@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

matthewconroy

@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz

I'm a mathematics teaching professor in Seattle. I taught discrete modeling for a bunch of years, but I'm back teaching calculus currently. I spend a lot of time making sound and visual art, often algorithmically.

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18+ garland, to random
@garland@social.seattle.wa.us avatar

Platelet donation day.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@garland Thank you!

WillardHerman, to random
@WillardHerman@mastodon.social avatar

I’ve been making music as a form of expression, since the very first of my albums.

After drawn by today, I realized that there isn’t enough music I really like listening to while I draw.

Maybe I should make my music, FOR ME to listen to while I draw?

It seems to me to be an odd idea.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@WillardHerman I think this is a great idea!

autumn, to cycling
@autumn@triangletoot.party avatar

new handlebar tape day! only took me five zillion rewraps to get the figure 8 right.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@autumn Nice work! I've recently rewrapped my bars, and I'm going to be redoing the left side for the third time soon! I'll get it right yet! Cheers!

zebulonmysterioso, to random
@zebulonmysterioso@mas.to avatar

Ah, no, not Steve Albini.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@zebulonmysterioso This sucks.

WillardHerman, to philosophy
@WillardHerman@mastodon.social avatar

The world Philipp Mainländer describes in “The Philosophy of Redemption” is the world I know.

I see myself as a adherent of Mainländer.

Mainländer described the world that I experienced for most of my life. There are several ideas and images of his which were part of my inner world. Before, I had no way of seeing them clearly.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@WillardHerman I've not heard of this work before. Sounds interesting.

paul_griffin, to random
@paul_griffin@mastodon.online avatar

Genuinely impressed at how many things have gone wrong in the last 4 weeks. I know no one needs to hear all this, but I just need to scream it into the void for a moment:

  • blown out tire
  • cat was injured by an unknown animal
  • stove died
  • house's main water line burst
  • house's a/c condenser unit died
  • sudden toothache that will require a root canal
  • leak in ceiling

And just when I thought I had my head around everything that needs attention, the washing machine died this evening 🫠

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@paul_griffin Wow, that's a terrible list! I hope things get better for you soon.

zebulonmysterioso, to random
@zebulonmysterioso@mas.to avatar

I was wondering who John Mulaney is and came across this dubious entry on his Wikipedia. I didn't realise Conan O'Brien's show was an open mic.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@zebulonmysterioso I just edited the page and removed that.

eeen, to photography
@eeen@mastodon.social avatar

monochrome flower, 1 of 6

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@eeen Beautiful.

GillesLeCorre2, to random French
@GillesLeCorre2@toot.aquilenet.fr avatar

Je vais me raser, Cat est déjà dans la salle de bain…

👋 🤗 👋 🤗 👋 🤗

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@GillesLeCorre2 Je ne savais pas qu'on pouvait raser nos chats !

bit101, to random
@bit101@mstdn.social avatar

https://bit-101.com/blog/posts/2024-04-30/i-broke-my-rotation-matrix/

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@bit101 That sounds hard! I hope things get better soon.

bit101, to random
@bit101@mstdn.social avatar

Building on my wireframe 3d library... 3d text. The nice thing is I can just pass it the string "hello" and get this object that I can render.

Yes, re-doing stuff I did 20 years ago. But I like to thing a little better this time. A little.

the word "hello" rendered in white 3d wireframe lines, rotating in space.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@bit101 Reminds me of Battlezone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_(1980_video_game)

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@bit101 I think Asteroids was the first game I played a lot at arcades. A great game!

voiceofunreason, to random
@voiceofunreason@xoxo.zone avatar

Shout out to fall-2023 @voiceofunreason for investing in waterproof shoes, good socks and an effective rain poncho so spring-2024 @voiceofunreason can continue to go on his lunch-time mental-health walks in very wet Portland weather without increasing his misery.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@voiceofunreason Sounds great. What kind of shoes did you get?

WillardHerman, to random
@WillardHerman@mastodon.social avatar

Skill in art is overrated.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@WillardHerman I'd be interested in hearing your particular reasoning behind this claim. Cheers!

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@WillardHerman I see. I thought your statement would be a good conversation starter, with both "art" and "skills" (and maybe "overrated", too) being rather difficult terms to define in satisfying ways. Cheers!

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@WillardHerman The question "What is art?" has been written about extensively for a very long time. This article has some interesting things, for example: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition/ Skill in this context I think is difficult to define as a result of the difficulty of defining art: we might say skill is the ability to do something "well": but it is not at all clear what "well" means in art, since, just as art itself is difficult to define, what constitutes "good art" is even harder.

