Technology and gadgetry, reading classic literature through to current novels, sewing and fabric-craft. I have a range of interests, and I've split them up here for ease of reading.
Snow - 25/03/2018
Wild Arms - 10/11/2017
Eel Facts - 14/01/2017
Forgotten Things - 14/09/2015
Sewing - 23/08/2015
Snow
I don't see snow very often. Snowfall varies across the UK, but where I live there'll be snow a couple of times a year. Usually it won't settle on the ground. In late February of 2018 a large amount of snow hit most of the country, so I had a chance to walk around and appreciate it. One of the more interesting things about snow is the tracks that prople leave in it. If the snowfall was overnight, you can see in the morning that you're the first person to walk along a road, or that wild animals have been moving around in the early light.
This is information that is completely hidden to us normally. I found myself able to draw reasonable conclusions from effortlessly gathered data - the footprints left by people travelling in the snow. This is information which would normally take a degree of expense and planning to obtain, using something like a time-lapse camera or motion sensor (or maybe a good phone). Here are some examples of this snow data.
Example #1: From the image you can see that the pavement on one side of the road has been heavily used by pedestrians while the paverment on the other side is almost completely unused. The reason for this can be seen, as the pavement disappears in the top-left of the image. Without considering the broader layout of the road, it's reasonable to conclude that anyone on the far side of the road crossed over in anticipation of the pavement running out.
Example #2a: The parking area beside this building sees practically no use when contrasted with the number of people who use the pavement nearby. Some context which supports the data is that (1) the building is not in use and (2) the parking area cannot be used as a shortcut for those on foot. The space is more or less completely unused.
Example #2b: A second example of an unused area, but this time it is the central piece of pathway where a pavement meets a walking path. The pedestrians have had no need to go straight on and instead turn either left or right. The only track which travels through the centre of the triangle is a bicycle, as it moves from (or to) the road it cycled on.
Example #3a: This and the following image show people moving around obstacles. Here we have an empty sign with untouched patches of snow in front of and behind it. We see that with enough space (such as in this case) people move around obstacles in a way that's incredibly smooth and consistent. Luckily the sign is empty, so we know that none of the tracks are from people trying to read the sign. Some context consistent with the data is that the sign is on a bridge. This explains why people only moved towards or away from the camera, because the only destination to the left or right is the edges of the bridge.
Example #3b: An image from the same bridge. Here we see multiple bollards which have the same 'tailing off' shape of untouched snow around them as the sign. The shape is clearer for the sign likely due to the sign's greater width. Some additional conclusions would be possible if more examples were found and the length of the untouched shape was measured.
Before the conclusions I'd like to note that there are a number of limits to this data which a different method of data gathering would not have. Firstly, it is likely that each individual person will move differently when it has snowed. People might be more cautious to avoid slipping, or be more eager to get out of the cold. Second, everyone walking has access to the same data that we do. People may follow the tracks of those who came before them, either consciously or subconsciously, which would help to explain the very neat images we see in examples #3a and #3b. To sum up, extrapolating these results to a snow-free day might be less valid.
In conclusion, these images tell us that people don't move randomly. If people moved randomly we would have seen footprints on the empty pavement, the unused car park or the triangle of pathways. There was no reason for people to walk to these places and so none of them did. The shapes seen around the sign and bollards remind me of visualisations of a fluid moving past a stationary object, implying that with enough analysis it may be possible to model the movement of people in the same way as air is modelled for vehicle aerodynamics. I'm pleased to see that this has been picked up by actual researchers, with Roger L. Hughes's 'The Flow of Human Crowds' being but one example. Snow gives us all the ability to feel like scientists by providing accessible data for us to analyse, which is fun to me.
Here is a bonus picture which didn't fit in anywhere else. A person and an animal have both taken a shortcut across a car park.
Wild Arms
When I was young, probably under ten, I watched a friend play some of a Playstation game that had been borrowed from Blockbuster. That game was Wild Arms, a role-playing game released in the UK in around 1998. I have specific memories of the two of us being completely stuck, unsure how to progress.
At some point in secondary school my sister and I picked up a Playstation console from a car boot sale, and this led to me remembering Wild Arms and asking for the game as a present – something pricier than the second-hand console itself. I played for a few hours, completing the prologue of the game before setting it aside to go onto something else.
Here in 2017 I realised that I had an itch to go back to Wild Arms. Seven months ago I bought a signal converter to allow me to plug the Playstation's RCA (red-yellow-white) cable into HDMI, and I started the game from scratch. At the tail end of October and after about 30 hours of play time I watched the end credits roll on a game that had contained much more than I guessed at as a child. The play time averages out at about an hour a week. Sometimes I'd just play for half an hour, sessions which would see me complete a dungeon or find my way through the story to the next challenge.
