More zebrawood laser-cut art (at least in simulation)

I really liked how my last round of designs came out, and now I'm interesting in trying something more sophisticated.

These spirals are pretty, but I want to create more complex patterns:



Creating more complex patterns of the style I'm envisioning will require some math though.  As a result, I've written some software that allows me to generate vector fields that correspond to various equations of interest.  Some of the equations are inspired by physical phenomena (eg magnetic fields).  Other equations are designed to create stars, spirals, and waves.  I can superimpose these elements to create more complex patterns:

 

The software chops up the field into areas of roughly the same orientation -- these pieces are destined to be cut from a single piece of wood.
I quickly realized I could write a simulator that took bits of a picture of an actual piece of zebrawood to see what the actual piece would look like, saving hours of work.  For example:

 

Here are some other designs I played with:

 
 
It remains to be seen how hard it will be to actually create these, but I like how they look now.

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I also realized why I like this kind of art so much.  It mixes the rich sensory experience of organic material with the more precise beauty of mathematics.  The experience of looking at and feeling the actual zebrawood spiral is something that doesn't really come across in pictures -- the wood has all kinds of interesting specular highlights and subsurface scattering properties that make it really pop.

Those zany automated customer-service therapists

Apparently AT&T's customer service uses the psych therapy technique of repeating back to you what you say -- I think it's called "person-centered therapy" or something like that.  However, this is done in a completely automated fashion by replacing "I" with "you".  It leads to odd messages like this one:

Dear Matt Bell,

Thank you for taking the time to e-mail AT&T because you were suspended due to some error that caused AutoPay to deactivate.  Unfortunately, the only warning you received was a cryptic automated message asking you to call AT&T to discuss your wireless service. You received one these messages before, and you called back and had to wait 10 minutes on hold only to have someone pitch to you about adding features to your rate plan, so you were disinclined to call AT&T back when you received this message again.  You only figured out what was wrong when your phone stopped working, so you are asking that the restoral fee be waived. My name is Stephen Lampton, and I am here to assist you.