📝 Notes on Parker Adey

Milky Way and Flock of Birds

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:33:22 -0400

A braid group calculation showing the inverse relationship between Milky Way and Flock of Birds.

Fixing the zlib luatex mismatch

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 16:49:47 -0400

A brutal solution: downgrade zlib by compiling an old version.

Talk: The Art of Braiding Algorithms

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 14:47:06 -0400

A talk about work on loop braids and string figures.

On Library Holds

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 18:57:49 -0400

They are a magical mechanism for getting things from the library.

Thumb Loop Transfers

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 06:16:36 -0400

Various examples of thumb loop transfers in the string figure literature.

Commutator Intuition

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:51:01 -0400

What is a commutator, really?

Of Loops, Braids, and String Figures: The Loopy Calculus of Cat's Cradle

Wed, 27 May 2026 10:37:06 -0400

The hands out and slides for a talk at Bridges 2026.

How to Build Spot It

Mon, 25 May 2026 09:01:02 -0400

A bit of projective geometry builds a Spot It deck or the Fano plane.

Digital Magic: An Introduction to Base Systems

Fri, 22 May 2026 16:12:28 -0400

An old magic trick is used to introduce binary.

Missing Symbols PDF

Wed, 20 May 2026 10:27:26 -0400

Attention conservation notice: This is a fix for a very niche problem. Unless your printer is eating certain character from your print job, you had best move on. The punchline is: flatten the PDF.

The printer at work, a Ricoh IM C6500, doesn’t get along well with me. Sometimes, when printing a PDF it will garble the output and omit a lot of symbols. It drops math symbols and particular kernings, in particular ff. This makes it di icult to read papers.

$\LaTeX{}$ Lecture Notes Template

Fri, 08 May 2026 15:59:54 -0400

The $\LaTeX{}$ template that I use for writing lecture notes.

Why Do You Suck at Juggling?

Tue, 05 May 2026 16:31:06 -0400

A story that I often think about.

Gamma Correction

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:05:23 -0400

Some quick calulations about gamma correction.

Navaho String Games

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:06:20 -0400

A long excerpt from an anthropologist talking with the Navaho.

Pigeonhole Principle and the Dimension Bound Theorem

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 19:30:05 -0400

A little note about the equivalence of pigeonhole principle and the dimension bound theorem for finite vector spaces.

FAQ: TA Hiring

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 09:15:12 -0400

How TA hiring works at UTSC.

Garden Summer 2026

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 13:21:14 -0400

Various notes on gardening in the summer of 2026.

Contemplative Computing

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:50:12 -0500

Loose thoughts on more contemplative approaches to computing.

Friendship Fantasies

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:45:57 -0500

Some journal writing prompts about friendship.

Growing Linearly Independent Sets

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:50:49 -0500

A note about the expected size of a linearly independent set in a finite vector space.