August '20 Retrospective

What a month, eh? The hits in 2020 keep on coming. Try to take care of yourselves out there in the wide world.

Added a now page. It’s target audience is actually me. But if you get anything out of it, so much the better.
Sent out the Series002 postcards. Woohoo! Very happy to see many of them arriving.
Started building this website. So that’s a thing.

High-resolution Computer Graphics Using FORTRAN 77, (Angell and Griffith): I’m quite thrilled with this book. Especially because the Fortran 77 version is ~5$, but the C++ version is a couple of hundred. I may have never compiled any Fortran code before, but that doesn’t mean I can’t read it and translate it into whatever language I happen to be working with. Thanks for the tip @anachrocomputer!
Computer geometric art, (Angell): Not impressed.
Fractals: Form, Chance, and Dimension, (Mandelbrot): It’s an earlier version of “The Fractal Geometry of Nature”, which I didn’t realize. But the variation in explanation of some concepts is detectable and may actually be useful. Glad it was a very affordable price, so I’ll keep them both. But you probably only need one.
Perspective drawing by programmable calculator, (Yue): A recommendation of @johnbalestrieri, looks interesting and I think it will be useful. Looking forward to spending more time with it.
Mathematical Carnival: From Penny Puzzles, Card Shuffles and Tricks of Lightning Calculators to Roller Coaster Rides Into the Fourth Dimension, (Gardner): Seems like a fun idea. It’s a reference in the first Angell book.

Fractal Curves. The pdf books on this site are great. I found this link a long time ago, then lost it. Glad to have found it again.
Markdeep. Looks like an interesting alternative to plain old markdown. It includes a lot of the technical tools that I often want to add anyway.
The Graphics Codex. May be handy someday, but I’ll pass for now.
The Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. Someone linked the book in a tweet, but it’s a couple of hundred dollars. Turns out the author maintains a website! Searching is a bit clunky.
Websters 1913. You may not know it, but I also am a lover of words and writing. This is super handy. Johnson’s is also great for a historical perspective.
Science Advances. The latest news.
Bayes Theorem: A framework for critical thinking.
Roman Bread Recipe!. I haven’t made it yet. I also bake!
Horcrux. I might use it as a post card puzzle in October. Depends on how long the resulting text is.
Slide Rule course.
Awesome sys admin resources.
Pc Part Picker and Logical Increments. I recently decided to add a graphics card to a PC build that my wife and I put together some time ago. It’s not for gaming, it’s for making more art faster, with math! So I wanted to evaluate if I really needed anything beyond a 1050 Ti. Since I have no idea what I am doing, I decided that the 1050 would be adequate for starting, so that’s what I got. When I outgrow it, I’ll need these sites again.

Angell, I.O. and Griffith, G., High-resolution Computer Graphics Using FORTRAN 77, 1987.
There is lots of good stuff in here. @pentronik
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Angell, I.O., Computer geometric art, 1985.
It’s just some patterns. I don’t find it that helpful, inspiring, or interesting. @pentronik
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Mandelbrot, B., Fractals: Form, Chance, and Dimension, 2020. More Details
Yue, D., Perspective drawing by programmable calculator, 1984. More Details
Gardner, M., Mathematical Carnival: From Penny Puzzles, Card Shuffles and Tricks of Lightning Calculators to Roller Coaster Rides Into the Fourth Dimension, 1975. More Details