The Old Trams of Hong Kong
Machine Elf 26 – Devs Cube | Menger Sponge
When I was watching Devs (which I highly recommend, especially if you like films like Ex Machina from Alex Garland), I recognized the computer lab was in the shape of a cool mathematical fractal called a Menger Sponge. This is a fractal curve, a three-dimensional generalization of the one-dimensional Cantor set and two-dimensional Sierpinski carpet. It was formalized by Karl Menger in 1926. I’ve been working on lots of fractals lately at night in my lonely isolation and thought this was bizarrely mindbending. And, yes, I’m a math nerd.
The music is also from Devs, specifically the opening of Episode 4 of Season 1. The composers for the show at Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury, and, if you’ve seen the show, then you know what a unique soundscape it has. Well done guys! 🙂
It took about 48 hours to render at 1080p on a rather beefy Xeon and high-end GeForce based Origin PC… just to give you an idea of the complexity of the math.
Daily Photo – The Old Trams of Hong Kong
Here’s something most people don’t get to experience because it’s not really high on the touristy list of Hong Kong. If you head over to where the fish markets are, you can see these old-timey tram cars. They cost almost nothing to ride in, and you can just jump in and ride around all day! Those windows on the 2nd floor up top are particularly cool.
