https://somethingorotherwhatever.com Christian Lawson-Perfect's homepage en-gb Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:01:25 +0000 Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:01:25 +0000 christian+somethingorotherwhatever@lawson-perfect.uk (Christian Lawson-Perfect) toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/easter-bunny-surveillance A pretend 'app' I made to give the kids clues for their Easter egg hunt. Each sample is a short sound recording of something in the house. Sat, 04 Apr 2026 17:53:07 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/easter-bunny-surveillance useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/lawsolar-panelfect A chart showing the status of our FoxESS solar panel and battery system. Needs an API token and device ID to work. Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:47:40 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/lawsolar-panelfect work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/dig-display-screen A display screen for a Disability Interest Group conference stand. Tue, 24 Mar 2026 10:05:28 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/dig-display-screen useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/word-domino-maker A tool to make sets of dominoes with words on. My mum asked me to make a set of dominoes with words in French and English, which prompted a lot of maths thinking about whether you could make it work the same way as a standard set of dominoes. Mon, 23 Feb 2026 10:49:12 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/word-domino-maker experiment https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/prime-power-factor-graph An attempt to draw the graph of natural numbers, where each number is linked to the result of dividing by its greatest prime power factor. Sat, 07 Feb 2026 14:11:01 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/prime-power-factor-graph games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/number-builder How quickly can you get to the target number by building up from 1, using only arithmetic operations? Fri, 06 Feb 2026 07:51:57 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/number-builder work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/marking-sets How should we mark (multi-)sets of objects given by the student? Fri, 16 Jan 2026 10:16:15 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/marking-sets useless tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/random-emoji A page which shows a randomly picked emoji. Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:23:23 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/random-emoji games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/2026-memory A big matching pairs game with 2026 cards. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 08:43:19 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/2026-memory clocks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/christmas-clock A clock for Christmas Wed, 17 Dec 2025 09:08:12 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/christmas-clock experiment https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/proportional-text Each character's size is proportional to its ASCII code. Fri, 12 Dec 2025 14:55:54 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/proportional-text clocks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/railway-clock A pure CSS copy of the new Network Rail clock design. Wed, 10 Dec 2025 08:20:09 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/railway-clock toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/triangulate Try your best to cover a unit circle with triangles and it'll show you how close you got to π. Thu, 04 Dec 2025 14:09:39 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/triangulate websites https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/beachspectres-com Information about the Beach Spectres project. Sun, 23 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/beachspectres-com useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathsjam-5-minute-timer A 5 minute timer for talks at Big MathsJam. Wed, 19 Nov 2025 17:47:47 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathsjam-5-minute-timer toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/fuzzy-graph-shader A shader which shows points 'close' to a function. Made as a proof of concept to show that a shader can be much faster than plain JavaScript. Fri, 14 Nov 2025 08:14:15 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/fuzzy-graph-shader useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/colour-shuffle Rotates the hues in the webcam image to help me see differences between colours. Thu, 06 Nov 2025 07:35:28 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/colour-shuffle useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/beach-spectre-practise A tool to practise laying out the spectre tiling on a beach. Mon, 13 Oct 2025 09:57:41 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/beach-spectre-practise toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/payton-asch-s-herschel-enneahedron-construction Shows how to construct the Herschel enneahedron by truncating the middle of a triangular bipyramid. Thu, 02 Oct 2025 06:36:41 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/payton-asch-s-herschel-enneahedron-construction work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/accessible-conferences-and-events Guidance and case studies on running academic events that are accessible and inclusive. Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/accessible-conferences-and-events toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/pixel-counting-fixed-point-finder Tools to find images which describe how many black pixels they contain. Made for Matt Parker to accompany a video. Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/pixel-counting-fixed-point-finder work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/talks-about-numbas Talks and presentations about Numbas Tue, 22 Jul 2025 14:19:42 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/talks-about-numbas toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/webcam-julia-fractal Apply the Julia transform to the image from your webcam. It's horrible! Sun, 29 Jun 2025 18:47:55 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/webcam-julia-fractal toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/julia-sets-to-mandelbrot Shows how the Mandelbrot set relates to the Julia set. Made for Matt Parker. Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/julia-sets-to-mandelbrot toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/julia-and-mandelbrot-side-by-side Shows the Mandelbrot and Julia sets side-by-side, so you can see how they relate to each other. Wed, 18 Jun 2025 08:30:01 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/julia-and-mandelbrot-side-by-side toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/irrational-collatz-function A quick investigation of how the Collatz function works if you extend it to irrational numbers, rounding down to an integer before applying the test. Fri, 06 Jun 2025 10:51:40 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/irrational-collatz-function talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numberphile-the-9-sided-enneahedron I told Brady Haran about the Herschel enneahedron. Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numberphile-the-9-sided-enneahedron toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/integer-credits-sequence What if the factorisation of an integer was presented like the credits at the end of a movie? Sun, 01 Jun 2025 15:04:44 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/integer-credits-sequence puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/knop-s-game Thu, 22 May 2025 07:24:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/knop-s-game toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/magic-knight-s-tour-tool An interactive tool for making a magic knight's tour of a chessboard. Thu, 15 May 2025 11:57:31 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/magic-knight-s-tour-tool useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/aperiodic-monotile-reference A thing to help me lay out the Spectre aperiodic monotile tiling. Wed, 07 May 2025 15:53:35 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/aperiodic-monotile-reference useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numeral-conversion A page that renders your chosen number in as many numeral systems as it can. Fri, 11 Apr 2025 06:45:40 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numeral-conversion useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/3d-herschel-enneahedron An interactive 3D rendering of the Herschel enneahedron Sun, 06 Apr 2025 08:11:56 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/3d-herschel-enneahedron useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/colour-vision-deficiency-simulator A tool which shows roughly how a given image will look with different kinds of colour vision deficiency. Fri, 04 Apr 2025 07:10:14 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/colour-vision-deficiency-simulator work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/improving-accessibility-of-teaching-and-assessment-material-in-maths-stats-and-physics A poster presented at Newcastle University's learning and teaching conference. Fri, 21 Mar 2025 09:45:01 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/improving-accessibility-of-teaching-and-assessment-material-in-maths-stats-and-physics clocks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hilbert-clock A clock where the 'hands' follow the Hilbert curve Sun, 16 Mar 2025 09:14:49 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hilbert-clock toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/roman-coin-converter A tiny tool to convert between denominations of Roman coins. Thu, 13 Mar 2025 12:56:57 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/roman-coin-converter work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/accessible-teaching-for-maths-stats-and-physics Guidance on accessible teaching maths, stats and physics Wed, 19 Feb 2025 14:36:13 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/accessible-teaching-for-maths-stats-and-physics toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/thomson-problem Made for Matt Parker. A visualisation of the Thomson problem - distributing points on a sphere to minimise the repulsion energy. Tue, 18 Feb 2025 13:08:49 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/thomson-problem games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/sorting-game A few variations on sorting things in space. I made this for Helen but she didn't like it. Mon, 17 Feb 2025 09:46:41 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/sorting-game work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/accessibility-demo-day Material made to support an event I ran at Newcastle University. Thu, 13 Feb 2025 10:58:41 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/accessibility-demo-day useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/fontsource-font-picker A page to browse through all the fonts available on fontsource.com, and to fiddle with the variable axes. Tue, 11 Feb 2025 10:45:51 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/fontsource-font-picker useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/clp-s-map