Viewing profile — BobMackay

I think one should also consider the failure modes when, for example, a tree falls into the wall. For a straight wall, it is possible that a falling section will propagate the fail…

I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical!

I have been waiting for this for 50 years! It is wonderful that Roger Penrose and my father, Alan Mackay, are still alive to see it! If only Escher could see it!

Thanks. My copy was actually the copy that they sent to J.D. Bernal, and was signed over to him "with the compliments of the authors". My father was another PhD student of Bernal's…

Here is their 1947 paper on Principles and Progress in the Construction of High-Speed Digital Computers: http://bobmackay.com/Booth/Booth.html

I was present at the BMUG meeting on Berkeley campus when Andy demonstrated Switcher for the first time. He did no talking, but simply ran up two or three applications... and then …

If you like such things, Nguyen Duc Thang has a ridiculously extensive collection he has been modeling, which can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/user/thang010146/featured .

The notion of "Programming" was mentioned and even defined in 1947 by Donald Booth. See http://bobmackay.com/Booth/Booth.html Principles and Progress in the Construction of High-Sp…

I don't have a 3d printer - Shapeways is much more convenient and cheaper!

It is a BlueChick, from BuildYourCNC. I recommend it if all you wish to cut is wood. It is not really stiff enough for aluminum. A great starter machine. Mine is starting to wear o…

My father (Professor Alan Mackay) and I visited Professor Penrose in Oxford in 1975, to discuss his new tiling pattern, and I was able to write a computer program (in Algol 60) to …

Just as a heads up, if you try to run this program with your monitor in portrait mode, the program defaults to full screen mode, but assumes a landscape monitor. The parts that are…

This counting-out game is known as the Josephus Problem, and dates back many centuries. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_problem . I have a wood-block printed Japanese te…

Just for completeness, the 1990 paper referred to was by my father, Professor Alan Mackay, and was published in Modern Physics Letters B, Vol 4, No 15. I have put up a roughly scan…