Disambiguating

I haven't noticed any slacking off in my contact with Russians through the edu channels I inhabit.  Some TCP/IP supplier was said to have dropped from the scene, but like a rock in a lake.  

The internet was designed to not have single points of failure.

That being said, we weren't on the same page in any case, given the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues.  How does anyone understand anything in such a polluted environment?  Good thing we have namespaces right?  import this (that's an insider Python joke).

Like ever since I've searched and more recently joined academia.edu, I noticed great market penetration for Haken's, but not for our guy's product line.  No one was intentionally jamming the frequencies.  Both 5G and some airplane altimeters want to use the same space.  That's an analogy.

Wikipedia has disambiguated the two Synergetics (Haken's and RBF's) for several years.  We have a link to and from Tetrahedron on the RBF side (one way to keep telling them apart).  So only now are some Russians starting to see double, and realizing the potential for cross-eyed confusion.

No harm done.  Language is always folding and unfolding, sometimes getting people confused.  Like I said at the outset, it's Biblical.

Hey, I just noticed the disambiguation page for Synergetics now has a link to Tensegrity.  Is there something to disambiguate?  And the definition that's given:  

Tensegrity, the use of internal forces to overcome external forces, as in a self-supporting sculpture.

...that seems kinda weird doesn't it?  Who gave it that meaning?  I suppose I could dig into it, but for now I'm just passing through on my way to other places. I reported my finding to FSI.

Show & Tell

I produced this "metoob" mostly as a test of some new equipment, in particular the QuickCam Pro 9000 by Logitech, with Carl Zeiss optics. I'm feeling OK about the investment.

That's CubeIt! from the Huntar Company, mine from Math 'n Stuff, and Barrel Tower by Kenneth Snelson. Ed (E.J. Applewhite) was also my friend.

I rolled over my regular glasses in my sleep last night, snapped a temple (since fixed), hence the sunglasses. I make no excuse for the hat (I've tagged this with "Quakers" among other labels).

Workshop Scenarios

Glenn unveiled a Flextegrity kit of 100 pieces at Wanderers the other day. I missed the event, heard favorable reports. The kit provides a step-by-step sequence from one icosahedral hub to a four-frequency tetrahedron of 35 icosahedra. The resulting construction is sturdy and all weather. The hubs are fixed in place with customized stretched springs, do not touch one another.

One might call this "floating compression" however the springs also serve a compressive function under load, meaning we do not file this applied material under the "tensegrity" heading.

Students may wish to compare and contrast, as tensegrity is an important concept in contemporary art and engineering. The title by R. Motro is a part of the Flextegrity company library.

Sam has been running some numbers, on what it might cost to keep more of version 3 coming through the pipeline. B2C sales of kits to end users, perhaps bundled with a workshop might emerge as a co-venture.

For the time being, supply is limited and the kits are for workshop instructors.

Glenn's forte is what I call Neolithic Math, which involves working with tools, including hand-made ones. His brand of math provides a strong hands-on component consistent with learning various skills and crafts. His workshop includes such raw materials as antler, shell, many kinds of stone.

Flextegrity adds a more futuristic component (Martian Math), plus is a one of a kind, giving us a niche. My time slot, in the Linus Pauling house board room, or in a computer lab, has tended to feature commercially available supplies, along with free and open source software.

I am looking forward to adding more flextegrity to the mix, as I move about Portland. You might find Glenn and I at some coffee shop near PSU, assembling icosahedra and passing out our Radical Math (rad math) literature pointing back to these workshop opportunities.

I also have a tensegrity sculpture, Barrel Tower, a gift from Kenneth Snelson himself. I consider it too valuable to lug it around as an educational supply however.

Schools sending their teachers our way have an interest in joining a more world class network wherein tetrahedral accounting and 60-degree coordination (e.g. graphene) inform the geometry curriculum at all levels.

Schools which include more of this heritage (including Fuller Projections in some contexts) have a more cosmopolitan aura. Portland's international business community tends to encourage schools to move in this direction.

Executive Toys

No cube or corner office is complete without an assortment of executive toys.

Some of these disassemble into a surprising number of parts, disconcerting for the job interviewee perhaps, if fiddling absently, but there's information to be gleaned from such events.

In the foreground, CubeIt! from Huntar disassociates into 24 magnetic Mites, though only a few insider cognoscenti have any idea what that means (so why not flaunt your knowledge, if you're a high powered exec?).

The five "flippy balls" are even more obscure. Spin them in thin air, and they flip to the other color, a kind of jitterbug action (more esoterica).

That sculpture in the background is no way a toy. That's Barrel Tower, a Kenneth Snelson original and gift from the artist.

I'm bullish about my cube.

Quality Time with Wanderers

Allen Taylor addressed Wanderers today, on the topic of large scale networks, the Internet in particular, about which he is writing a dissertation. His offer to write another edition of SQL for Dummies was recently accepted, other deals are in the offing. The guy stays busy, as does the rest of his talented family.

One upshot of this meeting: academics writing about the Internet and its networks should be clear about the distinction between the hyperlink topology and the physical topology. These are somewhat unrelated. Having a popular web page that a lot of people go to, seemingly more every day, is a more fluid kind of happening than swapping in a new switch, or having to set out in some fancy satellite-monitored ship, to fix a break in some cable (which sharks have been known to chew through). Allen is of course completely clear about this difference.

I was happy Julian could come by. We decided to take the Xmas lights off his statue outside, which prompted a couple Celilo Group staffers to come out and inquire about our doings: they own the lights, the sculpture is in their patch.

We reassured them we were just trying to make things easier for Terry, reducing the tackiness factor (Xmas lights are long out of season by now, and all that wiring spoils a handsome red molecule in daylight) -- I said this while leaning on a railing, which started to give way ("please accept my apologies for destroying your building -- I love the Chinook Book").

Then Julian came by my place to look at geometry puzzles and my Barrel Tower again (a gift from the sculptor). Julian was privileged to meet with Ken in his SoHo studio in 2005.

Dave Fabik also joined us this morning, our token Quaker with helicopter gunship experience.

Joint Ventures?

I got a call from Richard Amerman out of the blue the other day. He and I are Plone afficionados -- like, we both attended that sprint with Alan Runyaga and Andy McKay in Victoria that time. He wants to do some global data displays using Plone, in collaboration with a biodiesel guy I haven't met yet. They might need my help in some way. Sounds like fun.

On another front, I met a former webmaster with Sesame Street (Consoletti introduced us). He reminded me that Grover (a kid favorite) and Yoda (the Jedi Knight), are the same guy, Frank Oz (just like Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch are both performed by Carroll Spinney). This webmaster has also worked as a counselor with navam kids.

I still remember those posters that came out after 911, with Osama Bin Laden in the foreground, and in the background: Evil Burt. I took a screen shot of that in my brief case when I flew off to the east coast in October of 2001, to visit (among others) Kenneth Snelson in Manhatten and Stuart Quimby in upstate New York; a spark of humor in a very dark time.

That's the time Ken gave me Barrel Tower, a fantastic gift that sits proudly in my office. I had to get it back through airline security at EWR (too big for the metal detector, and besides, it's all metal, so what's to detect?).