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I was feeling inspired to play around with tessellations and stumbled across Tiled.art, a fun site that illustrates how tessellations work and lets you make your own.

I didn't end up making anything very exciting artistically but did have fun, and I think it could be pretty fun for other people, with or without an artistic or mathematical background. Just play and see what happens!

The Devil's Calculator is a little algebra puzzle game about figuring out what various functions do and then using them to create the number 666. I've been having a lot of fun with it, but if you don't already think algebra is fun this game will probably not convince you otherwise.

The first 20 levels are free, and I feel like the early levels would be pretty doable for anyone with an ok grasp of basic algebra.

I'm at level 39 now and some of the later levels have been moderately challenging(*), and I'm not sure how anyone could have solved some of them without knowing (or knowing to look up) equations like the sum of all integers between 1 and x, the number of combinations of k objects chosen from a set of size n, etc. Which is still highschool level, but the sort of thing most adults will have forgotten unless they studied maths further.

(*)I have a Phd in abstract algebra, but that was a long time ago, and I'm not always great at puzzles, so it's hard to calibrate exactly how hard they are objectively. But definitely not easy for anyone who doesn't have a strong background in algebra.

Fandom Stats displays AO3 data with graphs. It's nothing you can't see in a search result sidebar but the graphs are fun.

(For those going 'Hey, Sean, weren't you going to get into fandom stats?": I got one lecture into a stats course and it was all too hard and I did something else instead >.>)

Most people: I was dreaming I was at a social event when suddenly: QUESTIONS ABOUT MATHS D:
Me: I was dreaming I was at a maths exam when suddenly: QUESTIONS ABOUT SOCIAL SITUATIONS D:

(And then the evil French doctors arrived with needles and distracting puppies but the Australian secret service arrived to save me and gave me a bunch of sandwiches. So it was all ok in the end)

I was curious to see how the ages of my followers varied over various social media. As expected, dreamwidth skews slightly older. But it was also interesting to see how the responses varied in other ways.

Ages:


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An Archive Of Our Own (AO3) is an archive for fanworks. Any work posted there needs to be given a title, a fandom, a rating (from "General Audiences" to "Explicit", with the option to pick "No Rating"), and warnings. Here's the AO3's guide to using warnings, note that it deals with some possibly triggering subjects.

Note these two cases in particular:

Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Use this if warnings may apply but you don't want to use them.

No Archive Warnings Apply
Use this if AO3 warnings don't apply to your content

These are not the same! But the specific differences can be muddy.

From A Moving Forward PSA for everyone using AO3 by kkglinka:

“No Archive Warnings Apply” means the fic is PG13 at worst, probably fluff, totally safe.

“Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings” is the polar opposite. It’s a glaring Enter at Your Own Risk billboard. It means: a shitload of warnings apply but I ain’t telling because this story requires shock value. It’s very important to read the author’s notes for those fics because they might be using that older format from above.

So I thought this was roughly true, if a bit over-simplistic, then decided to do some rough poking at the AO3, and now I don’t think it’s true at all: as far as I can tell, while works marked "No Archive Warnings Apply" are overall lower rated and "safer" than works marked "Creator Chooses Not To Use Warnings", the difference is small enough to not be much of a useful guide to the content of any given fic.

For example: using the AO3 search, 14% of fic tagged "No Archive Warnings Apply" are explicit, while 16% of those tagged "Creator Chooses Not To Use Warnings" are. A difference, but not a hugely significant one. And under the cut I have a bunch of examples of dark topics which are about half as common amongst "No Archive Warnings Apply" works as "Creator Chooses Not To Use Warnings" ones: a significant difference, but not large enough to make "No Archive Warnings Apply" safe.

My goal isn't to criticise kkglinka, I agreed with them until I ran the numbers (and it is of course possible that I somehow ran the numbers wrong) My goal is to encourage an accurate understanding of how AO3 users use these tags and warnings, and also to have fun playing with numbers because I am a nerd. In the likely event that my own analysis is flawed, I would be interested to hear about it.

And I do agree with kkglinka's final point: if you see something marked "Creator Chooses Not To Use Warnings" you should check the notes and tags very carefully, especially if there's subjects you find triggering. From broader fandom context I suspect kkglinka is pushing back against the situation where someone posts a worked marked "Creator Chooses Not To Use Warnings" that contains major character death or whatever, and a reader(*) gets angry because they think "Creator Chooses Not To Use Warnings" means "No Archive Warnings Apply". And it does not! It means the work could contain literally anything, and if you can't deal with that you shouldn't read it.

So I guess my point is that readers should also check the notes and tags for works marked "No Archive Warnings Apply". If a work marked that way contains major character death etc then yeah, you have a right to be pissed off. But a whole bunch of other stuff is fair game, including porn and other "unsafe" content. Always step carefully.

Content Note: discussion of triggering tags/content
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Disclaimer: this is based on half remembered mathematics from fifteen years ago and some refresher reading of wikipedia. Kentsarrow asked me about this over a year ago, but I ran out of puff, then fred_mouse asked for a post on "maths" and I decided to finally finish the damn thing. I would double check everything but doing so would require forcing my brain to relearn things it would rather block out (I love maths but have some very bad associations with brain hurting) but here is a short less handwavey proof for anyone who knows what a field is.

Should be understandable with high school calculus, I think? But if you don't get it, blame me not you :) One thing that may go over the head of those who haven't studied maths at uni is the DEEP RIVALRY between algebraists and geometers that made me super gleeful when I learned about this stuff (I have always sucked at geometry)
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Kira has made it very clear that I am not to move today and I have trouble seeing any good reason to argue with her.

I GOT HULU TO WORK ON MY COMPUTER (using Hola) and am currently watching the Korean drama/comedy Coffee Prince. It's about a tomboyish woman pretending to be a man, (including, at one point, pretending to be the main male character's boyfriend) which is pretty much my het id wrapped up in a bow and it is funny and charming betides. She has a similar "Eh, gender" attitude to Haruhi from Ouran and apparently the show doesn't make her become girly to get her man, woo (though next episode's preview seemed to have the guy have her "pretend" to be a woman, I am sure hiijinks will ensue)

The current Humble Bundle includes the interactive story Dear Esther which I've been meaning to try out for ages. Coffee Prince is only 17 episodes I'll get there eventually :)

I'm watching "I could never be your woman" since it sounded good: older woman romance! Paul Rudd! Same creator as Clueless! But so far I am super bored. There's some aspects I like but if nothing else I think I'd enjoy it more if I was a 40 year old single mother who sees 32 year old guys as endearingly young. *watches Coffee Prince instead, which has TWO sexy brunette leads*

Soooo behind on email. It's all too hard.

The sequel course to the Game Theory course I did on Coursera has started up, this time on Standford's own MOOC. The course itself is fun, we're currently learning about how there's no way to count votes that doesn't mess up under the right circumstances. But the site has some Issues, eg the fact that the first assessment said "Save answers" when it meant "Submit your first and only attempt". Not only did I get 30/100 but it didn't even save my answers! Since Coursera has a "save answers" button which just saves your answers I was not the only person caught out by this, the lecturers say they're looking into it.

I once wrote a book about how to work out the name of a thing called a "black box group."
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So cold. Plus I have a cold, which really doesn't help. Blech.

I've put a riddle or two on my glitch home street. I also dressed my glitch in longer hair and a warm jacket, it made me feel better :)

Perth peeps: Mathematics and Women: 36 years at The University of Western Australia See my head Phd supervisor talk about her fascinating life.

Also does anyone know where a person could get wheelchair or even bike flags locally? I guess I could buy one online.