Category Archives: technology

in which I curse my lack of omniscience

Posted on Friday, 2014 January 24 by Anton

I want to push several hundred greyscale images through a threshold filter, so that an output pixel is black or white according to whether the corresponding input pixel is less or more than 1/2 bright. (My goal is a ‘woodcut’ … Continue reading →

Posted in neep-neep | 2 Comments

do you speak my calendar?

Posted on Wednesday, 2013 December 04 by Anton

In MacBSD, the command cal 9 1752 shows the shortening of that month in the British Empire. If I reinstall MacOS and choose Italian as its default language, will the shift show up instead in October 1582?

Posted in calendars, history, neep-neep | Leave a comment

off by one

Posted on Sunday, 2013 December 01 by Anton

A look at 404s in my HTTP log revealed a bug in my math pix page, which in two places chooses randomly from families of images. I didn’t know that the PHP function rand(nmin,nmax) is inclusive at both ends.

Posted in me!me!me!, neep-neep | Leave a comment

limited voice recognition?

Posted on Saturday, 2013 October 26 by Anton

When I answer the ’phone, I generally say either “Yes?” or “Good day/evening, Sherwoods” rather than “Hello.” With cold-callers I often don’t get a response to that; I pause and try a variation or two of “Is someone there?” before … Continue reading →

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pass the time by tracing rays

Posted on Sunday, 2013 June 23 by Anton

I had assumed that Pixar did not use ray-tracing because it could not provide certain desired lighting effects. Now Dad tells me that Monsters University is Pixar’s first ray-traced feature, which implies that the speed wasn’t available until now.

Posted in cinema, neep-neep | 1 Comment

u-shape-it

Posted on Monday, 2012 August 27 by Anton

Hm, Shapeways has an API. If I were a skilled Web programmer I’d make a page where you can choose the size and frequencies of a Klein bagel model …

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Firefox 4

Posted on Tuesday, 2011 March 29 by Anton

I miss the popup menu of recent pages in this tab, that was beside the back/forward buttons in Firefox 3. The bar at the bottom of the window has gone away, to save space for content; status notices now appear … Continue reading →

Posted in neep-neep | Tagged , , | 2 Comments