four million colors

You may know from The Art of Computer Programming §4.1 (citing W. Penney, 1965) that, just as any positive real number can be represented by a bit string in base 2, any complex number can be represented by a bit string in base –1±i. Here I express the bits of that representation as bits of color values.

This is only an arbitrary crop of an image consisting of 218 pixels; get 222 colors (png, 373 KB). The full 24-bit version will have to wait for me to get cleverer about use of memory. (Later: Success.)

When I say I make mathematical pictures, the response often is: “Like fractals?” Some of my designs have chaotic reflections, but this is my first fractal in many years.

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still dangerous

I took Dad to the target range today. I hadn’t shot in three years, nor he in seven. He, using my .22, was pleased enough with his shooting to take his target home.

With my .40, I did better than I expected after so long: my shots at ten yards were in groups smaller than my fist, which is plenty good enough for most practical purposes (not that I ever hope to use a pistol for practical purposes). As usual my left hand was steadier than my right; I said to Dad, “Are you sure I’m not left-handed?”

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

Foundation and Spam

Got a spam today from someone who evidently used Asimov to feed the gibberish-generator:

Well, are implicated. When I’m most difficult to the regent, the nervous high priest in this tendency reached was up are Now? Hardin jump; remained silent and I’ve located (in which in his neck: was in Mallow’s eyebrows and over a metropolis will become a loophole is insufficient to change: the gravitational forces). Today. You will leave and gold is nonsense! HARI the him: down that: until I gave it is it the devil, do you see: here under the free, agent of the crisis comes I was of the Board; of will protect see that heralded the outlying provinces filled its stainless steel dear, said Ponyets winced at present took no longer open for the gravity for him; to I know the game of barbarism a single face, them; needlessly, until the line that leaped HARI SELDON an admiral, planets in a world they stood for the orders, no mistaking it grows. Finally the sub prefect of Journal and thirty years ago, at starving wages before I have had attended with the. People will be safe. Well, almost a subject up. Sutt, arrested; in I refer to do in Jorane Sutt and a is relatively small and Trade! It no danger and if need a power is gold bears no we’ve given us see these traders. Murder it not heard of a psychologist in Space for a strange occupation for word went pound body of his seat. No time from his back down to the air the gentle pressure. A warning, of knowledge of this point; where the trend, of dissident elements Foundation whispered it’s very Far less trip as far Star, at its side and the outer speaker. And Follow its favor of the contemporary true even so. Gaal felt buffeted right, Mallow: long and they to face. Still relieved irreplaceable and importance in the blue white lie in whole sport and in melodramatic. He in them. Never quite legitimate; monarchies: administrators. Surely you mean also tobacco not. An eyewitness. Or had called on, the future in sour? Hardin had gone a cold distance? The pleadings of our years. Consider myself. But, this stroke of me for my son upon joining; cell, was made by way, Hardin pursed his cap, I’ve went dead center of Trustees, of Anacreon of the inner right. It was the Imperium we have one though how’s that we have full of the plane; narration. They came near The notes and Hober Mallow fastened stepped in the other three that it; upward, out a Smyrnian. Well yes, I’ve never said, methodically, in my turn had only a little of suns. I near the only Anacreon wipe help in a mile long live heah in State of maintaining their priest, and not from the first, time, would be conducted.

Posted in prose, spam | 2 Comments

do me no favors

Argh. In the newest version of Firefox, Gmail puts its content in popups, and I can’t find a way to turn off that behavior.

Later: It only did that once, the first time I loaded Gmail after updating Firefox.

Posted in neep-neep | 1 Comment

a pretty thing

I eventually got around to ordering my poster from Zazzle. I feared that the colors might be dull, or that JPEG compression would spoil the detail, but it’s even more crisp and gorgeous than I imagined.

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fun with eigenvectors

After installing that matrix math library, I spent a week’s evenings pushing several abstract graphs through my “topological coordinates” program and finding, to my lack of complete shock, that none of them had any neat three-dimensional embedding.

Then I tried a torus, and was again far from amazed that it didn’t work well either: all the vertices being equivalent under the inherent symmetries, there’s nothing to distinguish the “inner” from the “outer”.

I cut a seam of the torus to make a cylinder, and then I got a surprise: the free ends curl in like an apple. If anything I’d expect the opposite: the vertices along the edges, being topologically outermost, “ought” to curl outward.

One of these days I’ll get around to fullerenes.

Posted in mathematics | 1 Comment

what, if anything, were you thinking?

I hear some surprising things in this job. I trust I’m not violating confidence if I repeat this doozy from a discharge report:

At this point the etiology of the [symptom] is still unclear to me; it could possibly be idiopathic but, given that his symptoms have resolved and [test results], most likely his [symptom] has unclear etiology.

Idiopathic or unclear? We report, you decide.

Posted in medicine | 1 Comment