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I didn't have time to go take a photo specifically for this week's active assignment weekly assignment: enjoy the silence, but I took this photo for a talk I'm giving and it reminded me enough of silent studying that I thought perhaps it was worth submitting.
I know, for a lot of people, a mathematics textbook isn't about enjoying the silence, but it was for me. I was bored and very disappointed in first year university when the subject I thought I wanted to study turned out to be... uninspiring. I switched into math, and suddenly I was being offered courses that were challenging enough that it was worth some silent study. So that's why this fit the assignment for me.
Romanesco is such a weird vegetable , imagine as a kid having to eat broccoli that you can use for your maths homework !!
Looks like a little island of christmas trees to me , lol
A quick illustration of Fin from Cartoon Networks new show Adventure Time. Done using Illustrator and Photoshop.
Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford. The Andrew Wiles Building in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter. Rafael Vinoly Architects. Photography Oxford Festival 2014 - 'Mathematicians'.
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, OM, GCVO, PC, FRS, FRSE (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907) was a Scots-Irish mathematical physicist and engineer who was born in Belfast in 1824. At the University of Glasgow he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging discipline of physics in its modern form. Quoted from Wikipedia.
Special thanks to my contact apvg who showed me around while I was there for a work-related away day.
My hubby's lil' email gift to me.
He really knows so much...about stupid stuff...like this algorithmic mathematical art, I like it!
Patterns on the floor at the entrance to the Mathematical Institute in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.
The former Radcliffe Infirmary site is being redeveloped by Oxford University, with administrative offices, academic departments and other buildings.
More information at www.ox.ac.uk/roq/
13 September 2014
SLR3_1454
Sage contains interfaces to most common mathematics software including Mathematica, Maple, and Matlab.
The result of iterating z_{n+1}=exp(i*0.021)*z_n/(1+z_n^3) in the complex plane. Hue determined by the complex angle, brightness by magnitude.
IR HDR. IR converted Canon Rebel XTi. AEB +/-2 total of 3 exposures processed with Photomatix. Levels adjusted in PSE.
High Dynamic Range (HDR)
High-dynamic-range imaging (HDRI) is a high dynamic range (HDR) technique used in imaging and photography to reproduce a greater dynamic range of luminosity than is possible with standard digital imaging or photographic techniques. The aim is to present a similar range of luminance to that experienced through the human visual system. The human eye, through adaptation of the iris and other methods, adjusts constantly to adapt to a broad range of luminance present in the environment. The brain continuously interprets this information so that a viewer can see in a wide range of light conditions.
HDR images can represent a greater range of luminance levels than can be achieved using more 'traditional' methods, such as many real-world scenes containing very bright, direct sunlight to extreme shade, or very faint nebulae. This is often achieved by capturing and then combining several different, narrower range, exposures of the same subject matter. Non-HDR cameras take photographs with a limited exposure range, referred to as LDR, resulting in the loss of detail in highlights or shadows.
The two primary types of HDR images are computer renderings and images resulting from merging multiple low-dynamic-range (LDR) or standard-dynamic-range (SDR) photographs. HDR images can also be acquired using special image sensors, such as an oversampled binary image sensor.
Due to the limitations of printing and display contrast, the extended luminosity range of an HDR image has to be compressed to be made visible. The method of rendering an HDR image to a standard monitor or printing device is called tone mapping. This method reduces the overall contrast of an HDR image to facilitate display on devices or printouts with lower dynamic range, and can be applied to produce images with preserved local contrast (or exaggerated for artistic effect).
In photography, dynamic range is measured in exposure value (EV) differences (known as stops). An increase of one EV, or 'one stop', represents a doubling of the amount of light. Conversely, a decrease of one EV represents a halving of the amount of light. Therefore, revealing detail in the darkest of shadows requires high exposures, while preserving detail in very bright situations requires very low exposures. Most cameras cannot provide this range of exposure values within a single exposure, due to their low dynamic range. High-dynamic-range photographs are generally achieved by capturing multiple standard-exposure images, often using exposure bracketing, and then later merging them into a single HDR image, usually within a photo manipulation program). Digital images are often encoded in a camera's raw image format, because 8-bit JPEG encoding does not offer a wide enough range of values to allow fine transitions (and regarding HDR, later introduces undesirable effects due to lossy compression).
Any camera that allows manual exposure control can make images for HDR work, although one equipped with auto exposure bracketing (AEB) is far better suited. Images from film cameras are less suitable as they often must first be digitized, so that they can later be processed using software HDR methods.
In most imaging devices, the degree of exposure to light applied to the active element (be it film or CCD) can be altered in one of two ways: by either increasing/decreasing the size of the aperture or by increasing/decreasing the time of each exposure. Exposure variation in an HDR set is only done by altering the exposure time and not the aperture size; this is because altering the aperture size also affects the depth of field and so the resultant multiple images would be quite different, preventing their final combination into a single HDR image.
An important limitation for HDR photography is that any movement between successive images will impede or prevent success in combining them afterwards. Also, as one must create several images (often three or five and sometimes more) to obtain the desired luminance range, such a full 'set' of images takes extra time. HDR photographers have developed calculation methods and techniques to partially overcome these problems, but the use of a sturdy tripod is, at least, advised.
Some cameras have an auto exposure bracketing (AEB) feature with a far greater dynamic range than others, from the 3 EV of the Canon EOS 40D, to the 18 EV of the Canon EOS-1D Mark II. As the popularity of this imaging method grows, several camera manufactures are now offering built-in HDR features. For example, the Pentax K-7 DSLR has an HDR mode that captures an HDR image and outputs (only) a tone mapped JPEG file. The Canon PowerShot G12, Canon PowerShot S95 and Canon PowerShot S100 offer similar features in a smaller format.. Nikon's approach is called 'Active D-Lighting' which applies exposure compensation and tone mapping to the image as it comes from the sensor, with the accent being on retaing a realistic effect . Some smartphones provide HDR modes, and most mobile platforms have apps that provide HDR picture taking.
Camera characteristics such as gamma curves, sensor resolution, noise, photometric calibration and color calibration affect resulting high-dynamic-range images.
Color film negatives and slides consist of multiple film layers that respond to light differently. As a consequence, transparent originals (especially positive slides) feature a very high dynamic range
Tone mapping
Tone mapping reduces the dynamic range, or contrast ratio, of an entire image while retaining localized contrast. Although it is a distinct operation, tone mapping is often applied to HDRI files by the same software package.
