🔥 This week's featured article
Reuleaux Triangle
**warning Once you learn about the Reuleaux Triangle you may start to see it everwhere! In buildings, in coffee tables, in kids playground equipment, in beer logos... Reuleaux Rules Our World!** Ever wanted to drill a square-hole? Is it possible to build a drillbit that would p…
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Featured 2021-02-19
Whistle Blowing
There Are No Official Channels for Whistle Blowers. I'm not a whistle blower, and I never intend to become one. But I want to state something very obvious about the nature of whistle blowing. This is a whistle. When you blow into it, sound is blasted in every direction. It isn…
Featured 2021-02-12
What Happened in 'Something Happened'
"Something Happened" is Joseph Heller's second book. His first book was "Catch 22" which has often been called the greatest book of the 20th Century, while "Something Happened" is a much less likeable book, a thoroughly unenjoyable book, a well-crafted work of art, hard to put do…
Featured 2021-02-05
Phantom Time Hypothesis
Error and falsification have radically distorted the {official|historical|"official"} record. The most difficult challenge to historians lies in trusting trust, or trusting 'trust', or 'trusting' trust, or 'trusting' 'trust'. Consider the incontrovertible put forward here: Ther…
Featured 2021-01-28
How To Become A Programmer
Being able to understand software, able to read, modify it, create it and share it, is a very powerful skill to have in the age we live in. But where do you get this skill? Does it seem like some people "just get it" and others feel hopeless and incapable of ever "getting it"? …
Featured 2021-01-20
Pigpen Cipher
Also known as: The Freemason's Cipher. A substitution cipher that has particularly distinctive looking characters. The encryption/decryption key can be quickly re-created by hand, once you know the basic idea. Give anyone twenty seconds with a pencil and paper, and they can r…
Featured 2021-01-13
Steganography
Steganography is about *smuggling* information. It is the process of hiding one message inside another in such a way that a person finding the outer message will not realise that a second message is hidden within. Consider a prisoner who needs to receive a secret message. They k…
Featured 2021-01-05
For a successful life
The floating world was originally a Buddhist idiom It saw all of human existence as a foamy illusion and a fraud to be outgrown. With typical irreverance the townspeople took the term embraced it transformed it and turned it into a glowing paean to the passing plea…
Featured 2020-12-29
Caesar Cipher
The simplest cipher (and one of the oldest) the Caesar shift is named after Julius Caesar. The month of July is named after Julius, and he also has his own salad, his own method of having been delivered as a baby (which makes no sense as his mother and the surgeons deserve credi…
Featured 2020-12-22
How to get shit done
- Make a fucking list. - Do the shit on the list. - Set a fucking deadline. - Meet the fucking deadline. - Don't fuck around. My speaking tour starts in April.…
Featured 2020-12-15
Ideas for the Universal GameDev Challenge
"Universal" ran a competition, hosted by Unity, to see who could come up with an original idea for a computer game based on one of these iconic stories: - Battlestar Galactica (2004 tv series) - Voltron The Legendary Defender (2016 tv series) - Back to the Future film trilogy - J…
Featured 2020-12-08
Story Layers
I've worked out a proper grand unified theory of story telling, and it's much simpler than all the old theories. The Search for the Grand Unified Theory of Story Telling Some people analyze stories and say things like: There's a plot, and there's a story. The plot is just what…
Featured 2020-11-30
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
"Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" is the major school of thought for assisting with Mental Health and Fitness in the world today. It arose out of the work of Aaron T Beck and, in terms of ancient philosophy it has some connection to the Stoics. The block-buster mega hit New York T…
Featured 2020-11-23
Random Dungeon Generators
You know what they say. When you're tired of procedurally generated dungeons, you're tired of life. Beginning with the game 'Rogue' in 1980, there is a long tradition of games which automatically generate their levels, in real-time, as the player enters each level. *Rogue* set t…
Featured 2020-11-15
Practical things you can do for the environment
This page is for those who already believe in climate change and want to find practical things to do about it. (In other words, it's written for me, and hopefully for you too!) The list is broken into four parts: - energy - waste - other - education energy - install solar pa…
Featured 2020-11-08
Unexpected Books
