Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with pattern

I'm dreaming of a well-rested Unicorn...

Unicorn on the cob — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:48:12 -0800

Almost every dream I have is a nightmare, if I remember the dream. Is there a way to train myself not to do this? Inspired by this question, I realized that almost every time I dream, it's a nightmare. They are typically very vivid and not "anxiety" dreams, like taking a test without studying. On the scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is, say, a sex dream and 10 equals me being in a situation where I have experienced hours of physical torture and eventually am eaten alive by rabid animals (and waking up feeling nauseated, heart pounding, sweaty), I'd say the majority of my dreams are in the 6-8 range.

I have also experienced cyclical nightmares every night for up to 10 months. By this I mean I can wake up 6-10 times a night and pick right up in the nightmare where I left off, or experience the same nightmare every single night for almost a year. I mostly dream like this:

- One night per week I'll have a fantastic, amazing, vivid dream that is weird/fun (it's never more frequently than that)

- Two or three nights per week I won't dream at all

- Three nights per week or more, sometimes up to six nights a week, I will dream about unpleasant things like going to jail for something I didn't do, having my teeth disintegrate slowly and painfully while I try to get them fixed, dying from painful and irreparable injuries, trying to run away from something but being pulled back slowly in an unbearably long, thin trail (like the spaghettification effect of a black hole)

Not sure if this matters, but about 3x per week I have to rely on Ambien to sleep at all and have suffered chronic insomnia since I was 11. The Ambien appears 100% unrelated to my dreaming patterns, as I have had happy dreams, no dreams, and nightmares all on Ambien.

Is there some kind of meditation, visualization or medication I could try to break this? I frequently feel physically and mentally exhausted and DO get sleepy, but dread sleeping knowing that I most likely will wake up terrified. I handle the nightmares fine if another person is in the house with me, for some reason.

If I could break cycle, I think I'd be able to feel rested. Has anyone else experienced this and been able to change it?

Yellow Shirt with Cubes

yeti — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:53:46 -0800

Where can I find this t-shirt? It's yellow with 24 paired cubes colored with green, red, & yellow faces, each face subdivided into cells of 8. I saw someone on the street wearing this shirt and thought it was neat. Then I spotted it last night on a pretty bad sitcom (thanks to a promo during Sunday football) so I took a picture to see if I could locate it. Tineye was no help with a screen grab, and I can't find the right google terms.

how to draw complex spirals

twine42 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:48:23 -0800

How would I go about creating a much larger version of this image so I could print and frame it?

What can you see in satellite photos?

k. — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:33:01 -0800

Satellite photos: what interesting features can be seen or measured in them (or other aerial photos), and where can I get a supply of images? Examples I have already seen, from some crude Google-searching:
Roads
Buildings
Degree of development (urban/suburban/rural)
Oil spills (apparently these are usually hard to see)
Blooms of algae (cyanobacteria) in the Baltic Sea
Damage to buildings from earthquakes

More would be appreciated--the more specific, the better. These will be used in a computer vision system, so I'd especially like to know where I can find a supply of images containing whatever feature I'm looking for (including the above)--easy for buildings or roads, but hard for rare events like oil spills. Natural disasters seem interesting, if there are pictures available.

I would also consider some other kind of non-photographic data as well, if it could be combined with maps or photos. Don't worry whether you think it's suitable; any idea you have will help!

Help me figure out this sequence

phyle — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 04:55:29 -0800

Ive been tearing my hair out trying to work out a mathematical formula for a sequence of numbers I have. Have a look inside and tell me if you see a pattern. Im trying to reverse engineer a little section of a computer program, I enter the numbers below and get the result out. I have just written out a sample of different numbers I have entered in. I cannot work out what it is doing, there is obviously some rounding in there which is throwing me off..

0.01->2
0.02->3
0.03->3
0.04->3
0.05->4
0.06->4
0.07->4
0.08->4
0.09->4
0.10->5

0.1->5
0.2->6
0.3->7
0.4->7
0.5->8
0.6->8
0.7->9
0.8->9
0.9->10
1.0->10
1.1->10
1.2->11
1.3->11
1.4->11
1.5->11
1.6->12
1.7->12
1.8->12
1.9->12
2.0->12

3.0->14

4.0->16

10.0->22

100.0->46

1000.00->100

Anyone have any idea?

What's the shift pattern on a 1980 Toyota pickup?

attercoppe — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:14:11 -0800

What's the shift pattern on a 1980 Toyota pickup? The 4-speed shifter, not the 4WD.

Not White Socks

Jimmie — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:29:26 -0800

I want to buy some preppy-funky patterned socks for men. Not argyle or stripes, but socks with a scatter of little random things airplanes or flamingos. These patterned socks in crazy colors like pink and lime green are ok too. What brands can I look into other than JCrew? Are there any other similar styled brands in Europe or the UK I can look into? I imagine this is can be found in more of those regions as they are more creative-preppy with mens fashion, if you can call socks fashion.