Several software applications are available on the PC, Mac and Linux platforms for producing HDR files and tone mapped images. Notable titles include
Adobe Photoshop
Aurora HDR
Dynamic Photo HDR
HDR Efex Pro
HDR PhotoStudio
Luminance HDR
MagicRaw
Oloneo PhotoEngine
Photomatix Pro
PTGui
Information stored in high-dynamic-range images typically corresponds to the physical values of luminance or radiance that can be observed in the real world. This is different from traditional digital images, which represent colors as they should appear on a monitor or a paper print. Therefore, HDR image formats are often called scene-referred, in contrast to traditional digital images, which are device-referred or output-referred. Furthermore, traditional images are usually encoded for the human visual system (maximizing the visual information stored in the fixed number of bits), which is usually called gamma encoding or gamma correction. The values stored for HDR images are often gamma compressed (power law) or logarithmically encoded, or floating-point linear values, since fixed-point linear encodings are increasingly inefficient over higher dynamic ranges.
HDR images often don't use fixed ranges per color channel—other than traditional images—to represent many more colors over a much wider dynamic range. For that purpose, they don't use integer values to represent the single color channels (e.g., 0-255 in an 8 bit per pixel interval for red, green and blue) but instead use a floating point representation. Common are 16-bit (half precision) or 32-bit floating point numbers to represent HDR pixels. However, when the appropriate transfer function is used, HDR pixels for some applications can be represented with a color depth that has as few as 10–12 bits for luminance and 8 bits for chrominance without introducing any visible quantization artifacts.
History of HDR photography
The idea of using several exposures to adequately reproduce a too-extreme range of luminance was pioneered as early as the 1850s by Gustave Le Gray to render seascapes showing both the sky and the sea. Such rendering was impossible at the time using standard methods, as the luminosity range was too extreme. Le Gray used one negative for the sky, and another one with a longer exposure for the sea, and combined the two into one picture in positive.
Mid 20th century
Manual tone mapping was accomplished by dodging and burning – selectively increasing or decreasing the exposure of regions of the photograph to yield better tonality reproduction. This was effective because the dynamic range of the negative is significantly higher than would be available on the finished positive paper print when that is exposed via the negative in a uniform manner. An excellent example is the photograph Schweitzer at the Lamp by W. Eugene Smith, from his 1954 photo essay A Man of Mercy on Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his humanitarian work in French Equatorial Africa. The image took 5 days to reproduce the tonal range of the scene, which ranges from a bright lamp (relative to the scene) to a dark shadow.
Ansel Adams elevated dodging and burning to an art form. Many of his famous prints were manipulated in the darkroom with these two methods. Adams wrote a comprehensive book on producing prints called The Print, which prominently features dodging and burning, in the context of his Zone System.
With the advent of color photography, tone mapping in the darkroom was no longer possible due to the specific timing needed during the developing process of color film. Photographers looked to film manufacturers to design new film stocks with improved response, or continued to shoot in black and white to use tone mapping methods.
Color film capable of directly recording high-dynamic-range images was developed by Charles Wyckoff and EG&G "in the course of a contract with the Department of the Air Force". This XR film had three emulsion layers, an upper layer having an ASA speed rating of 400, a middle layer with an intermediate rating, and a lower layer with an ASA rating of 0.004. The film was processed in a manner similar to color films, and each layer produced a different color. The dynamic range of this extended range film has been estimated as 1:108. It has been used to photograph nuclear explosions, for astronomical photography, for spectrographic research, and for medical imaging. Wyckoff's detailed pictures of nuclear explosions appeared on the cover of Life magazine in the mid-1950s.
Late 20th century
Georges Cornuéjols and licensees of his patents (Brdi, Hymatom) introduced the principle of HDR video image, in 1986, by interposing a matricial LCD screen in front of the camera's image sensor, increasing the sensors dynamic by five stops. The concept of neighborhood tone mapping was applied to video cameras by a group from the Technion in Israel led by Dr. Oliver Hilsenrath and Prof. Y.Y.Zeevi who filed for a patent on this concept in 1988.
In February and April 1990, Georges Cornuéjols introduced the first real-time HDR camera that combined two images captured by a sensor3435 or simultaneously3637 by two sensors of the camera. This process is known as bracketing used for a video stream.
In 1991, the first commercial video camera was introduced that performed real-time capturing of multiple images with different exposures, and producing an HDR video image, by Hymatom, licensee of Georges Cornuéjols.
Also in 1991, Georges Cornuéjols introduced the HDR+ image principle by non-linear accumulation of images to increase the sensitivity of the camera: for low-light environments, several successive images are accumulated, thus increasing the signal to noise ratio.
In 1993, another commercial medical camera producing an HDR video image, by the Technion.
Modern HDR imaging uses a completely different approach, based on making a high-dynamic-range luminance or light map using only global image operations (across the entire image), and then tone mapping the result. Global HDR was first introduced in 19931 resulting in a mathematical theory of differently exposed pictures of the same subject matter that was published in 1995 by Steve Mann and Rosalind Picard.
On October 28, 1998, Ben Sarao created one of the first nighttime HDR+G (High Dynamic Range + Graphic image)of STS-95 on the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. It consisted of four film images of the shuttle at night that were digitally composited with additional digital graphic elements. The image was first exhibited at NASA Headquarters Great Hall, Washington DC in 1999 and then published in Hasselblad Forum, Issue 3 1993, Volume 35 ISSN 0282-5449.
The advent of consumer digital cameras produced a new demand for HDR imaging to improve the light response of digital camera sensors, which had a much smaller dynamic range than film. Steve Mann developed and patented the global-HDR method for producing digital images having extended dynamic range at the MIT Media Laboratory. Mann's method involved a two-step procedure: (1) generate one floating point image array by global-only image operations (operations that affect all pixels identically, without regard to their local neighborhoods); and then (2) convert this image array, using local neighborhood processing (tone-remapping, etc.), into an HDR image. The image array generated by the first step of Mann's process is called a lightspace image, lightspace picture, or radiance map. Another benefit of global-HDR imaging is that it provides access to the intermediate light or radiance map, which has been used for computer vision, and other image processing operations.
21st century
In 2005, Adobe Systems introduced several new features in Photoshop CS2 including Merge to HDR, 32 bit floating point image support, and HDR tone mapping.
On June 30, 2016, Microsoft added support for the digital compositing of HDR images to Windows 10 using the Universal Windows Platform.
HDR sensors
Modern CMOS image sensors can often capture a high dynamic range from a single exposure. The wide dynamic range of the captured image is non-linearly compressed into a smaller dynamic range electronic representation. However, with proper processing, the information from a single exposure can be used to create an HDR image.
