Day 121 - Unexpected Retrievals

There were three things I intended to blog about today - here's what I wrote down to remind myself:

Primes occuring in nature
Visualising dimensions
Trivial when expressed properly

Now let's see how they turn out when I actually write them. Behind-the-scenes blogging, that is. Straight from my brainstorm to your brainwave (why does the brain have such weather-themed imagery?).

Today I watched, with Julia (under some duress), a one-off Horizon programme called Alan and Marcus Go Forth and Multiply. Basically, the comedian Alan Davies gets taken on a whirlwind tour of higher mathematics by Oxford professor Marcus Du Sautoy. The usual things come up - Monty Hall problem, dimensions, prime numbers, and it does prevent a couple of things (such as a potted description of what Perelman achieved) in interesting and original ways, helped along by Alan's charm and Marcus' obvious enthusiasm and intelligence. I highly recommend viewing it - on with the point, as they say in the pencil factory.
While discussing the Riemann zeta function and its relation to the prime numbers, they also demonstrated an interesting parallel in nature - the frequency of the vibrations of a quartz crystal correspond closely to (I presume) the modulus of a certain section of the zeta function.
This got me thinking about why prime numbers are so important in nature, and in particular, quantum physics, etc.
It's not that surprising.

Let's suppose we have a large group of objects of some kind, held together somehow. Further assume that these bonds are relatively weak - in other words, it won't take much to break up this big group into several smaller groups. Now, also suppose that the forces that act upon this group to break it up act pretty much symmetrically over the whole group. In other words, this breaking-up force will be distributed evenly. This suggests that the parts it is broken up into will be evenly sized as well.
For example, a group with 6 objects in it, broken up in a symmetric fashion, won't break up into a group of 5 objects and a group of 1 object. It will be broken up into groups of the same size, e.g. 2 groups of 3 objects.

See where I'm going with this? The size of groups of objects will tend towards factorisation, which in turns entails that they will tend towards sizes which are prime numbers, which can't be factored in a non-trivial way.

Now, this is a very general heuristic sketch - billiard balls, for example, don't naturally group into 2s or 3s. If, however, the bonds between objects in questions were sufficiently weak, and the breaking-up forces were sufficiently symmetrical, such a tendency towards primes would occur.
The objects may not be physical - they may be waves, or frequencies of waves, or properties of frequencies of waves, and so on. In any physical situation in which have some kinds of objects grouped together, and forces acting on them symmetrically, it would naturally tend towards primes.

Moreover, such weak bonds and symmetrical forces would be more likely to occur at very small scales, where there is simply less room for forces to act non-symmetrically. So, primes would crop up frequently in quantum physics. Since the zeta function generates the primes, in some fashion, it's also expected that it would generate, in some fashion, these quantum phenomena.

Alriiiiiiight, enough heuristics.

Another problem mentioned in this program was how to visualise in more than three dimensions. This is usually seen as some in built limitation of our brains, in that we can only visualise spacially in up to three dimensions - which is only natural, since we perceive things in three dimensions.
I think, however, that it's a lot easier than people think, and we're being held back by what think a dimension should be.

Take the paradigmatic cases: for 0-dimensions a point, 1 dimensions a line, 2 dimensions a square, 3 dimensions a cube, and 4 dimensions a hypercube, and so on.
Up to 3 dimensions, we can visualise these easily. We can build them from the previous one, by extending it in a different direction, in some sense.
We stretch out a point along a length, to get a line. We stretch out a line along a width, to get a square. We stretch out a square along a height, to get a cube. Then our minds hit a brick wall - where is the fourth direction in which to stretch our cube?

Take your pick! The fourth direction does not need to be spatial. Perhaps it can't be, since all the space we know and love only has three dimensions. A dimension is just another co-ordinate; another piece of information telling us where to look for a point.

Example. A point is 0 dimensions, because no co-ordinates need to be given, we don't need any information to locate any point within the point. Because there's only one point. We know where it is, we don't need to look.
Now, for a line, we need 1 number, to know how far along the line our point is, and then we're done. A line is 1-dimensional.
In a square, we need 1 number to tell us which line the point lies on - which cross-section of the square we need. Then another number to tell us how far along that line.
Similarly the cube - the first co-ordinate tells us the square, the second the line, the third which point on that line.

So! To make a fourth dimensional cube, a hypercube, watch carefully (I have nothing up my sleeves). Take time to be the fourth dimension. Suppose a cube suddenly springs into existence at time 0, and winks out at time 1. Now, if we searching through time as well as space, we have a 4-dimensional cube. The first co-ordinate tells us at which time we're looking - which cube we're searching in. The second which square within that cube, the third which line within that square, the fourth which point within that line.

Blam. A 4-dimensional cube, plain and simple. What's wrong with that? We can't hold it in our minds eye like the others, since our eyes can only see cross-sections of time. We are still, however, perfectly aware of time, and use duration in our visualisations, so we can easily visualise this magically appearing and disappearing cube. In a way, we already do when we visualise any cube. Now we're just taking notice of the time it's there for. Nothing mysterious or esoteric about the fourth dimension.

We can do something else, however. Instead of time, why not use colour as the fourth dimension? Let 0 be the colour white, 1 the colour black, and a continuous sliding scale of grey in between. Now let's have an infinite collection of cubes, one for each possible shade. Note we need infinite cubes, just as there are infinitely many squares in a cube, and infinitely many lines in a square, we need infinitely many cubes in a hypercube.

Now, to find any point, we specify the first co-ordinate - precisely which shade of grey we're looking at, then pick up that cube. The second gives us the cube, and...you've gotten the idea by now.

