Blog.

After running my solar system simulation several times I was interested to see how robust the system was. By this I mean that despite the fact that the particles start off randomly distributed, the progress of the simulation is quite similar each time. The details weren't exactly the same each times, but in general, a star formed at the centre of the universe at about the same time and ended up with a few satellites, while several particles were sent flying off into space.

I have just come across an interesting rule for the tones of some words on a Popup Chinese podcast. The rule was only mentioned in passing, perhaps because it only applies to a small number of words. The rule is for when a single character can represent a noun or a related verb, which have the same pronunciation, but a different tone:

The verb is third tone, while the noun is forth tone

Having made the change from Windows to Linux, I've also had to make the change from Adobe Illustrator to Inkscape. From what I've seen so far, Inkscape seems able to do most of Illustrator can do, plus a bit extra. However, it has taken me some time to make the change and some tasks that should have been simple have turned out not to be. One example is drawing arrowheads on lines and getting them the right colour.

On a trip home, a while ago now, I came across a small collection of Tomorrow’s World magazines (this not this horror) from 1998. Inside were several interesting articles and adverts. I particularly interested by those about then cutting edge cameras and phones, which look so dated now. I also found an article that had fascinated me at the time and was about a computer simulation of societies, called Sugarscape.