I played Wild Arms out of the desire to complete something which had been left undone for much of my life. I listened to podcasts to distract myself during the tedious random battles and resorted to a walkthrough only when the puzzles got too hard to complete. Other than that I feel proud that I could play the game so honestly, picking up on hints the characters dropped to point the way forward. This is in stark contrast to how I played games when I was younger, reading ahead to the point of looking through walkthroughs to games I didn't own and have still never played.
I'm not recommending that anyone else actually take the time to play Wild Arms. It's something which people committed to role-playing games of this type would potentially enjoy, but that's not the argument I'm wanting to make here. Instead I'd like to take a few paragraphs to share some of the most interesting things about Wild Arms, because there are most definitely things which I enjoyed and which surprised me.
There were moments of emotion, interesting action setpieces and mechanical idiosyncracies which, if they were packaged into a much shorter game, would make me far more likely to recommend Wild Arms. The benefit of not pushing people to play Wild Arms is that I'm more than happy to talk about the specifics of the story without worrying about spoiling people.
First things first, the Wild Arms opening video is something I love and I think holds up. It carries the weight of setting a theme for the game, since (to my disappointment) nothing else in the game is animated in the same way. The accompanying music is also good and puts across the Wild West tone of the game nicely. I also understand that a lot of my positivity about the opening video is wrapped up in my nostalgia around Wild Arms - I have dim memories of it due to it being the first thing you see when playing the game. It's worth a look, especially since it's only about two minutes long.
By far the most affecting that Wild Arms got for me was the town of Saint Centour. When I visited Saint Centour I was given an introduction to the energy forcefield that kept the town safe. The town was bustling, its people not having to worry about the monsters that roamed the fields. A couple of things struck me as odd - a man was writing in a diary but refused to let me read it; treasure chests were kept in houses, blocked by people; a dog barked at me, refusing to let me open another chest.
My next priority was a large tower some distance away, so I made the trip and fought my way to the top only to be confronted by one of the demon villains that are the game's antagonists. I was triumphantly told that this had been a distraction and that while I was gone an attack had been carried out on Saint Centour. Rushing back, I found the music in the town to have changed. The force field was down, the town was empty but for a blind girl who had hidden in her house.
Earlier in the game the demons had attacked a different town. There was fire and chaos and people lying down dead in the streets. Monsters roamed around freely both times, but this time the people had been spirited away completely. I could read that diary now, there was no-one there to stop me. I stood in front of the treasure chests that I couldn't reach before and debated whether I should pillage this ghost town. I did, in the end. The chest that the dog had jealously guarded contained a bone, but the dog was gone. I took the bone and I appreciated that it didn't turn out to be a solution to a puzzle later on, it was just an effective small story.
The plot point around playable character Rudy being made of a similar 'living metal' to that of the demon villains was interesting, if only because it was a turn that I didn't expect the game to make. Rudy is one of the three player characters, who are all given more or less equal screen time and story. Nonetheless, Rudy is the central figure on the Wild Arms box art and in the opening video, and the fact that he's mute (a video game cliché) adds to the feeling that he's positioned as the main character. The twist in the story showed me that Wild Arms could still surprise me. I got to see the other characters re-evaluate Rudy and treat him differently, finally rallying behind him in a way that felt like honest character growth and interaction.
I am of the opinion that Wild Arms is an odd game. My main argument for this is one of the options in the pause menu, which lets you redraw any of the 16-by-16-pixel icons that are used on the menu or the battle screen. There is no need for this and I find it amazing. My closest comparion for it is the game Animal Crossing, which contextualises the customisation by having you draw a town flag or design clothing patterns to wear. Here in Wild Arms, hidden in a menu with no preamble, I am able to poorly draw a star and a wand which will serve as the icon for special attacks for the rest of the game.
In another outlet for creativity, Wild Arms also lets you name its spells. The main character Cecilia is able to learn spells in an interesting way - finding an item called a Crest Graph lets her learn any spell from a grid of sixteen. Once one is chosen, you're allowed to rename the spell from its default. I lept at the chance, enjoying the novelty and embracing the traditional role-playing game convention of dropping vowels in order to fit into the maximum letter count. My fire spell became 'CandlLight' and a spell of invisibility became 'Flicker'. I was excited to see later in the game that the renamed spells would be picked up by the enemies too – if they used a spell that I had renamed, they would show me the courtesy of using the name I had come up with.
