trefulo's recent activity

  1. Comment on Proving the Earth is round at home in ~science

    trefulo
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    A very direct way would be to observe a lunar eclipse, during a lunar eclipse you can see the shadow of the Earth on the Moon and see that it is round for yourself. E.g. the photos here It...

    A very direct way would be to observe a lunar eclipse, during a lunar eclipse you can see the shadow of the Earth on the Moon and see that it is round for yourself. E.g. the photos here

    It requires some planning, but there are usually about two lunar eclipses a year that you can observe from any location. Here is a list of upcoming ones.

    Despite requiring planning ahead of time, there isn't any math or equipment required, it is just a direct observation of the shape of the Earth's shadow. Granted, one could argue that the earth was a flat round disk and things were perfectly aligned, but if you observe several lunar eclipses, you'll see them at different times of the year, in different parts of the sky, and you could of course observe them from different parts of the Earth and you'll always see a nice round shadow.

    As summarized in an often misattributed Magellan quote:

    The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Megathread: April Fools’ Day 2024 on the internet in ~talk

    trefulo
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    Paul Sellers had his traditional light hearted April Fools Day video, this year it was a call to invest in https://woodenai.com/

    Paul Sellers had his traditional light hearted April Fools Day video, this year it was a call to invest in https://woodenai.com/

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Teaching coding to an eight year old with Scratch? in ~tech

    trefulo
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    That's awesome, glad he likes it. It really is a gem but doesn't seem to be as widely known as it deserves. I'd recommend the GameGo as well, I think it makes coding much more visceral as they get...

    That's awesome, glad he likes it. It really is a gem but doesn't seem to be as widely known as it deserves.

    I'd recommend the GameGo as well, I think it makes coding much more visceral as they get to see and show others the fruit of their labors.

    4 votes

  4. Comment on What learning do you find easy or difficult? And why? in ~talk

    trefulo
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    I've spent the last several weeks using spaced repetition through Anki and have been enjoying it a lot. I'm learning morse code, the 300 most common species in my area (through iNaturalist), all...

    I've spent the last several weeks using spaced repetition through Anki and have been enjoying it a lot. I'm learning morse code, the 300 most common species in my area (through iNaturalist), all of the countries of the world (location on map, flag, capital city), the 650 most common spanish words, the constellations, and common english idioms. It's been a lot of fun and it's pretty magical how well spaced repetition works.

    I'd heard about it before but never really took the leap. However, I recently came across this overview which made me want to finally take the plunge. That post cites Fluent Forever as one of its inspirations. Wanting to learn Spanish but not having really taken many active steps, I bought the book and have to say I've also enjoyed it. It focuses on using spaced repetition to accelerate language learning.

    The "Further Reading" section at the end of the post is a trove of interesting links on spaced repetition, including the article Augmenting Long-Term Memory by Michael Nielson which emphasizes how spaced repetition can be used for more than just memorizing lists of facts.

    So, anyway, both specific to language learning and more broadly, I've been surprised to see how much I've enjoyed trying to use Spaced Repetition to learn new things at this stage in life.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on Teaching coding to an eight year old with Scratch? in ~tech

    trefulo
    (edited )
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    With my son, while he played around a bit with Scratch, what he really wanted to build was simple video games, and for that we've found that Microsoft MakeCode: Arcade has been a fantastic fit. It...

    With my son, while he played around a bit with Scratch, what he really wanted to build was simple video games, and for that we've found that Microsoft MakeCode: Arcade has been a fantastic fit. It offers a scratch like graphical programming environment, but with a focus on 2D arcade style games. It also supports textual programming in either javascript or python, so it naturally graduates to textual programming when the child does.

    My son has really taken a liking to it, I think especially because there are number of hardware platforms that support Arcade MakeCode, in particular he has a TinkerGen GameGo a simple gameboy like device which you can load Arcade Makecode games onto. He's gotten a huge thrill from being able to make his own games, load them on the device and share those with his brother or cousins.

    There are tons of instructional videos, or example games available to help learn from.

    Makecode also has a mode for the micro:bit and Minecraft Education which uses the same graphical / textual interface for programming a simple hardware device or minecraft plugin type things.

    Definitely worth checking out, I didn't find it until a friend of mine mentioned it but its been a huge boon to our son's programming journey and I can't help but spread the word.

    8 votes

  6. Comment on Small scale pen plotting by Adam Fuhrer in ~creative

    trefulo
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    Very neat pen plotting art by Adam Fuhrer. Full size works also available for purchase.

    Very neat pen plotting art by Adam Fuhrer. Full size works also available for purchase.

    3 votes

  8. Comment on Advent of Code starts tonight! in ~comp

    trefulo
    Link Parent
    They vary a lot in difficulty over the course of the month. Though, they tend to increase in difficulty as time goes on and the weekends tend to be a bit of a jump up in difficulty. Some of the...

    They vary a lot in difficulty over the course of the month. Though, they tend to increase in difficulty as time goes on and the weekends tend to be a bit of a jump up in difficulty. Some of the puzzles are quite notorious for their difficulty over the years.

    One way to assess the relative difficulty of the puzzles is to look at https://www.maurits.vdschee.nl/scatterplot/?10800 which shows a scatterplot of the solve times on the leaderboard for each puzzle from each year.

    7 votes

  9. Comment on Advent of Code starts tonight! in ~comp

    trefulo
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    I use python at work every day but have used advent of code to try new languages like you. A couple years ago I wanted to finally learn a lisp so decided to do advent of code in Clojure and I...