A map just for me. I realised that there were things I wanted to remember about certain places, but generic map apps show too much other information. I can make markers for new places and add relevant links or text. Mon, 03 Feb 2025 13:43:56 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/clp-s-map unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/css-quest I thought it might be fun to make a text adventure game where you navigate by writing CSS selectors. If you write a selector that matches exactly one element, it's shown. Fri, 31 Jan 2025 19:21:57 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/css-quest useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/qr-code-generator Thu, 30 Jan 2025 13:04:06 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/qr-code-generator art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hilbert-dots Animation of dots moving along a Hilbert curve. Wed, 29 Jan 2025 06:16:33 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hilbert-dots unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/train-track-game The idea was to make a puzzle out of directing tokens along a train track diagram. I got as far as trying it with arithmetic operations and didn't really like it. Something with generic symbols and some restriction on the order they go through vertices might work better, but would be work. Sun, 19 Jan 2025 11:12:54 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/train-track-game useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/monthly-mathsjam-dates A table showing when the monthly MathsJams are, for each month of the year. Sun, 12 Jan 2025 08:45:04 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/monthly-mathsjam-dates toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tiling-the-plane-with-one-of-each-n-gon An animation showing how you can cover the plane using only one of each n-gon. Tue, 07 Jan 2025 09:37:07 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tiling-the-plane-with-one-of-each-n-gon useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/emoji-search A quick page to find emoji matching a search word. Sat, 04 Jan 2025 08:54:56 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/emoji-search unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/draggy-road-game I thought it'd be nice to make a game out of connecting different places with roads and building things. I couldn't decide how much resource management was fun. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 10:20:03 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/draggy-road-game toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wobble-block Wed, 18 Dec 2024 16:40:03 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wobble-block art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/aperiodic-monotile-hoodie-designer A tool to design a an all-over printed hoodie using the Spectre aperiodic monotile. Mon, 02 Dec 2024 10:53:58 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/aperiodic-monotile-hoodie-designer art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hex-grid-wallpaper A pattern to print out on a big vinyl sticker, to use as a whiteboard in my office. Fri, 22 Nov 2024 09:56:26 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hex-grid-wallpaper art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wobble-on-a-hex-grid Recreating a design I saw made by someone else, but on a hex grid. Fri, 18 Oct 2024 12:35:08 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wobble-on-a-hex-grid toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mandelbrot-fractal A Mandelbrot fractal visualiser written using WebGL. Thu, 10 Oct 2024 08:01:18 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mandelbrot-fractal art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/dynamic-system-dot-plot Fri, 04 Oct 2024 12:02:43 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/dynamic-system-dot-plot puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/explain-this-grid-sequence Made to accompany a video about an integer sequence I came up with. Wed, 11 Sep 2024 16:05:19 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/explain-this-grid-sequence useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/automatic-colour-palette-maker A tool I made to help think about how to make a customisable, accessible colour palette. Fri, 30 Aug 2024 14:59:09 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/automatic-colour-palette-maker useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/which-colours-are-similar A tool which plots a list of colours on polar coordinates, to help spot similar colours. Thu, 08 Aug 2024 14:44:06 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/which-colours-are-similar toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/entropy-animation An animation of text diffusing. Thu, 25 Jul 2024 14:31:07 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/entropy-animation toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unicode-scroll Another iteration in my ongoing exploration of the Unicode character set. Wed, 17 Jul 2024 12:56:59 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unicode-scroll boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/big-internet-math-off-vote-plot A tool to plot the votes for each Big Internet Math-Off match, over time Mon, 01 Jul 2024 10:40:11 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/big-internet-math-off-vote-plot boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/add-a-tex-command-to-mathjax-v3 Shows how to add a TeX comand to MathJax 3, which parses its (non-TeX) input and returns TeX code to go be substituted for the macro. Mon, 17 Jun 2024 12:06:20 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/add-a-tex-command-to-mathjax-v3 work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/can-elm-make-arbitrary-html-in-a-custom-element I worked out how to put arbitrary HTML inside an Elm app, using a custom element Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:02:58 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/can-elm-make-arbitrary-html-in-a-custom-element work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-poster A poster about Numbas. Wed, 22 May 2024 14:11:08 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-poster games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/order-those-numbers You'll be shown five numbers, between 100 and 999. Try to guess what order the numbers will go in, from smallest to biggest. Thu, 16 May 2024 19:07:10 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/order-those-numbers useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/eukleides-editor An editor for Eukleides diagrams. Sat, 04 May 2024 09:06:56 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/eukleides-editor work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/embedded-numbas-question Shows how to embed a Numbas question in a page using an iframe tag Tue, 30 Apr 2024 08:59:03 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/embedded-numbas-question useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/jme-calculator A calculator that uses JME expressions. Fri, 19 Apr 2024 13:03:55 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/jme-calculator toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/svg-animation A simple spinner using the SVG animate tag Fri, 22 Mar 2024 11:41:27 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/svg-animation art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/nudging-along-implicit-curves Inspired by work of Elliot Vez on nudging a point along an implicitly-defined curve. Fri, 22 Mar 2024 08:05:48 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/nudging-along-implicit-curves clocks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/binary-clock A clock with a hand for each power of two seconds. Tue, 05 Mar 2024 09:44:37 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/binary-clock games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/binary-letter-search Letters are positioned on a binary tree. How quickly can you visit every letter? Tue, 05 Mar 2024 09:44:37 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/binary-letter-search unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/dig-a-hole-game I wanted to make a game where you have to think a bit, but not too much. Tue, 05 Mar 2024 09:44:37 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/dig-a-hole-game toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/make-numbers-more-exciting A button that takes a number and makes it more complicated by expanding it to a mathematical operation. Tue, 05 Mar 2024 09:44:37 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/make-numbers-more-exciting useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/metro-info A page to show the next train times for the Tyne and Wear Metro. I made this because the official app is rubbish. Tue, 05 Mar 2024 09:44:37 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/metro-info unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-theme-written-in-elm I'm working on writing display code for Numbas in Elm. This page shows a demo exam. Tue, 05 Mar 2024 09:44:37 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-theme-written-in-elm puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/reverse-the-list-of-integers A puzzle invented by Alexandre Muñiz where you have to reverse a list of integers with a constrained set of moves. Tue, 05 Mar 2024 09:44:37 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/reverse-the-list-of-integers clocks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unix-epoch-clock A clock which shows the unix epoch - the number of seconds since new year, 1970. There is a hand for each power of 10 seconds. Tue, 05 Mar 2024 09:44:37 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unix-epoch-clock useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/think-server A server for my code experiments, like glitch.com but under my own control. Mon, 04 Mar 2024 15:05:19 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/think-server games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hyperjumps-knockoff An implementation of Quanta Magazine's Hyperjumps game. There was some discussion on the Talking Maths in Public group about how difficult to understand Quanta's presentation is. Sun, 18 Feb 2024 16:56:24 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hyperjumps-knockoff toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/how-should-i-colour-the-days I'd like to colour the days of the year by changing the hue parameter of an oklch colour with the day of the year. How do I have to shift the number so that summer is reddish and winter is blueish? Wed, 14 Feb 2024 14:15:14 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/how-should-i-colour-the-days toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tiny-elvis A JavaScript port of the Tiny Elvis application, created in 1994 for Windows 3.1 by Matthew T. Smith Mon, 15 Jan 2024 13:08:15 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tiny-elvis useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/colourblind-palette-maker A tool to help me, with limited colour vision, make accessible colour palettes. Fri, 12 Jan 2024 14:39:30 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/colourblind-palette-maker useless tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/randomised-permutation-chart-curves