From: nuny on
On Apr 2, 4:56 am, James Dow Allen <jdallen2...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Apr 2, 11:43 am, Danny73 <fasttrac...(a)att.net> wrote:
>
> > But here on the three dimensional earth grid it
> > is 6 directions ---
> > North,South,East,West,Skyward,Earthward. ;-)
>
> Let me try to inject a serious question I have into
> this thread.   ;-)
>
> In a hexagonal grid, each point has six immediate neighbors;
> what should their names be?  (I asked this question before,
> with the only answer being the ugly "solution I was
> already using: West, Northwest, Northeast, East, SE, SW.)

That assumes you orient it east-west. You could just as easily
orient it north-south, or ignore "conventional" map coordinate systems
completely.

> Hexagonal grids have big advantages over square grid
> but are seldom used.  It sounds silly, but perhaps
> lack of the msot basic nomenclature is one reason!

NSEW nomenclature is tied to the rotation of the Earth. What do you
want to tie hex map nomenclature to? What is *available* to tie it to?
Note the origin of the word "orient".


Mark L. Fergerson
From: BURT on
On Apr 1, 4:45 pm, BURT <macromi...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> Directions are:
>
> Up down
> Right left
> Front back
>
> When we move through space we are moving in a 6 directional space grid
> in only 3 of these directions.
>
> Mitch Raemsch

For the 4th dimension surface there is two more directions in the
universe for circling the hypersphere. Hypersphere geometry gives 8
directions in its surface.

Mitch Raemsch
From: Tim Golden BandTech.com on
On Apr 2, 7:56 am, James Dow Allen <jdallen2...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Apr 2, 11:43 am, Danny73 <fasttrac...(a)att.net> wrote:
>
> > But here on the three dimensional earth grid it
> > is 6 directions ---
> > North,South,East,West,Skyward,Earthward. ;-)
>
> Let me try to inject a serious question I have into
> this thread. ;-)
>
> In a hexagonal grid, each point has six immediate neighbors;
> what should their names be? (I asked this question before,
> with the only answer being the ugly "solution I was
> already using: West, Northwest, Northeast, East, SE, SW.)
>
> Hexagonal grids have big advantages over square grid
> but are seldom used. It sounds silly, but perhaps
> lack of the msot basic nomenclature is one reason!
>
> James Dow Allen

Yes, and in fact only three directions are needed on the 2D hexagonal
grid.
Likewise just four directions are actually necessary to address 3D
space.
These are the simplex coordinate systems, whereby we can return to our
original location by stepping once in each of those directions:
http://bandtechnology.com/PolySigned/Lattice/Lattice.html
The ray is more fundamental than the line.
The simplex coordinate system is already encoded into the real number
due to the behavior
- 1 + 1 = 0
which generalizes via polysign to both an algebra and a geometry. This
geometry in lattice form is different than ordinary geometry, for it
still carries its directional origins along with it
http://bandtechnology.com/PolySigned/Lattice/P3Signon.gif

- Tim
From: spudnik on
NB, quaternions are not "quadrays" (for an amateur attempt
at homogenous co-ordination), but you can "do" special rel.
with them (according to Lanczos .-)

thus:
The "cap & trade" omnibus bill -- what Waxman-Markey should
be known as, being so fundamental to the Stupid, economy -- is at
least
as old as Waxman's '91 bill to ameliorate acid rain. One must really
stop
and consider, just who really opposes this "last hurrah" for Wall
Street (like-
wise, the healthcare bill, also under Waxman's House committee, and
which,
after all, is geared toward funding a smaller aspect of the S-- the
economy,
already tremendously leveraged by the "voluntary" cap & trade, which
the bill would essentially mandate, a la the much-larger, market-
making EU scheme).

Not so long ago, there was a guest-editorial in the WSJ, which
mentioned that
an actual carbon tax would achieve the same thing, more or less,
as the total "free" market apporach of cap & trade; oh, but, there're
certain, so-
called Republicans, who refer to the bill as "cap & tax!"

Well, before any "reform" of the financial system, why
would one put all of one's eggs into such a casino -- especially
considering that the oil companies have not bothered
to release the carbon-dating "fingerprints" that they use,
to determine whether two wells are connected, underground; so,
guys & gals, how old is the stuff, on average, anyway?

Surely, the green-niks who lobby for "renewable" energy, do not think
that oil comes only from dinosaurs, and their associated flora --
all, from before the asteroid supposedly offed them (I refer them
to the recent issue of Nature -- several articles that may be
related!)

Finally, note that, in a sense, the whole world is going a)
nuclear, and b) into space, while we are essentially frozen
into '50s and '60s techniques in these crucial frontiers. (While some
folks dither about Iran's nuke-weapons policy, they are rapidly
achieving a full-scale nuke-e and process-heat capbility
for industry & infrastructure.)

--yr humble servant, the Voting Rights Act o'65
(deadletter since March 27, 2000,
when Supreme Court refuzed appeal in LaRouche v. Fowler ('96))
From: Michael Moroney on
James Dow Allen <jdallen2000(a)yahoo.com> writes:

>On Apr 2, 11:43=A0am, Danny73 <fasttrac...(a)att.net> wrote:
>> But here on the three dimensional earth grid it
>> is 6 directions ---
>> North,South,East,West,Skyward,Earthward. ;-)

>Let me try to inject a serious question I have into
>this thread. ;-)

>In a hexagonal grid, each point has six immediate neighbors;
>what should their names be? (I asked this question before,
>with the only answer being the ugly "solution I was
>already using: West, Northwest, Northeast, East, SE, SW.)

A hex grid has 3 coordinates. Using your alignment, they'd be
North-South, NE/SW, NW/SE. However, they are not independent, if you
know any two, the third is defined. Also, nothing special about those
directions, turn the grid 30 degrees and you get a different alignment.
Also the NE/SW and NW/SE directions are approximate.

>Hexagonal grids have big advantages over square grid
>but are seldom used. It sounds silly, but perhaps
>lack of the msot basic nomenclature is one reason!

One disadvantage is that a basic hexagon isn't subdividable into smaller
hexagons or easily combined into larger ones. In rectangular coordinates,
the map gets divided into small squares. Each square is easily divisible
into n^2 smaller squares by dividing each side into n parts. You can't
divide a large hexagon into smaller ones.

If you want to have fun, extend the hexagonal mapping into three
dimensions. There are two ways - the first is to add a Z axis to a hex
map, kind of like making a 2D polar coordinate graph into 3D cylindrical
coordinates, like stacking honeycombs. The other way is more interesting -
add an axis at 60 degrees to the plane of the graph. You now have 4
coordinates for each volume in 3D space. Like the 2D case, you need to
know any 3 of them to define a volume region. Once you know 3 the 4th is
defined, it's not independent. All of space is divided into 12 sided 3d
solids. I don't remember what the shape is called. It is _not_ the
platonic dodecahedron with pentagonal faces, but instead, each face is a
rhombus. In this shape, all faces and all edges are identical, but all
vertices are not identical.