in which I curse my lack of omniscience

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’ effect.)

ImageMagick can apparently do this with one command, but I lack a library that it needs.

GIMP has a menu command with this function, but to do it from a script it seems I’d need to learn Scheme.

I could write a program using Python Imaging Library (which I’ve used to output most of my mathematical designs in recent years), but so far in RTFM I can’t tell how to, y’know, access the pixels it reads in. Later: Found a better FM.

Wish me luck.

Posted in neep-neep | 2 Comments

small irregular fullerenes

Shapeways has thirteen models of (the most symmetrical and famous form of) C60, but none of the thousands of smaller fullerenes. So I designed models of the 35 smallest, i.e. up to C36; this includes the smallest with no symmetries, and the smallest with no ‘peaks’ where three pentagons meet. One bundle has the 19 forms with mirror symmetry; two other bundles will have the 16 or 32 chiral forms (arbitrarily divided), so that the buyer can choose to have both or only one of a pair distinguished only by handedness.

I’ll make them available when I have them in my hands and am satisfied of their strength.

Posted in merch, sciences | 1 Comment

yeah, that makes me a total hermit

Yesterday I relayed a message from the local humane society, which contained an email address and a phone number; and the first response I got was “Is she on Facebook?”

Phooey.

Apparently it’s no longer possible to delete my Facebook account. If I deactivate it,

Your 12 friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you.

Bruce will miss you
Vanessa will miss you
Mae will miss you
Steve will miss you
Laurel will miss you

Laurel and Vanessa are dead, and Mae left Facebook long ago, which is why I didn’t bother defriending them when I did most everyone else. Bruce and Steve know how to reach me otherwise.

Posted in society | 1 Comment

to boldly spam

A recent fad in spam is Star Trek filler:

Sisko swiveled toward his chief engineer. “What do you think? Is there anybody still aboard the cargo shuttle?”
The commander nodded grudgingly. “Yes, I know. But you thought they might steal a couple of pods off the station. This is bigger than that. What did those Klingon renegades get out of it? Not the antimatter. So we have to assume that they were paid for their participation.”
Epilogue
“No!” she shouted.
The planet was a bit closer now, a bit more fiery at the edges, but it remained dark and essentially featureless. Picard peered at it as if he could have spotted the Mendel just by looking hard enough- as if he could have outdone the Enterprise’s vast array of instruments, not to mention Troi’s considerable abilities, by determination alone.

I wonder what’s the source.

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amazing restraint

Roderick Long defines right-conflationism as defending existing economic structures as if they were outcomes of a genuinely free market (what Kevin Carson calls vulgar libertarianism), and left-conflationism as using those outcomes to attack the concept of free markets. I hope my paraphrasing doesn’t offend either of them.

Left-conflationism asks us to believe that Big Business, through its corrupt control of legislatures, prevents political interference in the market and goes no further; that mere market freedom allows it to loot us so thoroughly that it does not seek subsidies or protection from competition.

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n-k-1

The blog “Degrees of Freedom”, which had been inactive for some time when last I looked at it, has vanished. James, do you still visit here?

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preprocessor fail

I’ve been getting comments like this: Continue reading

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