After I had played Wild Arms for twelve hours I left the game on the start menu for a few minutes. I was surprised to see a long cutscene start to play. It told a small story which hadn't been touched upon yet in the game, but ended up providing additional background information on one of the main characters. I was confused that the game would hide something like this and was glad to have found it.
Ultimately I'm happy with the time I spent with Wild Arms. Many games made twenty years ago are harder to play when revisited now, but with that aside Wild Arms still has some parts which stand out and are worthy of a mention. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go and watch that opening video again.
Eel Facts
I've decided to make use of this platform to spread the word about eels. As someone who is very knowledgeable in the field (pool?) of eels, I hope that I can impart enough of this information to be useful to those in need of eel facts. I'll discuss each type of eel separately so that we can all appreciate the diversity in this under-appreciated group of animals.
Moray Eel
Where to begin with this relatively well known specimen? Moray eels live in deep water near sea or ocean beds. They are a great example of animals using their surroundings to benefit themselves, as moray eels usually live in rocky areas with plenty of places to hide. This gives the eels a great place to do two things: pop out to snack on smaller fish, and hide from larger fish which would prey on them. All in all a very solid type of eel. If someone said this was their favourite subspecies of eel I would think that was a strong choice.
I drew a picture of moray eels so that you can use visual learning techniques to commit the moray eel to memory. I'm not particularly good at drawing and I hope that doesn't get in the way of this piece.
More Eel
The more eel is often mistaken for the moray eel in casual discussion, but it couldn't be more different. The confusion stems from its name, as "more eel" is pronounced very similarly to "moray eel". The more eel employs a complicated social structure and so lives in more open underwater environments.
More eels have a very specific set of rules that they all adhere to, affecting every part of their lives from hunting to play. All eels appear to have these values ingrained at a young age. When one eel (accidently or purposefully) breaks one of these rules, the other eels behave in an angry and outraged manner. This usually leads to the offending eel being shunned or attacked by its group.
Due to their complex interactions this animal is also known as the "social more eel". I hope that by now it's apparent that this type of eel is not just a joke about there being "more types of eel" than the moray eel!
Moire Eel
Arguably the most beautiful of the eels in this article, the moire eel has a skin that shimmers and shines. It lives in shallow waters where sunlight is more plentiful, leading to the sparkles from its silky-smooth skin being visible from a great distance. This display isn't just vanity though, as the moire eel uses the light show to draw in its prey of smaller fishes.
Similar to many other animals, subtly different displays are also performed by the moire eel to attract a mate and contest for territory. Moire eels are solitary when not looking for a partner, since two moire eels in the same area inevitably lead to one-upmanship with each eel trying to look more impressive than the other.
Sadly the shallow water habitats of moire eels and their impressive looks have led to much hunting over the years, so there are not many of these animals in the wild. They're truly a sight to behold and I hope to spot one for myself one day. As a side note, the pronunciation of moire varies - it's usually either the sound of a kiss in a cartoon (mwah) with a long 'a' sound, or pronounced just like the word 'more' (as in "more types of eel", not like the more eel above).
Moiré Eel
From an eel esteemed for its beauty to an eel studied for its scientific merit, the moiré eel is definitely one worth a mention. Although its name is very similar to the moire eel, it's pronounced distinctly. Your friends will certainly know which eel you're talking about if you bring it up in a conversation. Moiré is two syllables, mwah (with a long 'a' sound) and ray. If you've got an understanding of French I believe moiré is pronounced as you'd expect. The moiré eel is one of the smaller eels on this list, but that doesn't make it any less of a match than the others.
Let's take a look at the moiré eel's main claim to fame. The skin of the moiré is composed of two main layers. The lower layer is chiefly grey while the upper layer is so thin as to be almost transparent. Both layers are patterned with many thin black lines. The result of this appearance is that the two layers of skin create an optical illusion. The layers combine to form other patterns, confusing predators and prey alike. Moiré eels often hunt in packs to heighten the illusion, and have been seen working together using their natural edge to hunt fish much larger than themselves.
More Eels?
I'm afraid not. We're all out of types of eel to discuss, as any other kind of eel I'm much less of an expert on and so can't write knowledgeably about. I hope this has been an entertaining and lighthearted look into a species that many just overlook as being mere aquatic snakes.
Forgotten Things
I think being interested in lost or forgotten things is pretty common. We can all pick something unknown up at a car boot/garage sale and wonder who owned it, what it did and how much it mattered long ago.