I'm not sure what your original statement meant. I can see at least two interpretations: (1) acquiring skills is not as helpful in the creation of art as some suppose, so building up skill is "overrated" as a path toward being a good artist, and (2) people judge art too heavily from the point of view of whether or not they think that the artist had "skill": as though starting from the axiom that only skilled artists can make art. Is either of these interpretations close to what you had in mind? You wrote "skill gets the way of what is said"; is that because people judge the art by thinking about much skill the artist had rather than what the art "says" (so kind of like my (2))? Or is it that artists worry about looking skillful and that gets in the way of saying meaningful things?

Cheers!

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@WillardHerman Cy Twombly said something similar about "having an experience":In the only written statement Mr. Twombly ever made about his work, a short essay in an Italian art journal in 1957, he tried to make clear that his intentions were not subversive but elementally human. Each line he made, he said, was "the actual experience" of making the line, adding: "It does not illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realization." Years later, he described this more plainly. "It's more like I'm having an experience than making a picture," he said." https://www.askart.com/artist/Cy_Edwin_Parker_Jr_Twombly/30112/Cy_Edwin_Parker_Jr_Twombly.aspx I definitely feel something similar, on a good drawing day, at least in terms of what I value: I value the experience of having drawn, and seen, more than the thing I made on paper.

matthewconroy, to random
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

I saw an unusual thing today. When I walk to campus, there is a point where I take a short, secluded path. Usually I see nobody on this path, but today I saw three people (young people, quite likely students) standing on the grass beside the path. There is a light pole along the path, and they were clustered around it. When I first saw them, I saw a large dark lump on the ground at their feet, and I thought someone might be having a medical problem. As I got closer, I saw that this was just a pile of their backpacks, and they were facing the pole, bending forward a bit, in something like a praying fashion. When I reached them, I saw that there was a cellphone standing on the base of the light pole; the cellphone showed a man's face speaking. It was as though they were getting guidance or instruction from the man on the phone. I don't remember hearing any words; everything was rather quiet. It all seemed quite curious: why would they be doing this in this odd place?

lislegaard, to foss
@lislegaard@sonomu.club avatar

Is there a free software that is good for designing zines?

I know there is the scissers and Xerox method but I was more thinking to do a computer design and having it printed in a shop.

So something where I could add all the elements, sort them in the correct layout for printing and export pdf and correct colors and all that stuff.

I know there are zinemakers in on Fedi.

Any tips?

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@lislegaard I've used LaTeX for the two zines I've made and it's worked well. I used pdfbook2 to get the page ordering right. https://github.com/jenom/pdfbook2

paul_griffin, to random
@paul_griffin@mastodon.online avatar

I've arrived once again at that extremely stressful (for me, anyway) step of transferring layers onto lino accurately before the much more fun step of carving can begin.

I've tried so many different ways of doing this, and carbon paper has been by far the most consistent for me. I just wish it wasn't also the most menial and time consuming...

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@paul_griffin That is my least favorite part, too.

lo, to genart
@lo@framapiaf.org avatar

Animated truchet tiling

video/mp4

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@lo Really, really nice!

Stratski, to BelieveInFilm Dutch
@Stratski@mendeddrum.org avatar

Pic of the day: Polaroid Image 2 and Impossible PZ 600 Silver Shade film (expired and very overexposed).

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@Stratski Beautiful!

eeen, to photography
@eeen@mastodon.social avatar

Street photography

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@eeen Excellent!

rbmath, to random
@rbmath@mathstodon.xyz avatar

I had a student today joke? Threaten? Make a comment about stabbing someone in my family. Like... My first instinct is to dismiss this, but it bothers me... I forwarded it to admin, they kinda threw it back at me to make a decision on it. I didn't respond to that.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@rbmath Oh, that's unfortunate. What kind of decision do they want you to make? If a student did that to me, I would at least want some higher-up (a dean maybe? or some campus safety person?) to communicate with the student about how to interact properly with people, and definitely someone to assess the situation from a mental health point of view. Is anyone offering to do that for you? Depending on the phrasing and context, I might demand that the student be removed from my class. I have no tolerance these days for mean-spiritedness, but, then, I'm a nervous wreck.

matthewconroy,
@matthewconroy@mathstodon.xyz avatar

@rbmath That sounds hard.

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