Recently a historian friend of mine put some data on Facebook about Henry VIII of England and his wives. It showed how old the women were when they married him, how old when they died and how old he was when he married them. It provoked a reaction in me that has happened before with … Continue reading The lives and marriages of Henry VIII and his wives
Category: Visualisation
Writing numbers as words
This article is about how numbers are written as words in various languages. It also has a tiny bit about functions, specifically fixed points of functions, which I use to describe how numbers work in the different languages. I speak only one of the languages below as a native, so I've probably made lots of … Continue reading Writing numbers as words
Nim
Nim is a simple game for two people. In this article I will describe it in case you don't know it (or don't know this version of it), and then describe how I've modelled it in a C# program and what I learned about the game as a result. The game There is a simple … Continue reading Nim
Analysing white noise sounds from nature
The sound of rain, a breeze through trees, water in a stream and waves on a shore are probably familiar to you. They’re different but similar – they all contain white noise and don’t sound like e.g. a guitar, but they also don’t sound the same. In this article I try to analyse some recordings of … Continue reading Analysing white noise sounds from nature
The world’s greatest music?
I sometimes listen to the UK radio station Classic FM. Its strapline is “The world’s greatest music”. Leaving aside the difficulty of defining what great music is, let alone the greatest, I was curious as to the “world” bit. I scraped the playlist for one day, did some gentle analysis on it and the charts that … Continue reading The world’s greatest music?
Modelling a river lock
In this article I will model a lock on a river or canal. As well as going into the specifics of the model, I’ll touch on more general topics about modelling. These are things like diagrams to represent the model, tools, models as conversation starters, iterating models etc. A lock has a model that is … Continue reading Modelling a river lock
Visualising sauces in French cuisine
Classic French cuisine, as defined by e.g. Escoffier, has a set of base sauces such as velouté from which other sauces like normande can be derived. This article is an attempt at visualising the sauces and the relationship between them. The motivation behind it is someone I know who is studying catering, and as part … Continue reading Visualising sauces in French cuisine
The seven (or four) ages of man
This article is mostly about visualising some data from the 15th and 16th centuries, about how someone's lifespan can be divided up into stages. It happened because my friend Tamsin Lewis (a historical music expert) pointed me at a tweet by Dr Alun Withey (a history lecturer). The tweet had a photo of some lovely … Continue reading The seven (or four) ages of man
Modularisation – cohesion at many levels
This article builds on the previous article, so if you are new to the terms coupling and cohesion as they apply to software, please look at that first. In this article I’m going to look at cohesion as it applies to methods (or functions, if that’s what you call such things). Specifically, I’m going to … Continue reading Modularisation – cohesion at many levels
Modularisation – coupling and cohesion
This is related to the second of the things requested by Jesper, which was encapsulation. Encapsulation is a tool to use when designing software. It’s a bit abstract, and I don’t think people always agree on what it means. To me, encapsulation is part of the bigger term modularisation, which doesn’t immediately help because it’s … Continue reading Modularisation – coupling and cohesion
Random Tech Thoughts 