In 2010 I published a book titled Trials of the Moon: Reopening the Case for Traditional Witchcraft, which was a critique of Professor Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. I had found numerous errors in his work, and felt that he came down too heavily against (almost) any links
Reply to Ronald Hutton Read More »
For many years now, I’ve picked away at redesigning the Taroc, or Tarot, as it’s commonly known today. I’ve never found another deck that really works for me: most attribute wands to fire and swords to air, which has never suited me; and while I’d like the “minor” or pip cards to have pictures, I
Redesigning the Tarot Read More »
I’ve been interested in different ways of tiling the plane ever since I read a 1977 Scientific American article on different periodic tilings using convex pentagons and hexagons. There are nonperiodic tilings too, such as the famous Penrose tiles where two different shapes of tile create a mosaic that extends infinitely in all directions but
A tribonacci-based substitution tiling Read More »
Rachmaninoff wrote his “Fantaisie-tableaux” (Suite No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 5) in 1893 as a series of musical poems for two pianos. This, the third of the four, is probably the simplest to play, and is also one of Rachmaninoff’s most beautiful compositions. I got so obsessed with this piece that I ended up
Rachmaninoff “Les Larmes” rearranged for two hands Read More »
Simhashes are a clever means of rapidly finding near-identical documents (or other items) within a large corpus, without having to individually compare every document to every other document. Using simhashes for any sizable corpus involves two parts: generating the simhash itself, and solving the Hamming distance problem. Neither is much use without the other. Unlike minhashes,
Simhash and solving the hamming distance problem: explained Read More »
How beautiful are thy nipples, my sister, my bride! Thy breasts are more beautiful than wine, and the scent of thy perfume surpasseth all spices!
The Song of Solomon: a frank translation Read More »
If you’re a new font designer wondering how to set your OpenType font’s em-height and line-spacing, the advice you’ll find online is just about all wrong. Technology has changed, and the historical measures no longer hold true. Here’s how you do it in FontForge.
Line-spacing: getting it right Read More »
The Coelacanth typeface I’m creating is classic Venetian style, harking back to an age before bold type was invented. Bruce Rogers didn’t create a bold for Centaur (on which Coelacanth is based), but we now live in an age of philistines, and bold type is ubiquitous. I’d like Coelacanth to be versatile and meet all
Creating bold weights in FontForge Read More »
To save time and eyesight, use this text for testing character-spacing and kerning. It has all the usual character combos, with the main kerning pairs heading the list. Leslie Cabarga, creator of the excellent Kern King, hinted that someone could go one better. Well, this text adds many common, useful character pairs, plus all-caps and
Kern Baby — Typographic kerning aid Read More »
It’s not so often you need to code your own bezier curves nowadays. If you do, here’s a fast algorithm which uses fewer arithmetic operations — and additions only. I felt very clever when I discovered this a dozen years ago, but I wasn’t the first.
Addition-only Bezier cubic splines Read More »