%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |    Not for the faint of art. |
|
Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning Best Blog in the 2021 edition of [Link To Item #quills] !](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quill_Award-1375927_6.gif) ![Merit Badge in Quill Award 2
[Click For More Info]
2022 Quill Award - Best Blog - [Link To Item #1196512] . Congratulations!!!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quill_Award_2-1375927_6.gif) ![Merit Badge in 30DBC Winner
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning the Jan. 2019 [Link To Item #30dbc] !!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-30DBC_Winner-2064535_14.gif) ![Merit Badge in Blogging
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning an honorable mention for Best Blog at the 2018 Quill Awards for [Link To Item #1196512] . *^*Smile*^* This award was sponsored by the blogging consortium including [Link To Item #30dbc] , [Link To Item #blogcity] , [Link To Item #bcof] and [Link To Item #1953629] . For more details, see [Link To Item #quills] .](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/type-Blogging-2180.gif) ![Merit Badge in Highly Recommended
[Click For More Info]
I highly recommend your blog.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/Kudos-Highly_Recommended.gif) ![Merit Badge in Opinion
[Click For More Info]
For diving into the prompts for Journalistic Intentions- thanks for joining the fun!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/genre-Opinion-1150.gif) ![Merit Badge in High Five
[Click For More Info]
For your inventive entries in [Link To Item #2213121] ! Thanks for the great read!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/Kudos-High_Five.gif) ![Merit Badge in Enlightening
[Click For More Info]
For winning 3rd Place in [Link To Item #2213121] . Congratulations!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/general-Enlightening.gif) ![Merit Badge in Quarks Bar
[Click For More Info]
For your awesome Klingon Bloodwine recipe from [Link to Book Entry #1016079] that deserves to be on the topmost shelf at Quark's.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quarks_Bar-2046190_12.gif)       |
Here's another one for "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]Running Stitches My running days are long behind me. I'm a safe bet to take on a hike now, because of bears. If you encounter a bear, you don't need to run faster than the bear; you just need to run faster than your hiking buddy. This is, of course, one reason I avoid going *shudder* outside. Not that I was ever great at running, anyway. I used to have some stamina, at least, but speed? Forget it. Short legs and lack of competitive instinct. I might have been okay at running a marathon, though I'd never have finished first, unless I was the only one running it. Those times when I did try to run fast, for whatever reason, it never failed that I developed a stitch in my side. I've never been really clear about why they call that particular stabbing pain a "stitch." It's a pang, a twinge, a spasm. The only other time I can think of when "stitch" is related to one's body is when there's a cut deep enough that they sew the edges of the wound together with stitches. As I have never had those kind of stitches, except in my eyeball, I can't compare the pain. Eyeball stitches are no fun, though. I suspect the word is used for running-related pain because the Germanic root means something like sting, or prick. Not that kind of prick; the kind a needle does. For a long time, smart people who study these things weren't sure what caused a running stitch. Apparently, these days, it's technically called an exercise-related transient abdominal pain (ETAP). I like to think they were trying to make a pun, because the French word for step is étape. In any case, that link attempts to explain its cause, though apparently, there's still some debate on the topic. I say its cause is exercise. You can avoid it by not exercising.Because English is weird, "running stitch" also describes the most basic embroidery technique, but I don't know much about that, so I chose to rag on exercise instead. |
| I'm not going to have too many comments on the article I'm sharing today. It's more for informational purposes; these days, everyone is a photographer, and while phone cameras do a hell of a lot of the work for you (more than most people can appreciate), there are still things anyone can do to improve their picture-taking ability. How to take better photos Anyone can learn the principles that are essential to capturing quality images. Follow these tips and see the difference Before the era of social networking sites, creating and sharing photographs was more deliberate and less instantaneous, which made picture-taking feel special. Families cherished the physical print – a link to the past with sentimental value – and kept their precious memories in albums, rarely showing them outside the family. Today, people commonly take photos not only to serve as memory cues but to tell others who they are, what they care about, and how they feel. One might be tempted to think because I learned photography and even made a bit of money from it before digital cameras were a thing, that I'd have things to say about how kids these days have it too easy, that photography used to mean something, dammit, and that I'd yearn for the good old days of film and the techniques involved in developing it. While I'm glad I