In fact, any continuous variable that can be applied to cubes could be used. How much that particular cube is adored by the media, on a scale from 0 to 1, taken continuously. The probability that cube will turn into a flying pig, ideally. They're not spatial things, but we can think about them, we can visualise them. We can visualise time, and colour, and billion other non-spatial things. Use them in your search for higher dimensions.

This can be carried out higher dimensions. Want a 5-dimensional hyperhypercube? No problem! Just take your infinitely many different shades of grey cubes, and have them existing over a duration as well (not hard - most things exist over some duration). 6 dimensions? Take our temporary coloured cubes and just factor the height that the mould on them grows to. Let your mind run free!

Phew, how exciting. The third thing: "trivial when expressed properly." Here's what I meant:

I believe that any mathematical proposition, when expressed in the right way, becomes obviously and trivially true. The difficulty in mathematics lies in working out exactly how to say what you want to prove; translate it into the right language, look at it in the right way, and there's nothing to it.
A quick example, till I think of some more: factorisation of integers into primes. Look at it one way, and it's pretty obvious - primes are, by definition, things which can't be divided anymore. Take any integer, and divide it into smaller bits, then those bits again, and so on, and eventually you'll have to stop, and all you'll have left are primes. Easy.
Now, however, think about the integers like this: you start with 0. Then add 1 to make 1. Then add 1 to make 2, and so on. The integers are everything you get proceeding in this way, adding 1 each time. Now work out analysis, then complex analysis, then the theory of the Riemann zeta function, then let the primes be defined by the sequence which satisfies a certain functional equation involving the zeros of the zeta function. Now try and prove factorisation into primes. A lot harder.

Better examples to follow!

Day 120 - Happiness runs in a circular motion

Happy April Fool's Day! I love my little japes, so in this blog post, there is one false fact. All the others are, as far as I know, true.

Start of Script Frenzy today! I stayed up until midnight last night, and on the bridge from the old day into the new, I paused to write a quick scene. I don't know what my script is about, or what scenes will be written, or who the characters are. I'll be thinking, however. Until then, don't ask about my script. I will write about somebody I just found out about today: Alexander Grothendieck.

Grothendieck (born 1928) is one of the leading mathematicians of the 20th century - described by one mathematician as the "Einstein of mathematics". He brought in not only new theorems, but entirely new ways of thinking about and doing mathematics. In the 50s, he pretty much reinvented algebraic geometry from the ground up, and attempted similarly ambitious schemes in many other areas of mathematics.
Since reality loves a stereotype, this brilliant mathematician is also a bit...fractured. A radical left-wing anarchist and ecological activist, he withdrew from mathematics in the 1970s to focus on his ecological and conservation interests. In 1991, he withdrew from life altogether, disappearing from his home one night, and his current whereabouts are unknown. He receives no visitors, and has withdrawn from not only the mathematical community, but the community in general, it seems.
He has written an incredible amount - many of his opuses stretch to the thousands of pages. He's written long philosophical and biographical accounts of a similar length. Seriously, look him up on Google/Wikipedia. Fascinating.

Day 119 - Sorry, I missed the question

31st of March! Tomorrow (in just 1 hour and 35 minutes, in fact) Script Frenzy begins!! The first tentative words of my 100 page script!!! How exciting!!!!

Today, much less exciting things. I played Warhammer Quest with Nick while Julia slept and read James Bond. The first foray was unsuccessful, resulting in the swift death of our entire party. Dungeoneering is a dangerous business. The second journey, after dispensing with the unhelpful Questing Knight, did much better, and everybody actually survived (give or take a limb or two).

Trivialities aside, IT'S SCRIPT FRENZY SOON. I don't know what to write.

Day 118 - Old House up the attic

I spent the weekend in the dark, dank, damp, dimp crab-infested Fens of Norfolk, hence my absence. I had a great time! Eight of us, plus a giant dog, stayed in my Dad's caravan and enjoyed the bracing sea air. Contrary to what the numbers may suggest, nobody was viciously murdered (at least nobody that I'm aware of - we didn't do a head count when leaving).

As the Brachyurian reference above indicates (thanks Wikipedia!) we did indeed go crab fishing. This was clearly doomed from the start when my father, bravely poking a net into the murky waters, slipped on the wet path and nearly joined our prey. Muttering darkly, he declared the river banks totally unsafe for all of us, and said the bridge over the river would offer better chances. Our breathes baited with anticipation, our lines with bacon, we stared down at the water waiting for the bountiful bonanza. After a few minutes, me and Julia tired of this, and took the dog for a walk along the coast.

We returned just as they were leaving, my father darkly muttering something about 'the wrong season'.

On Wednesday, my Script Frenzy begins - I still have no idea what to write about. I placate myself that even thinking about it before April isn't in the spirit of the thing.

My mother pointed out that Wednesday was also April Fool's Day. I am undaunted by such remarks. The script will be completed. (Just you watch - soon it'll capitalise into The Script, and then who knows what else.)

Day 114 - Turn it around before you judge

Phew! I missed day 112 because I was preparing for day 113, and I'm sure you already know what happened on day 113. Pretty crazy, huh? I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. Sure, it has its ups and downs (and some of the scars are apparently permanent), but we love it all the same. Every year, just like clockwork (pun intended).

Still, life goes on. April is Script Frenzy month (see here for details). The goal is to write a 100 page script in a month, in return for which you get a certificate, a warm glow of satisfaction, and a 100 page script.

