Author Archives: ravenspoint

A sound simulation

Posted on November 3, 2022 by ravenspoint

The propagation of sound waves is governed by the following system of first order partial differential equations: The mathematical symbols might be a bit intimidating, but once past that, these formulae are surprisingly simple. Implementing them in computer code is … Continue reading →

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In Praise of Plodders

Posted on October 20, 2022 by ravenspoint

My brother is some sort of mathematical prodigy. When I was in high school I would show him my toughest assignments.  Although he was two years junior to me, he would stare at the problem for some minutes and then … Continue reading →

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PathFinder

Posted on May 23, 2021 by ravenspoint

Several times a year I need to find a path through a graph. The graphs might be representations of the layout of streets, the distances between cities, the connections between nodes, or they might be models of abstract relationships such … Continue reading →

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Ferrero Rocher Trees & Computational Geometry

Posted on July 16, 2020 by ravenspoint

This little hazelnut tree is growing in a farm in Northern Italy. When mature, it will produce lots of these But meantime it needs lots of tender loving care. The care will be provided by a robot tractor driving carefully … Continue reading →

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Talking to People and Robots

Posted on June 6, 2020 by ravenspoint

In these days of COVID19 and AI, when face to face communication is avoided and Alexa lurks in the corner of every room, people are beginning to sound like robots and robots sound ever more like humans.  Still, sometimes a … Continue reading →

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Bin Packing

Posted on November 15, 2019 by ravenspoint

For many years I have maintained open source code to optimize the arrangement of small items in larger bins in two and three dimensions. My interest in this problem has been maintained by requests from several clients to provide front … Continue reading →

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A little intelligence, artificially.

Posted on August 19, 2019 by ravenspoint

KMeans is a windows console application to find clusters in data with any number of columns ( attributes ) using the KMeans algorithm ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-means_clustering ) Usage: KMeans <data dimension> <data file path> <number of clusters> The iris data set ( … Continue reading →

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Talking to satellites

Posted on April 9, 2019 by ravenspoint

Starting work on SpaceCom  to enable error free communication between satellites and the ground using the  NASA TC SPACE DATA LINK PROTOCOL CCSDS 232.1-B-2

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New Mexico Senate Webcaster

Posted on February 23, 2019 by ravenspoint

Every session of the New Mexico state senate since 2009 has been webcast using a computer application designed and coded by SpeakerToRobots. The chair recognizes one of the senators. When the senator begins to speak, one of three cameras has … Continue reading →

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SWEEPEM

Posted on September 10, 2018 by ravenspoint

In the 1980s this Canso flying boat was photographed over the Gatineau Hills searching for ore deposits using a new electromagnetic system called SWEEPEM.  Built in the 1940s to hunt submarines under the North Atlantic, the aircraft’s ability to flow … Continue reading →

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