got that experience, I'm also something of a technophile. Digital cameras can be amazing, and they've democratized the act of recording images for posterity. In this Guide, I will provide some photographic principles and specific tips for casual, amateur and aspiring photographers on how to take better photos. By ‘better photos’, I mean appealing images that evoke emotions in the viewer and capture the essence of a subject or scene (and that resonate with how our brains make sense of the world). I find that no matter how good you are, or think you are, at something, learning more about it, even some of the so-called basics, can help. Even us engineers were expected to keep learning throughout our careers. So. Like I said. I have no real comments on the article; I think it's full of good information, whether you're using your smartphone as a casual snapshot-taking device, or have invested inspent money on a fancy DSLR (it's only an "investment" if you expect to make money from it). Everyone's a photographer now, but that doesn't mean they're all good at it. |
| I saved this one a few months ago, long enough so that I completely forgot, by now, what I thought I might say about this Lifehacker article. Did I save it to rag on it, or to agree with it? Let's find out. Avoid These 'Money-Saving' Habits That Don't Actually Save You Money Not all frugal habits will improve your bottom line. One stereotype imposed upon my people is that we're all penny-pinching misers. When I was a kid, other kids would toss pennies down the school hallway and taunt me for it, because kids suck (I sucked, too). I picked up the pennies anyway; by the time the kids were old enough to keep their prejudices to themselves, I'd saved up enough for a pack of gum. There's a similar stereotype for the Scots, but for some reason, with them it's called thrift and seen as a positive value. My point being only that despite all stereotypes, there's a particular brand of US consumer, usually not of either of those ancestries, who really do pinch pennies; if a widget costs $20.99 nearby and $20.98 somewhere across town, they'll chase ass across town. This might be more a case of wanting to reward companies that provide the lowest price than actual miserliness, but it should be obvious to anyone who is not them that driving across town is going to cost them way more than they "saved." I put "saved" in quotes, because they don't actually need the widget, so they're not saving a penny; they're spending over $20. Of course, we don't, and shouldn't, buy only what we need. There's benefit in budgeting for wants and even luxuries. Anyway, the article itself mentions that one, and a few others. I'm not going to cover every point. One part of frugality is finding the balance between the value of your time with the value of your money. Sure, you can spend hours searching for the best deal online or driving to different stores to buy items on sale, and you may actually save a few dollars at the point of purchase. But you may be spending money to do so, and you could be earning money during that time instead or investing in other non-monetary things you value, such as being with friends and family. So yeah, it's not just that my example above involves spending more in fuel (whether gas or electricity), it's also the time involved. My time, for example, earns me nothing, but I still find it advantageous to pay for grocery delivery rather than waste time poking around the supermarket myself. Making the rounds to different stores—such as several grocery stores—only to take advantage of a few small-dollar deals at each may seem like a smart strategy, but it may not be worthwhile after you factor in the time and money spent driving all over town relative to the dollars saved. Again, sometimes, I think that certain people do this not to save money, but to punish retailers who have the audacity to charge more for something than other retailers. Similarly, it’s tempting to drive out of the way to save a few cents per gallon when filling up your gas tank, and this may make sense if you only have to detour a few blocks or can pair the trip with a relatively efficient reroute or errands you would eventually need to run. Another possible case of the same phenomenon. I get it, though. If someone steals something from me, something that doesn't have some sentimental value, I get enraged beyond all rationality. It's not like I can't replace it; that's a mere inconvenience. It's that someone got the better of me, somehow, and I cannot abide that. Not precisely the same thing, but close enough. Cheaper versions of products—furniture, shoes, clothing, and tech, to name a few—that are of lower quality may wear out more quickly or break more easily, so you have to replace them more often and end up spending more in total than if you’d bought the better product in the first place. This is actually one reason poor people stay poor; they have to pay less for lower-quality things. Terry Pratchett noted this effect years ago, known as the Sam Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness: The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. Pratchett was hardly the first to come up with it, but the point stands: paying more for quality, if you can afford it, saves you more money and time in the long run. Especially with footwear. So, I guess this is a rare case of me mostly agreeing with Lifehacker (we had another one fairly recently in here). Sometimes, pinching pennies just gives you hand cramps. |
