Will I ever learn my lesson? Probably not. I suspect most people in math have the same problem: you buy a new book and have all sorts of grand plans about going through it and mastering all its theorems, etc. etc. That was me in February, when I ordered a copy of Differential Geometry of Curves and Surfaces by Kristopher Tapp. Read more...

I was reading the Wikipedia page for the famous Lorenz system of differential equations, and saw a nice animated plot of the phase space written in the Julia language. Among the other code examples on that page is a solution for Maxima, which outputs the following when run: It's not a bad plot, but I thought it could be improved. Read more...

Despite the "unreasonable effectiveness"1 of mathematics applied to physics, I think it is important to remember that there is an awful lot we cannot calculate exactly. In general, except for the simplest of problems, numerical computations or some other type of approximation are the only way to get answers. Read more...

Via wikipedia: During the Classical era, C minor was used infrequently and always for works of a particularly turbulent cast. Mozart, for instance, wrote only very few works in this key, but they are among his most dramatic ones (the twenty-fourth piano concerto, the fourteenth piano sonata, the Masonic Funeral Music, the Adagio and Fugue in C minor and the Great Mass in C minor, for instance). Read more...

Since I wrote Time for RSS to shine again I keep finding more resources and articles about how to take advantage of RSS to stay organized online. What’s old is new again, folks. Next thing you know, I will be posting about the newest release of Netscape Navigator. GET THE NET! Read more...

Elon Musk began July by breaking Twitter yet again. This is just the latest in his series of bizarre decisions to worsen the user experience and cut down on actual use of the service. Concurrent with the rate limiting, Twitter is also now requiring people to sign in first to view tweets. Read more...

Things are not looking too good right now for the distribution of online news in Canada. The Online News Act, or Bill C-18, received royal assent last week. Per a government news release: "The Online News Act levels the playing field between news businesses and large digital platforms to create greater fairness to ensure sustainability of the news industry. Read more...

Listening to the radio the other day, I learned something interesting about the risks of inhaling smoky air. The smallest particulates in wildfire smoke are less than 2.5 µm in diameter. This is incredibly tiny—it’s about 30 times smaller than the thickness of human hair. Such a minuscule size means these particulates can get deep into your lungs when inhaled, and even work their way into your bloodstream1. Read more...

Because I keep forgetting how: [[LINK][DESCRIPTION]] More: The Org Manual

I've been playing with some thoughts about RSS becoming relevant again for over a year now, but I wasn't sure anybody would be interested in hearing about it. Nowadays, it's fashionable to have opinions on the state of Twitter, so I can take this opportunity to shoehorn my half-baked ideas into the discussion. Read more...