Ada Lovelace, Echantress of Numbers

I recently found a splendid lens from LadyLovelace introduced me to the intriguing character of Ada Lovelace - and better, to this awesome comic about Ada Lovelace's adventures in crime and mathematics.

She was apparently Lord Byron-the-lovelorn-and-infamous' only legitimate daughter, raised by her mother, who tried to purge the evil of poetry from her with the power of MATHS. She ended up working with Charles Babbage, creating formulas for the Difference Engine and laying the groundwork for the modern computer. I love her already. She was born in 1815, and died in 1852 of uterine cancer - and of course, the bloodletting that was used to treat it.

Babbage wrote of her:

Forget this world and all its troubles and if

possible its multitudinous Charlatans — every thing in short but the Enchantress of Numbers.

Now go read the rest of the comic.

Awesome Linkage: Lesbian Unicorns, Shark Cancer and Digital Comics

Patrick Rothfuss is the guy who wrote the very brilliant fantasy book, The Name of the Wind (that utterly horrified me when it suddenly stopped - turns out he's writing a sequel, so I'm happy again!). The main character's a guy called Kvothe. Apparently he was once a lesbian unicorn. Or more honestly (and less amusingly!) the author made a joke about him being one, and Kvothe is now permanently a lesbian unicorn in the eyes of the internet (and I am so very much not helping with this).

This really makes me want to draw a lesbian unicorn. And wish that my fingers didn't keep writing 'unicron'. I did paint a unicorn last week though... and it's purple. The colour of being bisexual. I've decided that retroactively counts. Zazzle appears to have gone down, so I can't make amusing captions. Pity. I seem to compulsively consider unicorns a fit target for mocking captions. We could have had such fun...

Hat tip : ArchMage



Also, those stories and that big industry about the Magic of Cancer-Curing (s)Chark Cartilage? Debunked, as in kicked off the top bunk in the night as they rolled over on their pile of money. Sharks certainly do, probably, get cancer, and there's no reliable science to say otherwise.


An interesting read about the recalcitrance of publishing companies to seriously embrace digital media for its own sake: Please, Just Kiss Digital Comics On The Mouth Already ...and while we're on that topic, I've been sorting out my top webcomics page, so I've got pages for each update day (Monday, Tuesday... you can probably predict the rest!)