skills even in your main one.

You begin to hear a bored undertone in the Bird. As it tries to remember more about Peter, you finally take the chance to ask what has been burning on your tongue this whole time: “Who and what are you?”

🐦 Oh, you want to know more about me? Well, my job is to help this guy get some stuff written down. You’ll read from me on the blog from time to time, as a… sparrowing partner of sorts.

The Bird makes a whistling noise that sounds like a chuckle and visibly cheers up.

🐦 Well, now that I mentioned it! Why don’t you have a look at our work?

The shimmering feathery fellow moves away in small but quick hops, back to the wall. As you step closer, you see a doorway to the left of the painted wall, leading into an even darker room. As Pyter enters the door, his glow seems to brighten up the room, revealing a comfy chair at the opposite wall. Next to it is a small table with an open book and a desk lamp on it. As Pyter flies up on the desk, you hear him say:

🐦 We’ll see you there ~

Suddenly, the pages of the book start to emit light themselves, like a magic e-reader. It’s the same light that you noticed on the bird, but now it shines brighter and brighter, until you cannot make out any shapes anymore. It is over in a flash, and the light level returns back down. After reflexively closing your eyes from the bright light, you open them up again to see that the desk lamp has been turned on. Pyter sits on top of the lamp next to its switch, staring menacingly into your eyes. He does not talk anymore. As you move closer, you notice that he is frozen in place. You take a closer look and blink again. It looks like the bird is made out of wood!

You stare at him for a moment. You wonder whether you should finally turn around and run, but you figure you have gone this far already and your curiosity outweighs your fear. Reluctantly, you take a seat. The chair is as comfy as it looks. There is no sound, no distractions around you, it is just you, the book, and a wooden bird. You finally pick up the book and start reading.