Office oddiments

Odd things happen in and around my office. Here are a few ...

• (50k) - ``Odd that penguin being there ...''
  
  
• (46k) - Huggy my 6m long green snake
  
  
• (84k) - An office sign for Pete Billington

  This is something that I made from an old squirt-gun that Pete tried unsuccessfully to destroy and throw away ... it somehow kept showing up in his stuff. And yes, I had a little help from a small ``friend'' who can also be seen in the picture.

Earth & Sky

I love Astronomy, particularly visual Astronomy. I am not very much into astro-photography, but I have taken a few pictures.

• (5k) - Supernova 1987A

  I love Astronomy, particularly visual Astronomy. I am not very much into astro-photography, but I have taken a few pictures. The brightest star in the above image is a star that exploded in the Southern Hemisphere about 180,000 years ago. I saw it in 1987, a few dozen hours after it went supernova. South is down.

• (50k) - Supernova 1987A spectrum

  SN1987A changed colors and brightness over the course of a few days. Shown here are several color intensity charts taken at 24 hour intervals. Red is towards the left edge of each sheet.

• (53k) - NASA tracking stations (1987)

  These dishes are part of NASA tracking station outside of Canberra, Australia. It is part of the deep space network that receive signals from space probes such as Galileo, Voyager, Pioneer 10, and Pioneer 11.

• (5k) - The best sights are in the Southern Sky (1987)

  This picture was taken from the bad yard of DBell's house in Canberra, Australia. Alpha Centaurs is the brightest star near the left hand edge and the Southern Cross is 1/4 the way from the left near the top. The Southern pole is in the middle, 3/4's the way down from the top.

I have always loved volcanos. The shots below are from Hawaii taken shortly after the 11 July 1991 total eclipse.

• (67k) - (68k) - (59k) - Puu Oo lava lake (1991)

  This lava lake was about 100m across. These photos were taken from a helicopter. Puu Oo was part of a major eruption phase that lasted from 1983 to 1986.

Mathematics - works in progress / works of art

I think of Mathematics as both an art as well as a science. What is found below are some images based on various aspects of my mathematical research. These images are presented in no particular order and without much technical comments, I prefer to let the images speak for themselves.

What you will find below are some of my mathematical doodling. Some people, when they doodle while talking on the phone, will draw ``bunny rabbits''. I like to doodle equations and plots, usually via the Mathematica tool.

The doodles below are by no means random. They represent the current state of problems that I happen to be working on in the back of my mind. Sometimes a these doodles are later refined and used in the solution of a particular problem, sometimes they just give insight on how to solve something.

BTW: Doodling bunny rabbits is a cool thing to do. Others are much better at drawing rabbits than I am. :-)

• (109k) - 3D Mathematica plot of a compound trig function

  Plot3D[ Sin[y*x*Cos[x/2]]*Sin[x], {x,0,4 Pi}, {y,0,Pi},
          PlotPoints->250, ViewPoint->{0, -2.444, 1.791}, Mesh->False
        ]
  

• (27k) - equation #1

  Simplification thru solutions.

• (14k) - equation #3

  Solutions of simplification.

• (44k) - (27k) - equation plot #2a and equation plot #2b

  Mix & match Trig & Gamma.

• (22k) - (34k) - equation plot #4a and equation plot #4b

  Finding cracks in the cypher thru visual inspection.

Magrathea

In the process of debugging the magrathea program, a program designed to generate planet images at random, several mistakes were made. But sometimes such accidents produce interesting results.

• (49k) - (67k)

  These ``features'' were fixed between version 2.14 and version 2.15.

• (39k) - (35k) - (80k)

  These ``features'' came up while version 2.30 was being debugged.

• (36k)

  These ``features'' came up while version 2.33 was being debugged.

  In case you are wondering, magrathea should (and now does) produce planets that look like this:

• (10k)

  The magrathea program will be released as part of the new LavaRnd web site in late 2001. Until then, here is a sample image of the new LavaRnd server:

  (443k)

Misc

• (web page) - You can view pictures of Landon - (web page)
  
  
• (748k) - Scan of Fred Hirschmann's Lee Vining Creek photo

  This photo was the Feb 1994 photo for the Mono Lake Committee. This photo appears without permission. I hope Fred Hirschmann and the Mono Lake Committee don't mind. See their www.monolake.org web site, become a member and become involved in this important issue.

  I think this is one of the most beautiful photos ever taken. The reason why it is on this page is because I did some work in scanning this image.

• I took a fair number of photos at Ted Ciesla's 70th birthday party on 27 Feb 2005. My images begin with "LS".
• A glass forest that I saw at Ted Ciesla's party.
• JC Dill's Percharab Horse, Venus, jumping on 2005 March 13.
  jumping sequence is available. (Photos by Landon, composite merge by JC Dill)