Well this is the internet, where all things are within reach and so much is dusty, old, untravelled and unloved. This is where I'm going to talk about the small pieces of the internet that matter or mattered to me, in an effort to show they're not entirely forgotten.
Calipers
In the period ramping up to the final exams in the final year of my degree, I decided that a concept I was revising was a good band name, and wondered if anyone on the internet had reached the same conclusion. Introducing: Density of States.
I first found Density of States (DoS) on Reverbnation, giving me some information, the logo seen here, and two songs. They were around at the beginning of 2009, based out of Albany. Four members, listing their genre as "Rock/Alternative". Their last listed gig was August 7th 2011. I've put the logo here so I can still appreciate it if it disappears from Reverbnation. It's a wonderful mishmash of scientific notation, which I would hate if I didn't love it so much. We'll come back to one of the songs I found in a bit.
Further mousing around gave me a Facebook page and a Soundcloud with yet more music. There are therefore a few DoS songs out there to listen to, but I've not listened much to the Soundcloud offerings (though I like Crash Careen).
I'm not just talking about this band because they have a name I like. I'd like to chat a bit about their song Calipers. The Reverbnation version of the song has better audio quality, and you can hopefully listen to it here. If it's not available anymore, email me. I'll send you a copy.
Calipers pushes my song buttons. It's well-paced, wordy and catchy. There are enough physics terms in there to make me smile, even if I don't exactly know why some are being used. Above it all, it was just a really nice surprise. It's a good song that just never got the chance to take off. It's a forgotten thing that I've found and am sharing with people who'll listen.
Additionally, I didn't actually manage to find the lyrics to Calipers anywhere on the internet. This is my attempt to transcribe them for posterity:
Life in jaded sights embedded in your eyes
We can try to find solitude in the lies
Quest is logical, bitterness, hit or miss
In this tangible realm of the figureless
Indicated in every passionate notion
Our calipers, calculators, calories and quotients
So mutable and unarranged
So incompressible, the distance changed
I'll wait for no-one, no-one in any particular place
I'll measure slower, slower at a more resignable pace
Zombie kaput(?) eyes, minaturised quantum dot
Mystified in its dimly lit parking lot
All your nuances steeped in spectroscopy
Allow access to human thermometry
Indicated in every threshold solution
And metal pulled apart
Is an accessorisible stream of pollution
Now a battle scar
So mutable and unarranged
So incompressible, the distance changed
I wait for no-one, no-one in any particular place
I measure slower, slower at a more resignable pace
I've lost my calipers
I think it's about trying to make sense of the world through scientific measurement, how difficult that is. But I'm not sure. If you've got a better idea of what the lyrics are or mean, say so and I'll mention and credit you. Having grown up with the internet any information about song lyrics has always been readily accessible. This feeling of hypothesising on song lyrics, wondering what they say and what they mean is fun and reminds me of when I was very young.
You made a wonderful thing, Density of States. I'm a fan.
Sewing
I've been messing with fabric since 2012. I've mainly been using patterns available on the internet, making things that are interesting to me. Making things out of fabric is great since I get to completely customise something. It's much easier to make something specific if you choose every part of it. My work with fabric is fun to talk about as I can also include pictures.
At the time (summer 2013) the largest project I'd completed was this flag. It's probably still the most striking thing I've made without using a pattern of any kind. The flag would be square but for the points at the bottom, 83cm by 93cm. It came out very well and has held up.
You can see the yarn that I used to hang it up on the wall like a tapestry in my final year of university. It was originally my contribution to a costume my friends and I wore to a convention, and I thought if I was to make a flag I may as well do it right.
This waistcoat was created in the summer of 2014 as I had need for, well, a pink waistcoat. I couldn't easily find one my size online and definitely not one in the style I wanted - namely, very pink and preferably with many hearts on. I dug up a waistcoat pattern that I'd had for a while and slowly but surely interpreted the confusing language of patterns.
This project held a few firsts for me. The first proper from-scratch piece of clothing (discounting hats), the first buttonholes, the first use of a shop-bought pattern. I'm overjoyed at how it turned out. The one scary part of the process was when I pressed the iron to a piece of the synthetic lining fabric and immediately melted it. Damage control consisted of cutting off the melted parts and sewing on a replacement 'patch'. Luckily this is on the inside. It's covered up quite well.
Despite finding myself with an item of clothing which is only really appropriate on Valentines Day, I've since worn it to a party and a wedding. They were fun experiences. It's something I can wear when I want to stand out, and I feel great doing it since it's tailor-made for my size.