Not by a long shot. At least once a week we have people talking about how they "hacked" their focus, or their working hours, or other drivel. This is genuinely neat.
No. This woman demonstrated intellectual curiosity and real creativity. Most of the "life hacker" type posts I see are self-congratulatory pop-psychology.
Your age isn't on your website, but my calculation (got Master's degree in 1986 at likely approximate age of 24) couldn't have been TOO far off, right?
Well, it was farther off two years ago when I posted the picture. And I got my MA in 1986 on my 22nd birthday. (Later got an MLIS on another birthday.) I put a math problem in my follow-up post. You should be able to calculate my age and my son's ages from these clues: http://sonderbooks.com/blog/?p=10000
My age estimate was from your LinkedIn profile. If I was guessing by pictures, I would have said 39. (Is that the right answer? (I mean in the sense of Right Answer to say to someone of how old they are, not mathematically correct. :-) ))
The Right Answer is to have not brought up the age issue because it is rather immaterial to the discussion. Can you really say that the authors age, when considered independently from the article subject, has significant bearing on the voting?
WAY more geeky/cool to have knitted this yourself than to have just bought it as a T-shirt.
Sure, but I didn't say the opposite. I like the idea a lot and knitting this yourself is really great, but I would definitely buy it if it was on a T-shirt.
Agreed. But something still feels wrong with saying, "Nice, you spent 100 hours making something cool? I'd definitely pay $15 for a poor replica thereof."
Again, that is not what I said. What I meant was more along the lines of "You did a great work and I like both the drawing and its meaning. I would love to see that on a T-shirt, and if I were to make that T-shirt it would certainly give you credit for this."
I wouldn't feel like wearing a sweater like that for personal preferences, but I would like this idea to spread. You would definitely have a point if she designed and produced that as a T-shirt and now somebody else started making poor replicas, but hers is probably a unique specimen.
The idea of making a chart from prime numbers is definitely not copywrite-able. So go for it! I got the idea from a knitting magazine where someone described a blanket with a chart of prime numbers that fascinated a student who walked by who was in a remedial math class. They had a small picture of part of the blanket, and I couldn't figure out how their method worked, but I put those ideas into a sweater.
I have attempted to write a children's book about using this idea to make cyphers or just fun art. But I haven't tried to sell it yet. And I did a library program that went over very well with kids. Anyway, if anyone makes a t-shirt let me know -- I'd order one.
Though maybe I should do it -- I've got several colored charts already made from when I was working on my book. Give me some time, and I'll make a cafe press account....
I can see how it's easy to get hooked (sorry) on knitting and maths. You might start off doing visualisations of various sequences. Next, you wonder what happens if Fink and Mao's necktie analysis [1] is extended to an exhaustive analysis of knitting stitches, and end up with all sorts of multidimensional stuff. Finally that becomes too easy and you attempt to use a length of yarn to model the world line of a single electron [2] and accidentally win a Nobel Prize! :-)
No, prime factorization is way more hackish than pickup artistry or startup funding. You're succumbing to stereotypes based on surface appearance instead of looking at the essence of things. That's not very hackish of you.