Such HDR imaging is used in extreme dynamic range applications like welding or automotive work. Some other cameras designed for use in security applications can automatically provide two or more images for each frame, with changing exposure. For example, a sensor for 30fps video will give out 60fps with the odd frames at a short exposure time and the even frames at a longer exposure time. Some of the sensor may even combine the two images on-chip so that a wider dynamic range without in-pixel compression is directly available to the user for display or processing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dynamic-range_imaging
Infrared Photography
In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging. Wavelengths used for photography range from about 700 nm to about 900 nm. Film is usually sensitive to visible light too, so an infrared-passing filter is used; this lets infrared (IR) light pass through to the camera, but blocks all or most of the visible light spectrum (the filter thus looks black or deep red). ("Infrared filter" may refer either to this type of filter or to one that blocks infrared but passes other wavelengths.)
When these filters are used together with infrared-sensitive film or sensors, "in-camera effects" can be obtained; false-color or black-and-white images with a dreamlike or sometimes lurid appearance known as the "Wood Effect," an effect mainly caused by foliage (such as tree leaves and grass) strongly reflecting in the same way visible light is reflected from snow. There is a small contribution from chlorophyll fluorescence, but this is marginal and is not the real cause of the brightness seen in infrared photographs. The effect is named after the infrared photography pioneer Robert W. Wood, and not after the material wood, which does not strongly reflect infrared.
The other attributes of infrared photographs include very dark skies and penetration of atmospheric haze, caused by reduced Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering, respectively, compared to visible light. The dark skies, in turn, result in less infrared light in shadows and dark reflections of those skies from water, and clouds will stand out strongly. These wavelengths also penetrate a few millimeters into skin and give a milky look to portraits, although eyes often look black.
Until the early 20th century, infrared photography was not possible because silver halide emulsions are not sensitive to longer wavelengths than that of blue light (and to a lesser extent, green light) without the addition of a dye to act as a color sensitizer. The first infrared photographs (as distinct from spectrographs) to be published appeared in the February 1910 edition of The Century Magazine and in the October 1910 edition of the Royal Photographic Society Journal to illustrate papers by Robert W. Wood, who discovered the unusual effects that now bear his name. The RPS co-ordinated events to celebrate the centenary of this event in 2010. Wood's photographs were taken on experimental film that required very long exposures; thus, most of his work focused on landscapes. A further set of infrared landscapes taken by Wood in Italy in 1911 used plates provided for him by CEK Mees at Wratten & Wainwright. Mees also took a few infrared photographs in Portugal in 1910, which are now in the Kodak archives.
Infrared-sensitive photographic plates were developed in the United States during World War I for spectroscopic analysis, and infrared sensitizing dyes were investigated for improved haze penetration in aerial photography. After 1930, new emulsions from Kodak and other manufacturers became useful to infrared astronomy.
Infrared photography became popular with photography enthusiasts in the 1930s when suitable film was introduced commercially. The Times regularly published landscape and aerial photographs taken by their staff photographers using Ilford infrared film. By 1937 33 kinds of infrared film were available from five manufacturers including Agfa, Kodak and Ilford. Infrared movie film was also available and was used to create day-for-night effects in motion pictures, a notable example being the pseudo-night aerial sequences in the James Cagney/Bette Davis movie The Bride Came COD.
False-color infrared photography became widely practiced with the introduction of Kodak Ektachrome Infrared Aero Film and Ektachrome Infrared EIR. The first version of this, known as Kodacolor Aero-Reversal-Film, was developed by Clark and others at the Kodak for camouflage detection in the 1940s. The film became more widely available in 35mm form in the 1960s but KODAK AEROCHROME III Infrared Film 1443 has been discontinued.
Infrared photography became popular with a number of 1960s recording artists, because of the unusual results; Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, Frank and a slow shutter speed without focus compensation, however wider apertures like f/2.0 can produce sharp photos only if the lens is meticulously refocused to the infrared index mark, and only if this index mark is the correct one for the filter and film in use. However, it should be noted that diffraction effects inside a camera are greater at infrared wavelengths so that stopping down the lens too far may actually reduce sharpness.
Most apochromatic ('APO') lenses do not have an Infrared index mark and do not need to be refocused for the infrared spectrum because they are already optically corrected into the near-infrared spectrum. Catadioptric lenses do not often require this adjustment because their mirror containing elements do not suffer from chromatic aberration and so the overall aberration is comparably less. Catadioptric lenses do, of course, still contain lenses, and these lenses do still have a dispersive property.
Infrared black-and-white films require special development times but development is usually achieved with standard black-and-white film developers and chemicals (like D-76). Kodak HIE film has a polyester film base that is very stable but extremely easy to scratch, therefore special care must be used in the handling of Kodak HIE throughout the development and printing/scanning process to avoid damage to the film. The Kodak HIE film was sensitive to 900 nm.
As of November 2, 2007, "KODAK is preannouncing the discontinuance" of HIE Infrared 35 mm film stating the reasons that, "Demand for these products has been declining significantly in recent years, and it is no longer practical to continue to manufacture given the low volume, the age of the product formulations and the complexity of the processes involved." At the time of this notice, HIE Infrared 135-36 was available at a street price of around $12.00 a roll at US mail order outlets.
Arguably the greatest obstacle to infrared film photography has been the increasing difficulty of obtaining infrared-sensitive film. However, despite the discontinuance of HIE, other newer infrared sensitive emulsions from EFKE, ROLLEI, and ILFORD are still available, but these formulations have differing sensitivity and specifications from the venerable KODAK HIE that has been around for at least two decades. Some of these infrared films are available in 120 and larger formats as well as 35 mm, which adds flexibility to their application. With the discontinuance of Kodak HIE, Efke's IR820 film has become the only IR film on the marketneeds update with good sensitivity beyond 750 nm, the Rollei film does extend beyond 750 nm but IR sensitivity falls off very rapidly.
Color infrared transparency films have three sensitized layers that, because of the way the dyes are coupled to these layers, reproduce infrared as red, red as green, and green as blue. All three layers are sensitive to blue so the film must be used with a yellow filter, since this will block blue light but allow the remaining colors to reach the film. The health of foliage can be determined from the relative strengths of green and infrared light reflected; this shows in color infrared as a shift from red (healthy) towards magenta (unhealthy). Early color infrared films were developed in the older E-4 process, but Kodak later manufactured a color transparency film that could be developed in standard E-6 chemistry, although more accurate results were obtained by developing using the AR-5 process. In general, color infrared does not need to be refocused to the infrared index mark on the lens.
In 2007 Kodak announced that production of the 35 mm version of their color infrared film (Ektachrome Professional Infrared/EIR) would cease as there was insufficient demand. Since 2011, all formats of color infrared film have been discontinued. Specifically, Aerochrome 1443 and SO-734.
