To all the variations of Murphy’s law…
2020 was a devastating year personally and academically. Globally as well. There is no question about it. I write this as a reminder to myself that when things get tough, I need to keep powering through, to keep my sights on the next mile stone, the next goal, the next adventure and to keep the journey going. I write this in grievance and in gratitude. I write this to the lost loved ones and to the memories we shared and lessons they taught me. To the beautiful humans and to the things that got me through it all.
To setting goals boldly and to the ones that were achieved
to the goals that were set and went unattained
to the things accomplished but were never marked
to finding new problems to work on
to the interesting problems that grabbed my attention
to learning things that are intimidating and alien
to the things learned that have become so familiar
to sitting near a lake, beneath a sky filled with stars
and to keeping count of the meteors zooming by
to playing with prime numbers in polar axes
and exploring the mandelbrot set and chaos with logistic maps
to the books that were read and to the ever expanding list
to learning to program with python
to and trying to simulate natural processes
to writing a galaxy simulator and to the hours spent debugging
to cooking in groups and to eating so plenty
to catching a glimpse of comet neowise
to shooting startrails which was my bucket shot
to moving between continents and to what once was home
to switching to linux and learning openfoam
to learning to machine learn and artificial intelligence
which compliment my curiosity and my artificial stupidity
to doing art as little as it may be
to the shows, the podcasts and the ever growing backlogs
to the apps, the games, and most definitely the memesI’ll just leave these here…
First 3 images: Prime numbers plot in polar coordinates inspired by 3b1b on youtube. Here is a link
Image 4: This is the partial output between range (3.447 to 4.0) of a logistic map equation. This equation exhibits an unpredictable complexity for a simple 1-dimensional discrete time mapping and is often discussed when talking about chaos, the mathematical kind. The link if you want to learn more.
Image 5: This is the very famous mandelbrot set. This fractal is computed and rendered in python. Its a simple equation based on simple mathematical principles. Yet, it shows such complex and fascinating patterns under repeated iterations. The link if you want to learn more.
Images 6&7 are zoomed in sections of the mandelbrot set showing the complex beautiful patterns I referred to earlier.
The video contains a simple 2d galaxy simulator I wrote. I wanted to do it since I learned about the math and how they are usually rendered for documentaries and movies. It was a very fun project. I am working on it to make it better and render a spiral galaxy structure… then may be make another galaxy and witness galaxies colliding.
The following video is a timelapse of the nightsky. This was shot during peak of Lyrids meteor shower in April 2020. It also happened to be international dark sky week during lyrids. If you pay close attention, you can see a meteor streak. This was all shot on my phone and under a bit of light pollution. Keep that in mind when think to yourself how amazing it is!
The timelapse at dawn the same time.
A portion of the milkyway on the same night as the meteor shower. This was my second attempt.
Finally my bucket shot of the year. The one I had been waiting to try for a long time and it turned out great. This was also completely shot on phone and a tripod. This video is a timelapse of the stars trails which is cool.
The following image is a composition of 360 different 8 second exposures.
More night-sky stills in the Looking Up gallery.
For the pi number of people reading this… that’s all for now. And let us all keep in mind, life is not a zero sum game and we have to keep it going because there is always going to be a way forward.
Cheers!