Today in yak-shaving: my main 3D printer is down with mechanical problems and I'd like to bring my old one back online, but first I need to find out how to recycle a used paragliding wing.

I'll be stealthing around the Rapid + TCT show floor next week in Boston, if you're there and want to say hi hit me up on the app or wherever.

Hi #fediverse. We need to talk about something.

While talking to a colleague about how I recently learned most people have never sat on a cow it came up that she has never sat on a horse. Like, not even once during childhood.

Another colleague admitted they also have never sat on a horse.

My hypothesis is that most people have at one point in their life sat on a horse.

🏇 🐎 🐴

Have you sat on a horse?

Please boost for scientific accuracy.

You don't use open source software because it's better (it usually isn't).

You don't use open source software because it's freer (it only sometimes is).

You don't use open source software because it's got better politics (it isn't always).

You use open source software because *it is the only option*. In the long run, if it isn't open source, it doesn't exist.

image source: keithstack.com

Twelve years. I started this project twelve years ago, and today I hold the result in my hand. It’s a book that combines bead weaving with math called, “Beading with Algorithms: Cellular Automata in Peyote Stitch.” With help from mathematician and artist Roger Antonsen, graphic designer Zelda Lin, a handful of talented proof readers, and the good people from World Scientific Publishing Company, my dream of combining my loves of math, art, and teaching into a book is finally a reality.

This book is the first of its kind, a recipe book of algorithms that can be used and combined to generate colorful patterns in peyote stitch beadwork in any size and shape you desire. These algorithms could also be applied to other pixelated art forms like tile laying, embroidery, crochet, and quilts. We included projects like bracelets, pill pouches, pendants, beaded beads, and key chains. We also included a bunch of different grids that you can photocopy and color with markers.

Of course I’m biased, but I think it’s a really beautiful book. We included multiple colorful images on almost every page, 172 pages in all. It was a huge layout challenge, but Zelda nailed it. My original goal was to write 128 pages on how to use algorithms to make beaded jewelry, but the more we explored the space, the more we found. Not just millions of algorithms, the space of possibilities is infinite. So of course, we couldn’t include them all. But we used math and Roger’s custom software that he wrote for this project to help us find dozens of the easiest algorithms and more than a hundred more in increasing levels of complexity. We included all of our favorites. 1/2

#MathArt #beading #Genuary #math #beadweaving

Among the many #bots of the #Fediverse, is there one that can be used to play #InteractiveFiction, I wonder? I've seen a few that do random stuff including some procedurally generated IF and RPGs, but I was wondering about ones that were frontends to actual IF VMs so you could play actual IF adventures with them, possiby collectively (“Twitch Plays Pokémon” style).

#askFedi #bot

The void-sponges that I made in this post (https://tglad.blogspot.com/2024/10/void-sponges.html) have the nice property that they are symmetric to Mobius transformations that rotate around a circle. They act much like projected 4D polytopes even though they are 3D structures.

This has the interesting property that the structure could "swim" through water, since its conformal motion is wider on the part pushing down and smaller on the part going up.
(1/3)

@Daojoan All of my code is ad hoc and mostly incomprehensible to others. Take that, capitalism!

I'm happy we're finally taking back frogs ngl

The delusion that we can advance AI to the point where it rescues us from the mess we’ve created for ourselves is pure millenarianism. The CEOs of the big AI companies are a cult who believe that if they pray hard enough, AI Jesus will come down and grant us infinite abundance and prosperity.

Tilng the globe with pentagons of identical* area at various scales
https://a5geo.org/examples/teohedron-dodecahedron

*nearly

Departing Reno for the playa with Steel Tigerlillies, Ouroboros in tow.
We may be some time.

https://www.instagram.com/steeltigerlillies

I did the geometry for a large blinky sculpture: Ouroboros is going to Burning Man next week. If anyone wants to kick in for expenses, Hapto (https://haptotrope.com/) and I and our many friends who worked on this will greatly appreciate!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ouroboros-burning-man-2025/x/395857#/

I feel that presentation standards on Etsy have got out of hand. This isn't a print, it's collage.
Gosh thanks, but you know I'm not your mom right? just some rando buying a rock here?

'water is transparent only within a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum,

so living organisms evolved sensitivity to that band, and that's what we now call "visible light". '

In Philadelphia, I took the opportunity to visit @bathsheba ’s “Eltanin”.

https://bathsheba.com/gallery/commissions/eltanin/

There once was a girl from Purdue
Who kept a young cat in a pew
She taught it to speak
Alphabetical Greek
But it never got farther than μ.

Binder jetted steel with bronze infiltration is no more: the last source has discontinued the technology. All service bureaus that offered this material have taken it down, which tends to confirm my (and their) understanding that no one is continuing it.

20 years we dreamed together. It could do what other binder jetting processes couldn't and can't, and I built my art practice around it. Well, the market has spoken.

If you own a piece in this material, now you have a historical artifact.

This garlic has 4 cloves.
That's all.

Fun new paper at #SIGGRAPH2025:

What if instead of two 6-sided dice, you could roll a single "funky-shaped" die that gives the same statistics (e.g, 7 is twice as likely as 4 or 10).

Or make fair dice in any shape—e.g., dragons rather than cubes?

That's exactly what we do!