There is no currently available digital camera that will produce the same results as Kodak color infrared film although the equivalent images can be produced by taking two exposures, one infrared and the other full-color, and combining in post-production. The color images produced by digital still cameras using infrared-pass filters are not equivalent to those produced on color infrared film. The colors result from varying amounts of infrared passing through the color filters on the photo sites, further amended by the Bayer filtering. While this makes such images unsuitable for the kind of applications for which the film was used, such as remote sensing of plant health, the resulting color tonality has proved popular artistically.
Color digital infrared, as part of full spectrum photography is gaining popularity. The ease of creating a softly colored photo with infrared characteristics has found interest among hobbyists and professionals.
In 2008, Los Angeles photographer, Dean Bennici started cutting and hand rolling Aerochrome color Infrared film. All Aerochrome medium and large format which exists today came directly from his lab. The trend in infrared photography continues to gain momentum with the success of photographer Richard Mosse and multiple users all around the world.
Digital camera sensors are inherently sensitive to infrared light, which would interfere with the normal photography by confusing the autofocus calculations or softening the image (because infrared light is focused differently from visible light), or oversaturating the red channel. Also, some clothing is transparent in the infrared, leading to unintended (at least to the manufacturer) uses of video cameras. Thus, to improve image quality and protect privacy, many digital cameras employ infrared blockers. Depending on the subject matter, infrared photography may not be practical with these cameras because the exposure times become overly long, often in the range of 30 seconds, creating noise and motion blur in the final image. However, for some subject matter the long exposure does not matter or the motion blur effects actually add to the image. Some lenses will also show a 'hot spot' in the centre of the image as their coatings are optimised for visible light and not for IR.
An alternative method of DSLR infrared photography is to remove the infrared blocker in front of the sensor and replace it with a filter that removes visible light. This filter is behind the mirror, so the camera can be used normally - handheld, normal shutter speeds, normal composition through the viewfinder, and focus, all work like a normal camera. Metering works but is not always accurate because of the difference between visible and infrared refraction. When the IR blocker is removed, many lenses which did display a hotspot cease to do so, and become perfectly usable for infrared photography. Additionally, because the red, green and blue micro-filters remain and have transmissions not only in their respective color but also in the infrared, enhanced infrared color may be recorded.
Since the Bayer filters in most digital cameras absorb a significant fraction of the infrared light, these cameras are sometimes not very sensitive as infrared cameras and can sometimes produce false colors in the images. An alternative approach is to use a Foveon X3 sensor, which does not have absorptive filters on it; the Sigma SD10 DSLR has a removable IR blocking filter and dust protector, which can be simply omitted or replaced by a deep red or complete visible light blocking filter. The Sigma SD14 has an IR/UV blocking filter that can be removed/installed without tools. The result is a very sensitive digital IR camera.
While it is common to use a filter that blocks almost all visible light, the wavelength sensitivity of a digital camera without internal infrared blocking is such that a variety of artistic results can be obtained with more conventional filtration. For example, a very dark neutral density filter can be used (such as the Hoya ND400) which passes a very small amount of visible light compared to the near-infrared it allows through. Wider filtration permits an SLR viewfinder to be used and also passes more varied color information to the sensor without necessarily reducing the Wood effect. Wider filtration is however likely to reduce other infrared artefacts such as haze penetration and darkened skies. This technique mirrors the methods used by infrared film photographers where black-and-white infrared film was often used with a deep red filter rather than a visually opaque one.
Another common technique with near-infrared filters is to swap blue and red channels in software (e.g. photoshop) which retains much of the characteristic 'white foliage' while rendering skies a glorious blue.
Several Sony cameras had the so-called Night Shot facility, which physically moves the blocking filter away from the light path, which makes the cameras very sensitive to infrared light. Soon after its development, this facility was 'restricted' by Sony to make it difficult for people to take photos that saw through clothing. To do this the iris is opened fully and exposure duration is limited to long times of more than 1/30 second or so. It is possible to shoot infrared but neutral density filters must be used to reduce the camera's sensitivity and the long exposure times mean that care must be taken to avoid camera-shake artifacts.
Fuji have produced digital cameras for use in forensic criminology and medicine which have no infrared blocking filter. The first camera, designated the S3 PRO UVIR, also had extended ultraviolet sensitivity (digital sensors are usually less sensitive to UV than to IR). Optimum UV sensitivity requires special lenses, but ordinary lenses usually work well for IR. In 2007, FujiFilm introduced a new version of this camera, based on the Nikon D200/ FujiFilm S5 called the IS Pro, also able to take Nikon lenses. Fuji had earlier introduced a non-SLR infrared camera, the IS-1, a modified version of the FujiFilm FinePix S9100. Unlike the S3 PRO UVIR, the IS-1 does not offer UV sensitivity. FujiFilm restricts the sale of these cameras to professional users with their EULA specifically prohibiting "unethical photographic conduct".
Phase One digital camera backs can be ordered in an infrared modified form.
Remote sensing and thermographic cameras are sensitive to longer wavelengths of infrared (see Infrared spectrum#Commonly used sub-division scheme). They may be multispectral and use a variety of technologies which may not resemble common camera or filter designs. Cameras sensitive to longer infrared wavelengths including those used in infrared astronomy often require cooling to reduce thermally induced dark currents in the sensor (see Dark current (physics)). Lower cost uncooled thermographic digital cameras operate in the Long Wave infrared band (see Thermographic camera#Uncooled infrared detectors). These cameras are generally used for building inspection or preventative maintenance but can be used for artistic pursuits as well.
Mathematics is to do with numbers so my 'Sight & Sound' obscure link is "One Step Forward" (& Two Steps Back) by the Desert Rose Band :-)
Added to Sight and Sound : Pictures & Music
♫ ♪ ♪ ♫ Listen here - "One Step Forward" by Desert Rose Band
Below, the full interview with Dr. Nathan Myhrvold (from Nov 21, 2011):
Unless you’ve been hiding under some kind of rock, you’ve probably heard of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, the stunning six-volume, 2,400-page, 50-pound*, $625 cookbook that came out early this year. Nathan Myhrvold, whose team of 30 spent three-and-a-half years** in a 20,000 square foot lab (complete with a high speed camera and a machine shop) working on the tome, was in town this week to speak to about 250 food and science nerds at an event hosted by The Cookbook Store at the Isabel Bader Theatre. A staggering polymath, Myhrvold had already acquired a pair of master’s (economics and geophysics) and a Princeton Ph.D. (theoretical and mathematical physics) by age 23, before working with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge, holding the Chief Technology Officer job at Microsoft, running a patent empire called Intellectual Ventures and dabbling in photography, paleontology and, of course, cutting-edge food. We sat with Myhrvold over breakfast to talk about the surprising success of Modernist Cuisine and what the future holds for the project.
