This Just In . . . Phidippus Audax Is Officially Earth’s Cutest Spider

Posted on 1 June 2022 by RobertLovesPi

I found this playful little guy in Hope, Arkansas, today. Spiders are my favorite animal, and jumping spiders are my favorite group of spider species . . . but phidippus audax is my favorite jumping spider! They act a lot like miniature cats, stalking and pouncing on prey. If you ever see a black and white jumping spider, look for green iridescent chelicerae. If you see this distinctive reflective, metallic green, you’ve found yourself a p. audax. Treat them well, and they’ll eat lots of insects that would otherwise cause problems for us.

This particular spider waved at me, and remained very expressive during our entire encounter. He’d study his surroundings, utterly still, until springing into action so fast that my eyes got left behind, in a cloud of confusion. Fortunately, my wife is skilled with a camera, and was able to catch this shot.

I Went and Got My DNA Examined

Posted on 31 May 2022 by RobertLovesPi

Here’s one of the things I found from my recent subscription to AncestryDNA. I’m surprised, because I was told (as a child) that I was at least 1/16th Cherokee, and had a lot of French as well. I was also told I had Scotch-Irish, but no Irish proper.

“Lots of English” is about the only thing where what I was told when young, and what the DNA says, actually match.

Two Drawings of People

Posted on 2 March 2022 by RobertLovesPi

A Woman in Profile

For three days this week and another three next week, during this round of standardized testing, my assigned task at work, for four to five hours each day, is to guard a locked door to the testing area. I’m not allowed to bring a computer, a cell phone, or even a book, so I brought a clipboard, with ample blank paper, and a handful of freshly-sharpened pencils. As a result, this mostly-mathematical blog will be detouring into drawings for a while. These were the first two.

Two Rhombic Triacontahedra, Each Decorated with Birthday Stars

Posted on 13 January 2022 by RobertLovesPi

In yesterday’s post, I unveiled my annual birthday star for my new age, 54. Today, I’m placing that 54-pointed star on each of the thirty faces of a rhombic triacontahedron. I use a program called Stella 4d (free trial available right here) to do this, and it allows images on polyhedron-faces to either be placed inside the face, or around the face. Here’s the “inside” version:

And here is the “around each face” version:

Which one do you like better?

My Birthday Star for 2022

Posted on 12 January 2022 by RobertLovesPi

I turn 54 years old today, so here is a 54-pointed star to mark the occasion. The nine repetitions of the six colors of the spectrum work because (6)(9) = 54.

Perhaps You Shouldn’t Judge a Book by its Cover — However….

Posted on 21 July 2021 by RobertLovesPi

When Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon was released, in 1973, I was five years old. I saw the cover for a cassette tape of the album in a store, grabbed it, and wouldn’t let go. Apparently, I’ve always liked triangles.

My parents had to pay for the tape, just to get us out of there. My father tried to turn this into a little life lesson for me (“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” or some such crap). When we got home, we played it, and everyone involved had to admit that picking music based on cover art does, sometimes, actually work.

Alone at the Typewriter, With an Unusual Use of Mozart

Posted on 6 July 2021 by RobertLovesPi

At 53, I’m old enough to have needed a typewriter to write papers, as an undergraduate, back when I was still living with my mother in Little Rock, Arkansas (USA), and attending the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, or UALR. Majoring in history, I wrote many. When I did this, I had a certain ritual about the activity, one that fell from use once I made the much-appreciated transition to using computers, instead.

First, I had to have the typewriter in the center of the living room, oriented at a 45 degree diagonal to the walls. Next, I had to be wearing a bedsheet, wrapped around one shoulder, toga-style. No other clothes were permitted. Finally, I had to have my vinyl version of Mozart’s Requiem playing, over and over, from the time I started the paper until it was completed. This would generally happen early in the morning, on the day the paper was due, procrastination being one of my defining characteristics at that age.

I’m glad I don’t have to write papers anymore, and that the typewriter era is over.

An Announcement, Regarding Alcohol

Posted on 21 March 2021 by RobertLovesPi

On the advice of my doctors, I will no longer be drinking ethanol. I will, however, still be using it in hand sanitizer.

(The image is from Wikipedia’s “Ethanol” article.)

Snowfall in Blue

Posted on 16 February 2021 by RobertLovesPi

Like much of America, we’ve had a lot of snow lately, with more on the way. Making the piece above helped me unwind after a very stressful drive to the store and back on snow- and ice-covered roads. The car went skidding all over the place a few times, but I did make the trip without actually running into anything. I’m not going out again until the melt arrives.