Rambles Blog at Star Chamber

Welcome to a new millennium with the old Star Chamber.

I’ve been having fun with XML and XSL these days, and I’ve finally managed to get the Paracelsus Bookshop built on top of an XML database. To tell you the truth, it’s not very fancy, but it does contain some of my favorite books of all time. Which reminds me: have you seen the book list feature at Amazon? They make it incredibly easy to surf from list to list to list. It’s a great idea and a dangerously easy way to waste time.

Finally, here is a gratuitous link to go check out my weblog, where among other things, you can learn more about Ed Pegg Jr.’s amazing chaos tiles, pictured below.

Things to Say When You’re Losing a Technical Argument presented by Mr. Bad at Pigdog. Belittle the tiny-brained people who disagree with you.

I’m still on a Penrose tile kick. Here is another nice Penrose Tiler, this one by geert in the Netherlands. He also pointed to a well-written discussion on the Dr. Matrix Web World of Science site (which, incidentally, is worth a visit of its own).

Guy Ottewell is an eccentric polymath polyglot kind of guy. His books on astronomy are really unparalleled. Not many pictures on his site, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. Buy his Astronomical Companion if you are remotely interested in things remote. Fun fact: he is based at Furman University, where my wife went to school. She says “Go Furman!”

Weblog editors lists their most disturbing search requests. Funny.

I like Mooselessness.

Highly entertaining goof on foreign currency by James Lileks. This is an endless source of conversation fodder with foreigners. They think our money is monotonous to the point of absurdity, whereas we know it is nobly consistent. But who are they to talk, anyway, with their ridiculous rainbow-colored confections?

Sunrise and sunset over my house. The days are finally getting longer. Ahhh.

For Christmas, my sweetheart bought me Ed Pegg Jr.’s cool Chaos Tiles. Here is a snapshot of mine in action.

Notice how you can go for order or chaos, depending on your taste. The whole thing is very appealing. I happily endorse this product.

I was inspired to look for some more sources on the web. Here’s a pretty good Java applet to play with the Penrose tiles in the shapes that I first read about (there are several kinds of Penrose tiles, you’ll be glad to know). This implementation is by Shuxiang Zeng.

Researching Penrose tiles found me looking at Drew Olbrich’s Home Page, which deserves a visit on it’s own merits. Very clean, very nimble. Don’t miss the Thing in a Jar page.