| Time for another one for "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] Stocking I suppose there are worse jobs than stocking. Cleaning bathrooms comes to mind. Bussing tables. Active sewer maintenance. Come to think of it, most of the worst jobs in the world involve cleaning. But stocking has something in common with all of those: it's never finished. You do the same thing, all the time, and no one even knows you exist, even if they actively see you doing the job, unless you do it wrong, in which case, look out. Doesn't matter whether you're stocking goods in a warehouse, or stocking groceries on the supermarket shelves. The only difference there is that, in the former case, customers aren't audibly displeased as they grumble about having to maneuver their shopping carts and mobility scooters around you. Then they pick the shelves clean of all the delicious merchandise you've just arranged pleasingly for them, and so you have to do it again. And again. You're stuck in a time loop. It's a job a robot could do, but then you'd be out of a job, wouldn't you? But hell, when the robot uprising comes, it'll be led by the stockers. Of course, "stocking" also refers to an article of clothing, one of the myriad articles of clothing whose name makes little sense, like jumper or dress (since anything you put on makes you dressed). Turns out that the verb "to stock" used to mean "to cover one's feet and ankles," and had nothing to do with covering shelves with consumer goods. These days, hardly anyone wears stockings; they're mostly associated with the little gifts you stock them with at Christmas. At least that's not the worst job in the world. |
| At first, I thought this was going to be another "you're doing it wrong" article, but no. Well, a qualified no. From Fast Company: The Duolingo effect: How keeping the ‘streak’ is changing people’s behavior Maintaining a streak is a major motivator, and apps have caught on. "Duolingo" in the headline of course caught my eye, but that's not the only streak I have going. An activity streak has the power to compel behavior, and marketers have taken note. Marketing researchers Jackie Silverman and Alixandra Barasch recently documented 101 unique instances, including Snapchat, Candy Crush Saga, Wordle, and the Duolingo language learning platform, of apps that have incorporated streaks into their architecture by tracking the number of consecutive days users complete a task. Thing is, though, when I started with Duolingo, I was well aware that it was gamified. That is, it's deliberately structured to reward obsessive behavior, like how a fantasy role-playing game might dangle the promise of the next reward, or play triumphant music when you succeed at a quest, or whatever myriad little tricks game designers use to keep people playing. That was, for a gamer like me, the whole point. Self-motivation almost never works for me; I get frustrated and go play video games. But even that doesn't always work for me. The linked article displays someone's Wordle streak chart. Remember Wordle? I think it's still around. I got up to 101 consecutive days' wins, then failed one day. Rather than slog through trying to get another streak going, I just quit playing altogether. Still, there's a difference (something the article does note later). Wordle doesn't have an overall goal, apart from the streak (I remember one day, my habitual first word, which was STEIN, was the actual answer, so there wasn't any motivation left to go for even that, anymore). Not so with Duolingo. My streak there is just the motivation; the goal is to become more facile at languages. Still French. At one point, I'd finished all their French lessons, but then they went and added more. A lot more. So I'm still slogging through French. As an aside, some of the more recently added sections discuss cooking terms. You'd think that would be pretty damn basic in French, but no, many of those lessons were added fairly recently. Based on input from people maintaining streaks and how streaks are described in the popular media, I suggest they have four underlying characteristics. Keep in mind these are one person's definitions, not a generally-accepted scientific result. First, streaks require unchanging performance and temporal parameters. I'm skeptical about the "unchanging performance" thing; when I'm traveling, I have less time to maintain my streaks, so I let myself do the bare minimum; however, when I'm home, I do more. Second, the streak-holder largely attributes completing the activity to his or her resolve. I question this, as well. As I implied above, I consider my Duolingo streak to be mostly the result of the program's game-like design. This blog, in its fifth year of daily entries? Maybe that's my own stubbornness. Third, a streak is a series of the same completed activity that the person maintaining the streak considers to be uninterrupted. By Duolingo's own parameters, a participant can miss a day, occasionally, and have their streak automatically "frozen." This maintains the streak in their records through a day of inactivity. I would still consider it a streak if that happened, but in my 1622-day streak, that hasn't happened yet. The downside is that I find myself reluctant to go anywhere that doesn't have reliable internet access, but let's be real, here; that would be a consideration anyway, as my longest streak of all (besides being alive) involves being on the internet in some manner every day for 20 years. Fourth, the