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Miscellany
Jul. 12th, 2008 01:32 pm1. The department has bought me a copy of The Geometer's Sketchpad. I spent a couple of hours playing around with it yesterday; I'm starting to work out what I need to teach it to do next. Mathematica is still my program of choice for computation, either symbolic or numerical, but its graphics capabilities pale next to GSP's, in convenience and flexibility. Among other things, GSP provides for dynamic constructions, so that you can make a construction and then move the base points around and immediately see the effects. This is going to be fun.
2. I just finished reading William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land. It's long and ponderous. The language is as archaic as E. R. Eddison's (although, where Eddison achieved this by word-choice, Hodgson does it syntactically). There are Lots Of Capital Letters. ("The Great Redoubt". "The Watcher In The North-West". "The Place Where The Silent Ones Kill".) Also, Hodgson's view of male-female relationships is rather repellent. Still, as advertised, Hodgson's prose is vivid; the scene in which the two main characters huddle under a bush while the last refugees from the Lesser Redoubt are being hunted down is especially memorable. I don't regret reading it.
3. I see that the Sci-Fi Channel is re-airing "Joan of Arcadia" on Fridays; the pilot was on last night. I'd forgotten how good it was - how well the personalities and interactions of the central characters were laid out. (I'm thinking especially of the final scene with Joan and her father, the banter between Joan and Kevin, and Helen's encounter with the priest.) I have most of the series on tape, but I think I'd like to get the DVDs.
4. Steve Sigur died a few days ago. He was, before his illness, one of the leading lights of the Hyacinthos mailing list, which is devoted to modern Euclidean geometry, and he was scheduled to give a talk at MathFest 2008. I was looking forward to meeting him. Apparently he (and his collaborator) did finish writing The Triangle Book, so it should appear in the not-too-distant future. That's small consolation, but it's what we've got.
2. I just finished reading William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land. It's long and ponderous. The language is as archaic as E. R. Eddison's (although, where Eddison achieved this by word-choice, Hodgson does it syntactically). There are Lots Of Capital Letters. ("The Great Redoubt". "The Watcher In The North-West". "The Place Where The Silent Ones Kill".) Also, Hodgson's view of male-female relationships is rather repellent. Still, as advertised, Hodgson's prose is vivid; the scene in which the two main characters huddle under a bush while the last refugees from the Lesser Redoubt are being hunted down is especially memorable. I don't regret reading it.
3. I see that the Sci-Fi Channel is re-airing "Joan of Arcadia" on Fridays; the pilot was on last night. I'd forgotten how good it was - how well the personalities and interactions of the central characters were laid out. (I'm thinking especially of the final scene with Joan and her father, the banter between Joan and Kevin, and Helen's encounter with the priest.) I have most of the series on tape, but I think I'd like to get the DVDs.
4. Steve Sigur died a few days ago. He was, before his illness, one of the leading lights of the Hyacinthos mailing list, which is devoted to modern Euclidean geometry, and he was scheduled to give a talk at MathFest 2008. I was looking forward to meeting him. Apparently he (and his collaborator) did finish writing The Triangle Book, so it should appear in the not-too-distant future. That's small consolation, but it's what we've got.
