Rayleigh–Bénard convection, simulated live.
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Writing 1
Blackbody: scientific OLED wallpapersSeventy-eight 4K wallpapers for OLED screens, each drawn from real scientific data or simulated from the physics and maths behind it.28 Sep 2026 · 78 wallpaperspost
Projects 2
- Claude PulseAn always-on-top widget for Claude usage limits and live sessions, docked on the Windows taskbar.desktop appproof of concept
- VoiceFlowOffline dictation and meeting notes from a tray pill, summarised into my notes vault.desktop appproof of concept
Wallpapers 78
Geography
Drifters, 5,0005,000 of the 7,378 satellite-tracked buoys adrift in the North Atlantic since 1979, coloured by speed.Geography
White Storks207 storks avoid the open sea: south by Gibraltar or round by the Bosphorus.Geography
Gulf StreamThe Gulf Stream and its rings, Cape Hatteras to 45° W, on 1 March 2021: lines crowd where water runs fast.Geography
La Niña 1988Cold water welling up along the equator, drawn as sea-temperature anomaly contours.Geography
Arctic TernsGreenland to the Antarctic and back: the longest migration on Earth.Geography
Green TurtlesThirty-two green turtles leave Diego Garcia for feeding grounds up to 4,300 km away.Geography
Blue Whales143 satellite-tagged blue whales travel the California Current, 1993–2008.Geography
Arctic Sea IceThe September ice edge for every year from 1979 to 2025.Geography
40 °C DayThe jet stream loops north round the heat of 19 July 2022, Britain's first 40 °C day.Geography
Tropical CyclonesEvery hurricane-strength storm since 1980; none crosses the equator.Geography
Hudsonian Godwit8,260 km non-stop from Chile to Texas in five days and eighteen hours.Geography
Storm CiaránThe jet stream at up to 96 m/s as Ciarán deepened, 2 November 2023.Geography
Hurricane TracksEvery North Atlantic hurricane since 1851, from NOAA's IBTrACS archive.Geography
Ten Years AdriftBuoy 9526028, 1996–2006: from Kamchatka into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which it never left.Geography
Drifters218 of the 7,378 satellite-tracked buoys adrift in the North Atlantic since 1979, coloured by speed.Geography
KuroshioThe Kuroshio Extension on 1 March 2021, meandering east from Japan and shedding rings on both sides.Geography
Agulhas RetroflectionThe Agulhas Current turns back on itself south of Africa, 1 March 2021; the rings it sheds drift west.Geography
Maps
Mount FujiStacked east-west profiles of Fuji, each hiding the ones behind it.Maps
Crater LakeMount Mazama collapsed 7700 years ago; rain and snow have filled its caldera 594 m deep.Maps
Mount EverestPeak XV of the Great Trigonometrical Survey; first climbed by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953.Maps
Pen y FanThe Brecon Beacons' 886 m summit as a night map on the British National Grid.Maps
Yr WyddfaSnowdon's glacial cwms from the Ordnance Survey's 50 m terrain model.Maps
MatterhornWhymper's party of seven first climbed the horn in 1865; four died on the descent.Maps
Mount St HelensThe eruption of 18 May 1980 took 400 m off the summit and left a crater open to the north.Maps
Yosemite ValleyHalf Dome stands 1.4 km above the floor of a valley cut by rivers and glaciers into Sierra granite.Maps
Table MountainCharting the southern sky from the Cape in 1751–52, Lacaille named a constellation after it: Mons Mensae, now Mensa.Maps
Black CuillinThe gabbro roots of a volcano 60 million years old, carved by ice into a ridge of eleven Munros.Maps
Monte RosaHachures down the fall line in the manner of Dufour's Swiss map of 1845–65.Maps
Signals
Humpback Song in ColourColour follows pitch, from deep blue on the lowest moans to pale green in the highest harmonics.Signals
Great Quake HelicorderJapan's magnitude 9.1 earthquake arriving at a seismometer in Wiltshire, 9,400 km away.Signals
Sumatra Record SectionThe 2004 Sumatra earthquake at 140 seismometers, sorted by distance: its waves draw arcs.Signals
Humpback SongA male humpback whale's song: every glyph is a sung unit, its harmonics stacked above it.Signals
Lissajous 3:2Two tones a fifth apart on an oscilloscope, slightly detuned, so the figure slowly turns.Signals
Patterns
SeigaihaBlue-sea waves: an exact lattice of concentric arcs, a motif older than the Silk Road.Patterns
Quantum FoamA contour map of random ripples with the statistics of the fluctuations that seeded the galaxies.Patterns
Physics
- Rayleigh–Bénard IsothermsThe same plumes drawn as isotherms: lines of equal temperature, crowded where heat crosses the floor.Physics
Rayleigh–Bénard PlumesA floor suddenly heated under cold fluid at Ra = 10 million: the hot layer erupts in mushroom plumes.Physics
