User:Robertinventor

Inventor / mathematician / shareware software programmer.

I did some research on a style of mathematics in which everything is finite, in which exceedingly large numbers take the place of the infinities of classical and intuitionistic logic.

It uses a logic intermediate between classical and intuitionistic logic.

This page describes some of the philosophy behind it. The research was done some years ago, and in fact I have forgotten most of it, and would need to look it up again if anyone was interested. Reactions to it were unfavourable, so I never tried to publish it. However, I was satisfied with it myself, as it answered the basic question that motivated the research and lead to new areas for research which I enjoyed following up, so could possibly be of interest to others too. http://www.robertinventor.com/robert/largenumbersasinfinite.htm

After that I did some research into cellular automata, trying to find one with simpler rules than Life that had a similar undecidability proof. This was unsuccessful, but got me involved in programming again after a lapse of many years. I then did some research on non periodic sets of tiles, and found some new non periodic sets - research not yet published.

Then I got involved in writing music software, originally to explore an idea I had for a fractal tune built up from a simple seed. This was far more successful than I expected, the results were very musical. So I tried selling the program and was encouraged further by the enthusiastic feedback from users.

Later I added in scales from the SCALA archive with permission from Manual Op de Coul. This lead to microtonal fractal tunes. It turned out then that my program was useful for microtonal composers to retune their keyboards and pieces composed in notation software. So I developed that side of it further. It also turned out to be useful for music therapy in connection with Barbara Hero's Lambdoma keyboard - I adapted Tune Smithy so that it could be used to play the notes for her keyboard. Other spin off additions to the program include the chord progression player, the polyrhythm metronome, and the audio pitch tracer used to transcribe bird song.

Tune Smithy is my top selling program. But I also wrote some other software as well. Lissajous 3D was written in order to make Lissajous Patterns in 3D - originally for use with Tune Smithy for the music therapy connection, an implementation of ideas by Barbara Hero, and a suggestion to develop them in 3D by the composer Charles Lucy.

Virtual Flower originated in a discovery that it was possible to make very compact fractal trees in VRML - a few KB instead of the usual several MB that would be required for such complex 3D shapes. It also developed as a way to make geometrical shapes, polyhedra and animated star spheres.

Other programs I've written include the Activity Timer which is used to track time spent on projects on the computer, and Text Field Echo a text tool with a few special features - including a wild word search and replace, and search and replace all the files in a folder.

My web site, where you can find out more, is http://www.robertinventor.com