@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

andrewt

@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz

I'm kind of a Marmite person, in that I'm essentially a byproduct of the brewing industry.

Manchester MathsJam regular and occasional tamed programmer for the Nerds. Bi/polyam

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andrewt, to random
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

"this is environmentally friendly, it says so on a blockchain"

A "genuine leather" tag photoshopped to say "100% vegan"

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

also, "wearaware" is such a confusing domain to print in all lower case. i gather it's "wear aware" which is a cute name, but it reads like "we are wear" and once your brain's latched onto that it's a little puzzle to unpick the real meaning. it's a small thing but also it would have been quite an easy thing to get right

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

I am (CURSED! CURSED! CURSED!) writing a batch file.

I want to prematurely exit the batch file with a success code.

This page https://ss64.com/nt/exit.html
claims the way you do this is to type "exit". Quote: "When used in a batch script, this option will exit only the script (or subroutine) but not CMD.EXE. If executed on the command-line it will close CMD.exe"

I execute my batch script on the command line like .\build.bat. It reaches the line "exit". My CMD.exe terminal closes.

What happened?

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@mcc @mike I guess based on @jernej__s's reply you could go for the most cursed option and write an extra, empty file called "exit_batch_file.bat" and run exit_batch_file.bat without "call" whenever you want to get out of your original batch file

andrewt, to random
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

in 200 years whenever anyone coughs they're going to politely say "it's not covid" even though nobody knows what it means

eniko, to random
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

everyone on the tl: 🤩 beautiful aurora!

me in cyprus: 😩 horrible sahara dust storm

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@eniko we need to paint the Sahara purple and green for you

whitequark, to random
@whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

please tell me the most obscure joke you know

(feel free to explain or not explain it, depending on what you find more amusing to think of me reading it)

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@whitequark I saw a headline saying the government were creating "a sinister DNA database" but I'm not worried because my DNA is dexter

andrewt, to random
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

🎶 I am a language model and I've been trained on the internet.
🎶 I've information half-remembered, unsourced and approximate.
🎶 I live inside your laptop, phone and apps and even wearables
🎶 With pushiness and arrogance that's verging on unbearable.
🎶 I mansplain as a service if you need me to "well actually"
🎶 And draw pictures of women with large breasts and polydactyly.
🎶 I'll regale the room with confident elucidati-on
🎶 And some of what I say won't even be hallucinati-on

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@alex @trochee i don't have a link off hand but it is I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General from Pirates of Penzance (or Tom Lehrer's Element Song, which borrows the tune).

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

It's me, performing the song on piano and vocals, with 200% more lyrics.

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@cairobraga I mean the tune is just the Major General song from Gilbert and Sullivan, although I loosely used Tom Lehrer's piano arrangement for the Element Song, which is available on his website

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@cairobraga the only proof from the replies is @texanarchy's, although ofc "mansplain as a service" is a phrase that's been knocking around the internet for a while and I've no idea who coined it

lily, to random
@lily@glaceon.social avatar

frequency can be used to measure things that really feel like they should use different units.

"how often should my OS check the state of the keyboard"

"middle C"

this is technically a coherent answer

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@astrid @lily ok but bloody web designers actually do this shit

they say shit like "our website is designed around a minor third interval" to mean that headers are 20% bigger than body text and just please shut the hell up, no, first of all that's a preposterous thing to do and second of all you haven't defined if you mean an just intonation minor third or an equal temprement minor third because if you've designed the whole thing around the fourth root of two then your devs are going to at best ignore it and at worst murder you

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@astrid @lily i don't know how many people actually do it but i do know the number is at least three

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@astrid @lily it is all extremely silly

https://uxplanet.org/generate-type-scales-with-ease-99777390bda1?gi=59b585bf1ef8

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@astrid @lily it really isn't. Not least because they'll never get to the ×2 interval because their minor third isn't ⁴√2, it's 1.2, so stacking four of them will give you ×2.0736. And one of their favourite intervals is ϕ — the whole point of musical intervals is to be (or approximate) neat, simple ratios and the whole point of ϕ is to be as far away from any of those as it can. It's arguably the most violent possible discord you can produce with two notes. It's not just a pointless analogy, it's actually fighting them.