I've found this website which is great, http://www.joyofsocks.com, but I'm ideally looking for higher 'brand' name socks if possible.

These are as a gift for my father, as he has really generic socks and want to give him something useful but different.

Where can I buy pre-etched meteorites?

The Shiny Thing — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:12:09 -0800

So I was admiring the meteorite collection at the Natural History Museum yesterday and thought it'd be cool to have a nickel-iron meteorite of my own to sit on the shelf. My question: where's a reliable place to buy decent-sized meteorites (preferably a place that will ship to Singapore)? And a followup: is it possible to buy them pre-etched to show off the Widmanstatten patterns? I have no idea where I'd find a diamond saw or enough nitric acid to do the etching myself.

I've found this thread that has an answer for the first question, but cutting and etching is another matter.

Thanks, hive mind!

...now where's that Egyptian pine bark...?

mykescipark — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:08:47 -0800

My next tattoo is going to run the length of my torso's right side, from about mid-breast to inner thigh. I'd like to avoid the usual sort of vines/leaves/faux-tribal clichés, with a similarly organic or flowing feel, and in a more modern style. Can you recommend some resources for interesting patterns or motifs? (Nb.: I've already explored the wide world of tattoo sites, so I'm looking for more intriguing ideas, i.e., scientific diagrams and the like.)

Where can Mrs. Jones find a good pattern making class in the greatern NYCity metro area?

IndigoJones — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:06:27 -0800

Where can Mrs. Jones find a good pattern making class in the greatern NYCity metro area? She can sew, and well at that, and wishes to make her own clothing, despairs of most of what is out there either in patterns or on the wrack. The ideal course would be under a semester and not seriously expensive. But of course life is never ideal. Anyway, thoughts and anecdotes, recommendations and warnings of any kind would be most gratefully appreciated.

She would do the same for you.

Yoga Pants Pattern?

gomichild — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:29:39 -0800

Looking for a sewing pattern for yoga pants. The pants pattern was originally in Burda World of Fashion 11/2007 (I don't have a copy of that magazine however). An example here.

This is similar but the Buy PDF button is broken and appears to have been broken for some time.

I can only purchase online because I am in Japan. Google-fu has failed me as to an alternative source to get this pattern.

Does anyone know of an online site where this (or similar) pattern is available?

Hūsker Dū?

Tube — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:35:36 -0800

Is there a word or term for the following condition? I've noticed a phenomenon that pops up from time to time, that for lack of a better term, I'll call "cultural memory loss". I wonder if other people have also discovered this, and so may have given it a more precise name or definition. I'll give two examples of what I'm talking about.

When I moved to Seattle from Montana in 1987, I was astounded at how the city of Seattle basically shut down when snow fell. Local TV began continuous broadcasting of the "snow emergency". At the time I assumed that Seattle rarely got snow, and so was reacting to a truly novel event. But as the years went by, I realized that it snows in Seattle many winters, yet the populace continues to freak out as if they forgot that this was a more or less regular event.

The following event seems to occur with some regularity, yet people seem unable to perceive it as a pattern;

A prominent female celebrity takes her clothes off for a magazine photo shoot. This is considered somewhat scandalous, and it then reported as "news" in mainstream media. I actually posted this as a humorous "psychic" prediction in late 2007 for 2008 events:

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=3232504&postcount=44

Of course Miley Cyrus confirmed this "psychic prediction".

I'm thinking this phenomenon could be described as "historical amnesia", or "pattern recognition failure" or some such. I'm betting that someone besides myself has already discussed this, and perhaps given it a particular name.

So what is this name or term?

Making a pattern from old slacks

sevenstars — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:55:35 -0800

Please help me make a pattern from my all-time best-fitting slacks--which no longer fit me. A few years ago I sacrificed my favorite worn slacks so I could make a copy of them, but apparently I waited too long. I laid the pieces out on some snazzy slipcover fabric and cut them to size, put them together, and voila--Palm Beach golf pants for the woman I used to be, if I used to be a skinny golfer. What do I do now to get a more accurate pattern? I'm thinking I should add an inch around each edge of the slacks, baste with a 5/8" seam, and see how it goes, but if you sew at all, you probably have a better idea.

Looking for classy, contemporary fabric and pattern shops online.

suimin — Sat, 31 May 2008 23:07:25 -0800

Are there any trendy, fashion-forward fabric and sewing-pattern shops online? One of my friends is teaching me the basics of how to follow a pattern to sew clothing. I've been to my local fabric shops and they all have similar fabrics available, and the same clothing-pattern brands, such as Vogue and Simplicity, etc.

