A common objection when it comes to discussion of modern dinosaurs is always phrased the same way: “birds aren’t dinosaurs; they’re descended from dinosaurs.” It’s exactly as helpful, meaningful and accurate an assertion as insisting “birds are descended from animals.” It’s true, but what actual point is it trying to make? Presumably the problem is […]
read moreIt’s long been an established scientific just a theory fact that Rhamphorhynchus was the cutest pterosaur to have ever lived. Unfortunately the general public seems largely unaware of this, responding with criticisms like “what’s a rhamphorhynchus,” “what’s a pterosaur,” or “how do I even spell that?” Well it’s really quite simple: a pterosaur is any […]
read moreThis is a book review. Not something I ever expected to write, but I picked up a book on a whim and was so genuinely engaged by its content that I read it all and am now writing about it. The book in question is Uranium, by Tom Zoellner (ISBN 9780670020645), subtitled “War, Energy, and […]
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Thanks to omnipresent reasons, I thought it fitting to draw a nice schematic of a nuclear power plant, despite complete lack of experience in any related area. But my one, I decided, would be less abstract: the components, albeit simplified, would be arranged as they would in a power plant. Except 2D. That means a […]
read moreGo back more than 300 million years – further back than the time taken for the Sun to complete a lap of the entire Milky Way, long before the first dinosaur was ever even a glint in a non-dinosaurian ornithodiran’s eye. This period, called the Carboniferous, was almost alien in its life when compared to […]
read moreFor the most part, everything to do with orbits is a consequence of one simple rule: Newton’s law of universal gravitation. It simply states that all masses are attracted by a force that increases with mass and decreases faster with distance. General relativity describes certain physical observations much more accurately, but the differences only become […]
read moreJust a few design ideas for overlapping armour plates. In each case the plates at the top of the image sit over those beneath. They all tile because why not.
read moreIf you’ve even only touched upon anything involving computers and colour, you’re sure to have encountered some way of modelling it. There’s Red Green Blue, Hue Saturation Lightness, L*ightness a*green-redness b*blue-yellowness (okay, that doesn’t work so well) and even Y luma In-phase Quadrature, amongst quite a few others. All specify a colour with three values, […]
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In the card game Munchkin, it is necessary to track your level from 1 to 10. Now you could remember it, or alternatively you can use some sort of external aid. And what better than themed counters? So with what few Blender skills I still had, I made a set of six small counters that […]
read moreNo introduction is required – we’ve all heard “A picture is worth a thousand words.” But we shouldn’t parrot information without confirmation; it’s time for an empirical validation! First I performed a search for the phrase “a picture is owrth [sic] a thousand words” and copied the main text of the first three results into […]
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