Is It Whiskey Festival Time???

Is it time for the Ohio Craft Whiskey Festival ??

Previously I had build a Vestibulo-ocular Reflex Therapy App . I had put the details about building it in the page, but it got kind of long after I started adding features so I figured why have one article when you can have two, right?

The Form

The first thing we need is a form. Each of the inputs will call a javascript function to perform it’s function. The tempo can be input with a slider or a text box, and each will update the other. We also need a time limit and a font scale. If I knew a better way to calculate the actual size of the letter on the screen I could get around this, but alas I could not figure out a reliable way to do that. Maybe in the future!

VOR Physical therapy

I recently have had some vestibular issues related to how my brain and eyes communicate (badly). My issues are basically due to my gaze not locking correctly / some issues with peripheral vision. Once the source of the issues were identified I was given some exercises to do to help with the gaze stabilization.

The exercise basically is staring at a letter that is straight in front of me while turning my head side to side like in this video . Now I could just download a metronome app for my phone that’s going to steal my personal information, or I could have way more fun building a javascript app to do it. So I build a javascript app because as we all know I’m a big giant nerd.

You can read more about how I built it here test

Advent Calendars

I bought a candy advent calendar for my wife and a whiskey advent calendar for me. I hope to write reviews for both every day, but I’ll give the over under at April for when I actually write it lol =P.

In previous years we got Advent calendars for the animals. Funny thing - dog Advent calendars are almost always treats, cat advent calendars are almost always toys, and horse Advent calendars… okay those don’t exist to my knowledge (or would be very expense). At the end of the day we were left with a bunch of cat toys that that the cats leave everywhere for the Roomba to eat

This year we got the Sugarfina Advent Calendar as well as the 2023 Flaviar Whiskey Advent Calendar . I was content to leave the candy to Barb and the Whiskey to me, but Barb decided she wants to try whiskey, so now I have to share. At least the calendar came with two glasses!

Building a Hénon map with javascript

I first found out about the Hénon map as an undergrad and have loved it ever since. Can I simulate it in javascript? Let’s find out!

The Hénon map is a dynamical system that exhibits chaotic behavior. It takes two parameters a and b. Depending on the values the map can exhibit periodic , chaotic or intermittent (switching back and forth between chaotic and stable orbits). It is described by the formula:

$$ \begin{aligned}
x_{n+1} &= 1 - ax_n^2+y_n\\ y_{n+1} &= bx_n \end{aligned}
$$

The Hénon map is basically taking the x-y plane and stretches, folds and squishes it like kneading bread. For some parameters it will tend toward a fixed point or set of points, but for others it exhibits chaotic dynamics - which means that no matter how accurately you describe the current position, it will be impossible to predict where it will be in the future (other than within the bounds of the attractor).