Quadrays Update

Andy's JS implementation came to me through Bonnie's clique, in that they'd seen a custom presentation I missed (talking about other Syn-U faculty), but then Andy and I were in touch via LinkedIn, plus he credits me on his splash screen, as well as Bonnie.

On some levels we're close to congruent, on others, ships passing (in the night or day, it shouldn't matter -- the point is no interference). For example, his implementation dives into Wildberger constructions, well documented on YouTube, whereas mine is more conventional, sticking to classic Euclidean concepts but for the alternative powering model.

Daniel and I had already embarked on the QuadCraft Project, under which umbrella term he started on 4Dchess and other 4Dx popular game analogs, where "4D" is the "4D Syndicate" sense (as in: "4D as used by the Bucky cabal"). We had a JS developer adding 3D to an IVM framework embedded in the JavaScript 2D canvas. Andy's implementation uses the three.js library instead. Both are customizable.

Finally, Andy credits Tom Ace, another name in the Quadray Coordinates entry in Wikipedia and someone I've tracked through other projects, such as HyperSnakes.

Regarding Quadrays: my "some might say quirky" distance formula is designed to match the Synergetics "A Module" with its 2nd root of 6 over 4 distance from (0,0,0,0) -- the tetra's center -- to any of its four vertices (distance EC in Figure 913.01).

Meaning D((0,0,0,0), (1,0,0,0)) is not 1, but is rather $$\sqrt{6}/4$$.

but then:

D((1,0,0,0), (0,1,0,0)) = 

D((1,0,0,0), (0,0,1,0)) =

D((1,0,0,0), (0,0,0,1)) = 1,

when 1 = the diameter of the IVM reference balls used to make it (the home base tetrahedron), and where D(a, b) is the distance between the two points a, b.

Those distances are then used to design the XYZ juxtaposition, where I associate (1,0,0,0) with the (+,+,+) octant and so on. My mappings are well-documented in the Quadrays slide deck (School of Tomorrow).

Coda Minutes

knowledge engineering meetup Mar 31 26; coda minutes

No Kings in PDX

A world-readable Flickr album, assembled post march. Here's a pre march post.

PDX means Portland (as in Cascadia) in the local jargon.

The Platonics: Another Take

Jupyter Notebook on Github

Genealogy Library

A lotta Muricans are newly hip to (fluent in) this game (world game) of citizenship, and are considering adding passports or other movement credentials, as required by the transportation services. Along those lines, I was accompanying a citizen into proving Canadian ancestry, and what better place to complete the research than an ancestral archive, with everything from marriages to deaths, to county lines, exotic grid and survey systems I’d never learned about at Princeton?

I’m still mulling over the high bandwidth content I got from my tour of this basement facility in what used to be a Ford car assembly plant. Portland made those, for sure not on the scale Detroit did, or should I say Dearborn. I’m recalling my visit to the Henry Ford Museum and the Dymaxion House on exhibit, when Tara and I went by in a rental, the make and model of which I no longer recall. We were coming from Richmond, Indiana on that adventure, from Earlham College. Carol (my mom) was joining a WILPF summit at Wayne University. We stopped in Toledo (Ohio), and at that mosque.

On the way there (to the Ford Building), with my friend driving, we talked about Subaru (what we were in), a Japanese brand of car that Cascadians are very fond of and buy in outsized numbers. Subaru means Pleiades. Possibly the lack of light pollution makes our tribes more aware of astronomical phenomena, leading to our appreciation for all-terrain (four wheel drive style) vehicles of the type Subaru has pioneered (…Legacy, Outback, Forester, Impreza…). 

Our family had two Subarus: Robin Egg and Razz, both station wagon style (I grew up on station wagons: Fairlane, Cortina, Taunus, all Fords, those last two Made in Europe). “Station wagon” is a term inherited from the Old West shoptalk. In the Philippines we went with a Chevy sedan (the first car I learned to drive on, getting my stateside license later). Maxi Taxi, my jalopy muscle car, is a Nissan from Savannah. My wife owned a Volvo when we first met, and later she bought a Corolla (Toyota).

Those planning on leaving the jurisdiction may first participate in a protest next Saturday, a last gesture before fleeing a beastly state. My plans don’t involve much near term travel other than by car (I do have valid travel credentials — Canada is but a half day drive), but with a trip to Greater LA always in the back of my mind. I could park Sydney with friends and fly, maybe staying with public transportation on the other end (not the first time).

Diagrams

Achieving Escape Velocity

This was a period for doing curriculum development around Quadray Coordinates especially, as that meme had caught on and implementations were spreading, from my angle both inside, and outside, the scope of our QuadCraft project. 

QuadCraft had the tagline "A World Beyond MineCraft" or something like that, connoting our escape from rigidly rectilinear thinking. The TEXIT campaign (with variations) goes under this same heading.

Cloud Adventures

I filed a schedule C this year. If you’re new to the IRS tax code, this means I’m running a business, a teaching business in my case, a for profit, meaning I have to keep track of losses (expenses), otherwise how do we see if there’s a profit or not. You can take in a big amount, but what if you pass it all through, and then some, to subcontractors or PR folks of whatever variety? Stuff like that.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, electronic banking simplifies matters, as we no longer rely on a lot of hand-kept records, taught as part of check book 101 in the heyday of paper banking. Now you just download the PDFs or, better CSV files from your pay point (some transactions server, like PayPal), meaning whatever account (I just set up Swipe like a few days back) and there you’ve got all your transactions for the year. 

At this point, many would import the CSV into a spreadsheet, much the same as what I use: a Python DataFrame from pandas.

