Beyond the Great 96

The challenge when designing around a large star is to reconcile its high order of symmetry with the field of more standard shapes that surrounds it. The goal is to make the complete design appear natural and seamless. That’s an exceedingly difficult design challenge, one that increases in difficulty as …

Animated Map Colourings of Hinged Squares

Tilings like these, based on alternating arrangements of squares and rhombs, are ancient. And in the twentieth century, a few people experimented with this hinged motion. I particularly like the essay by Duncan Stuart, then a student at the UNC School of Design, though the most famous use of this …

Heesch Numbers of Unmarked Polyforms

After a few years of not writing about the subject here, I’m happy to offer an update on Heesch numbers! If you want to save time, you can skip right to the paper I wrote, or experiment with the associated dataset. Back in 2017, I wrote a series of four …

The Metaphysics of Speed Limits

(define (speeding-fine speed) (cond [(< speed 100) 0] [(and (>= speed 100) (< speed 120)) (* 3.00 (- speed 100))] [(and (>= speed 120) (< speed 130)) (* 4.50 (- speed 100))] [(and (>= speed 130) (< speed 150)) (* 7.00 (- speed 100))] [(>= speed 150) (* 9.75 (- …