savourtardis @savourtardis@qoto.org

You, a tech startup with millions in angel finance: made an app to turn handwritten maths into TeX.

Me, just the worst kind of smart alec: convinced a pen #plotter to turn TeX into handwritten maths

Curve fitting - this needs to be shared here :-)
By the great xkcd
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/curve_fitting_2x.png

In this talk I show how to multiply quaternions AND ALSO OCTONIONS using the dot product and cross product of vectors in 3 dimensions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI5xPGN_sWo

For quaternions this is well-known, but for octonions it's less so.

I sketched the proof that both these algebras have a norm obeying:

|ab| = |a| |b|

But you want to see the details, go to the proof of Theorem 2 here:

https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2020/07/octonions_and_the_standard_mod_1.html

I do the proof for octonions, but the same argument also works for quaternions!

Holy moly this thingy is sick!

Perspectives.

The last couple of days I've been experimenting with the modes on my phone. The "do not disturb" while sleeping is fine but my choices for the "driving" mode might need some work. I thought the reading out of whatsapp messages might be useful, particularly on the way in and out of said place.

Turns out I have a new found additional understanding of what VI people with screen readers are going through. When you've had the nice lady in your phone read "upward pointing finger with palm facing outwards" ten times because one of your colleagues likes to emphasise his messages with a follow-up screen full of ☝️ you begin to feel a fraction of their pain.

I have the option of turning off the reader. Not everyone does. I'll be thinking about that.

#vi #accessibility #GoodManners

I feel there ain't enough #origami here on Mastodon, so I decided to make myself an origami challenge, hoping more will join:
Fold and post every model from a specific book of your choice.
I will start from the book in the picture, which I got as a present and came with really lovely papers!
Boosts welcome, and join me with the hashtag #origami_challenge

A while ago, my son asked me how to draw using the two-point perspective technique…

"I haven't got the slightest idea", was my honest answer (kids need to know we don't know everything, after all)

Could have left it at that. Instead we went on YouTube, one thing led to another, and…

…anyway, here's the answer, using a program which uses Python's `turtle`

#Python #programming #coding #LearnPython #LearnToCode #drawing #perspective

https://thepythoncodingbook.com/2022/04/10/understanding-two-point-perspective-drawing-using-python/

"It was late in 1972 — a year in which the science of genetic engineering really began to sizzle — that two California researchers announced the unusually tidy transfer of genetic information from one bacterium to another with help from a specialized enzyme. It was a scientifically heralded result, but behind the hoopla was just one small catch. The information transferred enabled a common human disease bacterium, E. coli, to resist not just one antibiotic, but two.

“Alarm bells should have rung,” writes @matthewcobb, in his deeply researched and often deeply troubling history of gene science."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/books/review/as-gods-matthew-cobb.html

"Try reading the following out loud:

Hashtag screenreaders for the hashtag blind and hashtag VisuallyImpaired read every hashtag HashTags out loud and so it's hard for people with hashtag VisualImpairment to get the sense of the post because it's being constantly interrupted by well-meaning hashtag accessibility hashtag allies.

Easier to read with a block of hashtags at the bottom:
#screenreaders #VisuallyImpaired #blind #allies #Hashtags #accessibility"
--original author unknown

#AI led #art and inclusivity - a fascinating rant (love that word)

#ttrpg idea: you are all pets/familiars, looking after your hapless humans. The humans think they're the protagonists, but they're only alive because of your diligent and adorable work.

Had trouble choosing a mastodon instance? I got GPT-3 to generate some new possibilities.

flounder.club
Members discuss all different forms of flounder, from deep-sea to land-based.

dinosaur.pocket
All messages must consist of the two letters 'D', for fear that the dinosaurs will eat people's pocketbooks.

frozen.forest
Users must provide a source of warmth in order to post.

https://www.aiweirdness.com/ai-designed-mastodon-communities/

Here's my #cga palette chart that shows the 78 unique 4-colour palettes available in 320x200 resolution on #cga #ibmpc machines from the early #msdos era. It's probably the prettiest technical document I've ever made.

Let's launch this Mathstodon feed with a shameless plug:

The Mathy 2023 t-shirt recognizes various mathy days in the coming year ... Plus-Equals Days, Equals-Minus Days, Times-Equals Days, Arithmetic Progression Days, Palindrome Days (including Palindrome Fest!), as well as Pi, Tau, (two!) Fibonacci, and (many) Primes Days.

https://teespring.com/mathy2023

(I appreciate your support!)

@HappyApproxDay ((eπ)+√3)-9 = 1.2717850302424427

Today = 14/11 = 1.2727272727272727

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