RS: Some say that the Modernist Cuisine is the cookbook of all cookbooks. Others say it’s like an encyclopedia. Then there are those that look at it as a coffee table book because it’s so visually appealing.
NM: If you’ve got a small apartment, you can use it as the coffee table! [Laughs]
RS: How would you classify the set?
NM: The book was designed to be all those things – everyone can take from it what they want. If you go into a kitchen store, there’s tones of fancy knifes, copper pots, and those things that people buy – some use them as professional tools; some people use them as a status symbol, haha; some people love food and all aspects of it. The book has all the capabilities of those things.
Most people are passionate and curious about cooking, regardless of who you are, then the pictures or the information may be enough. I say passionate and curious because if you are more utilitarian in your goal – a journalist in the UK had said “the top selling cookbook in the UK is Jaime Oliver’s 30 minute meals” – that’s very different. It’s a fine book, but if all you want is to cook a meal in 30 minutes, then go buy his book or a hundred other books like that. That’s a very mission oriented view of cooking. If you’re on a mission, then people already service that, but my book is about satisfying passion and curiosity in a broad way. It’s not about 30 minute meals... there are things in the book that can be used for 30 minute meals and if you wanted a 30 minute meal comparison between Jaime Oliver and our book, we’d be happy to rise to the occasion. But there are also recipes in the book that take a hundred hours [laughs].
If you’re task oriented (what’s the quickest way to cook a 30 minute meal), then I say, buy his book. But if you’re curious how things work, then that’s a different thing.
In terms of whether you need other cook books? Well I have other cookbooks.
This book is designed to be based on 21st century cuisine. It is a broad survey of how traditional cooking methods actually work. So we take (not every single method but) all the principal methods of Western cooking, and many principal methods of Asian or other styled cooking, in the context of 21st century cuisine. Every modern technique we can find. We’re not saying that traditional techniques go away; there’s just no reason to reprint them, lots of other people have done so. Most cases there is an improvement. That was our primer – to be the basic foundation for 21st century cuisine but only in the context of everything else that has happened.
RS: What was the inspiration and motivation behind the massive project?
NM: The book is so different from traditional cookbooks, if you can get by its cost, one thing that cookbooks are about is that it’s simplified. Ask any chef who’s written a cookbook, the cookbook editors are sort of relentless about making in laymen’s term. People ask if they can do every recipe at home, and I say no. I don’t understand why that’s a good goal, at least in my mind, for this book because we’re trying to explain how cooking works. It’s the fundamental question: would you like to hear the real story or would you like to hear the dumbed-down story?
There are a lot of people who would like to know the real story. The fact is that 25% of the recipes in the book – forget about it – you’re not going to do it. To read about them and learn about them at the same time as other chefs do. Another one of the goals of our book is that everyone who reads it will learn something, even if you’re Ferran Adria or Heston Blumenthal or the best chef in the world – someone’s going to learn something they never knew before.
I think it’s kind of cool, if Thomas Keller learns something from the book and you learn it the same time that he is. It flies in the face of the idea that everything has to be dumbed-down because it’s so different than conventional wisdom. Today I get a lot of journalists saying that this is really for the professional cook – that’s a paternalistic view. It’s not for everybody. If you look online you’ll find thousands of people who are not professions but are cooking from it, sharing their experiences on a blog... any market is not uniform. It’s interesting and complicated.
Another inspiration for the book was the sous vide thread on eGullet that started in 2004 and a lot of people checked in from all walks of life. One of the guys, Bryan Zupon was a Junior at Duke University and he was cooking sous vide in his dorm room, in part because he figured out it was a sort of loop hole that they didn’t allow hot plates but you could use a water bath. This is the spirit of all these people sharing on eGullet.
RS: Given the somewhat niche appeal of the subject, the fact that it’s being reprinted a second time, has the reception for the cookbook surprised you?
NM: There’s two ways you can design a product, broadly speaking: you can go do market research. Most big companies do that – they do focus groups and surveys. It’s probably the way most products are designed and tested. That’s not what we did. The other way you can come up with a design is if you do what you want, and God I hope someone will buy it. That’s the way art is made and great restaurants are made. Appealing to committees and asking people what they want gives you a limited view of things. Having your own vision, like novels that are successful or non-fiction journalism, are pursued by people who have their own idea. So that’s what we did. We had this vision.
Once we had it done and we could show [publishers] what we had done, then it was more concrete vs. “I’m going to cut cans in half, take pictures... they’ll ask what famous photographer are you using? Oh I’m going to do it myself and a guy I found on Craigslist.” I’ll just sound like a creepy person. But after we had it [done], a couple publishers were very interested... but one wanted to print 2000 [copies]. I was like we’re done. It might be a smart number to print, but I was so deep into it that I couldn’t just sell 2000 copies worldwide. That’s just too little. Of course, so far we’ve sold 25,000 and hoping for 30,000 this year, and that’s just in English. There’s still French, German and Spanish. Over time, we hope to sell really a lot... because you want impact. People cook to have other people eat it. If you hire the best chef in Toronto, say “we’re going to give you double your salary but as soon as you finish every one of your dishes we’re going to put it down the garbage disposal,” they wouldn’t want to do it. It wouldn’t be fun. So we wrote these books to have impact. So we hope that people would buy it. Some are going to say “why is it so expensive? Why couldn’t we use shitty paper?” We were making a quality product. Quality actually matters. There’s great rustic, peasant style food all over the world, but there’s also something wonderful about food that’s been refined and elevated. For the same reason it’s wonderful that the world has a Per Se or French Laundry or a Fat Duck. We thought, we should have a really quality book. We’re not going to skimp on the paper and printing – the cost difference was really small – maybe you’d save $20, but so what? It’s not a lot.
If you bought the same number of pounds of cookbooks, if you tried to replicate the same content for traditional cooking, you’d buy more than $600. It would cost you much more money than my book. And it wouldn’t be as cohesive because this was done by one team. We had no idea if it would work, but it seems like it has.
RS: So would you say that real potential can’t be realized until you try, and that you can’t let limitations restrict yourself?