streaker quantifies the series’ duration. Which I just did for Duo. But I had to look it up. It's not like I spent all morning going "This is my 1622nd day for Duolingo." No, I just thought to myself, "Blog, then Duolingo lessons, and then I can get back to playing Starfield." I have at least one other streak going, which is WDC newsletter editorship. I'd have to look up the numbers there, too, but I haven't missed an assigned issue of the Fantasy or Comedy newsletters since I started being a regular editor there. Both began in the late noughties. Those are monthly, though, not daily. This definition distinguishes an activity streak from winning streaks and lucky streaks. Wordle, as above, isn't necessarily an activity streak; unless you're really good, or you cheat, you're not going to hit every one. (If you really are that good, great! If you cheat, whatever; that's on you.) There's a lot more to the article, but this is already getting long. Just a one more highlight: Streaks can serve to gamify the underlying activity by creating rules and quantifying the outcome, and many people enjoy the challenge of a game. And some don't, and that's okay, too. Everyone finds their own motivation. Or doesn't. The author ends by suggesting starting a streak rather than making a New Year's resolution, though the date on it was January 3, by which point most people have already failed at least one resolution. By today, it's probably safe to go back to the gym. Which was a streak I had going for a few years, myself, until... you know what... made it hazardous to be around sweating, heavily breathing people. That's a streak I might try to restart, but never in January. |
| As has become my usual habit on a Sunday, I picked an old blog entry at random to see what's changed. And boy, did I hit an old one—only the fourth entry, in fact, from early January, 2007: "Poker" This was back when I thought the blog would be about personal updates, as if my life were interesting enough to provide daily updates. Actually, it was "back when" a lot of things. Point by point:  Poker Night - dustbin of history obligations in December - not any more wife - no longer my former groomsmen - see below employee - I'm retired and he's long gone wife's friend's husband - dumped his wife, ran off with a younger belly dancer Quintessential gin - no longer available in Vir-gin-iaFinal verdict: 0/7 With qualifications. The qualifications are thus:  I'm still in contact with one of the groomsmen, though not both. Actually talked to him last night as we were gaming. While Quintessential is unavailable to me (it really is my favorite gin, though others come close), one thing that has not changed in 17 years is drinking itself. Well, maybe not quite as often. But it's nice to have some consistency in my life. |
| For "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]... Burgundy Not all red is burgundy, and not all burgundy is red. Burgundy (the region in France) apparently has a long history of influence in Europe. I've heard that, for a while, it was Burgundy (Bourgogne in French) that was the cultural center, not Paris. All things rise and fall, though, and now the region is mostly just famous for wine. And mustard. Yes, mustard; the capital of the region was once also the capital of mustard-making. The capital's name is Dijon. But while mustard's a fine condiment, I'd rather talk about wine. As with most wine-producing regions, they grow a wide variety of grapes there. Many of them produce red wine. Many others produce whites. Last November, I did an entry about one of my favorite French wines: "Beaujolais Nouveau Day" . Now, the Beaujolais region is just south of, and adjacent to, Burgundy. Incidentally, these blog entries are inadvertently helping me plan a trip to France. Anyway, point is, Beaujolais grapes grow in Burgundy, too.But Burgundy is responsible for what I consider to be the light beer of the wine world: Chardonnay. Unlike light beer, though, Chardonnay doesn't suck. It's just... everywhere. It's often the entry port into the land of Oenophilia. Those grapes can apparently grow just about anywhere, which means most of the wineries I've visited have some variation of Chardonnay. Now, I'm not ragging on peoples' tastes; if you like it, you like it, and that's fine. But there are so many other whites, including many from Burgundy, just waiting to be tasted. Like Pinot Blanc, also Burgundian, though better examples can be found elsewhere. And yet, the region is most known for its red wine, to the point where an official name for a certain shade of red, possibly reminiscent of the ruby color of a red wine, is called burgundy. Burgundy (the color) is quite similar to bordeaux (the color), though Bordeaux is an entirely separate wine-growing region, located on the Atlantic (west) coast of France. Unlike Burgundy, Bordeaux is better known as a wine region than as a color, to the point where I've taken to calling all boxed wine "cardbordeaux." I'll have to remember not to use that word when I'm in France. I've heard the people there can be... a bit touchy about certain things. So, to reiterate: not all red is burgundy, and not all burgundy is red. |