Now, I don't want to waste my time sewing clothes that I'm not going to like. A lot of the fabrics available in my local stores are...matronly? Country-kitchen? I've seen lots of boring florals, unoriginal stripes, and tacky satins. Even the plaids are these obvious sugar-sweet color combinations.

The patterns, by and large, tend to be boxy, frumpy, and outdated. I found a few nice dress and skirt patterns, but it seemed odd that, out of so many catalogues, I could only find a handful of designs that seemed at all well-cut, sleek, or original. I personally know a lot of younger people who like making clothes, so why did so few of the patterns seem to appeal to a younger demographic?

So I wanted to check out the competition online before I purchased anything. I mean, I see clothes in stores made from beautiful, creative fabrics. They must get the fabric from somewhere, right? And I'd always assumed that clothes made by the individual would fit better than clothes that are mass produced--and yet, a lot of the common patterns seem to be designed to fit in a boxy, not-tailored way. So, are there any online fabric and pattern shops that are more cutting-edge? (They don't have to cater to beginning-level sewing or anything--I plan on getting good at this, eventually.) I'm willing to do some work on my own--if someone could even just point me in the right direction, maybe recommend a magazine or a blog, I'd really appreciate it. All the searches I've done online have led me to more of the same tacky stuff I can find in the fabric stores here, and I'm looking for something a little more attractive.

Is this what balding looks like?

Anonymous — Sun, 04 May 2008 21:09:49 -0800

Based on this picture and this one, do I appear to have the beginnings of male pattern baldness or something more harmless like a double crown? Mid-20s male. Recently, someone pointed out that I might be in the very early stages of male-pattern baldness based on the visibility of my scalp in the crown area. However, as a child I remember hairstylists often mentioning that I had a "double crown" or "triple crown" or something similar. Based on that, I wasn't so worried at first. But after taking these pictures and having a look for myself, I'm a little worried after all. Before I see a doctor, I'd like to get some outside opinion.

^{Posted anon because I'm an embarrassed and vain coward.}

How can I simulate natural light patterns?

bchaplin — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:50:37 -0800

How can I create lighting in my room that simulates the patterns made when the sunlight shines through a tree? I live in an attic apartment with long sloping walls. When the sun shines through a tree in front of my house at certain times of the day it projects a lovely pattern of leaves and tree branches along my ceiling. I'd love to simulate this pattern with a lamp. I am not an electrician -- anything that I create would have to be a combination of DIY and ready-made.

In an OOP world, what's the best way to handle a lot of sequential code?

grumblebee — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:19:40 -0800

Design-pattern (programming) question. I'm working on a huge app (many thousand lines of code), and one of the most complex parts of it is the initialization logic. There's a ton of code that needs to run sequentially and only once.

Currently, I'm handling all of this with singletons, but I wonder if there's a better way.

Here's the basic framework now (in pseudocode).

MainInit.getInstance().init();

/* inside MainInit's init() method... */

DataManager.getInstance().init();
CommandManager.getInstance().init();
GraphicsManager.getInstance().init();
... etc ... //maybe 40 more calls like this

This seems pretty straightforward and easy to maintain. I don't have any real problems with it. But it's sort of off-the-top-of-my-head. I've never worked on an app that needs so much initializing before.

Since it's not really about objects -- it's just about tons of code running in sequential order -- I'm not sure of the best, tried and true method of breaking it up into manageable chunks. And I can't find much about it in my Design Pattern books.

I'm cool with non design-pattern solutions, too. I know patterns aren't for everything. I just need a really good way of organizing this sort of code.

WTF logo is on this fabric?

thewrongparty — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:15:26 -0800

I just bought some interesting fabric from an enormous textile discount place. See link for crappy cellphone picture. Obviously, the pattern incorporates a logo (there is a teeny registered trademark sign inside each square), but I cannot place it. Any ideas? Someday, it will be a bag or maybe a skirt and I'd like to know who or what I'm wearing. Thanks!

Design Pattern Quandry

Fezboy! — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:30:17 -0800

Programming/design pattern question. Being self-taught, I've discovered a number of times I've labored over the solution to a problem only to discover a more elegant, standard design pattern already addresses the problem. I'm sort of hoping this is the case here. What I want to do is provide a way for users to arbitrarily combine given numbers to generate meaningful-to-them numbers and have the means of doing this combining persist. For example, the application I have in mind stores counting statistics in baseball by player and date. As a user of this application, I'd like to be able to combine these stats in various ways that are more or less arbitrary from the application's POV. Many common formulas can be pre-programmed, i.e. OBP = (Hits + Walks + HBP ) / (AB + Sac + Walks + HBP). However, many may not be so easily anticipated, i.e. Quality Start = if( GS && (IP >= 6) && (ER <= 3) ) then return 1.

