Reading this, it feels like an application on Conway's law.

Dithering as a mechanism to reduce/remove banding can be very impressive.

The color Next machines only had 12 bit displays, 4 bits per channel, but with careful use of dithering it was often indistinguishable from a 24-bit display (so called "true color")

There are so many ways to produce sierpinski gaskets.

It you specify n points and the pick a new point at random, then iteratively randomly select (uniformly) one of the original n points and move the next point to the mid point of the current point and the selected point. Coloring those points generates a sierpinski triangle or tetrahedron or whatever the n-1 dimensional triangle is called

That's called a simplex :)

The same as in the simplex algorithm to solve linear programming problems.

I programmed this on my TI-83 back in the day and spent many hours watching it generate triangles during boring classes.

You can generate many other fractals (e.g. fern shapes) in a similar way, though the transformations are more complicated than “move halfway to selected point”.

yes, those are called iterated function systems (IFS) fractals

FWIW, the Next color machines had 12bit (4096) color and in practice it didn't make much of a difference. I was using one fairly extensively in the late 90s (by which time 24bit was the norm -- albeit not yet ubiquitous) and for anything other that photo/video work it was perfectly reasonable. It's amazing how far a good dithering algorithm can get you.

The refresh rate is, of course, a different issue

There's even a book "Adventure in Prolog" by Dennis Merritt (ISBN 1520918917)

It's a lot of fun to work through, other prolog resources can be a little dry

This one? [0]

[0] https://amzi.com/AdventureInProlog/

Yes! that one!. I have a paper copy, so it didn't occur to me that there would be an online version

Going to tell the Preface story tomorrow at work, I guess if your reading this you now know my HN handle ;) Not sure I will do the 'game' but that into was worth clicking the link.

> I guess if your reading this you now know my HN handle

No worries. A great philosopher once wrote:

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what your HN handle is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by an HN handle even more bizarre and inexplicable."

I also heard:

"There is another theory which states that this has already happened..."

I've also worked with engineers who have raced LMP. It's largely pay-to-play and this is one of those professions where if you're the right person, in the right place, at the right time, you might be able to afford it.

For the title holder, in this case the Earl of Lovelace, they are often referred to ("styled") simply by the place name. So after William King-Noel was created Earl.of Lovelace he was styled "Lovelace". She would have been styled "Lady Lovelace" in society, and "Countess of Lovelace" in formal contexts

From the mid 60s

Hence why it is so easy to get lost in there

The sidebar about pirate radio, while factually correct, seems to heavily imply that pirate radio started in the jungle era, but Radio Caroline was broadcasting in the 60s

Hi there. That was probably just a small mistake on how I tried to explain the paragraph or the poor choice of words/terms I used. Thanks for the heads up.