Some oddities you don't find on just any bookshelf. If you take a wrong turn in L-space, you may stumble upon these. - The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge - Principia Discordia - Codex Seraphinianus - The Magic Unfinished Spellbook (that could fly) - Tobin's Spirit Gu…
Featured 2020-11-01
Curiosity
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. —Albert Einstein Benefits of Curiosity The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny…' —Isaac Asimov If some rich investor back in the day wa…
Featured 2020-10-23
Best of Wikipedia
This article might not look like much. But it's a list of what I've found to be some of the most interesting little rabbit holes to go down. From these entry points you can explore all sorts of weird and wonderful things that our strange species has seen or done on or off this w…
Featured 2020-10-15
Dilemma
Ethics Man Did What Had To Be Done —Darkside A dilemma (Di - Lemma, meaning "two" lemmas) is a choice between two lemmas. Which lemma do you prefer? This lemma or that lemma? To understand dilemma then, we have to understand "lemma." What precisely is a lemma? It's not quite …
Featured 2020-10-07
Consider Supporting
Some online people or purposes I urge you to consider supporting People with Creative or Interesting ideas - Nicky Case - Vi Hart - mathigon - Gwern Branwen - Dani Donovan - ADHD Alien Vital Services - the internet archive - wikipedia - EFF - ACLU - open library (from internet …
Featured 2020-09-30
7 Bridges of Königsberg
*Mathematicians: taking all the fun out of an evening stroll in Königsberg since 1735.* Only five of the famous seven bridges of Königsberg remain today. There was a traditional puzzle, in the town of Königsberg, to try and walk around the town in such a way that you crossed ea…
Featured 2020-09-15
Hyperapophenia
Nonsense is nonsense. But the study of nonsense? That is a science. —Saul Lieberman Apophenia is when the human mind finds meaning in the meaningless. A specific well-known special case of apophenia is pareidolia: the seeing of human faces in things which do not contain human f…
Featured 2020-09-07
Protective Factors for Mental Health
I am not a professional at this, but I just wanted to list and discuss some well known protective factors for mental health. Answer this quick questionnaire: - Did you get a good night's sleep last night? - Do you see your friends often enough? - Do you have any enjoyable hobbi…
Featured 2020-08-31
Kids Coding
There's a wide range of apps and websites to help kids get into coding. The simplest apps all used a block-based approach, where you build a program by dragging and dropping blocks that snap together. Each block is an instruction. Games will start with very instructions available…
Featured 2020-08-24
Blackstar
I can't explain how much I love this song, and I definitely can't explain why. There's a mystique and a power and something just so very odd about it. I feel like I enter a trance on every listen. Meanwhile, fans turned this album into a mystical treasure hunt. It's a code to be…
Featured 2020-08-17
A Simple Puzzle
A group of Explorers are traversing a system of Caves when they find a Treasure. In accordance with an agreement that they signed before entering the cave, the Treasure must be divided fairly between them, in such a way that they are each satisfied that they will derive equivalen…
Featured 2020-08-09
Try Programming Languages in Your Browser
To begin programming, you can try this article: How to become a programmer There are online tutorials for just about every language, and you can see many of them in this list: Try .net (C#, F#, VB.net) Try Babylon.js Try C# Try CSS: Flexbox Try CSS: FlexBox Froggy 🔥 Try CSS: Gri…
Featured 2020-08-02
Red String
What is the connection between these three things? - A Chinese legend of an invisible cord tied around the ankle that connects those who are destined to meet. - Kabbalist belief that a thin scrap of woolen thread can be worn to ward off misfortune brought about by the evil eye. -…
Featured 2020-07-25
Dependency Graph For Knowledge
*Because everyone has a theory about the broken state of education* Can the knowledge or skills in a field be broken down into discrete atoms of knowledge? If so, can we: - Learn those atoms of knowledge (or skills) - Assess our current abilities in those atoms - Assign depende…
Featured 2020-07-17
Feminism
These are excellent articles or resources that have taught me some things about the world: You Should've Asked The Bechdel Test Interrupt Me One More Time Aubrey Hirsch: Medicine's Women Problem Gemma Hartley: Women Aren't Nags—We're Just Fed Up Here's a quote or image from each …
Featured 2020-07-10
FlowSnake
The flowsnake, also known as the 'Peano-Gosper' curve is a rather dashing space-filling curve. There is also a demonstration of it on the space-filling curves page. The following implementation uses 'mutual recursion' - i.e. two methods that call each other. The flowsnake has the…
Featured 2020-07-03
About
