Dan Drake 🦆 / is on Nostr

Former (and future!) #mathematician, college #math, #computerscience and #datascience lecturer; former #softwaredeveloper in #Madison, #Wisconsin -- moving to #stpaulmn #Minnesota later in 2025 to work at #Macalester College.

Here, have a hashtag-y list of things I'm interested in (no particular order):

#math, #geometry, #origami, #crochet, #Linux, #emacs, #bicycling, going for #walks, #hiking, #sciencefiction, #science fact, #mtbos

Last Notes

2024-08-08 13:05:56

I'm trying to come up with "math-y pilgrimage sites" to visit.
For example, the bridge in Dublin where Hamilton wrote the equations for the quaternions.
Or the estate where Newton wrote the Principia.
Or, to include a more literal religious angle: the Boole window in the Lincoln Cathedral.
What are some places that you think math and computing nerds should visit?
#math #computing #history #pilgrimage #hajj

2023-11-18 14:01:13

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@npub1psd…9sr7 *shrug* even if the technique is old, it's still an achievement to make it happen.
...and also very cool that I can load a web page and watch it happen in real time.
The various drones, video feeds, networking, and such makes me appreciate how hard your job is as a writer of near-future science fiction, because sometimes reality catches up with your story and can kinda pull the rug out from under it. Or, put another way: reality can sometimes mutate futuristic science fiction into alternate history.
(That's how I felt reading the last Merchant Princes book. You were telling a story so deeply based in, and inspired by, the early and mid-aughts, with the Iraq War, surveillance state stuff...and reading Invisible Sun in 2022 or so, it all came across as weirdly antiquated. That wasn't your fault, of course, and I loved the series. But there was some cognitive dissonance as I read the last one, since *sigh* these days, I *wish* America's biggest problem was having GWB as president...)

2023-11-18 13:28:52

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@npub1psd…9sr7 indeed, the hot-staging separation was very cool, and in itself a technical achievement.
And just in general, getting something that big and complex up that far -- 80 km or so? -- and that fast -- about 10,000 km/hr? -- is a feat.

2023-09-27 12:45:58

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@npub1psd…9sr7 "programs written for Windows XP in 2001 still work"
Oh, it's even better than that: at my job we use VB6 software (and are still maintaining it!). The runtime for that -- which works today -- dates from 1998, at least.
It's mind-bending when I think that some software running on my computer -- a 64 bit laptop with who-knows-how-many cores, at whatever GHz -- uses software that originally ran on, like 486s at 66MHz.