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@astrid @lily also "minor seventh" is also the name of a chord so I assumed we were using the ratios of all the notes in that chord and it sounded very silly but no, they're doing a perfectly reasonable thing and just calling it something silly

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@astrid @lily the amount of people that think A4 paper is in the golden ratio is maddening. there is more than one interesting number! A4 is in √2, not ϕ! Although whatever you do don't tell the designers that or they'll be calling it "tritone paper" and insisting it's cursed

andrewt, to random
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

I really enjoy how much the community of the fediverse is all about a deep love for a few important pictures of software and a deep, deep animosity towards nearly everyone who created any of it

christianp, to random
@christianp@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Another entry in the annals of the Tyne and Wear Metro's difficulties with communicating statistics.
The current iteration of their stats poster has two statements about the number of trains arriving on time: "77% of trains arriving on time", and "on average, four out of five trains arrive on time".

I'd say 77% is more like three out of four than four out of five, wouldn't you? Is there any wiggle room with the phrase "on average"?

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@christianp there are definitely rules about what goes on these posters so it could be they're required to say it out of five?

TechConnectify, to random
@TechConnectify@mas.to avatar

I don't know who needs to hear this (that's a lie: ~80% of drivers) but when you're in a turn lane or an exit only lane, you should still signal to confirm to those around you that you are aware of the lane you're in and where it's about to go.

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@TechConnectify I tend to feel this about forced turns in city centres — you can see the sign saying you can't go straight on unless you're a bus or a cyclist, but there's no reason to assume everyone else knows about it. A cyclist coming down that road shouldn't have to infer that you're about to turn in front of them.

ColinTheMathmo, to random
@ColinTheMathmo@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@andrewt Hello ...

I have a friend (who is not imaginary) who has a thought about a variant for ...

He says (paraphrased): ...

"... could implement a hard mode, where each puzzle is based on a random reading direction. (Left-to-right, right-to-left) x (top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top). I’ve kind of got my eye in now for L2R,T2B. Plus vertical direction before horizontal.

"I was thinking about word searches and how they had complexity by reading in non-obvious-order."

I recognise that you've probably moved on and don't especially want to tinker, but if it's easy to implement, maybe it's a thing to try.

Thoughts?

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@ColinTheMathmo I suppose it'd be easy to implement — just generate the grid the normal way and then flip it around to the direction you want (eg, mirror it horizontally to get right-to-left-top-to-bottom). I think if the whole game were that way I wouldn't be terribly interested because it's really the same puzzle but presented in a deliberately obfuscatory way, but maybe allowing a mix might be interesting? It'd break the "well the top left letter must be the start of a word" logic, for one thing. I don't think I'm going to tinker with the main game because I think that's too well established now, but I've been thinking about open-sourcing it lately so people can remix it and this'd be a nice project for that

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@ColinTheMathmo oh yeah, within each word it has to stay consistent or it's no better than Strands

dale_price, to random
@dale_price@mastodon.online avatar

😳 Zuck’s alt text!

(Which person do you think counts as the “1 person”? Also, he’s claiming this is a PHOTO he took??)

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@dale_price hahaha, it is extremely funny that they have so many artists and product developers and the best use case they can think of for their "metaverse" headsets is "playing a 2D game on a virtual screen"

ramsey, (edited ) to mastodon
@ramsey@phpc.social avatar

Is there a way to do an “OR” search for hashtags on ? Or maybe one of the apps has implemented this? @MonaApp, do you support this?

I want to do a search like this:

OR OR

Then, I want to save or bookmark it, so I can check it regularly as a separate “feed.”

(Edit: I know about the advanced interface, but I’m on mobile, specifically iOS.)

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@ramsey @MonaApp the 'advanced' web interface does this if you pin a hashtag as a column and then use the toggle switch at the top

eniko, to gamedev
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

"eni, did you just put the monty hall problem in your video game"

why yes, yes i did 😊

wishlist/more info about kitsune tails at https://kitsunegames.com/kitsunetails

#GameDev #ScreenshotSaturday #PixelArt #FoxGirl #KitsuneTails

a forest scene. the cat merchant, a humanoid cat wearing a fez, proposes a game where the player picks one door from 3, two have a single coin behind them, while one has a power up the player picks the leftmost door. the merchant helpfully reveals that the middle door contained a coin, and tells the player they can switch if they please the player switches and finds the power up. a golden chest appears and when bonked releases the power up, the scene ends

andrewt,
@andrewt@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@eniko oh god, you're gonna get someone banned from twitch chat for arguing about this

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