Eat more

I should, I suppose, be writing about more interesting things. What am I doing, you might ask.

Well, still working on the web site thing. About the only thing that I would consider "artistic" was this illustration I did for restaurants without photos:



For those wanting a brain teaser, this is the sort of thing that I have been pondering. (Charles might be interested in these...)

1) Imagine I were to draw a closed shape on paper, all straight-line edges (no curves). Then using carbon paper (remember that?) I put a dot at each vertex. Then I hand you the carbon with just the dots. Would you be able to reconstruct it from just the dots, if I told you that none of the lines/sides cross each other? Note that the shape may be concave.

2) If you knew both the coordinates of each vertex and where the lines went, and then I gave you the coordinates of another point, could you determine whether the point was inside the closed shape *without* graphing it? ("Inside" in the sense that the center of a crescent moon shape is *not* inside the shape.) What formula/algorithm would you use to determine this?

That's all to say, this is why I haven't been blogging. Not exactly dinner conversation.

Off to measure another hundred coordinates on the map...