p
e
r
s
o
n
a
l |
And now I am 46
(30 Sep at 23:56) |
Hmm! Yes! I turned 46 years old, which was predictable. Also predictable, and predicted, is that I finished that darned video:
Rupert's Snub Cube
I also updated the project site with more data and links. I should have just posted this blog-post earlier in the month when I uploaded it; I don't know why I always save it to the last minute and risk losing 1,000 points. I guess I figure I might get several more projects done in the month. I did not: Instead I played Silksong (which is excellent, and you don't need me to tell you about this game) as a reward for finishing project, and since that is sometimes too hard to be relaxing (I do love how hard it is!), I also installed Cult of the Lamb which I bought at some point. The latter is charming and has great art and music, but I don't think it's a must-play. For some reason I expected it to be more like an action roguelike (a la Hades, say) but it's a bit more like a tech-tree resource-management farm-sim. The combat in the main loop is just not quite interesting enough yet. But I will finish it, I'm sure.
I have begun on my next projects, several of which involve cryptography.
I also made this 3D-printed file handle:
stderr
This began as a purely practical thing (I needed a handle for a file), and I actually assembled the original file before realizing my missed opportunity for a pun, and then decided that the right solution was to buy a second file! |
 |
|
| You son of a bitch |
| OK the 'file handle' pun made me laugh |
| Happy birthday! I loved the video, but over the course of this journey I got surprisingly attached to the snub cube, and I'm sad not to know whether our snub cube buddy is in fact Rupert or Nopert. Also unsure if the dry salt bed is just a delightful non sequitur or callback to a previous Tom project I missed. I did somehow overlook Harder Drive until now... must not have been checking your blog that spring. So that was an unexpected bonus to find. |
| Nice Anonymous: I don't know where the dry salt bed comes from, but http://radar.spacebar.org/f/a/weblog/comment/1/1201 already calls it traditional. |
Tom spotting!
"It’s natural to wonder which other shapes have [Rupert's] property. 'I think of this problem as being quite canonical,' said Tom Murphy, a software engineer at Google who has explored the question extensively in his free time. It 'would have gotten rediscovered and rediscovered — aliens would have come to this one.'"
https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-shape-found-that-cant-pass-through-itself-20251024/ |
| @Scott I can't believe they would insult him by referring to him as a mere software engineer at Google, instead of "Critically acclaimed and academically lauded SIGBOVIK author and core contributor at The Association for Computational Heresy" |
| HB Tom! –pun cracked me up. |
Also featuring David's animation:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-shape-found-that-cant-pass-through-itself-20251024/ |
I was thinking about this nopert problem. One thing that I have not seen mentioned is if you could use the difference between the area of the polygon's largest and smallest possible "shadow".
For example, in the case of the sphere (Not a polygon) the smallest and largest shadows are exactly the same size. Where as in the case of a cube there is quite a significant difference between the areas of the largest and smallest shadows.
Could this property be employed to find new noperts or at least approach the problem differently.
For example I know that there are Curves of constant width. They roll like a sphere, but aren't a sphere. are there polygons of constant "shadow" area or at least something close to that.
It would seem trivial to me that IF a polygon has constant "shadow" area then it HAS to be nopert. You cannot have two different projections that have the same area AND have one "fit" inside the other.
I would imagine that it's impossible to have a polygon of constant "shadow" area... But I don't think I can prove it. If it's impossible how close do some of these potential noperts get? |
|
|
|