NM: That’s one of the main reasons I did the book. I realized that this could be my contribution to cooking. Maybe in a parallel universe, I became a chef instead of working in Microsoft, going into physics and all the other things I did. If I started a restaurant at this stage in my life – for Seattle to have one more great restaurant, that would be nice – but it wouldn’t have the impact on people. I’d have more impact in i.e. Toronto with this book than if I say had a restaurant in Seattle. I’m not complaining about restaurants, but the ability for someone to find investors, to find space, to create a restaurant, although it’s difficult, people can do that. But a cookbook like this that has all the properties it has and covers all the techniques... who’s going to do that? Big publishing companies are incredibly conservative. Maybe they’re right to be conservative, but in this case, I love food and I love this kind of food, I knew how hard it was to learn this kind of cooking because I was learning it myself and it required lots of research, asking chefs around the world, a lot of experimentation... if I could pull all of this together to make a definitive book, coalesce all the information in one place, it would be hugely valuable. For the chef who would never get a stage at El Bulli or The Fat Duck a huge opportunity. That’s what I hope to be my contribution to food.
RS: Do you find any of the chefs resisting this because now you’ve explained how to do many of these once mysterious techniques?
NM: In general I’ve found most of the Modernist chefs are incredibly helpful. If you ask Ferran [Adria] how to do something, he’ll tell you, but he doesn’t have to explain to everyone what he’s doing. And even in his wonderful cookbook, he didn’t have the page count to go into tutorials. Some of the chefs don’t have the patience, because doing all those step by step things; they’re on to the next cool thing. That’s fair enough, that’s what they’re supposed to do. If you went to a great fashion designer and asked them, teach me how to sew [laughs]... It’s wasn’t a question of people hording ideas (maybe there’s a few people who do hoard ideas but that wasn’t the big phenomenon).
RS: Could it be that this is part of the culture of this movement/cuisine/technique? Where in the past with more traditional methods much of those techniques are guarded or protected vs. now it’s all about sharing knowledge to help advance things?
NM: Cooking still has an interesting structure. The medieval guilds were all about apprenticeships; you learned by turning at 13-year old to a master who treated him a little better than a slave and then they grew until they became the master, where upon they started abusing apprentices. That was the way most professions were. There are professional chef schools, but many of the greatest chefs are self taught which is fine; there’s still a whole idea of apprentices working their way up which is great so long as there’s a certain amount of shared information.
There’s a lot more than gimmicks and tricks; there’s a fundamental basis to the way you do things. Now that we know a way to describe modern cooking, it’s understanding what effects you’re trying to achieve with the food and then understand how to get them. Traditional techniques are sentimental and contradictory. Take roast chicken: crispy skin, moist flesh. Traditional cooking typically tries to make a compromise. Sentimental philosophy of Modernist cuisine is that you cook the inside one way and the outside another way. It’s all about the idea of control – another big idea in Modernist cuisine – you can be in control. The idea that it’s all mystical, that it requires vast amounts of human skill
RS: In working on the MC , what was the biggest myth you debunked?
NM: We found a bunch of errors in food safety – there’s a whole chapter on that. One example is eggs cooked to order should be brought to 145-degrees for 1-second. That does nothing. It’s sort of a cosmetic regulation. There’s a regulation for fish: 145-degrees for 1-second which overcooks the fish. If they said 145-degrees for 12-minutes, it would have some sense to it, but for 1-second it means nothing.
Duck confit is one that some chefs say, if you cook duck in fat, it will create this unique flavour. That’s a fraud. I figured that out because I was trying to understand how the fat can actually penetrate into the meat because fat molecules are large and they won’t go through the membrane. Firstly, what people call fat is actually fatty tissue. Most of what people object to is that it’s rubbery – that’s the collagen matrix that holds the fat; you have to render it to get the fat. Duck fat melts at 14-degrees Centigrade, so how come you have to cook it so hard? It’s not the fat; it’s that the lipids are enclosed in collagen and the collagen needs to be broken down because the lipids are trapped. It’s that collagen that gives rubbery duck skin. I realized the fat couldn’t possibly penetrate the meat so how does it create a unique flavour and texture? And the confit nature of the meat isn’t just at the surface, it goes all the way in. So it had to be a fraud.
We did a taste test, and we either cooked it traditional, sous vide or steamed it. As long as the time and temperature are the same, in a blind taste test, we couldn’t tell the difference. When I tell some chefs this, they almost get angry and don’t agree with it. But I say look, it’s not about agreeing, try it. If you can try in a blind taste test, maybe you can taste things I can’t taste, but no one in our group could taste it.
One of the essences of science is to know this idea that hypotheses can be disproven. And chefs have to understand that there are a lot hypotheses that people take for granted. Some of its correct but a lot isn’t.
RS: What’s your next cookbook project?
NM: Well in terms of a project that’s a little smaller than a giant multi-year, multi-volume extravaganza again. We did one of those, and I’m sure I’ll do another one again at some point, but the books that will come next will be a smaller thing – single topic book. And I can see a list of many single topic books. Imagine if I was doing another volume to Modernist Cuisine? It is a lot of ways to make that next volume by taking a specific topic. But I would also like to see the pastry and desserts so hopefully. One thing that was special about Modernist Cuisine is that we did take this topic approach and we didn’t have any compromises, we wanted to cover everything out there. So we have to find areas that are worthy of our attention; approach different ethnic cuisines or a technique in more specialized form. So there’s a lot of different ways that you could slice it. So we’ll see what happens.
RS: One thing I’ve found interesting is that chefs who have been reticent to use the label “molecular gastronomy” are now suddenly happy to talk about “modern cuisine.” Thoughts?
NM: Well molecular gastronomy is a terrible name. We discuss the history of it in the book. Chefs hate it. The ironic thing is that Hervé This, who’s this French food scientist – he would tell you he’s the father of molecular gastronomy – he feels strongly that that term shouldn’t be used to describe restaurant cuisine, but used for science.
RS: I believe he now refers to it as Note by Note?
NM: The latest thing he’s excited about is called Note by Note cuisine, which I’m not sure I fully understand. It seems to be like if you start using a slang term... it’s possible to be widely used because not anybody knows precisely what it means because they use it in context. I haven’t seen any precise definition of it. Is seems to be about isolating specific characteristics of ingredients and then having a sequence of these things in a menu which is analogous to playing notes of music. That’s my interpretation from the little I’ve seen, and Max, my co-author who reads French better than I do, said that seems to be kind of what he does.
