j_bertolotti

j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz

Associated Professor of Physics at the University of Exeter. Maker of typos. Science, scientific visualizations (grouped under the hashtag <a href="https://mathstodon.xyz/tags/PhysicsFactlet" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#PhysicsFactlet</a>), some miniature painting. He/lui/on. All opinions are my own fault.

Posts

Post #3800734
Bake Off, but for miniature painting! https://youtu.be/j5z5FIN9F7o #MiniaturePainting
Post #3800733
RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/116893541666491703 Anybody interested in starting a company specialized in removing the debris that will fill our low orbit after the inevitable Kessler syndrome? Pretty sure we can convince a bunch of VCs that in 10 years all countries will be willing to pay any amount to get their lower orbit available again. #Entrepreneurship
Post #3800732
The parallels between the videogame industries and academia will never cease to amaze me.
Post #3800731
Your periodic reminder that there is practically no downside to preprints: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02167-3 #Science
Post #3800730
Hot take: if your calendar invite doesn&#39;t contain enough information for me to understand what the hell this meeting is supposed to be about, I will likely just skip it.
Post #3697161
Tempted to start making posts about how #Optics, #Light, absorption etc work, aimed at people doing #MiniaturePainting . Mostly I am not doing it because I suspect I would come around as obnoxious instead of useful.
Post #3609574
Hotel corridors are the quintessential #LiminalSpace .
Post #2559920
Who in the universe need a remote to turn the pages of their ebook reader? Why is thing a thing? https://www.engadget.com/2167086/boox-announces-tappy-a-wireless-page-turning-remote/
Post #2559919
It looks like it is #webcomicday, so here are some of the webcomics I read regularly (in alphabetical order). * Aurora (https://comicaurora.com/). A high-fantasy adventure involving a lot of minor gods and gods&#39; avatars. From Red of Overly Sarcastic Production fame. * Fantasy High (https://www.webtoons.com/en/comedy/fantasy-high/ep-1-the-beginning-begins/viewer?title_no=7686&amp;episode_no=1). A webcomic adaptation of the homonymous show by #dimension20. * Girl Genius (https://www....
Post #2559917
Phone (admittedly a bit old and cheap) complaints that the storage is full. I go and see what I can delete and find that my data actually occupy at most a quarter of the memory. Everything else is system apps. So essentially Android is occupying more and more space, until I will be forced to buy a new phone. 🤬
Post #2559916
Work in progress on my orange orc. #Warhammer #MiniaturePainting #Orc
Post #2551113
#PhysicsFactlet The &quot;stretch and fold&quot; dynamics of the phase-space representation of a chaotic system (in this case a periodically driven simple pendulum) is always fun to see. (Made for a lecture, so I am quickly putting it here. Maybe will write a thread about it in the near future.) #Chaos
Post #1877506
One more finished model, a million new things I tried for the first time. The most notable were blending contrast paints (the red on the wings and black on the blade on top of the head), and the crackling on the base. Biggest mistake was not to undershade enough before applying the contrast paints. #PaintingMiniatures #Miniatures #Warhammer #WH40k
Post #1876111
My first attempt to use contrast paint (here, just on the skin). I am still a bit clumsy with the brush, but I like how these turned out. #MiniaturePainting #Miniature #Warhammer40k
Post #1814122
Dear hive mind, I need advice on audio drama to listen to. I greatly enjoy #Midst and @midnightburger, and I am looking for something similar to add to my playlist. #AudioDrama
Post #1814121
I know Amazon is evil, but Amazon always delivers on the day they claim they will deliver (I couldn&#39;t care less about stuff like &quot;same day delivery&quot;, I just care to know when the delivery will occur). Most other places where I can buy online have to rely on a courier or on Royal Mail, which invariably result in stuff being delivered at an unspecified time in the future (with no correlation to the time they claim they will deliver), or not being delivered at all.
Post #1810933
"The Mastodon time line is empty and boring" Listen, I posted the picture of a couple of poorly panted Warhammer miniatures, got a few likes, looked at who liked it and followed those who seemed to boost a lot, and now I am awash of photos of gorgeously painted miniatures! Your timeline is as alive (or dead) as you make it!
Post #1654579
#PlayStation is now requiring #AgeVerification to use voice chat &amp;co (in the UK). I used voice chat while playing a grand total of once, so I think I can skip this one.
Post #1481351
RE: https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@nicebyte/116394053764136410 This is a very good example of why a &quot;good explanation&quot; is very audience-dependent. This explanation would have confused the hell out of student me, but since the first time I encountered spherical harmonics I was the veteran of several Maths and Physics University-level exam, the explanation I was given (spherical harmonics are the eigenfunctions of the angular part of the Laplacian in spherical coordinates) made...
Post #1481350
I am somehow running for the board of #EOS. If you think that having me there trying to expose more people to the beauty of optics is a good idea, you might vote for me. On the other hand there are a lot of excellent candidates on the list, so you should probably vote for one of them 🙂 https://www.europeanoptics.org/pages/about/eos-board-elections-2026-candidates.html
Post #740105
Never painted feathers before, and it was also my first experiment with a flow improver. But the real lesson learnt from this is to never ever use a black wash over a bright yellow! #MiniaturePainting #Miniature #DnD
Post #686764
Never painted feathers before, and it was also my first experiment with a flow improver. But the real lesson learnt from this is to never ever use a black wash over a bright yellow! #MiniaturePainting #Miniature #DnD
Post #590060
ChatGPT costs more money and resources to run than Wikipedia. So if the answers from ChatGPT are not at least as good as the ones you can find just visiting the correct Wikipedia page, the rational move is to give all of OpenAI money to the Wikimedia foundation.
Post #297986
If ChatGPT can successfully summarise for you that long document you don&#39;t have time to read, than you shouldn&#39;t have asked people to write it in the first place. Ask them for a short summary, and save them hours of their time.
Post #282755
Random reminder that, despite what you read in "Lord of the Flies", when a real group of teenagers happened to get stranded on a inhabited island, they didn't start killing each other. On the contrary they worked together, built a commune, and survived in good health for 15 months (when they were saved by a passing ship). Most people are good people. Even teenagers 😉 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongan_castaways
Post #83143
Reminder: "This is a bubble" and "This has no practical applications" are two very different statements.