Recent content by Jeremy McCreary

You're kidding, right?

That's quite a paint job! This is a screenshot from the DogmaF product page. This is what Gemini AI came up with from "paint the bike frame like a Pinarello DogmaF in Molten Sand color". It'd probably take a much more complicated prompt than that to get anywhere close.

Ever wonder what your bike would look like in a different frame color? Original "brassy yellow". Loaded the yellow original above into my Samsung S25's image editor, hit the Gemini AI icon, then hit Create. Then entered the prompt "paint the bike frame red". Nothing else. Looks pretty good...

Love those mechanical displays! San Francisco's Exploratorium and San Diego's Fleet Science Center are full of them. But totally impractical for educating millions of kids day to day. Math and science are useful and wondrous lenses on the world. They're also a useful style of careful thinking...

Here's an interactive graphical model of the main cycling power losses made in the Desmos online graphing calculator: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/mzto8h9jho The graph The graph plots ground speed Vg in m/s on the horizontal x-axis and mechanical power loss in W on the vertical y-axis...

Can you give an example of the kind of physical (mechanical?) representation you have in mind? How would you reconfigure it to play what-ifs with more than one equation or model? Graphing calculators and their online equivalents (e.g., desmos.com) offer a much more practical and flexible way to...

Doubt I could follow a riding script for even 20 mi. Operationally, you segment the planned route in some way. Then you assign an anticipated rider power and assist level to each segment, as if they'd be effectively constant throughout. This gives the rider an effort+assist script to follow...

Governent support for education is an important side of this, to be sure. But I was talking about student interest and STEM literacy in the general population. Not talking about higher math or rocket science here. A widespread grasp of beginner algebra would help. Algebra isn't just about...

Also tough to have a democracy when critical thinking's become a lost art in the general population. And it's well on the way to lost here in the US. If nothing else, STEM education teaches critical thinking and the importance of evidence. Autocrats and religious zealots do everything they can...

Amazing agreement over such a long hilly ride! How well did your wife stick to the riding script you put into the app to get the 11.3% prediction? We'd love to see your TQ bikes and the places you ride them. My 3 favorite forum threads are the ones for sharing ride photos...

One of the best jokes I've heard in a long, long time! Not that I can relate, of course. If I could give it more than 1 laughie, I'd give it 10.

Believe me, STEM educators are trying hard to find new and better ways to teach their subjects. But in a youth culture that generally values none of this and thinks it's totally uncool, it's akin to educating rocks. In other words, the problem's at least as much a cultural resistance as it is a...

The HOA is repainting all the houses in the neighborhood. They just did the neighbor's house while he's away. Supposed to be keeping an eye on things for him, so I texted an update: In a 'what the heck' moment, I just opened the first photo in my phone's image editor and told the AI tool...

Sorry, really thought those standard symbols (€ for Euros, L for liters, $ for dollars, gal for gallons, €/L for Euros per liter, etc.) would speak for themselves — at least to folks who remember a little algebra. My mistake. Using symbols instead of words to work out general patterns is a...

Sorry, this strikes a nerve. In the last few decades, popular culture's come around to the view that STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math) are boring and useless — certainly not something a cool kid would show any interest in. It's OK to blow them off. Who needs them...