Simon Blackburn

@simonrblackburn.bsky.social

530 Followers 525 Following

Combinatorics, Algebra, Cryptography. Professor of Pure Mathematics at Royal Holloway University of London. Maths enthusiast. Cat enthusiast. Woking Rail Enthusiast.

Black female stag beetle resting after flight. Brown strut of my shed in the background, showing off my infrequent painting.
Red biro on plain white background. The ink is one third gone.
A terrible photo of a dark edged bee fly (the common one) from this lunchtime. The fly is central, in front of green leaves. The bumble-bee style furry body, with a ginger rump; the dark leading edge to the wings; the amazing long proboscis. An insect with style.
Two class 37s travelling left to right in front of autumn trees. 37800 in Rail Ops Group blue with star field. Behind is 37308 in classic engineers grey. Both with traditional yellow ends. What a sound!
LinkedIn result for their Pinpoint game: Solved in 2. Today's average: 45461.
Red mushrooms on a pinecone and pine needle covered ground. Lots of browns. Autumn is lovely.
3 smiling people stand in front of the Victorian marvel that is Founders Building, and (out of sight) a couple of floors above a lovely coffee shop.
A blue skylight at the centre of an ornate dome in Teatro Massimo, Palermo. A single line bounces around a circle, forming a 7 pointed star. The skylight is surrounded by a beautiful wide gold band, and then by a cream band decorated with dancing figures. This room is famous for its strange accoustic, but it should be famous amongst experimental design theorists.
Class 68 in debranded all over blue. Classic yellow ends. Heading left to right. Rail track sweeps past the loco to the level crossing near Egham station.
69016 in dark blue, with blue and hi-vis yellow dashes below and a grey roof above. Travelling left to right, with a meadow in front and trees behind. 73128 follows, in classic Network South East livery.
Model train (blue with yellow ends) hauls blue IFF containers and brown Tex containers around an oval of track.
An empty shop in Guildford, called Zero. Plate glass with concrete details. A more descriptive name than Boots, or Jigsaw. (Sad to see it empty of course.)
Turntable tech description from Amazon. Dimensions 5.7L by 4.4W by 9.1 H centimetres.
GBRf 69014 passing left to right. Described as a golden livery, it's closer to a mustard yellow, with a thick black band below. Gleaming because the livery is new, and because it has just rained. I got soaked.
Animal Crossing person shows off a pie, decorated with a pi symbol, in a field of tomatoes.
Kitten, white with brown blotches, curls up in the sun, on a soft red blanket.
Ornate and colourful ceiling, terracotta relief, in Celtic Revival style.
66315 in blue and yellow GRRf livery. Travelling left to right in front of winter trees. Level crossing fences visible in foreground m
GBRf 47736, in GBRf blue livery, hauls two barrier coaches in Arlington Fleet Services green through Egham. A hint of diesel clag at the rear, as it accelerates as the signal changes. A chilly day, though the early frost has gone.
A tree stump carved into the shape of a fox above a cluster of mushrooms, in an autumnal wood.
Peckett 0-6-0 'Henbury' in steam. Blue sky and a grey dock crane behind. Weedy tracks in front.
'We are hiring' sign.Part obscured by ''Boris Johnson' book.
Beautiful cat, in a cat basket, washing.
A tiling of a region of the plane, with a 2 by 2 hole, by nine 4-ribbon tiles.