I'm doing it with one of my friends (Odd Bloke) - independently, both of us would probably lose motivation and/or get far too involved and found some kind of egocentric cult. In one of those sad quirks of geography, however, he is in Coventry, and I'm in Peterborough. We need to establish some kind of voice communication, but finding gaps in our busy schedules is proving to be pretty hard.

The biggest difficulty still lurks menacingly over the stormy horizon - what to actually write about. What to write, even. TV show? Film? Play? Comic book? Touring interpretive dance routine? Nuclear mimes? I don't know!

Day 111 - Repunits Unit(e)

A blog, as promised. Still bedtime though. My blog seems to often be meta-blogical. Now that I'm pointing this out, am I being meta-meta-blogical? And now meta-meta-meta-blogical? Are the number of prefixes only limited by my mental stamina? Let's just say I'm being meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-blogical and leave it there, otherwise it just gets silly.

On Saturday, I looked after my little brother for the day, with the help of Julia. It started off by me playing Wall-E on the Wii (terrible game design, rushed out for the film), with Freddie's helpful suggestions, such as "You shouldn't have fallen off there," and some actually helpful ones, like "Don't fall off there." Then I got him dressed, and we watched the first half of Kung Fu Panda whilst eating banana sandwiches.

We had earlier mentioned driving to Central Park, but Freddie did not seem keen. Halfway through a dramatic scene, he paused the DVD, and announced that he was ready to leave. Not one to argue with the fickle interests of youth, I dramatically hurled my sandwich onto the table and we left.

Me, Julia and Freddie picked up Julia's dog, Scamp (hope you're keeping notes), on the way, and walked around the park. Several races took place, in which Freddie appeared to be the funder, rules arbiter, judge, crowd, and inevitable winner. This was helped by the fact that the finish post seemed to change mid-race, and sometimes even after the race had apparently ended. Sports today, can't keep up with them.

We had ice cream, then played a 'shooty game' at Julia's house, which Freddie much enjoyed. Needless to say, his first attempt was much better than mine. Well, they do say your hand eye co-ordination peaks at age 5. Can't argue with science.

Back home, watched the rest of Kung Fu Panda, acted out a bit in the kitchen, and Julia and Freddie attempted to make some sort of nuclear reactor (with working uranium!) out of cardboard, but this sadly proved far too difficult, so the energy crisis is still unresolved. Made spaghetti ate, Freddie went to bed. A good day.

It's my Dad's birthday today! Happy birthday Dad!

Revision continues. I shall start to blog about what I learn, so the two PAINFUL CHAINS THAT BIND MY LIFE can feed off each other in some kind of vicious symbiosis. Topics I am revising:

Logic
Set Theory
Topology and Groups
Group Theory
Galois Theory
Algebraic Number Theory
Knowledge and Reality
Frege and Russell
Philosophy of Mathematics

Day 110 - Lined up like daisies

I am exhausted. This regular blogging isn't the fun it's supposed to be, because I leave it too late in the day - just when all I want to do is go to bed. I need to do during the day itself. OK, I shall tomorrow - during the day! I'll fill you in on what I did Friday/Saturday, and indeed today.

Happy Mother's Day, Mum!

Day 107 - Stabbing through the words

I still need to do more revision. The best intentions are continually being scuppered by distractions, that distract and tempt me. Breakfast and bathtime alone seems to expand to take up three hours, and then it's time for lunch! Hard-working guys like me can't catch a break, it seems. Tomorrow will be different, though. I'm going to sit down at my desk by 10am, breakfast or not, covered in filth though I may be.

Sadly, one small unavoidable distraction is my new Discworld wizard (Yaztromo), who I'm trying to get the addicted achievements for. Unfortunately, I can't get them until he's five days old, which means I need to rack up 120 hours of playing time as quickly as possible. That means a lot of effort over the next couple of weeks. Or, of course, I play non-stop for five days. Probably not a good idea though.

Day 106 - Representations

I'm blogging in bed! Luxury. Me, Julia, her sister and Mum and Mark went to the pub quiz this evening. We did not do well. I have, however, learnt that the Telly-Tubbies' home hill is called Home Hill, so the evening was not wasted.

My reflection in the mirror looks like a very fat man.

Day 105 - Transmitting through your head

I just watched Intolerable Cruelty, a great film, just as all Coen brothers films are. Especially Coen brothers films with George Clooney. I had lasagne/sweet potato mash/burgers for supper, followed by tea. My eyes are feeling slightly scratchy. I had lunch with my father and Julia at Sundays. It cost £15.19 for the three of us. I had the pork.

This is a log of my life. On the web. A web-log. A "blog", if you will. Enjoy.

Day 104 - Gerrofoutofit

It's 12:23 am. I meant to go to bed an hour ago. I just finished watching a video of a rabbit chasing a snake up a tree. This is the Curse of the Internet.

The desk has been working out well - I even did some revision on it this morning. I also helped make a collage this afternoon, of a dragon. Well, Julia made the dragon, and spurned my helpful suggestions of backgrounds and various props for the dragon to eat.

In a rebellious attempt to make a collage of my own, I carefully scribed some mathematical formulas onto some paper and cut them out. I am now at a loss with what to do with them. Please put your suggestions in a comment.

Day 103 - Triumphant Epistles

Only ten more days to go until Day 113. We all know what that means, don't we?

I've been slaving away for minutes getting my writing desk ready for tomorrow morning. That is when I shall start my revision, after many weeks of exhausting procrastination. The desk itself is an interesting one - an old piece of furniture, about five feet tall, with three drawers and a desk bit disguised (cunningly) as a drawer on the top.

