Acetio | Blogma

It's a perpetual, one-sided comic strip. Video and more info here

Fractals were cool 20 to 30 years ago. 3d fractals have been cool for just a few years. Animated 3d fractals are cool now.

Surface detail from subBlue on Vimeo.

More (static) 3d fractal images (in color)

I actually bought Stephan Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" when it came out. It now sits, all five and a half pounds of it, right next to Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid". They look impressive together, but it's a little embarrassing to have a whole shelf devoted to books I once meant to finish but long ago stopped pretending that I ever would.

Wolfram's book was a big deal when it came out in 2002 or so and I remember being excited by some of the ideas, although I'm not sure all the hype is/was warranted. One problem I had was that it wasn't clear enough what the practical applications could be. But Stephen has been busy and one of many sites devoted to the theories in the book is tones.wolfram.com which uses algorithms to generate music. It's a comprehensive tool and it's possible to get actually good music from it. Play around for a few minutes and you'll get some crud, some tolerable pieces, and one or two impressive little songs.

from Mike C.

Whoever came up with 'Roy G. Biv' as a memory aid for remembering color names had to scratch for vowels.

Red, Green, and Blue are necessary, of course as those are the three colors our eyes are 'tuned' to perceive, with all other colors being combinations of these primaries.

Yellow is a good addition, since although it isn't a true primary, it is the brightest color we perceive since both red- and green-sensitive retina in our eyes are stimulated by it, making it appear nearly twice as bright as red or green alone.

For eons, people have enjoyed mapping the musical scale to the color spectrum.

Despite knowing that music is waves in air and light is waves in electromagnetic fields, I decided to do a little research and math.

The color spectrum ranges from 384 to 769THz (terahertz)


By repeatedly doubling a note (say A, at 440Hz) we can find where it would actually fall in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Ada Babbage: Abba: Aba Cadaba

Heinrich Schenker had some interesting theories of music. One, I believe, was that every euphonious melody begins on the 3rd or 5th and ends on the root.
If you find a melody that does not fit this pattern, by adding or removing notes so that the melody does fit will actually 'fix' the melody and make it sound better.

Week 4

Electronic Music that tries, and fails

15-year old invents ultrasound mosquito larvacide device