blending curves

Posted on Sunday, 2011 July 10 by Anton

I made some progress on an old project: to make outline fonts based on some favorite old bitmap fonts, by automatic fitting of smooth curves to the sequences of dots.
a letter of PLATO IV's standard charset, with curves superimposed
(The image above is in Scalable Vector Graphic format. If you see nothing, you may – dare I say it – need to update your browser. It works in Firefox 5, Safari 5, Chrome 12, Kindle.) Continue reading →

Posted in curve-fitting | 6 Comments

practical shooting for the apocalypse

Posted on Friday, 2011 June 24 by Anton

I’m watching the pilot episode of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. In this iteration the machines have a sense of humor!

Seems to me the most useful thing Sarah can do with her shotgun is aim for the eyes. Does she ever learn that?

Summer Glau is prettier here than in Firefly. Gained weight?

Posted in cinema | Leave a comment

the tantalizing tune

Posted on Thursday, 2011 May 26 by Anton

I used to have a ringtone that, pardon the pun, rang a bell: I was sure it was from some modern string quartet, but couldn’t find it in my collection.

Years go by. Today I get in the car, turn on the radio and hear that musical phrase. I wait for the piece to end, but the title is not announced. Well, maybe the station webs its playlist. I get home, refer to the website and find, for the time in question, some song by Daniel Lanois (surrounded by other songs rather than string quartets). Argh.

An hour later I turn on the radio again and hear “Every Day Is a Winding Road”, which was on the list. So I scroll back an hour . . . .

It is in fact the second movement of Ravel’s string quartet in F.

Posted in music+verse | Leave a comment

Friday thirteen come on Friday this month

Posted on Saturday, 2011 May 14 by Anton

Somewhere or other I recently mentioned having heard that, because the Gregorian calendar cycle of 400 years is a multiple of 7 days, the 13th of the month is not evenly distributed and falls more often on Friday than on any other day of the week; but I had not done the math myself and did not have the numbers. Now I’ve done it but can’t remember where to post the followup!

Posted in calendars | 2 Comments

that didn’t take long

Posted on Friday, 2011 May 13 by Anton

Someone has snapped up my old unwanted domain to start a blog in (i think) Swedish.

Posted in blogdom, me!me!me! | Leave a comment

links from spaaace

Posted on Sunday, 2011 May 08 by Anton

Average illumination near the Moon’s south pole, showing which crater floors never (or almost never) see sunlight. Unfortunately the text doesn’t quantify what the whitest pixel means, i.e., how much time the most-illuminated point spends in shadow.

Wobbling time exposure of Regulus and Mars, showing ‘twinkle’ in a novel way.

Posted in astronomy | Leave a comment

crickets

Posted on Sunday, 2011 May 01 by Anton

This site had half as many visits in April as in March, presumably either because the old domain expired or because folks are busy getting ready for the end of the world.

Posted in me!me!me! | Leave a comment