It's made of some lovely...wood, probably oak. These things usually seem to be, I recall. This desk also has history. Apparently, during the Second World War, my great-grandfather's belongings were put into safe storage to escape the Blitz. Everything was stolen, except for this desk - I suspect it was too inconvenient to slip into one's pockets.

Well, the top of the desk is slightly too high for regular chairs, so the idea of actually using it as a desk (rather than, say, a repository of junk) never actually occurred to me. Necessity is the mother of efficiency, however, and I needed a desk area as my revision cubby hole. I call it: the RevisoHole! I may work on the name a little more.

While pondering the height question this morning, Julia pointed out that the chair I was sitting in had a variable height, solving my years old dilemma in one deft pull of a lever. These are sorts of things she excels at. The path towards RevisoHole (still thinking) was now clear! I just cleared the top from its various junk. Tomorrow morning I'll give the whole thing a good polish, then sit at it, and try to work how you're actually meant to revise.

What does 'revise' actually involve?

Day 102 - Scalp pickin'

It's a very special day. And I don't mean Pi Day (though it is that, as well). I don't even mean Albert Einstein's 130th birthday (that is, if he hadn't died).

It is mine and Julia's 5 year anniversary. Five years ago today, she trapped me in a butterfly net, and has kept the drugs at a comfortable (but not disabling!) level ever since. For more details, I refer you to my alternative blog. It hasn't been updated in a while - but why bother, when nothing has changed?

I might have forgotten something.

Day 101 - Sold at great expense

I just sent off my yearbook entry. That's the third time I've had to write a yearbook entry, and it never gets any easier. After weeks of soul searching and agonising composition, I lose all patience with the enterprise, sit down at my keyboard, and write a barrage of nonsensical words. This is at the expense of my reputation and my dignity, but at least it preserves my sanity.

Also, today is the last day of Hilary term. 60% of my possessions are packed in a neat pile in the middle of my room, and tomorrow I'm being driven back to Peterborough. After the Botanical Gardens, of course.

Day 100 - Can it be sold without tiring?

Day 100! I made it! So, what's new?

It's pretty late now - I had a good night, however. I went to the Turf with Mike and {CLASSIFIED}, and we chatted about controversial issues (vegetarianism, abortion, the allure of tobacco...you know). Headed back, via some deeelicious Ahmed's, and then met up with other people and chatted about less serious stuff in my room for a while. Aah, man, s'all good, you know? People should just be chilled out and happy with one another. That's my philosophy on life.

Also, I've been reading this website - a collection of transcripts from Princeton graduates' mathematics oral exams. Yes, I do feel stupid because I don't know the answers to these questions. Yes, I am aware how stupid that itself makes me. No, I won't change.

Day 98 - What about when you can't notice the stripes?

Farm birds can smell the fear, according to the script writers of Friends. Ross is also paranoid. It's hard to write a blog post while watching Friends.

Much more exciting things happened today. Me and Julia signed the wotsit for the flat! Marlborough Road, Oxford - our very own little nook. We'll be moving in, 6 months tomorrow. Also, hopefully getting a kitten. Julia is, as you can expect, in fits of squealing excitement, and making all kinds of lists.

Heck, I'm pretty darn excited as well. Our own flat!!!

Day 97 - Framed by a miniscule amount

Ooh, largest prime smaller than a hundred! (A fun number fact, just for Nick.)

I've returned from Peterborough, without even a scar to show for my troubles, not that Archie didn't try his best, bless his little snapping jaws. A long train journey back, with the usual odd cross section of British society and their politeness and petty mutterings.

Since I got back, I've been looking for jobs with Julia again. Where are you, my web of contacts? It seems I must pull some more strings and scratch a few more backs before the greasy wheels of the jobs market start to grind the other direction in my favour. I have been fond of my metaphors lately. As fond as someone who really loves similes.

Day 96 - The Erratic Poltergeist

Update on the Flat Situation. (Yeah, I'm using capitals. I have a Shift Button, and I'm Darn Well Going to Use It. It's My Language, and I'm Gonna Use It.) The brain trust seems agreed - we move at daybreak. Well, as soon as after daybreak as the estate agent will let us in, at least. That will, we hope, be early enough.

Aah, a message from Julia. I need to respond, and shut this infernal communication engine down. Any minute n

Day 95 - Nullstellensatz

The title of this blog post refers to the Nullstellensatz ('theorem of zeros') of David Hilbert, which I had never heard of before today, but have seen referred to in three different sources within the last 6 hours. Mathematical concepts are, as they say, like buses.

I have been distracted for the past half an hour by looking at websites advertising postdoctoral research positions in pure mathematics. I enjoy thinking about the future; especially when it becomes true - see this old blog post from 2004, for example. I understand this stuff now!

Well, I've forgotten what the Primary Decomposition Theorem says, but I'm sure I could learn it again very quickly indeed.

I'm back in Peterborough for the weekend, and just about to go to bed. I have played with Archie in the garden (his mouth apparently possesses unlimited destructive capabilities) and had shepherd's pie and rice pudding. Home things, you know. Lovely to be back. No more proper sentences. More words bad, less words good.

Day 93 - Plug it to d' left

Real, exciting news! Me and Julia went to look at a flat this afternoon - for those woefully behind on our personal lives, we're going to move in together next year. I'll be doing my Master's year in Oxford, and she'll be working in Oxford, doing the wonderful job of her dreams (preferably something with animals - anybody involved in animal/conservation stuff in the Oxford area who might be able to give an amazingly intelligent, capable, enthusiastic and beautiful girl a job, just comment and I'll get in touch. conversation animal job vacancy jobseekers oxford oxfordshire nature rspb rspca tropical - take that Google!).

