For anyone interested in implementing Hobby's algorithm in their own projects, I recommend the paper "Typographers, programmers and mathematicians, or the case of an aesthetically pleasing interpolation" by Bogusław Jackowski [0]. It was my primary reference when working on the code for the examples in the blog post, and I found it easier to understand than Hobby's original paper. I mention this paper in a comment in the linked source code but it looks like I left it out of the post itself so figured I should share it here.
Hi Raph! I'm the author of the blog post. I actually read your PhD thesis when I was working on this project and trying to wrap my head around splines. It was a huge help to me in understanding the landscape of the field and how to think about and compare different classes of splines. Just wanted to say thanks!
It depends on the definition of a “day” that you use, but due to Mercury’s elliptical orbit sunrises and sunsets are weird. [1] It takes 59 Earth days for the planet to revolve once around its axis, but from the surface it takes 176 Earth days to observe the sun making a complete circuit of the sky.
[0]: https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb34-2/tb107jackowski.pdf