iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026

Does anyone know a clever way of finding the distance from an arbitrary point in the plane to the curve 𝑦 = 1/𝑥 ? I've reduced it to a quartic that I don't fancy solving.

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Reposted by Christian Lawson-Perfect

Chris Staecker @chrisstaecker.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I'm refereeing a paper which uses ∓ by default rather than ±. Is this normal anywhere? (Middle-east?)

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026

How has this only just been added to the #OEIS? oeis.org/A398406 "Hexadecimal expansion of the square root of 2."

oeis.org

A398406 - OEIS

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

Ubuntu 26.04 has a new default terminal app, which I've dutifully switched to using. But as far as I can tell, it doesn't come with a colourblind-accessible palette, so I've just lost half an hour to working out how to copy over my customised palette from the old app. Like, a significant […]

mathstodon.xyz

Original post on mathstodon.xyz

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

This Water Sort level drove me mad! I've been stuck on it since yesterday, and since my PC is spending hours doing a distro upgrade, I decided to try brute forcing it with a python script. The solution it found takes 65 moves 😭 "Relaxing colour-sorting […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

Screenshot of Water Sort level 30, showing 14 containers, filled with different symbols. I can transcribe the symbols if you really want me to.

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

wowww, the server in South Africa that I admin for work is only getting 7KB/s from my server in the UK

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

If I was still doing integer sequence reviews, this one would get a very low score: Indices of record low-water marks of the sequence abs((sin(p))^p) where p is the numerator of the k-th convergent to Pi/2, starting from k = 1. oeis.org/A399429

oeis.org

A399429 - OEIS

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026

I hate you, bit of wall next to the door that is narrower than my wallpaper scraper.

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 25/09/2026

with all these new clever terminal emulators that do things like show images, is there one that could use a different font, depending on which machine I've SSHed into?

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

Thomas the Tank Engine has had a less-problematic remake in recent years. Where's the decolonialised Babar remake?

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2026

Interesting collection of symbols on my Octopus energy statement. Do you think that £41.39 is going to me, or to Octopus? The line below is definitely in my favour - it's the amount for electricity exported from my solar panels.

Credit on your account. Reversed account charge: +£-41.39. Electricity: +£208.63.

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026

Aperiodic monotiles, in the Geobunnies style. Mathematics is hugely improved by the addition of a face, ears, and a little fluffy tail.

The Spectre and hat aperiodic monotiles, in bright colours, with a rabbit's face, ears and tail drawn on.

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

This is the bit of #Beamish museum that makes me the most nostalgic 😔

A plaque reading "scheme partly financed by the European regional development fund"

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

With LLMs, we've moved from bad students saying "the dog ate my homework" to now saying "the dog did my homework".

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

Just found a block of code that hasn't worked for 12 years 😬 The problem was that I removed an entry from a dictionary of regular expressions without realising it was still referred to, and `string.split(undefined)` returns a list of one item, instead of throwing an error.

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

Just realised that I've lapped my page-a-day block of note paper from last year.

The top page says Friday 12th September 2025

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026

Grim scenes chez L-P today as we tracked down the Horrible Smell of the last few days to the fridge's drip tray. Which, of course, doesn't come out. So I had to reach in with kitchen roll and a bottle cleaner to scoop out the ming and gradually make it less hideous than it was. I think I've […]

mathstodon.xyz

Original post on mathstodon.xyz

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026

Welp, I've been putting it off for a long time but it looks like Google is more stubborn than I am and they're really removing XSLT from Chrome, so I've got to do something. There's a polyfill - github.com/mfreed7/xslt_polyfill - but it's 1.4MB and takes a couple of seconds to load […]

mathstodon.xyz

Original post on mathstodon.xyz

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

[Food] On Wednesdays, Mrs L-P works late and the kids have tea at their grandma's, so my dinner is an orgy of every ingredient that the other members of my family don't like or can't digest. Tonight is a particularly gluttonous example. I chopped a load of garlic and then realised my jar of […]

mathstodon.xyz

Original post on mathstodon.xyz

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

I had an MRI this morning. I only got a call for the appointment yesterday afternoon - it must have been a cancellation. I was in for about half an hour. I didn't know it took so long. Both my mum and my wife have noped out of MRIs in the past due to claustrophobia, but I weirdly kind of liked […]

mathstodon.xyz

Original post on mathstodon.xyz

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026

Today's #3dprinting fix: replaced a broken bit of the bracket for my bike lock.

A bracket attached to a handlebar ona cargo bike. One side of the bracket is the original black plastic; the other half is a replacement printed in bright PLA

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026

It's the 4,012th international Excel Spreadsheets Are Not Forms Day.