We found a good place, but it is expensive (though in Oxford, where isn't?). Now comes the agonising few days when we try and achieve the delicate balance between thinking-it-over-properly-and-making-sure-it's-the-right-decision and not-losing-out-on-a-great-thing-by-waiting-too-long.

I'm going home this weekend to consult the brain squad. Updates later!

Day 91 - Pig Slayin' Joe

Illness has struck me down. Not real illness, but there are enough vague hints of an illness for me to claim sympathy, relaxation time, and all the benefits of a serious illness without the icky side effects.

How much work should we be doing at university? How much is too much, how much is too little? The obvious answer is "enough", but this raises yet further questions. Enough for what? To pass your exams, or to ace them? To balance your social and work life, or to succeed academically no matter the cost? How much work should I putting in to resolving this question?

At least the last question is easy to answer - a lot. To this end, I will establish the Bloom Foundation of Study Studies, be the President, Secretary, Treasurer and Intern, and devote all of my time and resources to a final answer to this fundamental problem. The people need to know, and know they shall.

Day 90 - An Aquamarine Silk Vestment

Happy Day 90, everybody! That's right, since roughly the beginning of December, I have (roughly) blogged every day for the past 90 days. Except yesterday, of course - after four days with Nick, everybody needs a break from life for a while.

How does that look to you? These are the Froglets, from The Clangers. In under seven days, these happy little critters will have consumed half of the Earth's resources, in a desperate attempt to fuel their latest half-baked scheme - creating an Earth Machine, an automatic planet generator which will spit out a completely fresh, biodiverse, and lemony fresh world whenever the old one becomes a bit icky. Locked in their top hat, orbiting Earth at an implausibly slow speed, these disfigured madmen will surely be the doom of us all. Or, you know, it could work out and be pretty groovy. Why take the risk, though?

Watch out.

Day 88 - Deathiate or Niceify?

It was an evening of explosive FUN in all but name. And even the name was EXPLOSIVELY FUN. That's right, it was a party tonight, hence the EXCESSIVE CAPITALISATIOn.
The party was for {CLASSIFIED}'s 21st birthday party, even though it's not actually her birthday until Monday. We had INDIAN, and me and Nick dressed up as NINJAS, and I spilt some Diet COKE but it worked out fine.
We headed over to MARK's room, did some BHANGRA dancing, and finished (well, started, but you know what I mean) with me and Nick downing a can of whipped cream between us. This is what YOUTH is for, after all.
A great TIME was had by all, and the internet JOINS me in wishing {CLASSIFIED} a happy 21st birthday.

I miss CUPCAKE.

Day 87 - Watch out for the grabbling trap

I just got back from London: me, Mike, Andrea, Raf and {CLASSIFIED} went to see Wicked for {CLASSIFIED}'s birthday. It was amaaaazing - the best musical I've ever seen. Great songs, plots, and set. I was too far away to see their faces, but their acting was probably stunning as well.
Oddly, the blonde was played by a brunette, and vice versa. Peculiar indeed.
We also ate food and had ice cream afterwards, when I either:

A) Was invited to an exclusive nightclub, or
B) Was invited to participate in some sexual activity by an odd man.

It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure.

I left Nick alone with Julia for the afternoon/evening, and they watched three films and ate junk food. Colour me surprised.

Day 86 - Never Foul a Fowl

2.43

Nick's here, and we just finished playing the longest game of Blood Bowl that has ever been played. It actually started in 2004, although neither of us realised at the time. Its true nature became apparent about an hour ago, when our ancient bond revealed itself in a shower of nlood and confusion.

I will not explain any part of that paragraph. Or anything from that past 27 bdays.

Day 85 - Peculiar Factorisation

First of all, Happy Birthday Freddie! My little brother is five years old today. Sadly, I have no recent photos on my laptop, it seems, so here's one from July 2006 - add three years or so, and there he is.


It's cheating a bit, to use someone else's words in one of my own blog posts, I thought earlier. To redress the balance, here's an old piece of writing that I found on my laptop - I must've written this when I was about 15, probably. There are bits I love, bits I hate ("well hewn thighs"?!?), but here it is, in all of its erratic glory.
Nick's arriving tomorrow to stay in Oxford. God help us all.

Maze:

A lone figure stalked the labyrinth. Its long, twisting corridors stretched both ahead and behind of him without a break in the monotony, until they turned sharply away. They were broad but low, causing any tall explorers to bow their heads. Small globes, floating close to the ceiling, let off a dim glow, lighting up the passages for the wanderer as he strode along the stone floor. He was very short, not rising past the halfway mark of the low corridors. He was wearing just a pair of light, cotton shorts, tightened by a ragged rope belt. This left exposed his slightly chubby torso, and the surprisingly lean and well hewn thighs, ending in a pair of large, mangled feet. His arms were also well muscled, and extremely long, easily dragging on the ground if he let them rest. But instead they were in constant motion, tracing strange curves in the air with their wild flailing. His face was...portly, and drooped slightly, as if it had been let out to hang just a bit too long. A hint of stubble covered his rounded chin and bloated cheeks. His hair was black, greasy, and long, stretching down to his shoulders. He was also shouting at the top of his high pitched voice, screaming about some sort of 'black water'.