Experimenting with how the curves joining points in a permutation chart are chosen. Wed, 10 Jan 2024 13:06:30 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/randomised-permutation-chart-curves puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/double-back A puzzle where you have to reverse the order of two lines of numbered baubles. Invented by Ed Kirkby. Tue, 12 Dec 2023 16:01:52 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/double-back art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wordy-christmas-cards A tool to make art consisting of text drawn over an image, avoiding a mask drawn by hand. Heavily inspired by Litographs, made for Christmas cards in 2023. Mon, 11 Dec 2023 15:02:35 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wordy-christmas-cards toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/clip-my-face The beginnings of an idea about quickly cutting out sprites from a drawing. I used a photo of myself as a toddler as the test image. Sat, 25 Nov 2023 13:35:59 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/clip-my-face toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/morse-key A Morse code key made for Ayliean MacDonald. Mon, 19 Jun 2023 12:46:26 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/morse-key useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/geogebra-custom-element A web component to embed a GeoGebra applet Mon, 08 May 2023 10:33:33 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/geogebra-custom-element useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/qr-code-generator-glitch A really simple tool which generates a QR code containing the given text. Wed, 03 May 2023 11:38:07 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/qr-code-generator-glitch toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/keyboard-bashing For my toddler to bang away at the keyboard Mon, 10 Apr 2023 04:53:16 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/keyboard-bashing useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unicode-math-normalization Data for normalizing mathematical expressions written in Unicode Wed, 29 Mar 2023 14:46:40 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unicode-math-normalization useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/aperiodic-monotile-images Smith, Myers, Kaplan and Goodman-Strauss's aperiodic monotile, in a variety of formats Tue, 21 Mar 2023 09:43:34 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/aperiodic-monotile-images useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/django-activitypub-bot A Django project for serving ActivityPub actors, designed for bot accounts Fri, 17 Mar 2023 11:37:27 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/django-activitypub-bot work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-spreadsheets-extension An extension for Numbas providing editable table or spreadsheet widgets Tue, 24 Jan 2023 08:05:22 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-spreadsheets-extension useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/twitter-archive-generator A Python script to convert the Twitter archive to something that can be published Fri, 06 Jan 2023 10:59:33 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/twitter-archive-generator toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/birthday-magic-square An interactive page to make a magic square for your birthday. Made on request for James Grime Mon, 02 Jan 2023 09:55:23 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/birthday-magic-square talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/five-talks-about-trains My talk at Big MathsJam 2022: five talks about trains Mon, 14 Nov 2022 19:20:08 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/five-talks-about-trains toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/random-trees-in-circles Generates a random tree by joining up points arranged around a circle Wed, 09 Nov 2022 08:35:49 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/random-trees-in-circles useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/can-i-also-use A tool to work out which browsers support a combination of features Tue, 01 Nov 2022 06:22:31 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/can-i-also-use toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/listen-to-a-sequence Plays an OEIS sequence as a tune Thu, 27 Oct 2022 08:49:44 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/listen-to-a-sequence work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-lockdown-app-for-ios A version of the Numbas lockdown app made for iOS Wed, 12 Oct 2022 13:25:43 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-lockdown-app-for-ios work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/written-number-extension-for-numbas A Numbas extension providing a function to write out a number in words Wed, 21 Sep 2022 07:34:28 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/written-number-extension-for-numbas useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/watchmake A tool which runs make when a file in the current directory is changed. Sun, 18 Sep 2022 15:15:57 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/watchmake games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathematical-guess-who A multiplayer mathematical Guess Who? game. Made for the 24 hour maths game show. Tue, 13 Sep 2022 07:57:48 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathematical-guess-who work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-lockdown-app A locked-down browser for running Numbas exams in a controlled environment Thu, 01 Sep 2022 12:01:33 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-lockdown-app talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-unintentionally-useful-consequences-of-playing-games-with-maths A talk about Hamiltonian graphs, leading to the Herschel graph. Tue, 23 Aug 2022 09:31:24 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-unintentionally-useful-consequences-of-playing-games-with-maths clocks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/css-binary-clock A binary clock entirely made in CSS Thu, 14 Jul 2022 07:55:07 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/css-binary-clock games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/maths-blockbuster The game board for Maths Blockbuster, part of the 24 Hour Maths Game Show Sat, 09 Jul 2022 15:12:28 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/maths-blockbuster useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/formula-calculator-template A template to quickly whip up a page to calculate a formula Wed, 06 Jul 2022 06:12:57 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/formula-calculator-template toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/shunting-yard-algorithm-animation An animation of the shunting yard algorithm, with a little train Sun, 05 Jun 2022 09:06:55 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/shunting-yard-algorithm-animation toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/didn-t-graduate-texts-in-mathematics-meme-generator A generator for memes, based on the Graduate Texts in Mathematics series Mon, 30 May 2022 09:14:49 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/didn-t-graduate-texts-in-mathematics-meme-generator games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/oeisle A Wordle clone where you have to guess a sequence from the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences Sun, 22 May 2022 18:33:51 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/oeisle games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tractor-befunge A happy image occurred to me of the Befunge instruction pointer as a tractor, driving around a field. Mon, 09 May 2022 07:10:44 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tractor-befunge games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/prime-run A game about adding and subtracting prime numbers. You start at a random number, with a random target. Try to reach the target, by adding or removing any prime factor of your current number. Sat, 19 Mar 2022 12:42:47 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/prime-run toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-tale-of-log-2-cities Reduce a book to log(2) of its original length by alternately adding and removing 1/N of the words. Thu, 17 Mar 2022 07:55:43 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-tale-of-log-2-cities boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wordpress-interactive-element-plugin A WordPress plugin which provides a block to embed an interactive element. I made this to make it easier to include interactive thingies in posts on The Aperiodical. Sat, 05 Mar 2022 13:43:37 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wordpress-interactive-element-plugin useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/creal-js Constructive real numbers, in JavaScript. Based on Hans-J. Boehm's Java implementation Sat, 26 Feb 2022 13:57:07 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/creal-js art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/rectangle-pals Rectangle pals are randomly added or taken away, but after each step, all the rectangles have the same area. Thu, 24 Feb 2022 11:53:05 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/rectangle-pals games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/nulac This is a pen-and-paper game I invented in secondary school. Twenty years later, I've made a digital version of it! Fri, 18 Feb 2022 20:01:35 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/nulac work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/programming-extension-for-numbas An extension for Numbas which provides a code editor and the ability to evaluate code written in Python and R. Thu, 03 Feb 2022 14:45:29 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/programming-extension-for-numbas games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/find-dracula Find all the Draculas in a castle. Wed, 02 Feb 2022 10:06:15 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/find-dracula games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/jiggraph A puzzle game about shaking hands Sat, 22 Jan 2022 15:54:26 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/jiggraph work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/canvas-lms-folder-sync A command-line tool to synchronise a local folder with one in a Canvas LMS course Thu, 13 Jan 2022 12:49:10 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/canvas-lms-folder-sync games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/this-island-is-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us A game about dividing up an island Mon, 10 Jan 2022 10:46:00 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/this-island-is-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/floating-point-calculator An experiment in making a calculator out of pieces that float around. Wed, 08 Dec 2021 16:21:56 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/floating-point-calculator work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/chirun-lti-in-docker A Docker container for running the Chirun LTI server. Mon, 22 Nov 2021 10:46:10 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/chirun-lti-in-docker work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/chirun-lti-server A web interface to process and serve documents with Chirun. Mon, 22 Nov 2021 