This Website!!

Why did I make it?

Long story; but it's because I like graffiti.

According to Wikipedia, the mathematical concept of quaternions (four dimensional supercomplex numbers) were initially written down in 1840 by the banker, social reformer and mathematician Olinde Rodrigues. However, most of the time, their discovery is attributed to the mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton, who came up with them three years later; probably because his discovery of them was a lot more interesting.

Complex numbers are numerical values with an imaginary component, meaning a multiple of the square root of minus one. This is called i if you’re normal, if you’re an engineer and Math Error if your calculator is boring).

If we plot complex numbers on a 2D surface by using their real and imaginary components as coordinates, you’ll discover that adding and multiplying them together is remarkably geometric. Addition is like moving points about, and multiplying is like rotating and scaling them.

2D transformations weren’t enough for Hamilton, though. He wanted to find a number system that represented transformations in three dimensions. Unfortunately, while just adding a new component works fine and dandy with addition, it won’t work with multiplication. In fact (again, according to Wikipedia), every day Hamilton would come down for breakfast, and his son William would ask him “Well, Papa, can you multiply triplets?”, and he’d have to reply “No, I can only add and subtract them.”

On the sixteenth of October 1843, while walking with his wife over Broom Bridge in Dublin, he had an epiphany. He couldn’t multiply 3D numbers, but he could multiply 4D ones.

This was so exciting to him, he got out his pocket knife, and carved the basic quaternion multiplication rules into the side of the bridge.

Okay, let’s take a step back here. Imagine you’re his wife: you’re out on a walk with your husband, and all of a sudden he’s fucking carving some bullshit maths into the bridge you’re on. That’s beyond embarrassing. Why the fuck would he do that? Nobody cares about your stupid fucking quaternion identity, and you’re carving it into a bridge for everyone to see. Sometimes sharing isn’t caring! Keep it to yourself!

Although, we’re still telling this story. Would I be writing about it one hundred and eighty two years afterwards if he didn’t vandalise that bridge? No! That’d be mad boring, and it’s why nobody talks about the guy who discovered quaternions three years before him. Without looking at the first paragraph again, can you still remember his name? Exactly!

That’s why I like graffiti, and that’s why I’m making this site. I want to get my stuff out there for someone to see, even if they’re a bored teenager mindlessly browsing Neocities, a now-former potential employer who I’ve probably put off with that bout of swearing two paragraphs ago, or even a confused old lady who was originally looking for crochet patterns.

To you, the reader, whoever you are, I hope you’ll find something interesting here. Welcome, and enjoy your stay!

The process!

This is a pretty basic static website, which I've made with just HTML and CSS so far. (Admittedly, I'm still halfway through making it as I write this, so this may be completely inaccurate by the time I'm done. Who knows!)

Really, this is just a project I'm making for fun, so I'm not too concerned about making my code bombproof as long as I can sensibly maintain it myself; there's probably a million rules I'm breaking, but tbh as long as it works I'm good for now. :P