I play stuff, I draw stuff, I code stuff.

Your Hong Kong Splatoon 3 ☂️ Brella main and vector artist who also studies Computer Science. Occasionally play games other than Splatoon. Can probably help your math homework too.

  • 7 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • All Gentoo users remember the pain of compiling QtWebEngine ;)

    I used to run Gentoo on my old computer. Installing it was quite the experience. That was where I learnt about most of how Linux works thanks to the wiki.

    I heard compiling your own packages with use flags can improve performance, but honestly it was not worth it for the compile time.

    When I switched to my new PC, the Nvidia GPU doesn’t work and I could not figure out why. I also don’t have the time at that moment so I installed Endeavour instead, which I’m still using.


















  • I did it in Cantonese, probably similar to the Mandarin poem.

    I think my mom started making me memorize it in the last year of kindergarten (I was 5yo). By the time multiplication becomes the main topic in primary 2 (2nd grade) maths, I didn’t really have much problem doing them. It was really useful to have it recited.



  • The following are not-properly-researched theories I made up

    I think x came from “unknown”. Perhaps at one point people used a cross (x) to represent something unknown. The symbol may have extended to mean “variable”. Then math advanced and people begin making graphs with variables and the logical next variable is y.

    abc are used when these variables run out, because they are intuitive to pick.

    ijk in programming loops came from “index”. The reason we use “index” and not “count” or “tally” is because in early computer days, someone decided to use “index”. For example, your browser still automatically fetches “index.html” if a path doesn’t return a valid response.

    ijk in vectors may have come from quaternions, which in turn came from complex/imaginary numbers. Since i represents “imaginary”, that could have been carried over to vectors.

    The xyz orientation in 3D program is purely a choice by the developer. It is which ever orientation they are comfortable with developing.

    y is up because of it’s commonly used for graphs, but y is down for computer graphics. The top-left corner of a screen is (0, 0) and as the position moves downwards, y increases.

    We do use Greek letters in other coordinate systems! For example, a spherical coordinate system often uses (r, θ, φ). I think these symbols may have already had connections with other aspects of math (like θ is commonly used for angles). They are not used generally to avoid confusion.