It’s a bit chilly in Western New York, and I’ve learned that my apartment doesn’t have any decent insulation. In fact, it’s so cold that even the knitted droids need scarves and hats!
BB-9E was a little disappointed (so was I) that Rian Johnson left him out in the cold, with barely a few seconds of screen time.
I am teaching Mandy to sing (sort of). Here’s Mandy playing along to Carol of the Bells in what may be the worlds “first” Periodic Table spectrum visualizer. Now, before we blow up the Twitter sphere with allegations that Mandy belongs on the Top Ten List of Most Infamous Lip Syncing incidents, I’m not claiming that this is live. Mandy wasn’t designed to do real-time spectrum analysis (she’s a Periodic Table, after all) but I wanted to see if some geeky visualizations would be possible. So, I created my own version of Carol of the Bells (written in Sonic-Pi) and then analyzed the audio file using Mathematica, which has a neat function, SpectrogramArray[], that provides easy access to the frequencies in an audio file. I then binned the frequencies into 118 buckets – one for each element on the periodic table, and converted the intensities into colors (blue for high amplitude, red for low amplitude). I probably should have thought a bit more about which elements should display which frequencies, but time was running short so I simply made the heavier elements have the lower frequencies. In any case – enjoy.
Clearly it’s that time of the year when I have a boat-load of grading to do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be procrastinating with posts to my website.
Here’s a video of how Mandy – The Bright Periodic Table looks on the inside, and a demonstration of how she responds to a user’s commands.
A while back, my wife knitted me a BB-8 which was pretty awesome. What’s even more awesome is that she used that pattern to knit me a BB-9E. He’s bigger, blacker and badder. Now I’m ready for The Last Jedi!
BB8 and BB9E knitted by my wife
I asked my students what these silly things on the back of their phones were, and why they were needed. Apparently, phones are sufficiently heavy that you’ll drop them on your face while trying to read/text while lying down. They also seem to help with taking selfies. It turns out that they were thought up by a philosophy professor so tell that to your Mom and Dad when they ask why their paying so much money for your liberal-arts education. Heck, I’ll even give you some inspiration, because one of my students bought me my very own popsocket (I feel sooooo millennial) and I just had to customize it.
My kickin’ T-Mobile slider phone – unlocked and now Popsocketed.