Links for August 30, 2019

Escher at the Alhambra

But it was Escher’s second visit to Spain, where he revisited the Alhambra as well as experiencing La Mezquita in Cordoba, that appears to have really disciplined his art. From that point on, tessellation is insisted upon more rigorously – but at the same time, it is also treated playfully. In Reptiles (1943), we see a tessellation coming to life. In this marvellous lithograph, there is an open book displaying one of Escher’s reptile tessellations. In the picture, the tessellations are precise but the majority of the reptiles are two-dimensional. But then we see in the bottom left hand corner that the reptiles – like the black and white men in Encounter – are climbing out of the surface. They are no longer mere shapes, but actual lizards.


Codecademy vs. The BBC Micro

Alas, it’s possible that the real problem is that nobody wants to learn about the Jacquard loom. Judging by how Codecademy emphasizes the professional applications of what it teaches, many people probably start using Codecademy because they believe it will help them “level up” their careers.”… Codecademy, which after all is a business, gives these people what they are looking for—not some roundabout explanation involving a machine invented in the 18th century.


Origami Simulator

This app allows you to simulate how any origami crease pattern will fold. It may look a little different from what you typically think of as “origami” - rather than folding paper in a set of sequential steps, this simulation attempts to fold every crease simultaneously.... All simulation methods were written from scratch and are executed in parallel in several GPU fragment shaders for fast performance.