Kármán Vortex StreetLattice-Boltzmann flow past a cylinder: dye rolls into the wake's alternating vortices.Physics
Kelvin–Helmholtz BillowsTwo streams sliding past each other at Re = 10,000; the interface rolls up into billows that begin to pair.Physics
Kelvin–Helmholtz PairingThe same billows a little later: neighbours orbit each other and merge into one twice the size.Physics
Chladni Plate (3, 7)Simulated sand settles on the still nodal lines of a vibrating square plate.Physics
Bubble ChamberCharged particles curl through superheated hydrogen; each radius measures a momentum.Physics
Ten Thousand PendulumsReleased a millionth of a radian apart, chaos pulls one line into silk.Physics
CausticsSunlight refracted by ripples focuses into folds and cusps on the pool floor.Physics
Kelvin WakeEvery crest behind a hull at Froude number 0.5, from linear wave theory; its cusps lie 19.47° off the track.Physics
Kelvin Wake, TurningA hull at Froude number 0.49 turning 110° to port: crests crowd inside the turn and fan out beyond it.Physics
Rain on a PondThe first 0.6 s of light rain on a pond: 84 drops, each ring sending capillary ripples out ahead.Physics
ButterflyEvery sunspot group since 1874 at its latitude: each cycle starts near 30° and ends near the equator.Physics
Butterfly, Thirteen CyclesThirteen solar cycles laid over one another from their minima: one pair of wings, Spörer's law.Physics
Solargraph, GreenwichOne arc a day from the winter to the summer solstice, 2025–26; the dark gaps are Greenwich's cloud.Physics
Solargraph, TromsøPolar night to midnight sun: from 21 May the Sun's daily path closes into a loop round the sky.Physics
Solargraph, QuitoTwelve-hour days on the equator; Pichincha's slopes end each afternoon about 45 minutes early.Physics
Corona, DrawnThe Sun's magnetic field on 2 July 2019, eclipse day near solar minimum: streamers at the equator, open poles.Physics
Maths
Hopf FibrationCircles over one meridian of the base sphere, each linked once with every other.Maths
Buildings
Shukhov TowerStraight struts on a doubly ruled hyperboloid, as in Shukhov's 1922 Moscow radio tower.Buildings
Circuits
Core MemoryFerrite rings on X, Y, sense and inhibit wires: one bit per core, as in 1953.Circuits
Aerospace
IsogridNASA's triangular-rib panel, carrying load equally in every direction.Aerospace
Oblique ShockMach 5.1 flow over a 20° half-angle wedge, solved from the Euler equations and drawn as a shadowgraph.Aerospace
Astronomy
Kerr Black HoleA spinning black hole ray-traced through curved spacetime; one side of the disc beams brighter.Astronomy
Gradients
Fraunhofer SpectrumSunlight split by wavelength; each dark line is an element in the Sun's atmosphere.Gradients
Neurons
Purkinje CellA real guinea-pig cerebellar neuron, every branch at its measured width.Neurons
Human Purkinje CellA human cerebellar neuron: 51.7 mm of dendrite in one flat fan.Neurons
Pyramidal NeuronsTwenty-six real human cortical neurons, each at its recorded depth.Neurons
Action PotentialHodgkin–Huxley equations on 30,946 compartments, 1.2 ms after firing.Neurons
Trained NetworkA 784-64-10 network trained here reads a handwritten 7 along its strongest paths.Neurons
Cosmic
GW150914Two black holes merge 1.3 billion light years away; both LIGO detectors hear the chirp.Cosmic
GW170817Two neutron stars spiral together; their chirp climbs out of the LIGO noise to the merger.Cosmic
CP 1919Eighty successive pulses of the first pulsar, each one flash of a spinning neutron star.Cosmic
X-Class WeekX-rays from sunspot AR 13664 in May 2024; its eruptions sent the aurora over southern England.Cosmic
GRB 221009A · THE BOATThe brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, counted by Fermi on 9 October 2022.Cosmic
Heat Maps
Reading, 100 TimesA hundred people read the same page of The Hunting of the Snark, their eyes sampled 1000 times a second.Heat Maps
Return Sweeps2,501 leftward jumps longer than 8°: 100 readers' eyes sweeping back from each line's end to the next.Heat Maps
Knight's Web11.2 million knight moves from 966,028 Lichess games: Nf3 alone was played 798,636 times.Heat Maps
Twelve HoursThe 32 GPS satellites over one day: two laps each, turning back at 55°, on a track they retrace daily.Heat Maps
Circulation
RetinaThe vessels of a healthy human retina, traced by hand from a fundus photograph; the fovea has none.Circulation
Circle of WillisA healthy adult's brain arteries from MR angiography, seen from below: six trees leave one ring.Circulation
Cleared LeafThe veins of a sweetgum leaf, mapped from a cleared-leaf photograph at their measured widths.Circulation
AmazonEvery river of the Amazon basin carrying 5 m³/s or more, drawn at a width set by its flow.Circulation
Nothing matches.