Oct 1, 2026, 8:05 PM@n1xnx @Canageek @nyrath @ianturton @TerryHancock
Oh yes. And yes.
@arclight is the online authority on AEC-certified FORTRAN libraries wrapped & still in use down south in 🇺🇸.
(His and @nyrath 's tenure with SJG may have overlapped?
IIRC, Neither overlapped with my sister-in-law, art-dir for 1st gen GURPS)
Oct 1, 2026, 9:35 PM@n1vux @n1xnx @Canageek @ianturton @TerryHancock @arclight
Back in 1977, when I was in high-school, I did the artwork for Steve Jackson's famous table top war games Ogre. So I figured I was an artist.
But as a scifi fan, I wanted an accurate 3D star map. So from a cold standing start, knowing only the definition of tangent, sine, and cosine, I derived a polar to rectangular coordinate transform. This can turn a star's right ascension, declination and distance into x,y,z starmap coords.
Oct 1, 2026, 9:48 PM@nyrath @n1xnx @arclight
IIRC Steve mentioned OGRE! when he introduced us at PoGo that once.
(I had similar trig mania, but for Fuller Geodesic Domes, and later on, goniometers of all sorts #instrumentsOfMathsInstruction ).
(I cheated mathswise on my 3D star chart: inscribed spherical coords (RA & Dec) on 6" craft Styrofoam sphere and inserting measured pipe cleaners for range to stars.
Also tried Holmes stereoscope with chart views plotted with T/NROFF on a Diablo Daisy wheel printer.)
Oct 1, 2026, 9:52 PM@n1vux @n1xnx @Canageek @ianturton @TerryHancock @arclight
The trouble was, using my fancy scientific calculator, it took about 15 minutes to calculate each star. And I had hundreds to process.
Meanwhile it was time to sign up for college. I figured I was an artist, so I became an art major.
Oct 1, 2026, 9:59 PM@nyrath
My darling son-in-law tried Art School; took him a couple terms to determine whatever they were teaching wasn't what he called art!
(It's nice to have someone else in the household who understands symmetrical vs preceptual color solids! He's found a career that makes use of his aesthetical vision, he's a haberdasher now.)
Oct 1, 2026, 10:01 PM@n1vux @n1xnx @Canageek @ianturton @TerryHancock @arclight
In college was my old friend Tex. We were in high school together. We ruled science fiction class, because we knew more scifi than all the students and the teacher.
One day in college I complained to Tex about taking 15 minutes to calculate each star. He asked for the equation, and scribbled something. It was a Basic program.
Oct 1, 2026, 10:18 PM@n1vux @n1xnx @Canageek @ianturton @TerryHancock @arclight
"I cannot use this! It is a computer program, only usable by people with big brains" I complained.
Tex said "Nope", lead me to a DecWriter, and showed me how to type into the computer the program, the data, and "RUN".
It printed out the 3d coordinates about ten per second.
I was in love!
Oct 1, 2026, 10:20 PM@n1vux @n1xnx @Canageek @ianturton @TerryHancock @arclight
Alas, it was too late to change my major. I took as many computer courses that I could squeeze in, but my degree is in fine arts.
Oct 1, 2026, 10:04 PM@nyrath @n1xnx @Canageek @ianturton @TerryHancock @arclight
Secret from 1950/60s EE sliderule guide, a sliderule with a very specific set of Trig scales can do Rect ↔️ Polar conversion in one setting, faster than a calculator. The needed cheat is adding 1 mentally on B scale to find scaled hypotenuse.
Oct 1, 2026, 10:37 PM@n1vux @n1xnx @Canageek @ianturton @TerryHancock @arclight
I do remember being annoyed. While glancing through a calculus textbook, I stumbled over the very equations I had derived for polar to rectangular coordinate transfer.
Oct 2, 2026, 3:01 AM@nyrath that's confirmation!
You got it right from first principals! ⭐️
In my maths world, that's GOOD!
(Those same equations are in a lot of textbooks and reference tomes. Possibly not astronomy tho, they're so wedded to their mislabeled spherical coords. They convert among spherical origins and axes and supposed inertial references, don't seem to believe in right angles! 🤷♂️)