During my year at Trent University I took a course in “natural language understanding by computers” from Stephen Regoczei, a course that we conjured up as a reading course so as to free me from the shackles of needing to take Computer Studies 101. And a course that, in the end, was far more free-ranging than the title suggested.

One day Stephen held up an object and asked me to sketch it from his perspective. I failed: my brain simply didn’t have the horsepower to do such a complicated reprojection.

And the third dimension has continued to be my arch nemesis in the years since.

But I’m trying to overcome that, and sketching coffee cups is good practice. I’m nowhere near there yet, but I’m making some progress.