The Elements of Euclid in Greek and Latin

I was trying to parse my way through an edition of The Elements in Greek and Latin:

https://archive.org/details/euclidisoperaomn01eucluoft/page/x

The name of The Elements in Ancient Greek is:

Στοιχει̃a

or, when transliterated:

Stoicheĩa

.

The Ancient-Greek word, τὰ στοιχει̃α or, when transliterated ‘tà stoicheĩa,’ is a plural form of the 2nd-declension neuter verb, τὸ στοιχει̃ον genitive: του̃ στοιχείου or, when transliterated: ‘tò stoicheĩon,’ genitive: ‘toũ stoicheíou.’

The Ancient-Greek word, ‘tò stoicheĩon,’ can mean ‘an element in a set.’

Figure 1: The elements of this set are alpha, beta, gamma and delta.

The Ancient-Greek word, ‘tò stoicheĩon,’ is formed from the Ancient-Greek masculine noun, ὁ στοι̃χος genitive: του̃ στοίχου or, when transliterated, ‘ho stoĩchos,’ genitive: ‘toũ stoíchou,’ which means ‘steps,’ or ‘a flight of stairs;’ and the Ancient-Greek 2nd-declension neuter nominal suffix, ‘-eĩon,’ genitive: ‘-eíou’ which denotes ‘a means (of),’ ‘an instrument of;’ etc.

Figure 2: a ‘stoĩchos’ or ‘series of steps.’

The term, ‘stoĩchos,’ according to Wiktionary, may be traced back to the indo-european word:

*steigʰ

, which means:

‘climb.’

Hence, etymologically, the Ancient-Greek term, ‘stoicheĩa,’ can be said to mean: ‘the means of climbing up;’ ‘the means of stepping up;’ ‘the means of ascent;’ etc.

This is highly instructive, as, in truth, Elements is a book that is a Jacob’s ladder, of sorts, by which one can ascend, element by element, into the heavens of mathematical knowledge.

Figure 3: With The Elements of Euclid, we advance in our mathematical knowledge element by element. Each element is, conceptually, like a rung, heaving us upwards to Mathematical prowess; to an implicit knowledge of Euclidean Geometry.

Wire-Framing Websites and Apps in Inkscape and Scripted SVG:

Figure 1: I drew this HTML logo in Scripted SVG. My development skills, especially my ability to develop web images through code, is really beginning to rise to a professional standard.

Figure 2: I mocked up this old website, phouka.com for an e-book that I am putting the finishing touches to, and hope to release upon Amazon, shortly. This website, developed in 2005, employs a pre-html-5 table layout which is now deprecated. Today, the downloading of fonts by a web-accessor is no longer required thanks to @fontface .

Figure 3: I drew this Swift Logo – the Programming Language employed by Apple – in Vector software such as Vector Magic and Inkscape. Apps can be mocked up in Inkscape so as to give the customer a sense of what his/her app’s user experience/ graphical user interface might look like, prior to the app’s development commencing in earnest.

If anyone should require mockups of apps or websites prior to taking this wireframe to a professional website-developer/app-programmer, let me know. Send me a direct message, or something. The advantage of doing this in SVG, is that one can then employ the SVG code and the CSS code generated by Inkscape in the website/app itself.

Bookcover Design in SVG and Inkscape:

Figure 1: I drew this book-cover in Scripted SVG and Inkscape. You may observe the vector file at my codepen account.

When it comes to the Kindle Store: prospective purchasers really do judge a book by its cover!

That is why a book cover requires its being extremely stylish and appealing to the eye, employing gradients, fonts, contrasting/complementary colours, etc. to this effect.

Must Do is a Great Master.

The title of this piece comes from a Monaghan-ism that has a parallel in non-localised English.

As part of our Networking-and-Systems Apprenticeship, we have to draw Network Topologies.  I am watching a Microsoft MVA video series on how to do this:

Video 1:  A Microsoft Video Playlist on Networking Fundamentals.

The chaps at Microsoft recommend some of their proprietary software for the task: Microsoft Visio.

I looked up Microsoft Visio on their online store, and, to my horror, it cost in excess of €700.  It amazes me that triple-A videogames can employ hundreds of developers that can work years of man-hours between them, and, yet, they can retail their software at €60-€70.  How come non-gaming software can sometimes retail at the €1000+ mark?

So, I am not spending money – that I do not have – on this.  Eventually, I would like to set up a development company using the Microsoft Bizspark program, and, I think, Microsoft will give me all of their software for free, upon the proviso that I develop for their platform.

So I looked for a coding solution.

I took a low-quality raster screenshot of the server icon featured in their video:

Figure 1: A low quality raster-screenshot of a server icon.

I then began to manually describe this Server Icon in SVG[1] code:

Figure 2:  A manually programmed svg file that I produced.

Below is a capture of the high-quality vector image that the code produced:

Figure 3:  A capture of what the simple svg file, above, produces.

Sometimes, lacking the proper resources necessary to – ordinarily – complete a task, forces one to seek more creative solutions.

As in the adage:

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Indeed, it is necessity – and not plenty – that it the mother of invention and innovation.

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[1] Scalable Vector Graphics.