10:21:35 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/chirun-lti-server talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/each-edge-peach-pear-plum I've made another baby, so it's time for another talk about baby maths. Each Peach Pear Plum is a classic picture book for babies, with a beautifully simple rhyming scheme. But I've always wished it was more complete. Join me for an Eulerian tour through fantasy land! Sat, 20 Nov 2021 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/each-edge-peach-pear-plum work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/graph-theory-extension-for-numbas An extension for Numbas which adds tools for generating and drawing random graphs. Thu, 04 Nov 2021 14:32:15 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/graph-theory-extension-for-numbas useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/what-colour-is-that Point your camera at something, nad this tells you what colour it is. Sat, 30 Oct 2021 07:56:22 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/what-colour-is-that work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/line-by-line-derivation A thing for writing out line-by-line mathematical derivations more conveniently than just TeX allows Thu, 21 Oct 2021 12:34:55 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/line-by-line-derivation work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/behind-the-design-of-numbas A collection of articles about the motivation and research behind the design of the Numbas system Wed, 25 Aug 2021 12:18:52 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/behind-the-design-of-numbas work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/qti-to-numbas A tool to convert a bank of QTI items to Numbas Tue, 17 Aug 2021 14:00:12 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/qti-to-numbas writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-lullaby-sequence My son was born last September. While he doesn’t hate sleep as much as his sister did, he still needs a bit of help to drop off. I’m not at all musically inclined, and I seem unable to … Wed, 14 Jul 2021 08:48:17 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-lullaby-sequence websites https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/whystartat-xyz A collaborative site collecting ambiguities, inconsistencies and other unpleasantness in the conventions of mathematical notation. Mon, 05 Jul 2021 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/whystartat-xyz games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-unicode-guessing-game A game where you're shown a Unicode character and have to work out its name Thu, 24 Jun 2021 12:05:01 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-unicode-guessing-game useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wordsearch-generator-mk-2 A wordsearch generator, written in Elm Tue, 15 Jun 2021 08:52:14 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wordsearch-generator-mk-2 boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/elm-on-glitch A starter Glitch.com project for things written in Elm. Fri, 14 May 2021 14:27:51 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/elm-on-glitch toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/pentagonal-spirals Can you make a rule for laying out a pentagonal spiral, so it goes on forever? Thu, 13 May 2021 07:01:29 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/pentagonal-spirals code detritus https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/your-laptop-knows-more-than-euler A Jupyter notebook to accompany a post on The Aperiodical by Connor Krill. It shows that computers can find Mersenne primes much faster than Édouard Lucas (Connor got the wrong mathematician originally). Wed, 12 May 2021 19:17:05 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/your-laptop-knows-more-than-euler writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/my-robot-draws-tex For my birthday I got an EleksDraw pen plotter. It’s a cheap and cheerful example of the form: a pair of orthogonal metal rods with a pen on the end, attached to electric motors. The idea is … Thu, 08 Apr 2021 13:32:44 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/my-robot-draws-tex useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/postcard-maker A web page to create a postcard, for my pen plotter to draw. The text can include mathematical notation, rendered using MathJax. Thu, 08 Apr 2021 12:49:30 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/postcard-maker useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/which-one-doesn-t-belong-maker A tool to make 'Which One Doesn't Belong?' grids - a 2×2 square of images. Thu, 01 Apr 2021 06:54:51 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/which-one-doesn-t-belong-maker work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/extract-data-from-a-numbas-exam A page made to show how to embed a Numbas exam and extract the attempt data from it. Wed, 31 Mar 2021 09:17:34 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/extract-data-from-a-numbas-exam useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/plotter-tools This is a web-based controller for my pen plotter, an EleksDraw. Mon, 15 Feb 2021 08:13:46 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/plotter-tools boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathsklatch-2020-camera-operator Some bits to help record talks delivered in gather.town. Sat, 14 Nov 2020 12:08:21 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathsklatch-2020-camera-operator work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/download-text-file-extension-for-numbas This Numbas extension adds functions to create links for students to download randomly-generated files. Thu, 29 Oct 2020 10:00:27 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/download-text-file-extension-for-numbas toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/gaussian-origami Inspired by a question on math-fun. Thu, 22 Oct 2020 10:43:19 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/gaussian-origami unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/lean-blockly I had a thought about using Blockly to construct proofs, which would be translated to Lean code for evaluation. Fri, 09 Oct 2020 13:42:23 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/lean-blockly boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/fix-the-maths-on-wordpress-com A bookmarklet to replace all the maths rendered as images on wordpress.com blogs with a better rendering using MathJax. Thu, 01 Oct 2020 10:05:11 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/fix-the-maths-on-wordpress-com writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-enormous-difficulty-of-telling-the-truth-about-escalators-with-statistics Earlier this year, when getting the train to work was still a thing for me, I noticed this statistic: 95% of the time escalators were working in the last four weeks. Wed, 02 Sep 2020 13:25:35 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-enormous-difficulty-of-telling-the-truth-about-escalators-with-statistics clocks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unix-permutation-clock A clock which shows a different permutation of a deck of cards each second, for the next 10^60 years Fri, 28 Aug 2020 15:22:37 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unix-permutation-clock clocks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-permutation-clock A different permutation of the cards every second. Wed, 26 Aug 2020 13:19:16 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-permutation-clock boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/transcriptpage A tool to create a page showing a video next to its transcript Mon, 03 Aug 2020 11:08:12 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/transcriptpage talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/inclusive-e-assessment A talk given at [EAMS 2020](https://eams.ncl.ac.uk/sessions/2020). Presented both as a video and a series of slides with accompanying transcript. Thu, 25 Jun 2020 10:50:09 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/inclusive-e-assessment games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/absolutely-huge-memory A memory game that is bigger than you'll ever be able to deal with Sun, 26 Apr 2020 08:59:47 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/absolutely-huge-memory clocks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wobbly-clock A wobbly clock Thu, 16 Apr 2020 07:13:10 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wobbly-clock work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/moodle-scorm-report-for-numbas This Moodle plugin provides a special report for Moodle's SCORM player, for use with Numbas exams. Fri, 03 Apr 2020 13:01:32 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/moodle-scorm-report-for-numbas toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/make-it-rain-bloomberg If you wanted to give the same amount to everyone in a place, how much would each person get? Fri, 06 Mar 2020 19:31:56 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/make-it-rain-bloomberg work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/chirun-in-docker A Docker container for running Chirun. Fri, 06 Mar 2020 14:11:39 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/chirun-in-docker work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/chirun A tool to produce accessible lecture notes from LaTeX or Markdown source. I took over development from George Stagg. Thu, 05 Mar 2020 14:41:09 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/chirun art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/animations Some looping animations that I made. Tue, 03 Mar 2020 18:57:04 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/animations toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/samdob-the-order-of-operations A tool to play around with the order of operations Thu, 20 Feb 2020 13:21:37 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/samdob-the-order-of-operations puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-paper-version-of-the-seven-triples-puzzle Last year I wrote about a 3D-printed puzzle I’d designed, called Seven Triples. At work we want to use this puzzle during an A-Level enrichment day, which means we need about twenty copies of… Thu, 20 Feb 2020 11:25:04 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-paper-version-of-the-seven-triples-puzzle art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/triangular-squares A nice looping animation showing a triangular lattice morphing to a square grid Wed, 12 Feb 2020 12:24:14 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/triangular-squares art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/triangular-square-1 A nice looping animation showing a triangular lattice morphing to a square grid Tue, 11 Feb 2020 15:26:15 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/triangular-square-1 games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/draggy-box Game/puzzle to do with shuffling boxes Fri, 24 Jan 2020 09:39:11 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/draggy-box toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-conant-gasket Draws the Conant gasket, a fractal which ought to be better known. Wed, 15 Jan 2020 09:06:12 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-conant-gasket work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-parts-graph