Matthew M. Conroy's blog

My latest chapbook/zine: Complete Incomplete Cubes (after Sol Lewitt) contains all 4096 incomplete (plus "blank" and complete) cubes on 16 pages. Let me know if you'd like one and I'll mail a copy to you!

This grasshopper was temporarily stuck between panes of my storm/screen door. I don't see grasshoppers very often in Seattle.

Updated my dice problem collection. The new problem is problem 40: A die is rolled and summed repeatedly until the sum is 100 or more. What is the most likely last roll? What if we roll two dice at time? Three, etc.?

If one die is rolled, then 6 is the most likely last roll, while 7 is the most likely last roll when two dice are rolled. With three dice, the most likely last roll is 12, but for more dice, a very clear pattern emerges: if the number of dice rolled is odd, then the most likely last roll is the most likely roll (greater than the median), while for an even number of dice, it is one more than the most likely roll. (Here we assume a sufficiently large value for "100": for large numbers of dice, we want to extend the threshold so the analysis is smoother.)

A poem by Edward Thomas (1878-1917):

Mother, the root of this little yellow flower
Among the stones has the taste of quinine.
Things are strange to-day on the cliff. The sun shines so bright,
And the grasshopper works at his sewing-machine
So hard. Here's one on my hand, mother, look;
I lie so still. There's one on your book.

But I have something to tell more strange. So leave
Your book to the grasshopper, mother dear, --
Like a green knight in a dazzling market-place, --
And listen now. Can you hear what I hear
Far out? Now and then the foam there curls
And stretches a white arm out like a girl's.

Fishes and gulls ring no bells. There cannot be
A chapel or church between here and Devon,
With fishes and gulls ringing its bell,--hark!--
Somewhere under the sea or up in heaven.
'It's the bell, my son, out in the bay
On the buoy. It does sound sweet to-day.'

Sweeter I never heard, mother, no, not in all Wales.
I should like to be lying under that foam,
Dead, but able to hear the sound of the bell,
And certain that you would often come
And rest, listening happily.
I should be happy if that could be.

These little purple flowers cover parts of our yard in early summer. I often try to take nice pictures of them, but it was cloudy and windy, so I took one inside and used a tripod for a change; 6 second exposure at f22. The result is much better this way.

More recursion-based composition experiments. Headphones recommended. https://soundcloud.com/matthew-m-conroy/recursion-2024-1