Diversions

Today I showed my aunt and uncle the paltry 'downtown' that Vasteras has to offer (I speak only partially in jest), ate a marvelous sandwich and moved onto the final book in the fantasy saga I am currently involved in.

My mother has just reminded me that I used to, as a child, clamber up open doorways. I'd stand in the doorframe, place both my arms on the often-rough wood of the frame, jump and - before landing) - spread my legs so that my feet too would gain traction on the sides of the frame. I would then proceed to raise myself, shuffling one limb at a time, until I was at the top of the frame. Stranger still, I have a vague memory of doing this.

That is bleeding awesome. I need to go try this.

....Nope, doesn't work. Can't even spread my arms. Damn this size thing.


In other news, I now know how to show that the Gauss Map of a compact connected oriented n-surface in R(n+1) is surjective. Go me.

Grades

Meh. Was slightly hopeful for a perfect semester.

History 133b: Natural Rights and Revolutions -> A-
Math 22b: Multivariable Calc -> A
UWS 15b: Writing Seminar -> A
Physics 20b: Modern Physics -> A+
Physics 100a: Classical Mechanics -> A

GPA: 3.934. Apparently. What a bleeding arbitrary numbering system.

My Awesome-ity Blinds Ferrets

And badgers too, for good measure.

I took this:









and, with some absolutely fantasmagoric CSSing, produced this:

Home Sweet Blog

Let me explain.

Fatman was complaining, once again, that he wanted a page on which people could find, download and read his fiction...and then leave him comments, in the hope of building some kind of "constructive criticism" witches circle. Half of his wants had been fulfilled by the somewhat awesome GooglePages...but a commenting facility still eluded him. I suggested a Blog (home crowd cheers), to be used in combination with his GooglePage - host stories on the latter, and link to one story per post on the former. The conversation went something like this:

Me: So, that way you can host your stories on a pretty cool website (courtesy GooglePages) and STILL provide a place for comments (courtesy Blogger) without doing some fancy serverside PHP and whatnot needed for a forum.
Me: What say you?
Him: D'uh. What's a Blog?
*Censored for violence*

So, after a quick primer on weblogs (thank you, Glock), I bade him go sign up on blogger.com, create a blog and add me as an admin to help out and do his design. We shall skim over the part where he created an account, couldn't create a blog, and gave me his username and password...except he'd forgotten the password in a space of twenty minutes...anyway, skimming over that: I ended up creating said blog and invited the man to join (we shall ALSO skim over the part where Zacko-boy asked, "what do I do with this invite?" That's right. Skim over). After some hassle, Zack's Blog was actually up.

[And now he has me designing for him. Poor bastard.]

At any rate, he wanted to use, for a banner, an image he'd ripped off some band's website. It was over a black background, and hence I was forced - against my will - to seek out a black layout (I'm not yet uber enough to create my own). Couldn't find an acceptable one, so I modded a blue substitute. Need some help on the colours, by the way. Head on over and suggest.

Well, it's now dark. Which, in Sweden, means it's rather late and about to get lighter really really fast. Hence, I am going to bed (to read, that is).

Toodles.

Cappuccino + Finger = {delta}(1,1) good

Don't ask.

So apparently holiday season has started once again in Bangalore. Gdammit. I'm several thousand kilometres away, and rather miffed about it.

On the other hand, there will be enough people at Brandeis over the summer to keep me entertained. Out of the department, Sammy and Vince are literally within hitting distance. In the department itself, much of my Physics crowd will be floating around. Also within hitting distance, though most of them are fitter (and bigger) than yours truly.

I think my next online name will be "kroneckerdelta". Configure had a good long run and all that, but times demand change etc etc. Any ideas as to where I should sign up as "kroneckerdelta"? Suggestions, people.

And now, the feature of the week!

(No, there really wasn't anything worth saying in this post)

Tech Ramblings of the Day:

My bed here is a wondrous device. Latched onto its left side is a small plastic remote with four buttons on it. When utilized correctly (an endeavour requiring years of training), these buttons fiddle with the elevation of certain parts of the bed. Other opportunities aside, this has led to an almost singular use: push button for insta-chair. It is now my new reason for not getting out of bed. Previously, my choice in the matter was limited, as reading necessitated actually finding some means of back-support. Now, with a convenient stack of fantasy novels on the floor, even that bit of exertion has been eliminated. And with my laptop close by, almost all of my needs are fulfilled. Now if I could only fit a kitchen in here...

I am currently installing and testing various music players for fun (it's good to be back with Gentoo). In my absence, there seem to have sprung up a fairly wide range. Currently on my app bar: Banshee and Quod Libet. Fairly proficient, lacking a bit in polish - but what the heck, they're fairly deep alpha. Practically CVS code.

8 GB

Dear Diary,

Today I downloaded 8 gigs in something less than 90 minutes.
HOLY !@#!%!%!@%!!#^!$!
I was happy.

./Kabir

And Today

...There was some great food.

And so today I was bored. A mild, mediocre sort of boredom that crept up unnoticed and dropped the ground beneath any desire I had to do. Listless would describe my state of mind fairly well. I have resolved to do some differential geometry tonight - you know, work on something useful, get my mind onto something (and justify my borrowing of that textbook). It didn't bode well, however, to turn to the first page and see, lo and behold, an entire chapter on level sets. Skipped that without a second thought. Baaad residual memories from the first weeks of multivar-calc. All that drawing and stuff. Totally uncool.

I did manage, however, to recover my laptop from the depths of MBR hell and give back to it the joyfulness of GRUB. Thank you, Gentoo Handbook. You are pure happiness, bottled and given away by the gallon.

Dinner.

A Girl.

Yesterday, I met a girl.

It was fun.

Today, I'm going to read webcomics. That shall be fun too.

So I Spent the Day Reading

...Something that is rather inadvisable when the subject is a Goodkind book. Terry Goodkind, age unknown, is one of those authors that I've always seen lurking around in a fantasy section, but never really picked up (think old, ugly hooker). Now that I have, however, I'm not much happier for it. Another curiosity resolved (do you resolve curiosities?), another saga I don't think I'll complete.

I finally got around to reading the paper Professor Wardle sent me. Well, my job might essentially be a lot of data-collating, but just knowing some of the theory behind it makes it all the more interesting. I discovered that if I read really fast, I can zip past most of the cumbersome ideas and pick up some moderately interesting highlights - which a second, slightly slower, reading confirms. So, while I don't have the faintest as to what the Eddington Mass is, I can tell you the proposed structure for at least a part of SS433. It involves cylinders.

Has anybody downloaded An Elephant's Dream yet?

Doves

'Morning.

A day, depending on where you are and what you do, begins in either darkness or light, comfort or the unholy despair of a hangover. We who like the constant, however, strive to unify our greetings. We're all Newtonian to first order, and so we choose time as our invariant. Of course, this is not true of cross-net communication, but somehow that is irrelevant. When I wish you a good morning, it may be the depths of night or the honeymists of dusk around you, but you feel the morning. For a brief moment, perhaps, but you feel it nonetheless - which is how you ascribe it meaning. I am neither an artist nor a writer, so I shall ask you to concentrate neither on the meaning nor the placement of the word, but instead on the combined whole. I do not know how you might feel it, whether as the beginning of a unit of waking experience or as a nocturnal limit, but perhaps I can say, without sparking too much controversy, that it must be signifying an endpoint. Some endpoint.

So, what is the significance of all this bullshit diatribe? Simply that I shall once more try my hand at a blog. Sheepatplay, Humanitybites, they all died. Let us forget them. Welcome, then, to Electroweak.

Three, two, one.

Let's Jam.