The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

I learned how to do fake calligraphy this week. Never mind that I already know how to do real calligraphy, you can do the fakey shit with any old pen.

You just write it in regular script and then go back and widen the downstrokes. :fap:

Attachment 10461

You also gotta make the original script wide enough, which I alternated between remembering and forgetting to do, which is why the keming is all over the place.

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

FANCY! :yup:

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Made me look it up:

Fuck yeah Keming!

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Okay, maybe not every week.

I was down the rabbit hole on youtube the other morning and I ran into this one:

Finding the Edges (Sobel Operator) - Computerphile - YouTube

and I got nostalgic for computer vision, so I banged out an edge detector in python real quick using the methods from the video:

Attachment 10878

I still want to do the part where you color the edges to show the orientation, but the parts after that are less pretty and therefore less interesting to me so I probably won't bother.

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Did you see my vintage plotter refurbishment thread? You can see there I used a variant of Sobel to find edges (in a photo of Zsa Zsa) turned them into HPGL plot commands and plotted them out. The actual drawing begins about one minute in - up to there it's just getting the plotter set up.
I've since done some work on trying to work out which colour pens to use to draw the outlines of different shapes - but I got sidetracked with other projects. I need to get back to that.

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

:heartattack:

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

I saw the plotter thread but somehow i missed the Zsa Zsa post. :squeezle:

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Relevant smilie:

Re: The Learn Something Every YEAR Contest
 

I thought about putting this in petty accomplishments, but sometimes I think about this thrad and how it exists to make it look like I only learned 2 things in the last 2 years, so ... BAMP!

:bump:

I learned to solve a Rubik's Cube! :propeller:

I don't remember exactly how long ago I started, but I could do it when I was at my friend's house for New Years, so I must have learned it last year sometime. I took my cube with me, and her kids had a couple cubes as well, so anytime I saw one laying around unsolved, I would solve it, and whenever they saw a solved one laying around, they would scramble it. Who knew kids were good for something?

Since that time, I have learned how to do the first 2 layers at the same time, intuitive-F2L-style, but I still have to use beginner methods to solve the last layer, so I haven't bothered to start timing myself. But I am constantly playing with it, and getting better at recognizing the different states and discovering my own shortcuts, so it's been a real slow and satisfying burn to get to where I am now, and I still have tons of room to improve.

As far as fidget devices go, it is endlessly entertaining. If I just need to fidget, I can flip and twist and turn and scramble that shit all day. Then if I need to focus my mind a little bit more, fuckin solve that bitch. It only takes a minute or two (I guess).

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

See the opening post in this thread I've linked the photo from that thread below, but my twisty puzzle collection has grown a fair bit over the almost nine years since I posted that. :blush:

http://www.freethought-forum.com/for...9&d=1291722594

I'll be a bit rusty at solving some of the more complex ones now and would have to swot up on them, but I've been doing the basic 3x3x3 cube for so many years that I don't expect to ever forget how to solve it (though of course I lose speed when I've not practised recently).

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

It has been awhile since I solved a cube. I don't think I could do it easily now. I should practice again. I can't let Ensign Steve beat me. :nope:

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

I am expecting delivery today of several cubes, specifically a faster 3x3, a 2x2, a pyramid-shaped one, and a 12(?)-sided one with pentagonal faces. I fear fantasize that I am looking into my future in that photo.

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Oh oh! I can solve the Pepsi can!

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Somewhere I have one of the early (1979 or 1980) David Singmaster books (more of a magazine really) on the cube. It's probably in a box with cubes of various dimensions.

Couldn't find it but I did find this:

https://i.imgur.com/P6Chh5e.jpg?1

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Oh, me too. :burp:

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Those plastic Pepsi can sliding puzzles are selling as 'vintage' now on eBay and people are asking for fifty dollars or so for ones that are in good condition. :spend:

My original Nintendo Ten Billion Barrel is also becoming valuable now. Mine still has the original plastic case it came in. And after owning it for a few years I eventually figured out how to solve it by writing a C program on the Commodore Amiga to search for sequences that would move just three or so balls around without disturbing the others - that would have been around 1989. :oldman:

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Nintendo? I don't recall that. Maybe the one I have (may still have) was a knock-off.

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

I'm in a dispute with Banggood who sent me two different items when I ordered two of the same one - they wanted me to photograph the items, the bags they came in, shipping labels, ... :sisyphus:

So I photographed the Nintendo barrel and its container during the same photo session. :yup: Did you find yours and/or your other cubes yet?

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Pic 5 suggests your barrel has some electronics. Is that right? Mine was purely mechanical.

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

I'm pretty sure it's in one of these places:
- a box in the spare room here that I have not unpacked yet
- a box in a storage unit containing things I have not retrieved since moving back from South Africa
- a box at my parents' house, if I didn't take it to my London flat or my Bath flat or to South Africa

It's possible my collection of cube paraphernalia is distributed across all categories.

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Those are the two items Banggood sent me. They still seem to think that both those items are the same - perhaps they are and I'm just hallucinating?
:twilightzone:

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

I mostly learned how to solve the dodecacube this weekend. I can consistently get it to where there are 3 or 4 pieces unsolved (3 if I need to cycle them, 4 if I need to swap 2 pairs).

Attachment 10993

I will learn those moves eventually, but in the meantime I'm just practicing the rest of the solve. One out of 5-ish times those pieces end up in the correct order by accident anyway, so no problems! :lol:

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Following the abrupt and senseless death of my ancient iphone, I am learning to use android. It is much more functional (Files that can move! SD card! Replacable battery!) but my apple-coddled brain thinks the UI needs work.

Specifically, many things cleverly disguised as buttons and switches in Android 9 aren't actually buttons and switches. An incomplete list:

• Sometimes they're dropdowns. To change your notification sound, try turning it off. It may drop down instead.
• The big green candylike answer-phone button does not answer the phone. You must swipe it.

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

Android is all about non-standardisation. I mean customisability, that's the word.

And every vendor feels the need to put their own spin on it. So some of them fix UI issues in stock Android ... most of them make it significant worse.

Part of it is the whole trend towards removing UI cues, like borders and distinguishable backgrounds. What you think is a standalone button might in fact be a slider button with the slider background the same colour as the page background (white usually). (I'm happy to blame Apple for starting this, even if I'm wrong.)

But that big green phone button ... you're right.

Although sometimes, it decides what's on screen can't be hidden so you get a small window at the top about the incoming call. There, the green button really is a button and you have to press it not slide it.

Re: The Learn Something Every Week Contest
 

My condolences.