Pi to me a Kingdom is.
Such perfect joy therein I find,
that it excels all other bliss
that world affords or grows by kind.

Though much I think I feel I want,
and still my mind permits to crave,
Infinity goes on and on,
the splendour falling wave on wave.

I am often fascinated by the choice of Google ads that appear on different posts on this site (at the bottom-right of the page).

For the previous post on Golden Rectangles, there was a string of ads for ‘Fibonacci Traders’…
What are Fibonacci Traders?!

It seems the ads were picking up the mention that stock market prices fluctuate in a Golden Ratio relationship. And Fibonacci Traders are ones who use this knowledge to get you Big Bucks on the stock exchange!

It just fascinates me to see all the random businesses out there who wind up being linked to words that we write. Whatever next?
 

I recently created a little tool to calculate Golden Rectangles… the GoldenRectanglizer.

It was made for the Golden Rectangle photo group on Flickr, which explores the Golden Ratio in photographic composition. The idea is that you keep it open when cropping photos in your photo software and calculate the Golden Rectangle that best fits your picture.

What’s a Golden Rectangle?
A Golden Rectangle is one whose height and width are related by the Golden Ratio, an extremely common natural ratio – found in the geometry of human faces and bodies, seashells, trees and even the distribution of financial stock market highs and lows.

If you were to cut a square from the Golden Rectangle, the remaining small rectangle would have exactly the same height-to-width ratio as the original rectangle.

One side is approximately 1.618 (“Phi”) times the size of the other. But the exact ratio can never actually be known because Phi is an irrational number, just like Pi (3.14159…). The number of decimal places goes on infinitely.

More is discussed in the Golden Rectangle photo group discussion board. Here are the latest photos from the photo pool:

If I had a tail, it would, I feel, be advisable that I now place it sheepishly between my legs as I tuck into the large portion of humble pie set before me.

On May 10th this year I smugly wrote a blog entitled ‘Google a Gonna?’, delighting in the prospect of another corporate monster meeting its untimely demise. Little did I know …

Google Earth is awesome … the potential applications are seemingly limitless. You can literally (well … virtually) fly all around the earth, zooming in wherever you please, tilting and rotating the landscape to your heart’s content … a more compelling experience is hard to imagine. Terrain, roads, buildings, hotels, restaurants, local search, route finder … already this product has much to offer. Add to this the .KML technology providing layers of dynamic content bound to geographical locations and you have yourself the building blocks of something truly exceptional.

Before hailing Google as an untouchable techno-god, it must be said that this offering is really a re-branding of an already existent application developed over a number of years by the Keyhole team – recently aquired by the search engine giant.

So popular was this free application that Google were forced to suspend downloading and registration just two days after launching in an attempt to combat the massive amount of traffic generated by it’s release. You can still get the download but you’ll have to employ a good search engine to find it!

Today is the first full moon in May, a traditionally auspicious day known as “Ananda Purnima” (the blissful full-moon). On this day in 1921, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar was born in Jamalpur, India.

His early work as a railway clerk betrayed little of the storm that was soon to occur around him…

Sarkar started teaching yogic meditation to a growing band of followers, later forming the socio-spiritual organisation Ananda Marga. He became known by his spiritual name Shrii Shrii Anandamurti.

In 1959, he propounded a humanistic socio-economic theory, Prout, to challenge both Capitalism and Communism. I remember hearing his comment that society had been unable to fully accept humanism until it had witnessed the horrors of World War Two.

He formed a relief organisation, AMURT, which was the first global NGO founded in the Third World. AMURT has recently been working in the Tsunami region.

Sarkar went on to form a global cultural organisation, RAWA, for the realignment of the arts with the spirit of service and mysticism. And just to show how it was done, he composed a staggering 5018 songs in the last eight years of his life, before passing away in 1990. His collection of songs is called Prabhata Samgiita.

He went on to propound a new concept in science and psychology, called Microvita, and a holistic system of education based on his principles of Neo-Humanism.

Sarkar was a fountain of wisdom on ecology, womens’ issues, linguistics, history, farming and just about everything else that I can think of!

A strict moralist, and a tireless exposer of corruption, he fell on the wrong side of Indira Gandhi’s increasingly authoritarian government. Refusing to keep quiet about social exploitation and his Prout theory, he spent seven years as a political prisoner and survived a poisoning attempt while in jail.

By the time he re-emerged, his ideas had spread throughout the world, and continue to do so today.

So much in one lifetime…

I’ll be thinking of you today. Happy Birthday!

www.grokker.com is a search engine that displays the results of your information requests in a very interesting way…

In his excellent blog Semiologic, Denis de Bernard’s recent posting claims that Grokking ‘..is times more powerful that anything Google’s pathetically outperformed search engine will let you do. It deserves the blogosphere’s full attention.’

I agree … Grokking may not be perfect but it’s a step in the right (and for me inevitable) direction, away from linear search results toward a more visually compelling and intuituve data representation.

When I looked at the new UK political map at the BBC, I couldn’t help noticing something…

Is it just me, or is there a Dragon in Wales – bowing its head and unfurling its wings? Take another look…

Wales doesn’t usually enter my mind. What could it mean?

The Welsh political map
Looking at the map of Wales itself, it seems that the 4 parties cover roughly the same area of land as each other. The way the parties are symmetrically clustered is interesting:

Both the Liberal Democrats (yellow) and the Conservatives (blue) seem to have 3-fold symmetry around the centrepoint of Wales, while Plaid Cymru (green) and Labour (red) have 2-fold symmetry above and below that centrepoint.

Blaenau Gwent (Labour’s bloody nose) is the small grey-green spot to the south-east. And is that Newtown at the centrepoint?

So what’s new on the horizon for Wales? Is the Welsh Dragon rising?

[Original images created by the BBC, and borrowed with respect.]

Something I’ve just been trying out…

Here is a Category Map of this website. It uses the WordPress Category Map Plugin.

The size and colour of the category names are related to the number of posts in that category. Each category name is also a link and can be used to browse the posts contained within that category.

If you refresh the page, you get a new, randomly generated map.

I think the map gets more interesting when there is a greater number of posts on the site and the relative differences in category size gets more pronounced.

I have posted some comments the plugin’s website, about how the map could be taken further.

This is a photo from the Hubble Telescope‘s recent 15th Anniversary Series.

From Hubble’s description of the photo :

The graceful, winding arms of the majestic spiral galaxy M51 (NGC 5194) appear like a grand spiral staircase sweeping through space. They are actually long lanes of stars and gas laced with dust.

Beautiful.