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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: December 5th, 2023

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  • I’m disappointed that none of them seem to have gone with the random convergence approach.

    Set the three corners of an equilateral triangle. Pick a random starting point on the canvas. Every iteration, pick a random corner from the triangle and your next point is the midpoint between the current point and that corner. While the original point is almost guaranteed not to be a point in Sierpinski’s triangle, each iteration cuts the distance between the new point and the nearest Sierpinski point in half.

    If you start plotting points starting with (say) the 50th one, every pixel is “close enough” to a Sierpinski point that you see the triangle materialize out of nothing. The whole thing could be programmed in about 20 lines of QBasic on DOS 30 years ago.




  • I find this funny, since I did a Gimp tutorial back in 2000 (early Gimp 2.x maybe, but maybe still 1.x – I don’t remember that part). I got okay with it.

    A friend asked me to do some early photo editing a couple of years later since they’d heard that I was “good at Photoshop”. I pointed out that I was actually “mediocre at Gimp”. I was plunked down at a computer with a (probably pirated) install of Photoshop and asked to touch up some photos.

    I hated it. Nothing was where I expected it to be coming from Gimp. If I recall correctly, I closed Photoshop and just downloaded Gimp for Windows.

    It sounds like I might hate Gimp 3.





  • This was my first thought, too.

    I started taking antidepressants a few months ago to treat ADHD-related anxiety and depression. (The doctor suggested that I could try ADHD-specific meds, but pointed out that I’m already a relatively successful adult, so clearly I’ve built coping mechanisms over the years.)

    I’m surprised by how much more rational I’ve become when dealing with stuff.

    I first really noticed it when I was crossing at an intersection and a driver turning right didn’t see me and almost hit me. She slammed on the brakes and waved her hands in a clearly startled and apologetic way. Before the meds I probably would have flipped her the bird and had my heart pounding in my ears for the next half hour as I seethed with anger. Now, my thought was “She made a mistake. I’m fine. She knows she made a mistake and she’ll certainly be more careful next time. It’s okay.”

    That’s not to say that I don’t get angry anymore. I just get angry about stuff that matters or where I can change something. It feels a lot healthier.

    Standard disclaimer: I’m not a doctor. This is not medical advice. It’s just my anecdotal experience. Maybe talk to your doctor about getting tested for depression and/or anxiety. (I had never thought to before this year, because in my youth I was just called “disorganized”, “lazy”, and “scatterbrained”.)



  • What national ID?

    The US doesn’t have a national ID card. I have a federally-issued ID card as a lawful permanent resident, but the typical US citizen has what? Their main proof of citizenship is their birth certificate, issued by their state, and doesn’t have a photo (and if it did, would probably be a baby photo). The people with passports tend to have enough money to travel internationally, which is a pretty small proportion of the population (as it’s a big country, so even a lot of people who can afford vacations will vacation in the next state over at most).