I was trying to make something to visualise the flow of parts in a Numbas explore mode question. Thu, 19 Dec 2019 09:37:54 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-parts-graph work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tikzjax-demo Jim Fowler's TikZJax is incredible, but it needed an easy way of trying it out. So I made one. Tue, 10 Dec 2019 09:15:05 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tikzjax-demo toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/automatic-namesby Uses some word lists to come up with random fake place names and show them in street signs. Prompted by the thought that glitch's automatic project URLs would be cuter if they were place names. Mon, 18 Nov 2019 15:01:23 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/automatic-namesby real things https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/my-adventures-in-3d-printing-seven-triples-puzzle At work we’ve got a 3D printer. In this series of posts I’ll share some of the designs I’ve made. There are seven kinds of shape. There are three copies of each shape. The pieces … Thu, 07 Nov 2019 11:36:59 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/my-adventures-in-3d-printing-seven-triples-puzzle talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/baked-sudoku You can impose on Sudoku puzzles a physical system which works surprisingly well. It has phase transitions, and when you reduce the heat it settles into a solved state! Tue, 05 Nov 2019 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/baked-sudoku art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/flock-paths An arty thing inspired by the Herschel enneahedron. Mon, 04 Nov 2019 11:23:42 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/flock-paths art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-homologist-s-nightmare Lots and lots and lots of overlapping rings Tue, 15 Oct 2019 10:44:30 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-homologist-s-nightmare puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/get-the-coins-out-of-the-bank A puzzle from the maths-fun mailing list. Mon, 07 Oct 2019 08:56:54 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/get-the-coins-out-of-the-bank toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/number-dress-up-party All the numbers have come to a party in fancy dress. Wed, 18 Sep 2019 11:24:44 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/number-dress-up-party toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/sierpinski-interpolation This is known in some places as the chaos game: if you repeatedly move halfway towards a randomly chosen vertex of an equilateral triangle, the positions you can end up together make the Sierpiński triangle. In this one, press the keys 1, 2 and 3 to move to each vertex. Tue, 17 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/sierpinski-interpolation puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/s-o-x An adaptation of the book _Solo Noughts and Crosses_ Sun, 01 Sep 2019 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/s-o-x talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tmip-2019-the-big-internet-math-off About the Big Internet Math-Off, a competition I ran on The Aperiodical. Given at _Talking Maths in Public_. Mon, 12 Aug 2019 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tmip-2019-the-big-internet-math-off toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/incident-counter Inspired by the 'paralellepiped incident' joke that some friends make. You reocrd an incident, and when you come back later it tells you how long since the last incident. Mon, 17 Jun 2019 07:00:38 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/incident-counter useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/clp-s-nice-calculator An RPN calculator with some nice features Thu, 16 May 2019 09:26:27 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/clp-s-nice-calculator work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/eukleides-extension-for-numbas An extension for Numbas which provides the Eukleides geometrical drawing language. Thu, 02 May 2019 13:19:14 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/eukleides-extension-for-numbas real things https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/my-redbubble-shop I've made a few mathsy t-shirt designs. Mon, 11 Mar 2019 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/my-redbubble-shop work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/statistics-extension-for-numbas A Numbas extension providing a wrapper around the jStat library Mon, 25 Feb 2019 12:44:46 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/statistics-extension-for-numbas work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/jsxgraph-extension-for-numbas This extension for Numbas adds the ability to generate diagrams using [JSXGraph](https://jsxgraph.org). Mon, 25 Feb 2019 12:36:06 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/jsxgraph-extension-for-numbas toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/glass-sudoku Following the paper "the paramagnetic and glass transitions in sudoku" Mon, 11 Feb 2019 08:26:37 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/glass-sudoku talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/zeckendorf-cup-arithmetic My 5-minute talk at the big MathsJam conference this weekend was about some stacking cups that my daughter is too young to appreciate. Here’s the really quick version, in just over a minute: … Mon, 19 Nov 2018 09:39:51 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/zeckendorf-cup-arithmetic useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathsjam-countdown A five-minute timer for MathsJam Gathering talks. Sun, 18 Nov 2018 09:18:53 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathsjam-countdown boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/distance-to-postcodes Calculates the straight-line distances from a source postcode to a list of other postcodes. Made in response to someone at a university asking how many of their students they could expect to travel in for a day event. Wed, 14 Nov 2018 10:14:02 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/distance-to-postcodes boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathsjam-retweeter MathsJam Retweeter bot code Thu, 01 Nov 2018 10:04:43 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathsjam-retweeter art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/truchet-polygons Each tile is a regular polygon with an even number of sides. The vertices are painted in alternating colours. The tiles are lined up so that the colours on every edge match. Fri, 26 Oct 2018 15:14:46 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/truchet-polygons toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/spontaneous-venning An attempt to simulate people spontaneously forming a Venn diagram Wed, 17 Oct 2018 10:16:13 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/spontaneous-venning unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/categorised-esoterica A tool I made to help quickly categorise all the things in my [Interesting Esoterica](https://read.somethingorotherwhatever.com/) collection. Fri, 12 Oct 2018 15:41:17 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/categorised-esoterica writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/this-matrix-joke-is-only-barely-worth-your-time If you see me doing a maths thing, I’m probably wearing one of my maths t-shirts. I’ve got quite a few, but the one that reliably produces the much-sought-after look of total indifferen… Mon, 01 Oct 2018 08:33:38 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/this-matrix-joke-is-only-barely-worth-your-time toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unit-fractions-are-all-you-need Every rational number can be written as the sum of unit fractions Thu, 20 Sep 2018 09:18:02 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unit-fractions-are-all-you-need toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/reciprocals A never-ending list of reciprocals Sat, 15 Sep 2018 13:39:04 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/reciprocals toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/factorisation-list A never-ending list of factorisations of the natural numbers. Sat, 15 Sep 2018 07:44:32 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/factorisation-list useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-big-countdown Shows a big timer counting down from 10 minutes. Wed, 29 Aug 2018 07:09:59 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-big-countdown clocks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-big-clock A page showing a big HH:MM:SS time display and nothing else Tue, 28 Aug 2018 09:18:58 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-big-clock work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/chemistry-extension-for-numbas Data and functions to help with calculations in chemistry Thu, 16 Aug 2018 09:24:05 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/chemistry-extension-for-numbas useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-people-shuffler A tool to decide who goes first: everyone loads this on their phone, and presses the screen at the same time. The phones will all ping at different times. A knock-off of an app I saw someone use. Contains a QR code so everyone else can load it easily. Fri, 10 Aug 2018 16:19:58 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-people-shuffler work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/quantities-extension-for-numbas A Numbas extension providing functions to handle amounts with units Wed, 25 Jul 2018 08:58:33 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/quantities-extension-for-numbas useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/random-statistically-plausible-people Randomly generate the names of statistically plausible people Tue, 24 Jul 2018 13:23:13 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/random-statistically-plausible-people toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/divisibility-diagrams Show a diagram to compute divisibility by any number Mon, 09 Jul 2018 09:11:17 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/divisibility-diagrams writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-big-internet-math-off A competition to find The World's Most Interesting Mathematician. It's really a way of tricking people into telling me fun maths. Sun, 24 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-big-internet-math-off games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/get-the-average-right I think the gist of the game would be that in each round, everyone guesses a number, and at the end the closest guess to the average of everyone's guesses wins. It didn't really work. Sun, 17 Jun 2018 08:07:41 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/get-the-average-right art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/spinny-squares Spinny squares Fri, 15 Jun 2018 14:23:50 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/spinny-squares toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/i-can-name-your-polynomial I can name your polynomial Wed, 23 May 2018 10:02:23 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/i-can-name-your-polynomial toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/polar-fractions Show every fraction in the range [0,1] on a polar