Christian Lawson-Perfect

Mathematician, koala fan, mathstodon.xyz admin,
⅓ of https://aperiodical.com. He/him

Homepage: http://somethingorotherwhatever.com
Location: Whitley Bay, UK
Pronouns: he/him
Favourite number: 3435

Last Notes

2025-10-15 06:42:47 UTC

Why is it that I'm happy to spend a couple of days preparing, and a day travelling, to give an academic presentation to half a dozen people, but if I spend an hour making a video and it only gets a couple of hundred views I feel it was a waste of time?
Is it that I don't know *who* the video viewers are?

2025-05-24 08:32:35 UTC

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do you have a way of checking your authentication details outside of the router?
Since you've just had fibre put in, I wouldn't be surprised if it was something stupid like they've made a new account instead of moving your old one

2025-01-28 15:09:57 UTC

A few mathematicians in the UK have set up the Queer, Equality and Diversity Network for Maths. (Name chosen entirely for the acronym: QED)
https://sites.google.com/view/qednetwork/
"The QED network is a community-led effort by UK mathematicians to connect and support LGBTQIA+ members of the UK mathematics community.
The impetus to set up such a network grew out of the 2024 BAMC conference under a drive for increased UK visibility and community for queer people in the mathematics community."
They're on bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/qedmathsnetwork.bsky.social. I'll see if I can get them over here too 🤞

2025-01-28 09:29:38 UTC

A question about pens.
I'm left-handed and I prefer writing with fountain pens. With ballpoints and the like I produce scratchy nonsense.
For years I've used disposable fountain pens - Pilot V or whatever Bic's pens are called.
I feel a little bit bad about the single-use plastic, but I like having pens in lots of places.
Pilot V-pens are getting more expensive, and I'm not sure if Bic even make theirs any more. I'd like to avoid Amazon if possible.
So, what should I buy? Is there anything non-Amazon for less than £2 per pen, or is there a cheap cartridge pen that I can buy half a dozen of without immediately regretting it?
EDIT: I've used Lamy in the past and I don't enjoy the grip.

2025-01-22 10:53:16 UTC

My employer wants 300 voluntary redundancies across the board, which will become less voluntary if enough people don't volunteer.
The union rep for my school has just sent an email out saying that for us that means 10 academics and 5 support staff will go.
My response:
https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/113/871/626/324/957/260/original/a75e3bbc5cce512d.png

2024-12-18 11:05:53 UTC

Are there any guidelines on designing a *low* contrast mode for web pages?
Searching for "low contrast web design", all I get is pages about how low contrast is bad!
#accessibility

2024-11-24 19:03:57 UTC

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At the moment we're covering our costs thanks to generous donations from many mathstodon users.
If you have some money to spare, we'll gratefully receive it at https://ko-fi.com/mathstodon. I promise not to spend it on lobbying to legislate π = 3.

2024-11-24 18:31:12 UTC

mathstodon.xyz: Just a reminder that tomorrow the server will be down for a short while as I move to a new database server.
Everything's set up and ready, so assuming it goes to plan, the downtime shouldn't be more than a few minutes.
If it goes wrong, of course, it's another matter entirely! 🤞

2024-09-24 13:16:03 UTC

A question for academic matheamaticians: have you ever had any formal training in writing #TeXLaTeX?
Does your department offer anything to colleagues who want to improve their TeX skills?

2024-09-03 08:30:29 UTC

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oh hey, it's that meme format I made! This version's by Davide Castelvecchi - https://aperiodical.com/2022/05/didnt-graduate-texts-in-mathematics/

2024-03-26 11:46:38 UTC

Who would know how to make a guess at the answer to this question: is internet traffic pretty much equal numbers of 1s and 0s, or is there noticeably more of one than the other?