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026

After getting fed up with geogebra and polypad, I've finally taken the time to make myself a little thing for placing polygon tiles. It picks the closest edge to the point you've clicked on, and places a tile lined up with that edge. My idea (artist's […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

Lots of regular polygons from triangles to nonagons, placed sort of randomly but all touching. The polygons are colourful and the background is plain white.

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

So when are the LLMs going to do amenability of Thompson's group F? There are positive and negative results (all retracted?) in the literature, so it'd be fun to see what the slop interpretation boils down to.

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Reposted by Christian Lawson-Perfect

abadidea @0xabad1dea.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

Oh, right, new school year. University students: the secret to success is GO THE FUCK TO BED, GO THE FUCK TO CLASS, DO YOUR FUCKING HOMEWORK and to get HELP AND SUPPORT from people who want you to succeed if you find yourself neglecting any of these, and there are many more such people than you […]

infosec.exchange

Original post on infosec.exchange

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Reposted by Christian Lawson-Perfect

theHigherGeometer @highergeometer.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026

"Supplemental AI statement of the third author. Very unfortunately and without me being aware, the in-progress version of this work dated January 14, 2025 was shared publicly at the link www.ihes.fr/~gabber/BGV160.pdf on January 16, 2025. My understanding is that after 18 months it […]

mathstodon.xyz

Original post on mathstodon.xyz

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

realisation of today: I've wasted a lot of time fiddling with adopted stylesheets in shadow DOMs. These custom HTML elements could just not use a shadow root at all.

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

arggggggg, central IT have taken sudo off my account on this macbook!!

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Microsoft Bookings is having a little rave 🥳 🤟

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 09/09/2026

Accidentally turned on caps lock while opening a terminal window and had an unwelcome DOS flashback

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

Hrm, the bank Santander has a 35-character limit on your contact email address, which means I've had to tell them it's "christian+santand@..." instead of "christian+santander@..." ☹️

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

What do you think are the chances that this automated six-month reminder email I got was sent at 12:34 by coincidence?

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

I saw a funny thing in the co-op yesterday but didn't take a photo because it was too busy. The price ticket for a bag of 6 satsumas said "£1.20 (0.02p / item)". That implies 6,000 items in the package. My guess is that someone accidentally pressed a ",000" key on a specialised keyboard. Any […]

mathstodon.xyz

Original post on mathstodon.xyz

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

This week's Rutgers Experimental Mathematics seminar is Neil Sloane, prompted by the #OEIS soon reaching 400,000 sequences. 17:00 EST (UTC-4), September 10th. sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/ex…

sites.math.rutgers.edu

Rutgers Experimental Mathematics Seminar

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 07/09/2026

That's how you get my attention: "Decimal expansion of two-dimensional minimum-variance onion constant." (oeis.org/A398684)

oeis.org

A398684 - OEIS

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 06/09/2026

Have any other fediverse instances seen a huge increase in account registrations this week, or is it mathstodon-specific?

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 06/09/2026

Write 25 in binary: 11001. Interpret that as if it was in ternary: 3⁴+3³+1 = 109, a prime number! What other composite numbers does it work for? I quickly realised that it has to be odd, and furthermore, has to give an irreducible polynomial if you interpret it in base x (e.g. 11001 →𝑥⁴+𝑥³+1) […]

mathstodon.xyz

Original post on mathstodon.xyz

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 05/09/2026

[Possibly unfair subtoot] I never thought the leopards would prove MY theorems!

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 05/09/2026

[Food] Pretty pleased with this year's effort for the second-born. Can you guess what the party theme is? #baking #cake

Looking down on a rectangular cake topped with squares in different colours, and smarties pressed into them to look like climbing holds. Two playmobil children are climbing, suspended by threads from the top of the cake. On the left hand side are two pigeons and a love heart, made of colourful icing.

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026

Fortunately, I've been using computers long enough not to be put off by this nonsensical collection of words.

Studio blog: Android Studio Rabbit 1 Canary 3 now available

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 03/09/2026

Jumpscare as my home screen weather widget started showing temperatures in Kelvin

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 02/09/2026

Does anyone know of a single-word name for 10⁸? In the same vein as 10⁶ is "million", 10⁷ is "crore".

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 26/08/2026

A little #MathML question: is there a way of putting stretchy braces around arbitrary HTML without using JavaScript to resize them? I've made a thing using ResizeObserver to set the size of stretchy braces to (roughly) the size of the contents […]

mathstodon.xyz

Original post on mathstodon.xyz

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2026

This is a fun clock: the hours, minutes and seconds marks are on circles of increasing radius in the hyperbolic plane, and there's only one hand. You can find the different markings by moving around the plane. jpivarski.github.io/hyperbolic-map/…

jpivarski.github.io

One-handed clock — hyperbolic-map

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Christian Lawson-Perfect @christianp.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2026

Yes, lots of algorithms in #elmlang are a faff, but OMG, an undo/redo mechanism is SO much easier in elm than in plain javascript!

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