Anyway, Hervé doesn’t want to call it molecular gastronomy; the chefs don’t want to call it molecular gastronomy. Molecular sounds very off-putting to people. If you take a scientific perspective of course everything is molecules and it’s not molecular biology. If there’s a reason to call it molecular biology – because that’s the study of unique molecules of life – and it’s molecules that that you’re concerned with, and there’s no sense that that’s true here. Historically molecular gastronomy was invented as a cool name for a conference. Hervé recently sent an email out to people that he was thrilled that this cuisine was being called modernist. Heston Blumenthal wrote a piece saying the same thing: that as far as he’s concerned, molecular is dead, it’s now modernist. I think modernist has a significant improvement over molecular: first, it’s more encompassing and broader. So what we mean by modern is that people cooking a wide range of styles, it’s not a single style. It includes people who cook foods that are deliberately different; the differentness is part of the point. If you go to Alinea, Moto or El Bulli part of the entire creative point is for it to be new and surprising. Just like artists that do that. There are people who use surprise as part of the experience. There are also a lot of chefs that don’t cook that way but modern techniques are still part of their cuisine. Modern art encompasses a wide range of different artistic styles. Modern art includes Jackson Pollock, the French Impressionists, Chuck Close doing photorealism and everything in between. In the same way modernist is a term for cooking, or a style of cuisine that is meant to be all encompassing.
RS: Do you eat out or cook more?
NM: Well it’s different. For starters, Seattle there are a lot of great restaurants, but there’s not a lot of great modernist restaurants. So when I travel, I like trying to experience other things that I don’t get at home. So great restaurants, ethnic restaurants and other takes on food are also nice to try. So when it’s places like Chicago, it’s places like Alinea, Moto and places like that but also Hot Doug’s and the French fries in duck fat are great. Ha ha ha.
RS: Have you tried horse fat fries? (Not there. I had to make it myself – it was terrible with having to render down the fat itself that had to be sourced, but...)
NM: Use a pressure cooker.
RS: Now I know.
NM: It’s great. What we do with rendering fat is use a pressure cooker and to use Mason jars to hold the fat with an inch of water under.
RS: What is your favourite cuisine? Restaurant? Do you find that having demystified the cooking process through the MC that you are less easily impressed?
NM: It’s not hard to go out to eat. The funny thing is that knowing how I would do it doesn’t mean I know how they would do it. There’s a tendency to over think things “oh yes, they must have done this and this and this and this cuz that’s how I’d do it.” But no actually.
In terms of harder to be impressed. You know those optical illusions? The lines... I don’t know if you know the trick? One of the lines looks longer? You can say we know, but the perception is very hard wired. The food is great, tastes great and it doesn’t really matter knowing how it’s made – it doesn’t affect how you experience it. Once you’ve had lots of great food and you know what it can taste like if it’s no overcooked you become more picky about how it’s overcooked – which is also pretty easy to forgive in a certain context. But it’s about being more aware.
RS: Comments on your dining experiences in Toronto?
NM: When I’m in a different city, I would eat with a local guide because usually when you come to a city, there’s a set of places that the concierge will tell you is the best restaurant in town. There are places that a guide like Zagat will tell you, then there’s a place that a foodie will take you. There is some overlap but not very much.
In Singapore there’s something called makansutra. The name is a sort of take on kamasutra: makan means eating (??) in a local language. And this crazy guy writes all about street food, a guy named Seto, and when I’m in Singapore, he takes me around. You go to like 30 places and at each one you order only one dish. It’s things from all across south east Asia and all the things that are unique there. So if there’s a Seto in every town, that would fantastic, but of course there isn’t.
Unfortunately didn’t have much of a chance [to explore Toronto]. I did have pre-arranged dinners at Splendido and Campagnolo, which was fine, but I ate at one Indian restaurant while I was here called Utsav. We asked one of the concierges, who’s an Indian woman, where to go for lunch. It was very good actually. Typical Indian dishes but we also didn’t want to walk. It was good. I love all food basically.
But sure, I’d love to come back to Toronto and explore a bit.
RS: You have such varied interests that take up your time. How much of it do you use to focus on food and MC?
NM: I’m interested in a lot of things. I try to do it to the best of my abilities.
In the case of paleontology, I write a number of articles on paleontology. Every few years I do one, it’s not very constant. And my contribution to paleontology is smaller, it’s a contribution but it’s not “Oh my god, I’m the world’s best paleontologist.” But it’s fun. And I’m going to keep doing it. My company - development and also inventing – and one of the things we try is to try to invent things that are solutions to problems. We might fail. We have a philosophy that it’s good for us to try to do those things. Again, you can tell me that the world doesn’t work or we shouldn’t be doing it that way.
The cookbook has been interesting because cooking has been something that, up until now, if you interviewed me about all my other things “oh yes, he’s also a really good cook, he once won a barbecue contest...” people would be like oh that’s an interesting little hobby. It’s not like it is a contribution that was important towards cooking, I mean, up until the book. The book was trying to be something that was very important. My relative contribution to cooking may well exceed my relative contribution to paleontology, whatever that means.
RS: They’re all significant contributions, but given all that you’ve accomplished and projects you’ve lined up for the future, what is it that you hope will be your legacy?
NM: Warren Buffet was asked when he was gone what he said was: god that guy was old. [laughs] So the legacy, I’m not at the stage in my life where I can worry about that. I’m hoping that I have a lot more years walking out of here [laughs].
It’s a funny question, because in paleontology, my paleontology friends will say “he done a few interesting things” and I’ll have some little legacy in paleontology but currently it will be little; maybe I’ll come up with something bigger later on. In physics and in other interests of mine, in those areas, yes in some of them, if you interviewed them after I was gone they’d say: “too bad he wasted his time in all that other stuff. Maybe he would be a successful guy if he didn’t waste all his time on all this other crap.” It’s funny because my friends in each area don’t quite understand why I would waste my time from their perspective. Lots of chef friends can’t quite understand why I don’t open a restaurant, because to them that is the best thing you can possibly do. So what’s up with that? They say “surely this book is how you were going to introduce your new restaurant.” Well, not so much. So within cooking I’m hoping the book has an impact. People write to be read; people cook to be eaten. So I really hope the book has a big impact. If it has a big impact, it would help a whole generation of cooks – at home and professionally – will help them get access to techniques that they couldn’t get otherwise. If you interview me 10 years from now, we’ll be able to say, “here’s the restaurants and the trends that have been influenced from the creation of this book.” I hope that there’ll be other books by that date, that I won’t be totally done, but if I was done today, I would hope that this book will be a good contribution, that people would have found it really useful. That’s as much as you could hope for.
RS: Thank you for sharing about the whole process of this project. It’s exciting to see the final product but I can’t imagine how hard those 5 years were when you were working through the trials and tribulations.
NM: There was a lot of work. There are things that don’t go how you’d like; there are those things that turn out really well. It was a great project. It’s terrific to see it now actually accepted by people.
RS: Are you thinking of any more translations of MC?