Anyway, to “cut to the chase” (I should ask Perplexity where that idiom comes from) I tallied up cloud expenses for keeping data in the cloud, and part of my harvesting that data involved using said cloud, at which point I realized my banking files where only in the cloud and I’d need to mirror them back to the local drive, not an immediate process. I was separated from my own banking files by a time delay and mucho geographic distance. Kinda dumb. How do I make sure I have a local copy?

Well, one thing led to another and I know have a 17.5 gigabyte file downloaded to Old Mac, the youngest of my Macs. I’m awaiting a next beefy box, able to run Blender no problem, a focus of Spring Term. However it’s not super important that I be buff with Blender as I’m surfing the ripple effects of having already done the necessary renderings starting in Visual FoxPro times, before shifting the more long term rails (investments) in Python.

An issue is I don’t have 17.5 gig to spare in Old Mac’s long term storage, so the target device of this download is actually an inserted memory stick (thumb drive) connected to Old Mac through its USB port (not USB-C, the older shape).

Big footprints in the cloud (and yes “big” is relative) can’t be shifted around willy-nilly like potato chips (lightweight matter), kinda like some forms of “money” (investments), which can’t always be liquid either. 

The cloud service in question took some days rolling up a zip file with all my stuff in it (the 17.5 gigabyte file I was talking about). Clearly my request went to a queue and needed to wait its turn. I’m not the only one wanting to back up what’s in the cloud with something more local to the scene in question. Cloud services might get cut off for various reasons having to do with internet connectivity.

One may curse and shout about the delay involved (that wasn’t me, I’m just projecting) but in “tree world” (talking about real physical trees) we don’t expect to transplant a particular specimen at the drop of a hat.

Deep excavation and even a crane may be required. The process could take not just days, but a week or two (I’m not the expert — I bet they even use helicopters on occasion). 

Laws of physics (they call ‘em laws) have relevance in engineering. It’s not all about “vendor lock in” and making money.  It’s about figuring out a business plan that doesn’t require “leaps of faith” of the kind the underlying physics simply won’t allow. One may express cynicism about a human design, but how is one “cynical” about Jupiter (for example) or even Saturn with the stupid hexagon? Calling Saturn’s hexagon “stupid” just sounds stupid, right?

It’s not a human-devised system all the way down, let’s remember. Which isn’t saying anything crazy. We’re just remembering humans are johnny-come-latelies to this picture, and aren’t exempt or miraculously excepted from following (“obeying”) those generalized principles (“laws”).

Martian Math

The Martian Math moniker is multi-layered. In the full blown science fiction tale I tell, Earthling kids are being trained in ET math, but the ETs are here, not on Mars, and they want to learn from us about hydroelectric dams, whereas Earthlings have a lot to learn from them, so a 2-way street is posited. Let's build a dam together; a jumping off point into electromagnetics topics.

Synergetics is more coming from the ETs than from the Earthlings; ergo Synergetics seems alien, strange, weird (pedagogical positives when managed properly). The Earthling kids in our Martian Math class also learn how the ET kids learn Earthling math. TetraBook goes here. Tested at Reed College and other places around town c/o Saturday Academy.

And once we’re in the mood (mode) for science fiction: War of the Worlds and the Orson Welles reading thereof are important, as a fork to both H.G. Wells and his non-fiction (world between wars) as well as fiction (Time Machine), and to Orson Welles going forward into Film Studies (Media Studies). That War of the Worlds anticipates the virus (as yet unknown) in some dimensions (see web pages) is a jumping off point into biology, virology, crystallography, STEM in general.

Finally, Martian Math may be contextualized in its Silicon Forest context as one of four maths: Casino, Supermarket, Martian, Neolithic. The idea here is Martian is forward-facing futuristic (all the future), Neolithic faces back in the direction of prehistory (all the past), Casino covers risk and chance, probability and Supermarket is all about logistics, commerce and distribution. 

Martian - Neolithic is a time arc, whereas every age, every time slice (every now), has to compute in terms of possibilities, probabilities, and operate logistically using inventory (the BE DO HAVE of GST).

However it’s all supposed to stay flexible and optional. There’s no one right way, but when I do it I experiment and expand in specific directions, as would anyone.

Looking Ahead

The above was a quick sketch I then shared on Telegram in a faculty lounge context, while at the same time adding a record to Photostream; my usual workflow. The meme is an old one in these journals and elsewhere: General Systems Theory as competition for Economics as conventionally imparted. Once you change Econ enough, it starts to look a lot like GST, so lets agree these labels, as in what they mean, is malleable.

In GST, we’re not bound by some theory that humans are somehow the source of all economic value, as in value added, as if nature’s bounty were somehow off the books or unaccounted for. Likewise we value free software and its role as a serious good, hacked on by a few, of benefit to a few million or more.

What I expect some teachers will do is similar to what I do: mix in a lot of David Graeber’s stuff, such as Debt: the First 5000 Years.

A lot of explorers (wanderers by choice) come to our corner because they are looking for geopolitics, some flavor of language game that’s world focused. Fuller was known for his global map and his geoscopes, in addition to the spheres and domes, which were of course related. The corporate schools never wanted to touch the stuff, and so here we are.

As a boomer… except there seems to be some movement to carve out a Generation Jones, not saying I get it, as if the other generational boundaries weren’t likewise blurry? (how much is superstition vs sound anthropology?) …in any case, atop my being a Joneser, I’m one of those “third culture” expat types by upbringing, even if I’m back in the homeland by now (and have been for decades)… As a boomer I’m atypical in having picked up the GST banner, which most my cronies here left to languish (ditto Cybernetics).

You’ll find David Graeber in the School of Tomorrow orientation materials on GitHub, in case you’re still looking for a place to get started.