Blog  |   Puzzles  |   Books  |   About

Archive for November, 2011

Sudoku Troubleshooter #4 – XYZ-Wing

Thursday, November 24th, 2011

Troubleshooter #4: XYZ-Wing This is part of a series on puzzle solving techniques. If you are stuck on a particular Krazydad puzzle, drop me a note, and I’ll use this space to help you out. Michael wrote in an email: Dad, Good morning and an early happy thanksgiving. I really enjoy your puzzles and I […]

Campanello

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Campanello from David Watson on Vimeo. Todd Kurt sent me the link to this very nice electro-mechanical doorbell, designed by David Watson. He provides detailed instructions on his website, along with a few other interesting projects. I’m currently fascinated with such mechanisms, and hope to build something similar using a set of tuned desk bells […]

A History of the Sky

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Bolero

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

Chris Harrison’s visualizations

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011

Chris Harrison, a PH.D. student at Carnegie Mellon, has put together a really nice set of visualizations, often involving words, such as the color flower shown here. The rest of his website is full of some very cool research/fun projects as well. link

Astro Cantus – another Wheel of Stars

Monday, November 14th, 2011

Th new mobile app Astro Cantus plays the stars like a music-box, much like my own 2009 piece, Wheel of Stars. There are a few differences, however (I don’t doubt that it was conceived independently). Astro Cantus classifies the stars into 7 discrete pitch classes (based on spectral type), which gives the music a more […]

The Shared Experience of Absurdity

Friday, November 11th, 2011

Improv Everywhere‘s Charlie Todd gives a wonderful TED talk on two of my favorite subjects: wonder and delight.

8-bit Violin

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

For the past four years, Ranjit Bhatnagar has done something awesome every February: He builds an instrument a day for the entire month. One of my favorites is this 8-bit violin. On his site, you’ll find some great videos of the violin being played by experts. Ranjit has been doing this for a while, and […]

The World’s Ugliest Music?

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Fibonacci Flim Flam

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

I recently posted a tutorial on how to draw circles, spirals and fibonacci spirals (that pattern you see on sunflowers). I thought it would be only fair to post this critique of the notion of the “golden ratio”, in which mathematical curmudgeon Donald Simanek takes sacred geometers to task for overstating the importance and pervasiveness […]