He continued in his peculiarly rolling gait along the never changing passage, arms almost blurring in the air. Behind him, the globes slowly dimmed, fading away to total darkness. Eventually, there was a break in the monotony. A small opening had appeared in smooth sandstone walls, the pitch black within revealing nothing of what lay beyond. The man stopped before it, and turned to gaze into it, his arms finally stopping, dropping to the ground. He fell silent, and the last echoes of his cries echoed away down the now darkened passageway. He peered cautiously into the darkness, and waved a hand through the opening. Instantly, the room beyond was lit up by another floating glow globe. It was extremely small, practically a cupboard, and all of its wall space, and much of its floor space, was covered by scraps of paper, attached with small pins. They were covered in untidy scribblings in an unfamiliar alphabet. Here and there was a well drawn charcoal sketch, sometimes of an attractive young person's face, both male and female, sometimes of a sleeping cat, some were more like blueprints, with curious angles and scrawled annotations. There was one of an old, torn teddy bear, and one of a bloody knife. Many were of strange beasts, and even more incomprehensible things. But most were of the same scene: an isolated lake in a wooded valley, surrounded by tall mountains. Although all were of the same scene, and none of the details had changed, each was subtly different. Some portrayed the lake as an unwelcoming bottomless pit, others as an idyllic watery paradise, and others still as a polluted sump. In some the mountains were gentle sentinels, or distant, indifferent giants, and in some jagged, threatening beasts who were about to consume the valley. But no two were the same. On the floor were many blank scraps of paper, in rough piles, and in a clear spot was a couple of sticks of charcoal and a stub of a pencil.

The man looked around, and frowned slightly. He peered at a couple of the nearest scribblings, and read them intently. Then he sat down in the lotus position, picked up a stick of charcoal and a blank scrap of paper from the nearest pile, and began to sketch rapidly, but with great control. Under his skilled hand, the image of a ruined stone tower soon began to take shape. He added a violent storm raging in the background, some ivy growing down the walls, and a dead tree protuding from the stony ground next to the tower. When he had finished, he lay the charcoal stick down gently, and peered critically at the drawing. He picked up the pencil, and scribbled a short note in the strange alphabet (similar to Hebrew) underneath the tower. He shouted out a word that sounded like "Kratoamain!" in his shrill voice, and burst out laughing. He laughed loudly for ages, tears rolling down his cheeks, but keeping his arms curiously still and folded across his chest. A couple of minutes later, he seemed to have recovered, and stood up shakily, looking around at the walls. He found a blank space near the top, and rummaged amongst the piles for a bent metal pin. Although it was far above his head height, his arms easily reached up and hammered the nail into the stone wall with his calloused thumb. He looked around at the walls again, and gave a short nod. One of the more hospitable lake scenes caught his eye, and he reached out with one slender finger to stroke it gently. His eyes welled up, and a lone tear trickled slowly through the grime and stubble.

He stood in silence for one long moment, then dropped his head, staring at the floor, and letting his arm fall back to his sides. He turned and crept quietly out of the room, and it fell dark behind him once again.
He began to stride along the corridor once again, and he was soon shouting and windmilling his limbs around frantically once again.

When the echoes of his ramblings had faded away, there was the hint of motion in the now darkened corridor outside the drawing room. Darker shapes in the gloom glided silently along the floor, turning through the small archway. The small globe still hovering just below the ceiling did not seem to notice the newcomers, or if it did, did not care enough about them to shed some light. The vague, serpentine figures halted once there were in there, and faded once more into the darkness. After a while though, they began making a series of loud clicks, first one starting, then the others clicking in harmony. It was uncertain how many of these there were-at least four though, and no more than ten. The vague shadows once again began their strange motion, gliding up the walls and over the scraps of parchment, continuing their sharp chorus. It rose in both volume and pitch, become rapid and frenzied. The individual sounds blurred together, rising into one singular scream of agony and discord. The rise in pitch did not stop, quickly rising past the human threshold, so that only the shadow of sound was left. There was one final burst of sound, sending the walls vibrating, before they fell silent.

They dropped down from the walls, and glided back out into the corridor, and in the direction the man had gone.

Day 84 - Some people ain't got the vittals

As Mike described something entirely different, my blogging lately has been "erratic at best, more erratic at worst."
Events must have been happening in my life, but my mind cannot recall them now. Me and Julia just took advantage of one of the plethora of meal offers going around at the moment, and were rewarded by poor service (nobody likes an ancient death grudge settled while you just want to pay the bill) and deeeeelicious food.

We also just watched Four Weddings and a Funeral, the highlight of which (in a sad way, of course) was the funeral scene, with the reading of W. H. Auden's Funeral Blues:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Day 81 - Grease is the word

I've just been watching Grease! The more observant of you will notice that this is the first blogpost title that has been relevant - something for future trivia books, I'm sure. We went out for dinner at Nando's tonight, but I did not have the whole chicken again - a comparatively tiny chicken breast fillet burger instead.

Day 80 - A fay, a fah

It's 22:43, and I think my body has fallen asleep. My mind's trying its best to struggle on valiantly nonetheless, but it's getting more and more difficult. Time to rally the troops with a cup o' the Hot Brown Stuff ("Tea" has recently been copyrighted by the McDisney corporation, so I can't use it here, hence the cheerful euphemism.

Julia's still nuzzling a cat somewhere, so I've been pootling around alone today. Not a lot to report - did some Algebraic Number Theory, got to level 9 on Talesworth Death Arena, and just watched the first Kill Bill.

Forgot to say yesterday - me, {CLASSIFIED}, Mark and Victor made a music video to Cream's I Feel Free, with crazy dancing and a very bemused {CLASSIFIED}. I might even post it on YouTube, when I get the sound synchronized properly. Oh, Kino, why do you punish me?