plot, using the Calkin-Wilf sequence Tue, 15 May 2018 08:15:23 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/polar-fractions toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-incredible-palindromic-hat-trick Demonstrating the incredible fact that every integer can be written as the sum of 3 palindromes. Sun, 29 Apr 2018 15:21:04 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-incredible-palindromic-hat-trick toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/stecklegram A thing to help Katie Steckles decode the secret message in her birthday card. Mon, 23 Apr 2018 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/stecklegram games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-never-ending-sum A never ending series of sums, where the answer from the last question is part of the next question. Tue, 06 Mar 2018 17:32:26 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-never-ending-sum unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/time I had an idea about a way of modelling intervals of time and doing arithmetic with them, prompted by the question of what 'one month from now' means. It didn't really work. Mon, 19 Feb 2018 20:43:52 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/time puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/dudeney-puzzle-403 An interactive version of [Puzzle 403 from Henry Ernest Dudeney's _Amusements in Mathematics_](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16713/16713-h/16713-h.htm#X_403_THE_SPANISH_DUNGEONa). Thu, 25 Jan 2018 11:19:33 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/dudeney-puzzle-403 work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/asciimath2tex JavaScript library to convert AsciiMath to TeX Wed, 13 Dec 2017 10:58:53 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/asciimath2tex puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/circular-lights-out A circular version of the Lights Out puzzle. The aim of the game is to turn all of the lights off. When there is an evenly-spaced sequence of bulbs all turned off or all turned on, you may switch them all on or off by clicking two consecutive lights in the sequence. Sat, 09 Dec 2017 16:35:59 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/circular-lights-out puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/lights-modular-out A move in the classic Lights Out puzzle could be viewed as addition mod 2. This lets you set up a version of the puzzle where it's addition modulo something else. Wed, 29 Nov 2017 08:44:26 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/lights-modular-out toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/exploding-dots-counter An animated counter showing the [Exploding Dots](https://www.explodingdots.org/) 1 → 10 machine. Tue, 03 Oct 2017 07:43:30 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/exploding-dots-counter work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/random-person-extension-for-numbas A Numbas extension providing a collection of functions to generate random people, for use in word problems. Thu, 13 Jul 2017 14:12:54 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/random-person-extension-for-numbas writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-curious-mathmo-talks-to-david-roberts Way back at the end of last year I put out a call to mathematicians I know: hop on Skype and chat to me for a while about the work you’re doing at the moment. The first person to answer was D… Fri, 23 Jun 2017 17:15:01 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-curious-mathmo-talks-to-david-roberts juvenilia https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/some-maths-jokes A collection of maths jokes and explanations of why they're funny. Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/some-maths-jokes work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/linear-algebra-extension-for-numbas A Numbas extension providing functions to work with linear algebra Thu, 25 May 2017 11:29:51 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/linear-algebra-extension-for-numbas toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hexaflex-yourself Makes a printable template for a hexaflexagon containing a picture from your camera, or any image you upload. Made for outreach purposes at work. Thu, 11 May 2017 15:03:37 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hexaflex-yourself websites https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathsjam-com The homepage for MathsJam. As of 2017, it's my design. Wed, 03 May 2017 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathsjam-com useless tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/nul-points A thing to tot up everyone's ratings while watching Eurovision. Mon, 01 May 2017 16:56:45 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/nul-points useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tootbib A tool to toot a description of an entry from a bibtex file Sat, 22 Apr 2017 10:39:36 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tootbib work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-mathjax-url From the time when I needed it lots, and the main MathJax site didn't make it easy to find, I made this page with just the URL to load MathJax. Wed, 05 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-mathjax-url writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-maths-e-learning-officer My wife’s school recently sent round a form with questions about “a day in the life” of people working in STEM careers, to show to their year 6 children. My job involves the M in … Wed, 15 Mar 2017 09:17:27 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-maths-e-learning-officer work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/jme-marking-algorithms A repository I used to develop the marking algorithms feature in Numbas. Thu, 02 Feb 2017 15:59:09 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/jme-marking-algorithms work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/jupyter-interactions A site to show off interactions in Jupyter notebooks, which were new at the time. Tue, 17 Jan 2017 16:36:22 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/jupyter-interactions websites https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/cp-s-betablog I tried out making a static blog very slightly before they were cool. Sun, 08 Jan 2017 18:18:12 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/cp-s-betablog code detritus https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/checkmyworking-com-in-spress A spress site to create a static version of checkmyworking.com Sun, 27 Nov 2016 15:26:19 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/checkmyworking-com-in-spress boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/staticize-wordpress A tool to convert a WordPress blog to a static site with Spress. Used on checkmyworking.com Fri, 25 Nov 2016 15:41:03 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/staticize-wordpress art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/zeta-plot Build up a plot of the Riemann zeta function by spray paint. Fri, 11 Nov 2016 16:48:41 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/zeta-plot talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-clever-horse-theory-and-applications Clever Hans was a famous horse who could answer maths questions. I made my own. Sat, 05 Nov 2016 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-clever-horse-theory-and-applications work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/grammars-for-informal-notation An attempt to produce grammars to describe informal mathematician, which is often ambiguous and inconsistent. Thu, 22 Sep 2016 14:56:17 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/grammars-for-informal-notation work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbro-extension-for-numbas Format numbers and currency amounts with numbro.js Thu, 28 Jul 2016 12:18:55 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbro-extension-for-numbas puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/interactive-puzzlebomb-puzzles Interactive versions of the early [Puzzlebomb](https://www.puzzlebomb.co.uk) puzzle sheets. Made in Elm. Fri, 15 Jul 2016 07:35:31 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/interactive-puzzlebomb-puzzles work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/geogebra-extension-for-numbas An extension for Numbas which integrates GeoGebra materials Thu, 07 Jul 2016 14:37:58 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/geogebra-extension-for-numbas art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/sierpinski-dots A thing to play the Chaos game on a triangle, making the Sierpiński triangle. Mon, 20 Jun 2016 10:31:24 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/sierpinski-dots toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/emojiordinates Because What3Words is stupid, I made this thing to convert lat/long coordinates into a sequence of four emoji. Tue, 14 Jun 2016 09:21:33 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/emojiordinates unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-quiz-in-elm I wondered how much work it would be to write a quiz system like Numbas, in Elm. The hardest part was thinking about randomising, because I didn't have a good understanding of how Elm's randomisation works. Sun, 05 Jun 2016 17:36:17 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/a-quiz-in-elm puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/katie-s-nail-painting-puzzle A game based on Katie Steckles's binary nail-painting puzzle. Sat, 21 May 2016 10:07:14 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/katie-s-nail-painting-puzzle useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/bib-site An interface to browse and edit a .bib file Fri, 20 May 2016 10:33:35 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/bib-site websites https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/interesting-esoterica This site hosts my list of interesting and unusual papers that I have collected over the years. Many of the references are kept here so I can easily find them again when I want to tell someone about the really interesting idea they contain; others are here only because they caught my eye when I first came across them. Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/interesting-esoterica work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-lti-tool-provider An LTI tool provider to run Numbas exams Mon, 02 May 2016 19:08:47 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas-lti-tool-provider writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/approximate-a-ratio-by-folding-a-piece-of-paper Warning: you could make a very strong argument I’ve thought far too much about something inconsequential. If that makes your stomach turn, look away now. This morning in the shower, I had an … Sat, 23 Apr 2016 12:54:47 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/approximate-a-ratio-by-folding-a-piece-of-paper art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/prime-tapestry Inspired by [Barry Dalgarno](https://sites.google.com/site/geometryoftheprimes/) (ignore the nonsense) Wed, 06 Apr 2016 20:37:51 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/prime-tapestry websites https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/eat-something-or-other-whatever A site for me to collect recipes I like. I tried doing something clever with natural language processing to highlight the measurements in the ingredients, but it doesn't work very well. Wed, 30 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/eat-something-or-other-whatever talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/it-s-complicated A talk about calculating π, given at Durham University for π day 2016. Contains lots of animations. Mon, 14 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/it-s-complicated websites https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/isthisprime-com It's just a website that does one thing: tells you if a number is prime or not. It's been useful surprisingly often! Tue, 08 Mar 2016 21:27:51 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/isthisprime-com games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-is-this-prime-game All you have to do is say whether each number is prime. Mon, 07 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-is-this-prime-game games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/code-clicker A clicker game where each click runs a program you've written. You get points for completing challenges, but each operation in your program costs points. It works OK, but I didn't have the motivation to finish it. Sat, 27 Feb 2016 11:42:31 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/code-clicker writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/maths-objects A series of videos about mathematical objects. Sat, 20 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/maths-objects puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/pancake-flipping An interactive toy for the pancake-flipping problem, to go with a post by Katie Steckles on The Aperiodical. By repeatedly flipping the top part of a stack of pancakes, can you sort them by size? Sat, 06 Feb 2016 18:05:38 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/pancake-flipping art https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/circle-designs Generates nice designs made of subdivided circle quadrants. Thu, 04 Feb 2016 09:51:12 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/circle-designs work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/blackboard-numbas-scorm-analysis Because Blackboard's built-in SCORM player is so rubbish, I made this tool to give a better presentation of data from Numbas SCORM packages. Mon, 01 Feb 2016 13:52:11 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/blackboard-numbas-scorm-analysis toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-great-intersectionator I found a load of corpuses of words. I made this to show the words that are in the intersections of several corpuses. Fri, 22 Jan 2016 12:06:27 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-great-intersectionator games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/duopoly A game about drawing lines Fri, 15 Jan 2016 20:00:26 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/duopoly toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/punchcards I never used real computer punchcards, so this is a simulation of how I think they worked. Click bits to turn them on or off, or in Lovelace mode you can't unpunch a hole! Shows the ASCII decoding of the card on the top. Mon, 07 Dec 2015 06:57:19 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/punchcards toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unfurl-an-image A thing to do a coordinate transformation on an image. The example it loads with transforms from polar to cartesian coordinates. Wed, 02 Dec 2015 09:52:44 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/unfurl-an-image toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/ask-clever-hans-a-question Before I made the physical Clever Hans, I made this page which uses speech recognition and a formal grammar to answer arithmetic questions. Featuring the pixelated horse from my horsey game. Sat, 21 Nov 2015 17:10:52 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/ask-clever-hans-a-question unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/traffic-thingy A little tool to help Cushing try out the birthday problem with cars - how many cars should you expect to drive past before having a 50% chance of seeing the same string of final 3 letters twice? Sun, 08 Nov 2015 14:09:53 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/traffic-thingy toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/droste-dobble Exploiting a fact about projective planes Fri, 06 Nov 2015 11:14:28 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/droste-dobble work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/optimisation-problems-extension-for-numbas An extension for Numbas providing functions to help with optimisation problems Mon, 28 Sep 2015 14:34:23 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/optimisation-problems-extension-for-numbas toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tennis-graph A state diagram of a complete tennis match Fri, 18 Sep 2015 14:29:55 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tennis-graph games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/30-second-challenge Inspired by the newspaper puzzle my wife's grandma tests me with each time I visit. Sun, 19 Jul 2015 17:48:58 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/30-second-challenge work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/write-maths-with-jme Write maths, see maths applied to JME expressions from Numbas. Wed, 15 Jul 2015 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/write-maths-with-jme games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/sequences a numbers-in-a-grid game Thu, 04 Jun 2015 15:35:01 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/sequences toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/three-onefouronefivenine-com A page that scrolls the digits of π endlessly, using Gosper's spigot algorithm. Sat, 14 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/three-onefouronefivenine-com writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wolfram-alpha-cant-but-cp-can Christian Perfect has turned into a one-man plug for the holes in Wolfram|Alpha. Mon, 02 Mar 2015 16:46:53 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wolfram-alpha-cant-but-cp-can puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/word-lock The Word Lock puzzle from February 2015's puzzlebomb Mon, 02 Feb 2015 09:53:17 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/word-lock work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/polynomials-extension-for-numbas An extension for Numbas which provides a "polynomial" data type and associated operations Tue, 20 Jan 2015 16:40:55 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/polynomials-extension-for-numbas games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/word-game A ripoff of a word game Fri, 16 Jan 2015 15:24:08 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/word-game useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wordsearch-generator Given a list of words, generates a wordsearch. Tue, 16 Dec 2014 11:34:31 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wordsearch-generator writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/watch-out-im-a-blue-whale-and-im-about-to-land-on-you Christian investigates the possibility of a moving whale being able to warn you it’s coming. Thu, 20 Nov 2014 12:15:03 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/watch-out-im-a-blue-whale-and-im-about-to-land-on-you writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/apparently-im-not-a-maths-genius-or-on-the-subject-of-parcel-sizes Christian investigates the mystery of Hermes’ maximum parcel dimensions. Wed, 19 Nov 2014 14:30:19 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/apparently-im-not-a-maths-genius-or-on-the-subject-of-parcel-sizes work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/linear-codes-extension-for-numbas This Numbas extension adds stuff to work with linear codes. Thu, 13 Nov 2014 14:43:13 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/linear-codes-extension-for-numbas work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/download-scores-report-for-moodle-scorm This report provides buttons to download a spreadsheet of scores for a SCORM package. It differs from the basic report by giving the total score in raw marks and percentage, as well as scores for each SCORM objective (called "question"). Thu, 16 Oct 2014 13:24:12 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/download-scores-report-for-moodle-scorm work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/moodle-availability-username-plugin Moodle availability condition plugin. Allows you to restrict access to course sections or activities by username. Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:09:54 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/moodle-availability-username-plugin work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/permutation-groups-extension-for-numbas Permutation groups extension for Numbas Thu, 04 Sep 2014 13:55:23 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/permutation-groups-extension-for-numbas toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/swirlograph Looks like some wiggly worms swirling round a vector field. Made with p5.js. Thu, 28 Aug 2014 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/swirlograph work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/content-mathml-to-presentation-mathml-for-mathjax A JavaScript implementation of David Carlisle's tool to convert Content MathML to Presentation MathML. I made this as contract work for MathJax. Fri, 04 Apr 2014 14:21:24 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/content-mathml-to-presentation-mathml-for-mathjax boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathjax-in-twine A couple of macros which let you use MathJax to render LaTeX in Twine stories Sat, 29 Mar 2014 17:14:51 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathjax-in-twine toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/regex-fractals Draw fractals by writing a regular expression which matches parts of a subdivided square. Wed, 26 Mar 2014 20:37:06 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/regex-fractals useless tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/everyones-a-mathematician This morning Katie and I had a little discussion about house style on The Aperiodical. Mathematican Paul Taylor was listed as “Mathematician Paul Taylor” in the blurb for his featured p… Tue, 25 Mar 2014 10:57:12 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/everyones-a-mathematician puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/building-houses A game about putting flags in a field, made for James Grime Thu, 20 Mar 2014 15:28:16 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/building-houses websites https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/cp-s-oeis-frontend An alternative frontend for the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. Tue, 28 Jan 2014 16:21:27 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/cp-s-oeis-frontend toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/big-friendly-bf An implementation of the programming language I can't name Fri, 10 Jan 2014 22:12:26 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/big-friendly-bf work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/plot-differential-equations A little tool to visualise solutions to first order ODEs Tue, 26 Nov 2013 15:25:30 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/plot-differential-equations work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/lissajs An algebra parsing, evaluation and simplification system written entirely in JavaScript. Tue, 29 Oct 2013 14:37:13 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/lissajs work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathjax-play-area A page to try out different MathJax configurations. Fri, 25 Oct 2013 10:54:30 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathjax-play-area work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathjax-bindings-for-knockout-js Binding handlers for knockout.js which typeset all LaTeX inside an element containing HTML, or just typeset some LaTeX on its own. Tue, 22 Oct 2013 08:24:17 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathjax-bindings-for-knockout-js writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/an-enneahedron-for-herschel The Herschel graph has some pretty cool properties. Christian Perfect constructed the associated polyhedron, and it too has some cool properties! Tue, 01 Oct 2013 09:16:39 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/an-enneahedron-for-herschel toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/little-professor Read out an integer sequence, like the Little Professor calculator used to read out sums. Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/little-professor writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/integer-sequence-reviews My friend David Cushing and I used to review integer sequences for fun. Sat, 04 May 2013 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/integer-sequence-reviews writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/art-for-a-maths-department Christian was asked to find some art to decorate the walls of the university maths department he works in. Here’s what he found. Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:18:27 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/art-for-a-maths-department juvenilia https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/code-excursions The little bits of code I write to explore ideas. Sat, 13 Apr 2013 13:36:05 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/code-excursions boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/deck-js-maths-template A template to create slides with deck.js, MathJax, and the unicode Computer Modern fonts Sat, 09 Feb 2013 14:10:42 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/deck-js-maths-template talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/computability-of-bass-serre-structures-in-the-grzegorczyk-hierarchy A talk about the stuff I was looking at in my aborted PhD. Fri, 08 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/computability-of-bass-serre-structures-in-the-grzegorczyk-hierarchy boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathjax-bookmarklet A bookmarklet to render LaTeX by adding MathJax to pages that don't have it. Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/mathjax-bookmarklet toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/spiral-life Conway's Game of Life, but it doesn't all happen at once Thu, 01 Nov 2012 22:19:49 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/spiral-life talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/zero-knowledge-protocols A talk about zero-knowledge protocols, given at Newcastle's postgraduate forum. Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/zero-knowledge-protocols useful tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/using-computer-modern-on-the-web I compiled the Computer Modern fonts into a format that can be used on the web. Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/using-computer-modern-on-the-web toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/olympic-chokers Which countries are just failing to win the most? Shows a table of all countries who have won at least one gold (to exclude the milquetoast nations for whom second place is an achievement), sorted by the proportion of their medals which are not gold. Fri, 10 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/olympic-chokers work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/make-big-maths A simple page for rendering LaTeX at any size, using MathJax. Wed, 08 Aug 2012 06:49:27 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/make-big-maths work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wordpress-writemaths-plugin A WordPress plugin to add the Write maths, see maths thing to the editor. Doesn't work with the block editor. Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:54:23 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/wordpress-writemaths-plugin boring tools https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/logerrific A javascript server log analyser Tue, 01 May 2012 22:27:23 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/logerrific websites https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-aperiodical The blog I run with Peter Rowlett and Katie Steckles. Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-aperiodical work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/putting-maths-notation-online A talk about how to use MathJax, from when it was new. Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/putting-maths-notation-online talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/an-interesting-puzzle-from-mathsjam About the 'Princess in a castle' puzzle. Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/an-interesting-puzzle-from-mathsjam puzzles https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/princess-in-a-castle An interactive version of the Princess in a Castle puzzle Wed, 07 Dec 2011 01:20:12 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/princess-in-a-castle toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/random-eratosthenetic-pseudo-primes An investigation of what happens if you make the Sieve of Eratosthenes randomly. Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/random-eratosthenetic-pseudo-primes writing https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/aperiodical-round-up This is a sporadic series of posts where I collect links to interesting or unusual maths things. Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/aperiodical-round-up talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hands-on-maths-or-here-s-one-i-proved-earlier A talk about some physical mathematical objects, given at Newcastle's postgraduate forum. Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/hands-on-maths-or-here-s-one-i-proved-earlier games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tic-tac-reversi A cross between tic-tac-toe and Reversi, apparently. Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/tic-tac-reversi games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/kleinsteroids Asteroids, played on the projective plane or the Klein bottle. Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/kleinsteroids unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/codes-and-ciphers I wanted to make interactive demonstrations of some codes and ciphers. I only got as far as doing the Caesar Cipher. Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:45:46 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/codes-and-ciphers toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/when-s-your-next-prime-birthday Tells you when you are next a prime number of days old. Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:46:08 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/when-s-your-next-prime-birthday work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/textile-in-javascript A Textile convertor in Javascript, because no good one already existed. Tue, 19 Jul 2011 20:09:40 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/textile-in-javascript work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/textile A demo page for my JavaScript implementation of the Textile markup language. Sun, 26 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/textile games https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/monkey-bits Code written in the Monkey language. Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:06:18 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/monkey-bits work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/write-maths-see-maths A jQuery plugin to give an instant preview of LaTeX in editing areas. Wed, 01 Jun 2011 09:01:18 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/write-maths-see-maths unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/phd-notes Stuff produced during the PhD I gave up on. I was supposed to be looking at computability of products of groups. Mon, 09 May 2011 09:51:04 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/phd-notes work https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas Numbas is an open-source e-assessment tool aimed at mathematical disciplines. It's what I spend most of my work time on. Mon, 25 Apr 2011 08:08:44 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/numbas toys https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/circles Subdividing a triangle into circles. Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/circles talks https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/i-can-t-believe-it-s-a-universal-computer A talk about Turing completeness, given at Newcastle's postgraduate forum. Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/i-can-t-believe-it-s-a-universal-computer websites https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/check-my-working checkmyworking.com began as place to put notes about my PhD work, before I abandoned it. I also used to post about maths things, before I started The Aperiodical. Now (in 2022), my plan is to use this site to post bits and bobs about the techy things I'm doing, for the sake of anyone else who might encounter the same problems I do. Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/check-my-working unfinished https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/picaresque I'd just read _Candide_, I was full of big ideas, I thought I'd make a game about all of that. I didn't get far. Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:03:32 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/picaresque juvenilia https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/cards Some greetings cards I made. Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/cards juvenilia https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/warpycode This is an up-to-date repository of all my blitzmax code. It's mainly for my use, but others might find something useful in it. Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:15:03 +0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/warpycode juvenilia https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-unfortunate-man A nonsense story Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-unfortunate-man juvenilia https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-failure-song Some rubbish about exams? Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/the-failure-song juvenilia https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/christian-does-some-stuff A series of cartoons Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0000 https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/items/christian-does-some-stuff