Ransen's Blog

I was at the garden center and saw these flowers: My Mum used to plant them in our garden in Rowan Crescent. So I bought a few. The sight (only) reminded me of our garden 40 years ago, but closing my eyes and smelling them seemed to take me back in time physically . The smell is not even very lovely to most people, but it is full of crackling energy to me.  The amazing power of scents.

  I found this true story in Against The Gods (The Remarkable Story of Risk) by Peter L. Bernstein. Chevalier de Mere (real name Antoine Gombaud ) was a Frenchman who, in the 1600s, made money with this bet: "I bet I can get a 6 within 4 throws of the dice." The book does not explain the calculation, but does give the answer to his chance of winning (roughly 51.8% of the time). I'd like to be good at probability calculations, but I'm not. Anyway I thought I'd try to find out how the probability was calculated. I preceded like this: ...which yields... I was very proud of myself until I found out that there is a much easier way of calculating it. Just count out all the ways of losing, and take that number away from all the possible outcomes (winning + losing) and you've got the answer. To lose you must throw a non six four times. The probability of throwing a non-six is 5/6. To do it four tim...

I don't care what you ate last night. I don't care what it was called or how it was presented or how much it cost. I want gossip. I want to hear about scandal, illegitimacy, failure, success, real lives. I don't care what wine you drank last night. I don't care about its colour or taste, I was not there, I did not taste that wine, and nothing you say can describe it. I want to drink it, not hear descriptions of it. I don't give a flying expletive-deleted what the colour of the sand was on your holidays. Or the quality of the hotel. Or the route you took to get there. I want to know how you make your money, what your work you do, if you enjoy it, if you have any plans or ambitions. And sure as hell I don't want to hear your opinions on football teams, or hear what you dreamt last night. When someone says "I had a really strange dream last night..." I feel like a caged animal.  I'll smile politely, and maybe, to my s...

I know exactly how conceptual art works. If you are a lucky and well connected "artist" you get some more skillful craftsmen to make your "concepts" and present them as your own work. The dealers and you, the famous artist, make money out of rich idiots who are unable to think for themselves. Eventually, after many years, some poor fool will be left with worthless objects, wondering what happened to their investments. Where are the concepts in conceptual art? What can compete (in terms of amazing realities) with relativity, evolution, or quantum electrodynamics? One test. Imagine that civilization seems to be collapsing. You are in a very cold place. You have two sets of artworks which you could burn to keep warm. They will give the same amount of heat for the same time. You have a ton of sketches by Tracy Emin, and two paintings by Giorgione. Which do you burn first? Search Tracy Emin's sketches and Giorgione's paintings in Googl...

Look up The Monty Hall Problem if you've never heard of it. Basically there is a game show hosted by a bloke called Monty Hall, behind one of three closed doors is a prize, like a new luxury car. Behind the other two doors there is nothing. The game is to choose which door to open. You're given no clues. So all doors have an equal chance of giving you the luxury car, roughly 33%. Lets suppose you choose door A. Now Monty opens door C to show you that behind it there is no prize. The question is: Should you change your choice from door A to door B?  It is important to remember The A and B pair are not the same as the B and C pair, because the B and C pair do not contain the door your initially chose. The answer is yes , you increase your chances of getting the prize from 33% to 66%. If you haven't heard of the Monty Hall problem before you're probably surprised by this answer, but it is true, not only in theory but also in practice. (Try...

Walking back from the shops I saw a dead bee on the pavement. I managed not to squash it with my great big feet. I thought immediately of my 40 Euro USB microscope and what it would show me of the bee. I'd not have killed a bee just to look at it, but there it was on the pavement, unsquashed. So I picked it up... When I got home the first thing I saw and could get into focus was the leg shown above. Scary eh? But not as scary as the head: It does not look dead to me, the eyes seem to be staring at me. In the photo below you can clearly see the segmented eyes (more on that later) and the yellow "fur" behind the head... The mouth is pretty scary too... The greatest revelation to me was the wings though. As far as the microscope was concerned it was good that bee wings are flat, so you can get it all into focus, and isn't it beautiful...? Back to those multifaceted insect eyes. Sometimes you see images like this, pixellated flowers... ...an...

I have a rule about not going to see any films which have won (or may win) at Venice or Cannes, I violated that rule and, to my regret, saw Le Meraviglie. So I should have remembered that violating my own rules usually ends in tears. STL is the format most accepted by 3d printers. I wanted to create a medal or coin shaped object in STL. The problem with STL is that, apart from the huge file size, the mesh of triangles must be connected together in a proscribed way. Basically a triangle corner must not finish on a triangle edge: The triangles C B and E are illegal in STL as they are shown above because the corners of C and B touch the edge (not the corner) of E. 3D printers would spit any object like that out. That is just one of the problems of making STL files. Another problem, from my point of view, is that I have to modulate the triangle heights to follow the dark and light of the user's photo for my program PhotoToMesh. So how to I make a regular array of triangles i...

I love clouds, my friends mock me or look at me as if I'm mad, but a goodly shaped cloud just gives me a warm infinity feeling. These photos were all from the balcony of my flat over the last two years or so. It's tempting to stay inside and watch Law & Order I know, but with a bit of effort there's a whole strange universe out there before my very eyes. In this photo you can see that the Earth's horizon is cutting off the sun's rays halfway down the cloud... ...behind my head the sun is going down. I tried to imagine what strange winds could have created this... ...I suppose there was an invisible undulation of air. And for real drama... I don't need to waste money going to exotic places, it is all here before me, if only I'd remember to open my eyes more often.

I read, in Incognito I think it was ... ...that even when the eyes are closed the brain continues to produce images. And somewhere in the Instructables site there was an article about how to produce "safe hallucinations."  Both these things came to my mind recently because I've started having a midday nap. I've found that it better prepares me for the afternoon's work than, for example, reading a book,  watching TV, or browsing the Internet. Books, TVs and Internet do not leave my mind free to wander or sleep. They distract me from work, which I suppose is good, but keep the brain tethered. So as an experiment a few months ago, I decided to have a 30 minute nap. I use a timer, a blindfold (which you used to get on long haul flights) and some ear plugs. My hallucinogenic paraphenalia: I need the timer (which beeps for a minute after the set time) for two reasons If I fall asleep it will wake me. If I am restless I know there is a limit, and I ca...

My Veho 200X microscope has come up trumps again, here is the center (stigma? carpel?) of an oleander flower: Isn't it amazing?  (Since where I live there is a ton of light pollution I've turned my attention to the microsopic.)

If you are bored out of your mind with current popular music (some very skillful, but old ideas and techniques repeated ad-nauseum) have a listen to this: Hawk To The Hunting Gone by You Are Wolf (aka Kerry Andrew). Something original, new, lovely... My favourite tracks are Cuckoo (strangely happy) and Three Ravens (odd and dark). You can buy the album at from her site, look for the album Hawk To The Hunting Gone .