I love stories like these. It says the hobbyist took the initiative to call a computer scientist about this shape he found, which means not only did he discover it but also recognized its uniqueness. It just makes me wonder how often something like this happens where a random person doesn’t recognize the uniqueness of what they’ve found and everyone just goes on their merry way.

Infinite repeating patterns are nifty. A looong time ago I read a book on MC Escher and iirc a lot of his art was focused on tessellation and they inspired his other geometric eye-twisters. This page has examples of his sketches, though is mostly focused on how to create your own.