Edit: Interestingly, the above {CLASSIFIED}s were originally typed as < blank > (without the spaces), but HTML rendered them as blank spaces. Who'd have thought, eh? And no, you can't find out who {CLASSIFIED} is, you nosy Googler.

Day 79 - Shammooo It For the Young 'uns

Umm...so...yesterday, I was...being...eaten, by...myself. Yeah, that's it. That's why I didn't blog, I was too busy eating and being eaten. Have some sympathy, ye scurvy dogs.

Julia's left me today, back to Peterborough to be with her true loves (her pets, not her family, of course). This has left me at a loose end of my tether, so I've been pottering around my room this afternoon and evening, trying to do useful things, and getting distracted by INSANE things.

My attempt at revision this afternoon was to read through past exam papers, and reflect on how ignorant I am. Hopefully, this is the usual beginning to a long and painful process. After all what, exactly, did Benacerraf say, and is it right to care?

Horrible exam question: "Why are there no morals in logic?"

??!?"W>!>">!??!"?

Day 77 - Zero is the earliest number

I have not blogged for five days, and I'm not entirely sure why. Most of them I just completely forgot, and last night, I couldn't be bothered. This is why I stop most things - a combination of forgetfulness and laziness. Still, I'm back. When we fall off the ladder, we must pick ourselves up and start again. Or possibly the horse.

Perhaps this is where I'm going wrong. It's very hard to put a saddle on a ladder, and climbing up a horse does not get you very far at all. I must choose a metaphor and stick to it like glue. That's a simile, it doesn't count.

What have I been up to? Many strange, terrible, and wonderful things. In particular, Saturday was Valentine's Day, which fell into the third category (and probably a little of the first). We had an indoor picnic, and ate vast quantities. Then we watched Laputa, played on the MUD, and chilled out, before going to have dinner at Giraffe. I am in love with Julia, especially right now - we just watched Pretty Woman, and I am a sucker for romantic chick flicks.

Ooh, shut up Nick. You know you are as well. Plus, you have stupid hair now, so you can't laugh at anybody.

Day 72 - Edit it forever!

2.2.2.3.3

Today, I have walked a total of seven miles. My day was: walk to the Maths Institute. Back to Merton. Somerville. St Hugh's. Somerville. Christ Church. Merton. Somerville. Too many colleges!

I have also discovered that my converses are not the most comfortable shoes for long distance walking. Tomorrow, I will try and strap pillows onto my feet, and see how they hold up. Then a succession of furry animals until I find the optimal comfort/cruelty ratio. For science!

Day 71 - Count them till you can't count no more

This is why I should do the lunchtime blogging thing - I'm just too tired to blog properly now, just before I go to bed.

Me, and Tom did intend on going out to see Frost/Nixon tonight, but when we got there we found that the cinema had been fully booked. Making the most of our trip out, we went for a walk instead. We encountered a very insistent club owner, a hidden shopping arcade, the Jungle Master of 62 Park Lane, an amusing hedge, and a Range Rover with a "SOV13T" licence plate.

Better than the film, no?

Day 70 - Mmmmmmmkay?

2.5.7

One whole chicken. Nando's. Foolish boy enters. Leaves a foolish man.

Free Abelian Groups rule, and Witches drool.

Day 69 - Captured Forever Between Sheets of Slight

My jaw is much better today, but I think I'll still go and see the nurse tomorrow morning.

Today has been a wet and miserable day - looking back, half of it seems to have been spent trudging through pouring rain in the dark, trying to avoid falling and breaking my neck on the glaciers that have replaced the pavements, and cursing the shoddy workmanship of my shoes.

Swings and roundabouts, apples and pears. I also watched two episodes of Hustle, and attended two very interesting talks by maths PhD students (one on algebraic geometry, and one on mathematical physics). It occurred to me that perhaps I have been too harsh in my judgment of physicists - they have to learn all the same maths, but the physics as well! It's doubly hard! I doff my metaphysical cap to them, and all the great work they do.

Day 68 - Orbits of a Certain Nature

My jaw still hurts. After an extensive 10 second research session on Google, I have concluded that I have Bruxism. What Bruxism actually is I'm too terrified to find out. I'm sure it'll be something terrible, which will need lots of surgery and tea. Turgery, as Julia points out. She's a walking dictionary.

I failed to blog at lunchtime, but I had good reason. I was fighting with a bear. No jokes, man. A bear - a really, proper bear-sized bear. With paws and everything. I'm pretty sure I now have fewer kidneys than I should have, but it's difficult to count.

Day 67 - Chamford vs. Holmsford

Check it out, blog at lunchtime. Alright, new goal - blog every day, during the day. Madness, they cry. It shall be done.

I'm interested in religion, and having some Christian friends and it being the religion I've had the most exposure to, I wonder about Christianity the most. There are many big questions about it that I've yet to find a satisfactory answer to. I've borrowed a book from Raf - "If You Could Ask God One Question", by Paul Williams and Barry Cooper, which provides answers to some of these questions. I'll blog with one of these, their answer, and my evaluation of it, over the next few days.

Question 1: If You're Really There, God, Why On Earth Don't You Prove It?

Their (summarised) answer: He did prove it, by sending Jesus, his son, who performed plenty of amazing miracles and made it pretty clear that he was, in fact, the son of God/God himself. We have the Bible, which records these, and this is his proof.

My objections:
1) Why only then? In fact, why only once? There are plenty on Earth today who don't believe in God, probably far more than there were then. It seems that today is more in need of a healthy boost of God proof than was Palestine, 30 AD. What would be the problem with appearing every hundred, twenty years, or even every day? I'm sure there are good reasons that wouldn't work, but they didn't mention them in the book.