    I use python at work every day but have used advent of code to try new languages like you. A couple years ago I wanted to finally learn a lisp so decided to do advent of code in Clojure and I absolutely loved it. Really changed the way I think about programming. Used Clojure again last year and will likely do the puzzles in Clojure this year as well.

    5 votes

  10. Comment on Advent of Code starts tonight! in ~comp

    trefulo
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    Advent of Code is a fun yearly set of programming puzzles. Each day a two part puzzle is released at midnight EST each day from Dec 1st (i.e. tonight) through the 25th. It's a ton of fun, the...

    Advent of Code is a fun yearly set of programming puzzles. Each day a two part puzzle is released at midnight EST each day from Dec 1st (i.e. tonight) through the 25th.

    It's a ton of fun, the puzzles are formulated in such a way that the answer is always a short number or text fragment, which means you can solve them in any language or environment you wish.

    For more information about it, the author was recently on a podcast and gave an overview

    The subreddit is quite active during the month and is a great community as well.

    10 votes

  12. Comment on What are the best intro books for different science fields? in ~books

    trefulo
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    An absolutely fantastic introduction to Probability and Statistics can be found in Statistical Rethinking by Richard McElreath. McElreath also posts all of his equally fantastic lectures on...

    An absolutely fantastic introduction to Probability and Statistics can be found in Statistical Rethinking by Richard McElreath. McElreath also posts all of his equally fantastic lectures on youtube. The lectures are exemplary. I really cannot recommend them enough.

    1 vote

  13. Comment on What are the best intro books for different science fields? in ~books

    trefulo
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    I'm quite fond of Physics for Enquiring Minds: The Methods Nature and Philosophy of Science by Eric Rogers, which is old enough to be out of copyright and available for free on the internet...

    I'm quite fond of Physics for Enquiring Minds: The Methods Nature and Philosophy of Science by Eric Rogers, which is old enough to be out of copyright and available for free on the internet archive.

    The first couple paragraphs of the preface does a good job of laying out the goals and audience of the book:

    This book offers a course in physics to non-physicists who wish to know physics and understand it. Here are the general reading, problems and laboratory instructions of a one-year course given at Princeton to undergraduates whose chief field of study lies outside technical physics: economists, students in humanities and in life sciences, and many premedicals. That course is open alike to those who have studied physics before and those who have not. Like that course, this book neither requires a previous physics course nor repeats in material or treatment the normal content of high-school physics -- so it welcomes all readers.
    This book treats a series of topics intensively: topics chosen to form a coordinated structure of knowledge. Although mathematics provides the essential tools of physics, only the simpler parts of high-school algebra and plane geometry are used here. On the other hand, critical reading, good reasoning and clear thinking are asked for again and again. The problems, which are of primary importance are not plug-in slots for formulas, but ask for reasoning and critical thinking. In this way, both text and problems ask readers to learn by their own thinking.

    Its a great book, highly recommended.

    I also very much enjoy Calclus Made Easy: Being a very-simplest introduction to those beautiful methods which are generally called by the terrifying names of the Differential and Integral Calculus by Silvanus P. Thompson, also conveniently out of copyright, for which there is a very nice web version available at calculusmadeeasy.org which has my favorite epitaph of all time:

    What one fool can do, another can (Ancient Simian Proverb.)

    and also has a fantastic prologue:

    Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool to learn how to master the same tricks.
    Some calculus-tricks are quite easy. Some are enormously difficult. The fools who write the textbooks of advanced mathematics — and they are mostly clever fools — seldom take the trouble to show you how easy the easy calculations are. On the contrary, they seem to desire to impress you with their tremendous cleverness by going about it in the most difficult way.
    Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can.

    Finally while we are on the topic of fantastic web versions of classic texts, checkout both the Feynman Lectures of Physics and the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, though both of these texts, while introductions are targeting elite undergraduates.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    trefulo
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    Right now I'm reading Green Prosperity: Quit Your Job, Live your Dreams by Thomas J. Elpel. The book is interesting. A bit repetitive at times. The basic premise of the book is that we live in a...

    Right now I'm reading Green Prosperity: Quit Your Job, Live your Dreams by Thomas J. Elpel.

    The book is interesting. A bit repetitive at times. The basic premise of the book is that we live in a world of great abundance and yet the world conspires in various ways to ensure that we generally don't benefit from that abundance. The author maintains that we should be able to provide for our basic needs and live a good life with only about two months of work a year and makes the case and encourages people to sort of check out of the daily grind and consider an alternative path.

    7 votes

  15. Comment on People who use Obsidian, or other research apps, what service do you use to sync between devices? in ~tech

    trefulo
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    For a while now I've been using foam a roam clone built as a VS Code extension. This means my notes take the form of a git repository that I store on my personal gogs git server. This has been...

    For a while now I've been using foam a roam clone built as a VS Code extension. This means my notes take the form of a git repository that I store on my personal gogs git server. This has been working really well for me, but I admit it doesn't really have a good way to view the notes on mobile. My git repo is accessible on mobile and I've used it in a pinch to view notes, but then if I find myself needing to take notes on the go, I'll just use Keep and then transcribe them into my foam notes when I get back to my computer.

    Since I generally use my notes as a sort of lab notebook, this works well as I'm generally always at the computer when I want to take notes.

    1 vote