Despite the significance of the Great Groundhog today, we're going to talk about another rodent. The Platonic ideal of rodent, the Ruler of Rodentia: In Defense of the Rat They’re less of a pest than you think—actually, they have quite a few benefits. Now, if someone had said that, say, mosquitos were "less of a pest than you think," I'd know they were bullshitting. But rats are cute, and don't we give cute critters the benefit of the doubt? There was a time when we human beings used to put animals on trial for their alleged crimes against us. Gosh, I wonder what would happen if they put us on trial for our alleged crimes against them? The earliest of these prosecutions in the Western tradition of law appears to be a case against moles in the Valle d’Aosta, Italy, in 824 AD... Another clear example of anti-rodent prejudice. In the centuries between, a killer pig was dressed in human clothing and hanged in Falaise, France... Okay, I can kind of see the pig wearing human clothing (just imagine Alex Jones), but how the hell do you hang a hog? They ain't got no neck. ...Marseille put dolphins on trial for crimes unknown... That one's easy. The prince heir apparent of France was known as le dauphin. Someone mispronounced the definite article, and they thought they were trying les dauphins. ...and a rooster—in what must have been a case of mistaken identity—was burned at the stake in Basel, Switzerland, for the witchery of laying an egg while male. Maybe he was just living his true life. In 1522, “some rats of the diocese” of Autun, France, were charged with criminally eating and destroying barley crops. A skilled legal tactician, one Barthélemy de Chasseneuz, was assigned to defend the rats. How come most of these are French? Well. The article is fairly long, but I found it enlightening. Especially the part about how humans were a more proximate cause of The Plague than rats were: "In the case of the notorious plague in Europe, the event that forever marked rats as public enemy number one, the animals may be almost entirely innocent." But there's also a long discussion about rats' intelligence and demonstrated capacity for empathy—not only with other rats, but with humans. I'm not saying you should venture into the NYC subway tunnels and pick up a rat. There really are hazards with wild rats—just like there are with raccoons, and everyone thinks trash pandas are just the cutest things (mainly because they are). But I've known several rats in my life, albeit briefly (rodents don't tend to live very long lives), and, yeah... they're not all vermin. Now, if I could only convince my cats to stop leaving them for me as gifts, that'd be great. |
| Well, here we are: the worst month of the year. At least it's shorter than other months. Wait, this is a leap year? Rats. No sense dwelling on it. I'll just pick another site from my queue to blog about, and move on. One perfectly legitimate reason to avoid having kids, besides the obvious ones, is that, at some stages, they ask awkward questions that may be hard to answer in an age-appropriate manner. Like this one. Why is Gold yellow? Spoiler alert: Einstein again It turns out you don't have to look further than gold jewelry to experience Einstein's relativity. I don't think I ever asked my dad that particular question, but I did ask the classic "why is the sky blue" one, and his lengthy scientific explanation went right over Kid Me's little head. I think I might even have fallen asleep. Eventually, I understood the reason for the effect, at least to some degree. And I've often wondered why gold appears, well, gold-colored, when most other metals (with some obvious exceptions, like copper) are various shades of gray. Just haven't wondered enough to be arsed to look it up. Then this article somehow got my attention. You’ve probably not given it much thought, but the reason why gold is yellow (or rather, golden) is deeply ingrained in its atomic structure — and it’s because of something called relativistic quantum chemistry. Now, here's the thing: Generally (pun intended), relativity deals with large-scale things, while quantum mechanics deals mostly with the smallest. I'm told the two theories are both well-supported; that is, predictions they make turn out to match observed evidence. And yet, they're incompatible with each other (again, just going by what I've heard, here). So for me, the phrase "relativistic quantum chemistry" is itself a shiny gold thing that I just have to pick up. Simply put, because it’s a very large atom, gold’s electrons move so fast that they exhibit relativistic contraction, shifting the wavelength of light absorbed to blue and reflecting the opposite color: golden yellow. And there you have it: the answer. Refreshing to see that at the beginning of an article. Of course, it goes on to explain that shit further, which is also good. Incidentally, this is an entirely different phenomenon from why the sky is blue, but I can't help but notice the parallels: blue light from the sun gets preferentially scattered by air molecules, turning the sky blue and making the sun appear yellower. Read on for a more in-depth look into the fascinating chemistry that gives this symbol of wealth and luxury its prized color. At this point, it's less a symbol of wealth and luxury than one of overindulgence and greed. Still pretty, but come the apocalypse, all that gold you've been hoarding will be mostly useless. It's not like any survivors will need it for its amazing electrical conductivity. Anyway. I won't bore you with too much from the rest of the article. I do think it's very accessible—probably too much for a toddler, but not for a teen or a grown-ass adult—so give it a look if, like me, you want to finally get that stubborn curiosity looked at. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