This site is written by Leon Bambrick (leodo not show thisnbamdo not show thisbrickdo not show this@gdo not show thismail.com). It aims to be a complete, timeless, annotated repository of things I find sort of interesting. The original blog post launching the wiki is here. There…
Featured 2020-06-25
Writing Rules
Rules for writers, from writers. One of the first blog posts I wrote on secretGeek was "How to write a novel". This was an entirely tongue in cheek article with advice on what *not* to do. A lot of people read it, and it was linked from Wikipedia for a while. But eventually thei…
Featured 2020-06-18
Procedural Content Generation
From the {{bubbling|broiling} lava of a {monster|dragon|beast}'s lair|mossy growth on a {discarded|dishevelled|cracked} stone idol|{scaly|flaking} {orange |}rust on the {iron |}bars of a prison|rough-hewn stone-floor of a {|despot's }{castle|dungeon}}, to the {ancient |weathered …
Featured 2020-06-11
Sierpinski Triangle
Anything that's covered here is almost definitely covered in a very well known webpage, The Sierspinski Triangle Page to End Most Sierspinski Triangle Pages but regardless, I must press on. Let's draw a triangle. to triangle :length fd :length lt 120 fd :length lt 120 f…
Featured 2020-06-04
Conway's Game of Life
The so-called 'Game of Life' (or simply 'Life' as it is known by aficionados) is not the popular board game from the 1980's, but rather a simple set of rules that gives rise to a lot of curious and fascinating behaviour. ↑ Not this one, this one! ↓ The Game of Life is 'played' …
Featured 2020-05-28
Barbarian (AMSTRAD 1987)
There are several games you can play on your AMSTRAD CPC (emulator) that have the title "Barbarian." But only one of these games is the brilliant game to end all games, the correct and wonderful "BARBARIAN" from my childhood. The "correct" version looks like this: The "correct" …
Featured 2020-05-21
Characters in Fiction
Writing a book and struggling to make either a good book or powerful characters? I have original and useful ideas. Possibly wrong, but definitely helpful. What are characters for? In the book "How to Write a Damn Good Novel", James Frey says: Characters are to a novelist what lum…
Featured 2020-05-14
Unbounded Recursion
Please see Unbounded Recursion (Alternatively see Recursion where you can learn about applying bounds to your recursion, or detecting cycles in referential data structures) there is no general method to determine whether a given program will ever halt or will run forever; this is…
Featured 2020-05-06
Joke Genious
The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. —Famous Smart Alec, Samuel Clemens Analyzing a joke is like dissecting a frog, in the end they both die. —Woody Allen I used to believe that jokes stopped being funny when they were analyzed. But since becoming a father I …
Featured 2020-04-28
Paradox
I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member. —Groucho Marx What is a paradox? That of course depends on what you mean by "is". Some paradoxes are statements that are self-contradictory. Some paradoxes are statements that are simultaneously true and untrue.…
Featured 2020-04-20
Compound Bow
Imagine you are sent back in time, to Western Europe during the "Middle Ages". You might think: with my modern knowledge, I will be able to invent marvelous things that make me the most rich, wise and powerful person around! But what would you actually "invent"? Most things that …
Featured 2020-04-13
Creating a book
This article deals with writing, editing, proofreading, and self-publishing a book, in a variety of forms. Writing itself Before you can publish it you have to write it. There are two ways you can do this: write it yourself or have it ghostwritten by someone else. Generally, writ…
Featured 2020-04-05
Book Club
Here's the list of books from my bookclub. If you're interested in joining, please be aware that membership is highly restricted, and you must be either a brother of mine, or a brother of a brother of mine. Rules are that the books must be critically acclaimed Sci-Fi, from recent…
Featured 2020-03-28
Bronze Orange Bug Stains
The "Bronze Orange Bug" is a large stink bug which is green when smaller, orange when juvenile, and dark brown when fully mature. At all stages of its development it is pure evil in concentrated form and must die a swift and painful death. It flourishes on citrus plants, particul…
Featured 2020-03-20
Sierpinski Carpet
Sierpinski didn't just mess around with triangles, he also wrote 50 books (all of them flip-books of Sierpinski triangles, I assume), created a curve and finally — the highlight of his storied career — he released this: his Sierpinski Signature Edition Carpet design. A short warn…
Featured 2020-03-13
Time Receiver
A time-transmitter is usually bundled with a time-receiver, but time-receivers are so cheap that they are usually standalone units without a time-transmitter. The best place to locate a... wait a second. I really want to jump into the nitty-gritty about time devices, but I guess…