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The iPeriscope
Required: 2 iPhones. 2 sticks and blue tack. A prodding device. Operate by taking photo with upper device. Email to lower device. View.
Sum of integers
This is why the sum of n integers is 1/2n(n+1). Someone called Gauss worked it out in his head at school, but I like this picture. If you make a rectangle n wide and n+1 high, and shade half of … Continue reading
Archaeological scatterings
I’m watching the first of the “Beauty of Maps” series, the one on the Mappa Mundi. It shows the map as being a complex meeting of religious text and an expression of understanding of the world. The richness of this … Continue reading
A few notes on recently visited constructions
Cerreg Cennen, near Llandeilo, is a castle that was pulled apart by 500 men so it couldn’t be used as a base for robbers. It is built on a limestone crag, immediately above a deep natural cave. The Chapel of … Continue reading
Old flame (attraction from the past)
I was digging around on the Wayback Machine today, and stumbled across a lost piece of code from December 2004. It’s a Strange Attractor Generator, from the pages of Clifford Pickover’s book Computers, Pattern, Chaos and Beauty (p 165). As … Continue reading
Joining the queue
Queues are comprised of customers joining, waiting and then being served. There are two random processes here: arrivals, and serving time, which in this case are both Poisson processes. There can be one or more servers. A handy notation for … Continue reading
Mnemosynr
You have a set of friends, colleagues and vague acquaintances you’ve accumulated over the years, and expressed as a graph of connections in various applications such as Facebook, Myspace, blog networks, twitter, flickr etc. You’ve spent years constructing a trail … Continue reading
Redecorated
I’ve had the builders in, and redesigned this blog. The main aim has been to make a bit more room. The default WordPress theme, despite cosmetic adjustments, is a little mean and narrow – while the wide themes all have … Continue reading
Drawing on protocol
Drawing on protocol is a drawing constructed indirectly by its viewers, from the following rules: The IP address of each visitor to this page is recorded in the site logs The latitude and longitude of each visitor shall be estimated … Continue reading
A long line of Parisian revolutions and mathematicians
Timeline of mathematicians and the history of Paris