Instead of having to create a new class (oh, I'm using Java here) every time a user develops a new stat they'd like generated/displayed/scored in fantasy baseball, I'd like to develop a way to generate these classes/objects via the ui and then re-use them in subsequent user sessions. I can see how to do this in the UI using drag/drop or drop-down menus, but I don't know how to model this on the back end.

My present model suggests a class StatLine that is essentially a Collection of an arbitrary number of objects that implement a Stat interface. This interface describes methods like set/get value, get title/label, and get/set formula in addition to some other bookkeeping kinds of things like how to sort for scoring (ascending vs. descending). How to represent, store, and retrieve arbitrary formulas is the part that has me spinning in circles. It would seem that this is an ideal situation to use some combination of a properties file and reflection but the means have not yet come to me.

Something along the lines of:

public class AVG implements Stat {



public AVG( Stat Hits, Stat AB ) {

...



}



.... all kinds of getters and setters....



public Double getValue() {

...read some property that represents the formula and feed that formula to some kind of engine that returns the computed value...

}



}

It could be that I should drop the idea of making unique classes that implement the Stats interface for each statistic generated. Instead one could monkey together an engine that turned a string in to a calculation that is stored as a field in a Stats object. It just doesn't feel right though.

If you have run in to a pattern like this how did you solve it? What, if any, name does this design pattern have? What, if any, resources would you recommend for asking this question to a more specific audience?

What fictional evil has great corporate branding?

cowbellemoo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:09:22 -0800

What fictional evil has great corporate branding? I'm knitting myself sweaters and want to use the merchandising logo of fictional and cinematic dystopian/corrupt/evil corporations or organizations. A few examples I've thought up with a great deal of satisfaction:

Black Mesa from Half Life
Aperture Science from Portal
Umbrella Corp. from Resident Evil
uNorth from Michael Clayton
Three Bees from The Constant Gardner

I'm really interested in a fully-realized brand identity, not just any old evil corporation/organization. Ideally they'd have a nice little logo design and have short names, since it'll look better knit. It takes forever to knit up sweaters, but patterning out different logos keeps me really excited about them. Thanks!

How to design a stuffed animal?

apfel — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:06:01 -0800

Sewingfilter: Please show me how to design a stuffed animal for my young niece. She wants a doggie doll, but I've never done anything with a snout before. I've tried, unsuccessfully, to design a pattern on my own. I've botched several attempts and am running low on scraps. I have a specific idea in mind but I can't seem to transfer it to fabric.

Specifically, I want to design a dog shaped ragdoll. Dog head, human body. Something simple, classy, similar in shape to this but with a long, upturned snout. The 3D aspect is throwing me off. I can't seem to get the crest/top of the snout to match up with the sides of the face. Usually the head comes out too fat and the nose comes out too thin.

Can any crafty design veterans recommend how to approach this project? Or at least good resources online on making your own pattern? None of my searches have brought up much.

I appreciate any help you guys are willing to throw at me.

if (a || (b and (c or d)) and (not e or (f and g and h))) then ???

grumblebee — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:24:44 -0800

Comp Sci: What's the best Design Pattern or structure for dealing with a complex relationship between many booleans? I'm working on an app that has a zillion configuration options. I need to deal with situations in which the user choses Option A and (Option B or Option C) but not (Option D and (Option E or F)). That sort of thing.

Using tons of if/then/else's is clearly wrong. It's totally confusing. The State Pattern seems like the right direction, but unless I misunderstand it, it's too simple. It assumes that an app is in State A, State B or State C. What about apps that are in States A and C? In other words, there are 50 options and any combination of them can be on/off.

What's the best way to manage this?

I'm an Actionscript Programmer, but I'm pretty comfortable translating concepts from C-family languages.

How does natural selection account for male pattern balding?

airguitar — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:28:50 -0800

How does natural selection account for male pattern balding?

Identifiy this pattern!

tev — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 01:26:49 -0800

Can anyone identify the pattern on this shirt and tell me what these people are or anything about the pattern. I bought it at a vintage clothing store a little while back and while its one of my favorite shirts and I'd like to know more about it. here are the photos

El Gigante

e^2 — Sun, 27 May 2007 18:48:11 -0800

Help me make a luchador mask. I know a man with a very large head who loves lucha libre. This man had a regular old-fashioned hat made for him last year, because he hasn't fit pre-manufactured hats since he was twelve. It was the largest hat size the hatmaker had made by a half an inch in the band and had to be made in brown material instead of the black he originally asked for because the black material wasn't structurally strong enough to stand at that size. So you can see how ordering a mask online would probably not work for him, even with the stretchiness. He's considered a pro mask maker, but first I'd like to find out how difficult a basic stretchy mask would be to make. Preferably, if I could find a basic pattern that I could size up.