Hah! Another week gone by with barely a trace.
Summer is wild that way.
Thanks to various internet pals for reaching out last week.
Your support is very much appreciated.
I’m doing a thirty hour online course. It is such a slog. The software is very interaction heavy and intended to keep you at the computer. One might say that it is “surveillance education.” It has to be this way because the thirty hours are government mandated. I’m trying to make the best of it but it is such a grind. I feel so much compassion for my poor students who have to sit through 30~50 hours of calculus lecture.
Mira and I walked to school together for the first time in a long while. We played “shadow lands” on the walk. It was really nice to do our full morning routine: hang out, eat porridge, read aloud, practice reading, and play while walk to school together. It is such a joy.
Children amaze me. A neighbourhood kid, in second grade, borrowed Mira’s bike for a half hour and taught herself to ride a bike. We watched from the porch as she went from absolutely incapable of mounting the bike to riding confidently.
The community center pool opened up! We were there on opening day and had a blast swimming. It’ll be a go-to spot once everyone is done with school.
Escabasse, Sophie. Les Sorcières de Brooklyn. United States, Bayard jeunesse, 2022.
I’ve circled back around to reading Les Sorcières de Brooklyn. This time, I’m reading it aloud to Mira in French and English. It turns out that reading the French aloud before translating it is very helpful. A few week ago, I tried live translating Rollergirl from French to English, without reading it aloud, and that was hard.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. Ambigrammia : Between Creation & Discovery. Yale University Press, 2025.
This popped off the library shelf and in to my hands. Totally delighted to see that Hofstadter has a new book. Lots of lovely calligraphy and story telling.
I finally re-booted the piece about Growing Linearly Independent Sets. It is almost fully written and just needs little touches like author bios. Hopefully, it will go out next week or so1.
I’m working on my backlog of un-indexed journals. I’ve got eight volumes to go. At an hour and half per volume, that’s a lot of work2. Incredibly, at the time of writing this, 2227 days have been indexed. That’s a bit more than six solid years of entries. The index of the journal starts on 2013-10-24.
I gave a talk in Seminar about matroids. I followed the following excellent resources.
I rehearsed the talk a bit in my office and made these blackboard shots before a friend came to chat.
The Seminar talk got to the fact that the uniform matroid $U_{2,4}$ is ternary but NOT binary. I’d like to get to the theorem that which characterizes the greedy algorithm using matroids or vice versa depending on your preferred perspective.
I got rather excited about tablet weaving again. The video The Singular Charms of Tablet Weaving absolutely sends me. It is so well done: funny, informative, quirky. Check out this quote!
Tablet Weaving: the nerdiest of all the weaving techniques. It’s complex, it’s kinda difficult, it’s fabulously beautiful… It would make an excellent indie movie heroine.
I plan to make up some tablet-woven friendship bracelets. I bought a copy of Linda Hendrickson’s Tablet Weaving for Parents and Children which is a brief guide aimed at making friendship bracelets.
Seminar was deep in to Rubik’s Cubes last month. I’m still learning the basic algorithm. If I stare at the instructions, then my time is around four minutes. Hopefully, that time will come down once all the algorithms are in muscle memory.
I went down a bit of a string figure rabbit hole thinking about various initial loop transfers. Many traditional figures begin with some process which transfers the thumb loop along some complicated pathway. Compare, for example, the openings of Many Stars and Big Star. I’m trying to sort out what is possible with these processes. Where do they occur in the literature? What are they in terms of loop braids? More details to come.
16th-century beesuit I sewed for the opening of a new apiary at Oxford University : r/bees
Tabernis music: medieval beekeeping and dark music
Lashing: Scout Adeventure Guide: how to tie sticks together with ropes
Techniques to Build Rubik’s Cube Algorithms: A very math-y guide to building Rubik’s Cube algorithms. Lots of linked animations.
RedKB: Cube Theory 101: A series of videos on commutators and conjugates.
Engage your students: a starter’s guide for math teaching assistants by James Oxley
Tablet Weaving
Published: Jun 15, 2026 @ 19:00.
Last Modified: Jun 15, 2026 @ 22:16.
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