Category Archives: sciences

un-meander

Here, each curve hits alternate dots: first exactly (above), then with offsets pushing it toward the other curve. Below is the result of eight iterations. With enough iterations, the top of ‘s’ eventually gets a more symmetrical arch, as the … Continue reading

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meander

(Previously: 2014, 2011, 2010; also, less closely related, 2015) I tried to smoothen a stroke by shifting each dot toward the Euler spiral (aka clothoid, aka Cornu spiral) determined by its four nearest neighbors. That didn’t work so well: small … Continue reading

Posted in curve-fitting | 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

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

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what, more links?

Hm, the first two links here have been lying around for five years; guess I ought to shove them out. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry on restructuring the banks “Zomia”, a large region in Asia that was effectively stateless until recently James Leroy … Continue reading

Posted in economics, politics | Leave a comment

points problems pointers problems

Two-fifths of the links in my sphere arrangements page were broken. Ouch! I found new addresses for a few of them, and used the Wayback Machine for the rest.

Posted in mathematics | Leave a comment

adaptive sampling

I got an interesting idea today. As you may already know, I’ve been making models of Klein bottles an’ stuff; heretofore they’ve all been in the form of bent rods, but where possible I’d prefer a continuous surface. (A hollow … Continue reading

Posted in mathematics | 2 Comments