There are a couple of websites that feature work done by me. I had written earlier about Brad Honeycutt's website An Optical Illusion at (http://www.anopticalillusion.com/). He now features four different ambigrams created by me: You can find them on this page on his...
Dancing with words, Good/Evil in a new ambigram context
Many years ago I constructed an ambigram for the words "good" and "evil." The idea came to me while waiting for a traffic light to turn green. The memory of it is so vivid in my mind that even today when I come to that particular intersection I remember that moment...
Happy 2013!
Our family has a Christmas-break tradition. Over the past 5 years or so, every winter-break, we work together a create a video new-year's card. And of course, we made one this year as well. As you can imagine, coming up with original ideas has become increasingly...
Happy 2012
Every Christmas-break our family creates a stop-motion video new year's greeting card. We have been doing this for 4 years or so and it is an incredibly fun way to spend time together. It has become a "signature" thing we do as a family. Anyway this year was no...
Ambigrams on the web
Many years ago I got bitten by the Ambigram bug and before I knew it I had created hundreds! This was of course long before Dan Brown and Angels and Demons made ambigrams wildly popular. It has been fun to see what was once a fringe activity take on a wider...
The gift that keeps on giving, or Why I love the web
I recently received this email: Dear Mr. Mishra, I am currently working on a poetry research project for school, and one of the requirements is researching five different poets. While looking for people who wrote palindromic poetry, I found your website and decided to...
The mysterious pentagon… explained?
Around 2 weeks ago I posted a note about a "pentagon" I saw in some boiling lentils in my kitchen. There have been some interesting responses to this... but before I get to that, here is the original image, if you missed the original posting: Interestingly enough, a...
The mysterious pentagon
There are interesting patterns all around us. Here is one I found the other day. We were boiling lentils in a shallow bowl... and then, out of nowhere emerged an almost perfect pentagon! The almost perfect pentagon that showed up on the surface of the boiling lentils!...
Triplet from China
The triplet ambigrams keep flying in. This new one came in an email from Chunlei Zhang, a faculty member at East China Normal University, having received his Ph.D. in Curriculum & Teaching from Beijing Normal University. He was inspired after reading my previous...
New triplet Ambigram (Now in 3D)!
A few weeks ago I had shared a few triplet-ambigrams I had designed. For the uninitiated a triplet ambigram is a 3-d shape that cast different, and interesting, shadows depending on where you shine light on it. For instance here's a triplet ambigram that casts three...
véjà du, all over again
A véjà du experience is about looking at a familiar situation but with fresh eyes, as if you’ve never seen it before. It forms the basis of an assignment I give in my CEP818, Creativity in Teaching & Learning course. The assignment is described in greater detail...
ABC-Triplet Ambigram
I am currently teaching a course on Creativity in Teaching & Learning and as a part of that I was searching for an interesting image to highlight a note I was posting to the class. I wanted an image that represented, in some cool manner, the multi-dimensionality...
Space Invaders in Paris
France is being attacked by alien beings! This summer in France I noticed characters from 80's video games in the strangest of places. For instance, see this one, that I found while walking somewhere near the Latin Quarter in Paris. And though I took a picture of just...
Dabbling to see: A rant
My friend and colleague Leigh Wolf forwarded me this article on Edward Tufte: The Many Faces (And Sculptures) Of Edward Tufte. I have been a fan of information design guru Edward Tufte's work for years (decades?). I love his emphasis on clarity and simplicity in...
Martin Gardner, RIP
Martin Gardner, 1914 - 2010 Martin Gardner died five days ago. Gardner was an influential writer about mathematics and was one of the greatest influences on me (and my friends) as I was growing up. His recreational mathematics column was the main reason I subscribed...
Cool logos
I just came across this page of excellent logo designs. Some of the designs may need a moment or two to truly register. Check out 20 Unique and Creative Logo Designs. Here are couple of my favorites.
The opposite of truth
Niels Bohr, the 1922 Nobel Laureate in Physics once said: The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement. The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth. I was reminded of this when I saw this TED video. Check it out... (h/t Andrew...
The infinity of primes (proof as poem)
The math-po (and sci-po) stream keeps flowing. Math Mama Writes, who started the whole math-poetry movement has some more on her blog, and here is Erin Nash with some really beautiful biological poetry. And of course, here's her husband Sean Nash having his students...
Absolutely brilliant video
The Rethink Scholarship is an scholarship for aspiring art directors and designers to Langara College's Communication and Ideation Design program. This video is to publicize the program.
The futility of existence
I stumbled across this little machine that shuts itself off once it has been switched on! How cool is that. I don't have an clue whom to credit it to and would appreciate a heads up on that. I was reminded of the myth of Sisyphus which led to a great piece of...
Stuck with Google (recursively)
The other day, for one reason or another, I did a Google search for the word "recursion." According to Wikipedia, recursion ... in mathematics and computer science, is a method of defining functions in which the function being defined is applied within its own...
Creating Palindrograms, aka palindromic ambigrams
Ambigram.com is a website about ambigrams and the people who make them. Lots of cool stuff for enthusiasts and novices alike. They often conduct competitions and other fun challenges for readers. One recent one was related to palindromes. In brief, they challenged...
New ambigrams for a new blog!
What do you think this is? Take a guess...Well, it is the top half of a lake-reflection ambigram. What this means is that if you reflect what you see along a horizontal line at the bottom of the image, the picture you will then get will spell a word. Can you figure...
Designing for anticipation, Teaching for anticipation
In a couple of previous posts I had talked about the idea of postdiction (see the posts here and here). The argument being that good teaching (among a long list of other good things) is postdictable, i.e. it walks the line between predictability and chaos, and most...
Postdictable, the commercials
I had written earlier about the idea of "postdictable" which was defined as something that is "surprising initially, but then understandable with a bit of thought." It lies at the spot between predictability and total chaos. The movie Sixth Sense is postdictable in...
Lego based Sudoku & Rubik Cube solving robots
Two robots made entirely using Lego Mindstorms NXT Retail-kit that can solve Sudoku problems and the Rubik's Cube! How totally cool is that. LEGO Mindstorms is a line of Lego sets combining programmable bricks with electric motors, sensors, Lego bricks, and Lego...
Jugaad, educational toys from Junk (TPACK at work)
I had written earlier about the idea of Jugaad, the quintessential Indian idea of situational creativity. One of the masters at this is Arvind Gupta. Check out his website for tons of wonderful science toys and experiments that can be made from stuff we typically...
Visual proofs
I just came across these lovely visual mathematical proofs. For instance consider the following sequence: 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + ... = 1 and then see the following image on the blog!! How cool is that!!!! I had posted about something similar earlier (see visualizing...
Photo triplets
Christopher Bowhuis (a student in our summer on-campus MAET program) provided me a two minute tutorial on cloning myself, or anybody else for that matter. I had to go home and try it out with my kids (and a few of their friends who just happened to show up). Below are...
Creativity @ Plymouth, year 3
I spent some time last week with each of the MAET cohorts at Plymouth England. I have blogged about my time with Year 1 here and Year 2 here (as well as some other posts here and here). This is about what I did with the Year 3 cohort. As usual, I did my TPACK and...