Author Archives: Anton

the British succession

A change to the law of royal succession has been enacted by some of the 16 Commonwealth Realms, to become effective when all of them have done so. Its most conspicuous feature is removing the preference for male heirs, but … Continue reading

Posted in heraldry | Leave a comment

relax

This curve-fitting thingy is one of several projects on which I’ve made progress in rare fits over several years. It ran into two big snags. I haven’t found how to determine which gridpoints are within the pen-width of a blending … Continue reading

Posted in curve-fitting | 2 Comments

love or nothing

In Watch on the Rhine (1943; screenplay by Dashiell Hammett from a play by Lillian Hellman) the penniless Count remarks, Blecher, we do not like each other. The Nazi to whom he hopes to sell information replies, But that will … Continue reading

Posted in cinema, ethics | Leave a comment

dream geography

In a dream, while strolling among bookshops and the like, I chance to meet someone who hates me but is constrained to be polite. With a venomous smile that person asks, the better to avoid them, on what streets one … Continue reading

Posted in psychology | Leave a comment

models of the 35 smallest fullerenes

I noticed that Shapeways had 13 models of the roundest of the fullerenes (one of the 1812 forms of C60), but none of the less regular forms; so I made some. Each of the white pieces has mirror symmetry; the … Continue reading

Posted in merch, sciences | 4 Comments

FCC cube generator

I could have used this a week ago. def fccstack(): newlimit = 0 while True: oldlimit = newlimit newlimit += 1 # extend z for x in xrange(oldlimit): for y in xrange((x+oldlimit)&1, oldlimit, 2): yield (x,y,oldlimit) # extend y for … Continue reading

Posted in mathematics, neep-neep | Leave a comment

some thoughts about packing

My bundle of 19 fullerenes is arranged in a face-centred cubic lattice, each ball occupying one of the 24 even-numbered cells of a 4×4×3 array (and parts of the adjacent cells). The spacing of the grid planes is determined by … Continue reading

Posted in mathematics | 3 Comments