NM: Two languages: Chinese and Russian. If you look at what countries will hold the most high end restaurants – Canada is not going to quadruple its high end restaurants, you couldn’t. The number of high end restaurants will remain relatively constant (maybe they’ll grow at a few percent per year, but the population is flat and it’s already wealthy/successful country. The same is true for the United States or Europe. China, will have more high end restaurants – like how the United States went from in the 19th century it went from an agricultural country and the wild west and everything else into this urbanized industrial country – and that’s what’s happening in China. If you want to be influential... Plus China has this interesting combination of [having] rich culinary traditions of its own and everybody loves variety. So there will be more French restaurants developing , more sushi... If you lived in Shanghai or Beijing today, or Hong Kong – Hong Kong’s had a western economy for a while – so it’s got great restaurants of every variety. They’re actually selling the books in English in China through our printer. For the very rich people in China it doesn’t matter the books are in English. It’s also not a big influence on the culinary world. The challenge there is finding a way to get it translated in a cost effective way. If you told me that when we translate it to Chinese and I’ll never make any money on it, I’d still do it just because it’ll be a cool thing to do. It actually has many of the same properties that I said about China: it’s another unique situation where they’re growing more of a restaurant culture and growing more of an open society. Spanish is great, because not only do you get Spain but you get all of Latin America. So if you look at parts of the world that are more influential, the parts of the world that are developing are only part of the story. If you look back 20 or 30 years from now, it’s the parts of the world that are growing fast, they will go from having no culinary traditions to high end cuisine – that’s where you’ll have the most influence.
RS: And can we use the metaphor that “they’re really hungry for it” appropriately here?
NM: [Laughs]
RS: Thank you so much for your time.
* Random fact: Although both editions are printed on high quality paper, edition one used paper from Japan and weighed a mere 48-pounds. However, in wake of the tsunami earlier this year, the paper was no longer available and an equally high quality source, but slightly heavier product, from China was used. The ink alone weighs 4-pounds.
** Mhyrvold worked on the project for two years alone before having a team.
Ahmad ibn ‘Ali ibn Yusuf al-Buni (Arabic: أحمد البوني) (died 1225) was a well known Sufi and writer on the esoteric value of letters and topics relating to mathematics, sihr (sorcery) and spirituality, but very little is known about him. Al-Buni lived in Egypt and learned from many eminent Sufi masters of his time.[1]
He wrote one of the most famous books of his era, the Shams al-Ma'arif al-Kubra (Sun of the Great Knowledge, Arabic شمس المعارف الكبرى) which is one of the most widely read medieval treatises on talismans, magic squares and occult practices. This work rivals the Picatrix in importance. This book was later banned by orthodox Muslims as heretical, but continues to be read and studied.
Instead of sihr (Sorcery), this kind of magic was called Ilm al-Hikmah (Knowledge of the Wisedom), Ilm al-simiyah (Study of the Divine Names) and Ruhaniyat (Spirituality). Most of the so-called mujarrabât ("time-tested methods") books on sorcery in the Muslim world are simplified excerpts from the Shams al-ma`ârif.[2] The book remains the seminal work on Theurgy and esoteric arts to this day.
In c. 1200, Ahmad al-Buni showed how to construct magic squares using a simple bordering technique, but he may not have discovered the method himself. Al-Buni wrote about Latin squares and constructed, for example, 4 x 4 Latin squares using letters from one of the 99 names of Allah. His works on traditional healing remains a point of reference among Yoruba Muslim healers in Nigeria and other areas of the Muslim world.[3]
Ahmad al-Buni also left a list of other titles that he wrote. Unfortunately, very few of them have survived.
Al-Buni states in his work Manba’ Usul al-Hikmah (Source of the Essentials of Wisdom) that he acquired his knowledge of the esoteric properities of the letters from his personal teacher Abu Abdillah Shams al-Din al-Asfahâni. He in turn received it from Jalal al-Din Abdullah al-Bistami, who in turn received it from Shaykh al-Sarajani, who received it from Qasim al-Sarajani, who received it from Abdullah al-Babani, who received it from Asîl al-Din al-Shirazi, who received it from Abu al-Najîb al-Sahruwardi, who received it from, Mohammad ibn Mohammad Al-Ghazali al-Tusi, who received it from Ahmad al-Aswad, who received it from Hamad al-Dînuri, who received it from the master al-Junayd al-Baghdadi, who received it from Sari al-Din al-Saqati, who received it from Ma’ruf al-Karkhi, who received it from Dawûd al-Jili, who received it from Habîb al-A’ajami, who received it from Imam Hasan al-Basri.
Al-Buni states in the same work that he acquired his knowledge of magical squares from Sirâj al-Dîn al-Hanafi, who acquired it from Shihab al-Dîn al-Muqaddasi, who acquired it from Shams al-Dîn al-Farisi, who acquired it from Shihab al-Dîn al-Hamadani, who acquired it from Qutb al-Dîn al-Diyâ’i, who acquired it from Muhyiddîn Ibn Arabi, who acquired it from Abu al-'Abbas Ahmad ibn al-Turîzi, who acquired it from Abu Abdillah al-Qurashi, who acquired it from Abu Madîn al-Andalusi.
He also states that he acquired additional knowledge about the esoteric art of letters and the magical squares from Mohammad 'Izz al-Dîn ibn Jam’a, who acquired it from Mohammad al-Sirani, who acquired it from Shihab al-Dîn al-Hamadani, who acquired it from Qutb al-Dîn al-Dhiya’i, who acquired it from Muhyiddîn Ibn Arabi.
Al-Buni also states that he acquired his occult knowledge from Abu al-'Abbas Ahmad ibn Maymûn al-Qastalâni, who acquired it from Abu Abdillah Mohammed al-Qurashi, who acquired it from Abu Madîn Shu'ayb ibn Hasan al-Ansari al-Andalusi, who received it from Abu Ayyub ibn Abi Sa'id al-Sanhaji al-Armuzi, who received it from Abi Muhammad ibn Nur, who received it from Abu al-Fadhl Abdullah ibn Bashr, who received it from Abu Bashr al-Hasan al-Jujari, who received it from al-Saqati, who received it from Dawûd al-Tâ’i, who received it from Habîb al-A'jami, who received it from Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Sîrîn, who received it from Malik ibn Anas.
Al-Buni also made regular mention in his work of Plato, Aristotle, Hermes, Alexander the Great, and obscure Chaldean magicians. In one of his works, he recounted a story of his discovery of a cache of manuscripts buried under the pyramids, that included a work of Hermetic thinkers.
His work is said to have influenced the Hurufis and the New Lettrist International.[4]
"Mathematics - the other white cult"
Note to all people chronically lacking a sense of humor while taking everything in life literally (and way too seriously):