iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

It's a program/language mainly designed for diagrams, but it is relatively straightforward to write routines for basically anything you'd want to do in Python. I recommend having a look at Toby Thurston's introduction to get a feeling for it: github.com/thruston/Dra...

github.com

Even in Python I think that the plotting libraries leave much to be desired. I personally prefer to draw plots and diagrams using metapost. I generate the data in say Python and either import that in a metapost script or generate the necessary metapost code using a separate python file.

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To add insult to injury, I just noticed that Virgin Media sent me an email stating the problem has been fixed.

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In the time it took me to get to my office the internet has gone down again.

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Problem solved! Turns out there were still enough beans in the machine for a single shot of espresso.

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The next problem to a productive day has revealed itself: I am out of coffee.

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I'm back online! The takeaway is that your solutions can be solved by posting a strongbad reference.

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YouTube video by Strong Bad - Topic

In a bright start of a new week I have lost my internet connection. It's expected to be back by 7:10 pm. Until then, the system is down m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Tl...

m.youtube.com

The System Is Down

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Hershey's font, maybe? github.com/yangcht/Hers...

Matthijs @matthijs.vanderwild.com · 27/09/2025

If you see this post a bridge. ➡️ Swing Bridge ⬅️ High level Bridge Newcastle - Gateshead

A view of Newcastle across the Tyne river. The swing bridge is on the right, the high level bridge on the left. The castle can be seen in the background.

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As long as you're able to connect to the internet you should be fine 🙂

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Features of the Conference – Cosmology from Home

If you want to know more about what I mean by online-by-design: check out cosmologyfromhome.com/format/ or shoot me a message!

cosmologyfromhome.com

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Features of the Conference – Cosmology from Home

If you haven't heard of CfH before: It's an online-by-design conference with a format focused around active discussion. It aims to bridge the gap between theory and observation. Present and discuss your cutting-edge research to researchers from around the world!

cosmologyfromhome.com

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Matthijs @matthijs.vanderwild.com · 12/03/2025

This is slightly ahead of the official announcement, but: ⚡CONFERENCE ALERT⚡ Don't miss out on Cosmology from Home 2025! The dates have been fixed at 16 June – 27 June. Check out our confirmed plenary speakers (and register!) at cosmologyfromhome.com!

cosmologyfromhome.com

Cosmology from Home

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I can definitely recommend! His books are so much fun! And he's very quotable too; I'm fond of "With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D. and you still have the frog you started with.” from "the science of discworld", I think.

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Matthijs @matthijs.vanderwild.com · 12/03/2025

I'm slowly making my way through the discworld novels, and he really had a way with words. The books are so wholesome and at the same time give such a nice breakdown of our society. Terry is missed.

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Matthijs @matthijs.vanderwild.com · 12/02/2025

A shame that the only gif of this scene has a typo, but what can you do?

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Matthijs @matthijs.vanderwild.com · 24/01/2025

Roffa! Fun fact, shortly after it was opened to the public the bridge started swaying in the wind during light rain, as little streams of water on the cables altered the bridge's resonant frequencies. This was resolved after stronger shock dampers were installed.

Matthijs @matthijs.vanderwild.com · 21/01/2025

The latest version of "I AMsterdam"?

J R D M B @jrdmb.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Reposted by Matthijs

Cosmology Researcher Talks database 2024 stats: 1132 talks by 899 speakers re 1180 arXiv papers Top 10 sources: 94 Cosmology fr Home 93 Perimeter Inst 92 Kyoto U, YITP 80 CosmoVerse 76 Misc 57 KITP 52 ICTP-SAIFR 42 CERN 31 Neutrinos fr Home 30 Parity Violation fr Home jrdmb.netlify.app/crt.html

jrdmb.netlify.app

Search Talks

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Matthijs @matthijs.vanderwild.com · 16/12/2024

Honestly, it looks like those books already take you way past Manley's introduction. You could try Allen's introduction to Middle Egyptian. It dives a bit deeper into the grammar of the language amzn.eu/d/45ZvK5E

amzn.eu

Amazon.co.uk

Unless it was because of a change I somehow missed; in the UK they seem to run on whatever side is most convenient at the time. In Newcastle I've gone either way on the same platform.

To you too! Hope you're doing 😀

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Haa, it does look like that, yeah. It was a reflex because @nikosarcevic.com and I often have arguments where she's like "only you would ever use this" and my only response is "because it simply is the best thing I've found so far" 😁

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I started using it because I needed a simple tool for creating diagrams. pgfplots and tikz are absolute dumpster fires, and asymptote is quite heavy and verbose. There's penrose, but I haven't tried it yet. Metapost can be embedded in the TeX distros I use, and can generate SVGs.

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Cliff Burgess @cburgescliff.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

I mean, conversing in Middle Egyptian is a bit strong, but if it comes up I'll happily jw ḏd.j n.k jj m ḥtp pr.j 😂

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Reposted by Matthijs

Reminder for new users here: The spacetime metric is a Lorentzian signature tensor with precisely one negative eigenvalue

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Reposted by Matthijs

Shaun Hotchkiss @justshaun.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

The talks have been released, asynchronous discussion is underway, and the live discussions will start on Tuesday. You can sign up to watch the talks and discussions, until the event ends on Friday: parity.cosmodiscussion.com/registration/ Some random expected highlights...

parity.cosmodiscussion.com

Registration – Parity Violation from Home

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Awesome 😎 also: somehow I didn't get a notification from your mention. @nikosarcevic.com told me about it, but I had to search through your responses for this thread. It all worked out though 😁

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Oh, another thing: energy is definitely conserved in general relativity. That's baked into Einstein's field equations; the stress-energy tensor is locally conserved. In larger regions of spacetime things are more tricky as, vacuum energy gives an expansion of space which gives more vacuum.

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Does this answer (or at least move into the direction of the original discussion)? It's a bit tricky to pull the posts into google translate on the phone, and I don't know Norwegian 😅

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Because of that shift towards redder colours it is always possible to see how far in the past the light from that galaxy was emitted, and depending on how much we know about the universe's composition, we can calculate exactly how much time has elapsed.

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Matthijs @matthijs.vanderwild.com · 15/02/2024

The universe expands, and that leaves a time print on things. Imagine taking a picture of a galaxy that's very far away, waiting a long time, and taking another picture of that galaxy. Because of the way the universe expands, the second picture will appear slightly redder than the first picture.

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Without some process that fixes this you would basically just have a regular universe with extra steps, as theoretically the radius could always be increased to be essentially indistinguishable from a regular flat universe.

Matthijs @matthijs.vanderwild.com · 15/02/2024

A toroidal universe wouldn't be entirely without issues of its own, though. It would largely reproduce the standard model of cosmology, but would introduce at least one extra free parameter (the radius of the torus).