Author Archives: Anton

a poster

Sometimes I search my blog for this picture and scratch my head in puzzlement that it’s not here, before remembering that I posted it on Google Plus back when I used that. So here it is. Stephen Guerin (the shaven … Continue reading

Posted in merch | 2 Comments

mutant dragons

In 2007 I thought of a pretty way to paint a square so that all pixels are different, but similar colors are clustered. For each pixel, set x,y to its coordinates; if their sum is odd, set the low bit … Continue reading

Posted in eye-candy, mathematics | Leave a comment

And so it reiterates

In the last couple of years I’ve looked at thousands of webcomics. Sometimes I wish I’d kept a list of those whose first page is captioned “It begins” or “So it begins” or “And so it begins.”

Posted in cartoons | Leave a comment

how (some) fireflies do it

Fireflies in Borneo have a wonderfully simple and distributed way of synchronizing their blinks. If I had the skill I’d make a screensaver of it. A couple of ways to play with the concept: I wouldn’t expect all bugs to … Continue reading

Posted in sciences | Leave a comment

less than fifty years later

I’ve read Heinlein’s Red Planet three times, starting at age seven or eight, and each time I soon forgot most of the plot. One thing that stuck with me was that the school’s new head signaled his evil by ordering … Continue reading

Posted in heraldry, language, prose | Leave a comment

questions of emphasis

In Sherlock episode “The Lying Detective”, the phrase serial killer is uttered many times, always stressing the first word – as if the second were a given, even when (for the speakers) any killings are hypothetical. That impaired my enjoyment of … Continue reading

Posted in cinema, language | Leave a comment

you can talk to me now

When I changed the site to HTTPS but didn’t change a corresponding setting in WordPress, comments were broken. Should be working now.

Posted in blogdom | 1 Comment