Recently updated blogs

This week in Modern Plain Text Computing we put together some of the things we’ve been learning about cleaning and tidying data. Here’s a somewhat sobering example using data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which is how the NTSA tracks information about road accidents in the United States. Our data file shows counts of pedestrians aged <16 killed in road accidents on each day of the month in the …

I was thinking earlier today that I haven’t posted here in a while. I also have been thinking that I should worry less about publishing finished ideas, as I frequently tail off before that point. Then, the idea goes, forgotten, forever. So why not plant that seed here? It will go unnurtured but at least it can get a couple roots down, to let it weather the storm of amnesty …

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After taking a long break from working on belief systems(and writing a book in the meantime), I think it’s time to get back to belief system. The problem that got me stuck was how to define the term ‘Belief Systems’. The concept is not new(the oldest usage I could find goes all the way back to Plato and his...

$\newcommand\C{\mathbb{C}}$ I came up with the proof below while preparing a lecture for my complex analysis course. I learned from Sinan Gunturk that Peter Lax showed him the same proof back in 2007. Let \(O\subset\C\) be open and convex. Let \(z_0 \in O\) and \(c: [0,1] \rightarrow O\) be a closed piecewise \(C^1\) curve. Recall that the winding number of $c$ around $z_0$ is defined to be \[ W(c,z_0) = …

Metadata Author: [[Katy Hessel]] Full Title: ‘There Is a Bullet in My Brain’: The Searing Art of Hollywood Nun Sister Mary Corita Category: #articles Summary: Sister Mary Corita was a nun and artist who used her work to address social issues like the Vietnam War and racism. She believed art could help people see both the small details and the bigger picture of the world around them. Her legacy continues …

After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve decided to officially fully retire this blog. The ribbonfarm.com domain and all links will remain active, but there will be no new content after November 13th, 2024, which happens to be my 50th birthday. There will be one final roundup post before […]

What will affect the earth’s temperature the most in the next 10 years?Aerosols“Aerosols” is a fancy name for “tiny particles in the air”. Aerosols are the most potent climate lever in the world, because they act near instantly.Some aerosols warm the planet, for example, soot (‘black carbon’). Some aerosols cool the planet, for example, sulfur dioxide.CO2 and methane have to accumulate for decades to cause the warming impact shown above. …

I’m not technically a boardgame designer, but I will be at the Hythe Community Games Day on Saturday 9 November taking place inside St. Leonard’s Church in Kent. I’ll mainly be hanging out by the Frostgrave table run by some friends. I expect it to … Continue reading →

Design for Real Life is now available, for free, in its entirety, at dfrlbook.com. If you like what you read and want a personal copy, or just to support Sara and me, print-on-demand and ePub versions are also available from a number of sources. There are some countries where the book is not yet available, which we hope will be fixed soon. We’ll update the “Buy the book” page as …

(One of my summaries of the one-day Pycon NL conference in Utrecht, NL). Brett is the writer of the effective python book. As an example, he picked a calculator that can add and multiply integers. The numbers, the operators: everything is an object in his example. You can do it with one big function, object oriented or with dynamic dispatch. One big function: just a big old recursive function with …

Some of the half-frame 35mm photographs from the French ‘Randonneur Round The Year’ rides will be included in a Brighton Photo Fringe exhibition between 16 and 20 October. The show is at Regency Town House in Hove, open between 11am and 5pm. Further details on the Photo Fringe website. Copies of the photo book 2704 will be for sale at the exhibition but can also be ordered from my Etsy …

Even when the legal arguments in such lawfare cases are weak or absurd, the litigation itself can be of value to litigants who seek to utilise the court hearings to air a litany of real or imagined grievances. In the wake of a decision by the Council of Stellenbosch University to close its Wilgenhof Men’s Residence for one year in an attempt to bring an end to humiliating and exclusionary …

Is your meticulously crafted strategy falling flat during execution? Discover a powerful approach to making your strategic vision a lived reality.This blog post is a summary of our webinar What is Strategy Activation? Watch the on-demand version now. For anyone responsible for leading change transformation in their organization, an effective strategy activation approach is critical to bringing a strategy to life. Too often, strategies are meticulously planned but falter during …