Tien Chiu

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A (weaving) puzzle

I was playing around this morning with steepened twills for my Exploring Multishaft Design study group and discovered this interesting little puzzle: given a twill, you can steepen the twill line or make it shallower by skipping shafts in the threading or the treadling. This isn’t new news, but I then discovered that if you skip shafts in both the threading *and* the treadling, you get a “normal” twill back, but it does not resemble the original twill! (See file and photo below.)

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The question I posed to my study group is, what relationship does the new twill have to the original one? This seems mathematically interesting to me…

If we come up with an answer, I’ll post that too.

Weaving is such fun!

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Studying weaving

This weaving study group is turning out even better than I thought it would!  We’re getting eight or ten messages per day back and forth, most full of interesting observations that take considerable thought to fully absorb (remember, I’m a novice weaver).  It’s a real challenge and going to be more so as I try to juggle it with my other projects.  It feels like drinking through a firehose, and I’m having a hard time keeping up, but I’m learning a lot!  This is so much better than trying to puzzle weaving out on my own.

I have just given away nearly all of my back issues of Handwoven (~10-15 years worth – bought from eBay) to a beginning weaver.  I haven’t been that impressed by the magazine, and it was taking up lots of precious space on my bookshelf, so off they are going where they will do some good.  I did keep a few issues that I thought were particularly notable, though.  Now I have room to put out the back issues of Complex Weavers Journal, and the Weaver’s/Prairie Wool Companions!  They are much meatier (to the structure weaver anyway) than Handwoven.  Weaver’s in particular is great – I went to considerable time and effort to collect all 44 issues, and I think I’m only missing 2-3 issues of the 16 Prairie Wool Companions.  I use them as a study tool.

Now, off to investigate MySQL and set up my database.  I think I understand how I want to set up the fields, so it’s time to do the basic stuff and get all the tables, relationships, etc. in.  Then I can start building my basic form in HTML, and write the PHP to interface with the database.

Cooking roast chicken tonight, this time on a spit that sticks straight up.  In theory this allows the chicken to brown nicely on all sides – will be interesting to see if it works.  I’ve done my usual trick and slipped garlic slices under the skin on all sides, which produces a nicely juicy, garlicky chicken.  Can’t wait to taste it!

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Weaving and mathematics

I’m really pleased with how this online weaving study group (working through Exploring Multishaft Design) is going.  One of the members is also a mathematician, and posed the interesting question, “How many distinct twills can you get on n shafts?”

I thought about this a bit and realized that this is basically equivalent to a problem in number theory: how many ways can you add up various summands to get n?  This is addressed in a Wikipedia article on compositions in number theory.  I’m still working through the details of the formula (my original stab at it undercounts the total number of twills by a small amount – I understand the nature of the problem but not the way to fix it yet) but I find it fascinating how mathematics underlies seemingly unrelated topics.  I’m also pleased with myself for having remembered that there’s a branch of number theory devoted to partitions/composition.  It’s been fifteen years since I dropped out of math graduate school!

Meanwhile, I have been winding the warp for the painted-warp project.  I had forgotten how long it takes to wind a warp for fine work – I have to wind 1400 ends at 13 yards per end on a warping board.  It takes me about 1/3 of a minute (20 seconds) to wind each end, so that comes out to 1400/3 = 440 minutes = 7.33 hours just to wind the warp!  So I’m not going to get it done in time to paint this weekend.  Probably just as well since I don’t have the space to paint it indoors and outdoors is not an option – weather report says it’s due to rain all weekend.

I have also been reading up on information architecture (which is basically all about how to architect websites to make them intuitively obvious to the user).  Also about usability.  Steve Krug has a great book, Don’t Make Me Think! that covers the basics of it, and which is highly readable (and quite funny in places).  I highly recommend it.

Regarding the weaving project repository project – no, I have not forgotten about that! – I have been finding it rather overwhelming, but have decided that the best way to start is to pare down the functionality to the point where it’s extremely simple, then add on functionality in small chunks to get to the point of having something useful.  Since I have to learn almost everything from the ground up, this will enable me to do something besides flounder about trying to learn everything at once.  This means:

  • starting out with just a basic data-entry page, written in HTML, not with CSS;
  • having a basic display with nothing fancy (graphics, etc.)
  • stripping out a lot of the fancywork like tags, etc.

I figure the next iteration will involve replacing the HTML with “clean” CSS, and then I can start adding in more tables.  This will make it much more manageable as a project for a novice programmer.

I’m still not convinced this will ever be robust enough to be public, but it is interesting to play with, and hopefully I can make it useful someday!

Between learning about website design and documentation for my job, the project repository project, and the online study group, my brain is quite full right now.  I’m hoping I can keep track of all of those!

Interview yesterday went well, but they have four or five strong candidates for the position.  I should hear back from them “soon”, which puts them in the same timeframe as the web development contracting company I also interviewed with.  Balsam Hill, fortunately, has said that they have enough projects to keep me busy for awhile, so I’m not too worried about becoming unemployed.  Still, I’d like to get a permanent position soon.

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PHP, study group

Finished the section on PHP and have moved into the databases/MySQL section (page 200 or thereabouts). I won’t pretend to be an expert on PHP but I do have the basic syntax down and can look up the rest. I expect my early attempts to be frustrating and slow, but you gotta start somewhere.

Wove another 3′ on the network drafted jacket and am getting within sight of the end. Difficult right now since I am still fighting off this bronchitis and my inner ear is not quite what it ought to be, so weaving for long periods is making me dizzy. I have to take frequent breaks, which is frustrating.

The study group is rapidly becoming a reality – we have three people so far and a fourth is very likely. I’m pretty psyched about this – I’ve wanted to do a serious look at weaving design for awhile and this will be a great venue to get feedback and push me to think more deeply about it. Bonnie has very kindly offered to help us along with advice, which will be even better! So as soon as we figure out our format, we’ll get started.

Had three interviews (!) yesterday, two of which went really well. I’ve been asked to come back for a full interview today and have one more interview yet to be scheduled, plus a phone screen with OpenTable. I’m cautiously optimistic about landing a permanent position soon.