2) The answer's only as good as the word of the Gospels. If everything written about the Gospels is true, then it would be pretty compelling evidence that something very powerful was at work, maybe God. I'd need some good evidence that the Gospels were reliable, however, first. I've heard that there is such evidence - please let me know!

Comments, thoughts, answers, please comment.

Day 66 - Sweeeeeeeeep

I've just been watching Invader Zim with Victor and Mark, and my love - nay, fervour - for the show increases each time. Whether the first, fourth, or fifty-sixth viewing, it's still excellent. Awesome characters include Zim, Gir, Dib, Gaz, Tak, Professor Membrane, The Tallest, the Monkey, Mortos der Soul Stealer, Miss Bitters, and the various scum of humanity, who all act like they are suffering from constant migraines. It is a bleak view of the world, but a funny one. Watch some, today.

In other news, my left jaw hinge has been hurting for about a week now. I'm not sure why, and it's the weekend now, so I'll wait till Monday. If it's still hurting, I'll go and see the nurse. Hopefully she won't amputate again. I miss my torso.

Day 65 - Through the Looking Holes

Stephen Fry has a twitter account, as do a few other celebrities. This is one of those facts which, when you think about it, is completely expected, and yet still utterly surprising.

A fact of the opposite sort is that the world continues to run each second pretty much as it did the second before.

Day 64 - Mr Knowles, the Joyful Dancer

Any of the following would be terrifying to wake up to:

1) A meteor shower inside my room.

2) A flaming tsunami.

3) The Fourth Coming of the Prophet Tzatoomo, who last appeared 3,700 years ago, and is really annoyed that everyone's forgotten him since.

4) A pile of rotting fruit that speaks with the voices of the dead.

5) Girls Aloud. Live.

That is all.

Day 62 - Ravenous Overcomings

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FQlgA68z_L4

OK, I really didn't want to use videos or photos in my blog posts. They are a sign of weakness and lack of creativity. This video is, however, an exception, being as funny as a clown in a hurricane. Also, hopefully your laughter will distract you from your murderous rage at my lack of updates over the weekend.

I didn't do anything exciting enough to justify this failure. Sure, some people died, and I lost ANOTHER ploughshare in the ensuing legal fallout, but that's just a regular Saturday morning. Seriously, nothing has happened, so move along. What gives you the right to peek into my life, eh?

Day 59 - Sammy "Three Times" Johnson Q.

I managed to get most of that group theory sheet done, and went to the class at 5pm. I also MUDded, ate lunch, and watched an Antonio Banderas film, where he taught ballroom dance.

[Through the electronic ether comes Daniel's cry of FAIL!]

Day 58 - Some Things Stirring

After punching in some numbers and crunching some digits using my Secret SuperComputer (ssh, don't tell anyone), I can produce the following numerical analysis of my 24 hour MUDathon.

In 24 hours of MUDding, I...

Gained 42 quest points, 3 achievement points, 4 guild levels, 550 in rating, died once, gained a spare life, and shifted my alignment from Good to Neutral.

I gained 2 levels in stealth.inside, 3 in stealth.outside, 8 in manipulation.passing, and also in manipulation.palming. 1 level in casing.place, and 11 in covert.points.
8 levels in culinary.baking, 23 in instruments.wind, 29 in melee.dagger, 10 in ranged.thrown, and 38 in defence.dodging.
10 levels of valueing.gems, and another 10 in valueing.jewellery. 11 in climbing.rope, and a surprising 25 in acrobatics.balancing.
1 in other.perception, and 4 in other.points. Finally, 4 levels in spoken Djelian, and 1 in written Djelian and written Agatean.

I gained a total of 49 TMs, averaging to just over 2 per hour.

That shows just what you can do with 24 hours on the MUD. In fact, if you were more efficient and numberchased like crazy, you could do a heck of a lot more. I had fun though, and did plenty more quests!

Day 57 - Tinned Avalanche

Dear, oh dear, oh dear. How can it get to my bedtime with me forgetting to blog? My carefully engineered plan, statistics, log of the MUDathon, all laid to waste by my prevarication.

I'm not even sure if that's a real word.

I've been struggling with my Group Theory problem sheet this evening, being distracted throughout by Brasseye, the Simpsons, and various constructions and games involving the buildup of Diet Coke cans in my room. Most of my mathematical energies have been spent trying to prove a formula. It's so annoying, that I now suspect that the question has a typo in it, since this can surely not be done by any mortal mathematician.

Day 56 - Don't you think that you're a winner?

Sorry for not blogging over the weekend - my epic 24 hour MUDathon did take place, finally, after 8 years of waiting. Thinking about it, however, staying at my laptop for 24 hours means that I have even less of an excuse as usual for not blogging, so I shouldn't have told you that. Where's the delete key?

Never mind, can't be bothered. After the MUDathon, I slept for 3 hours, woke up for a very confused half an hour in which I ate some food and watched Zero Punctuation video game reviews, and then slept for the next 11 hours. Woke up this morning feeling very refreshed. Had a philosophy tutorial, played on the MUD some more (still love it!) and found out I have a problem sheet due for Wednesday.

Julia is fetching me cups of water and lemon squash. She's now back, glaring at me until I relinquish my metaphorical hold on her internet kingdom. I should go, before she stabs me. I'll post a detailed analysis of my MUDathon tomorrow.

Day 53 - Cut by the Cards He Sought to Shuffle

Two very exciting events are looming (in a friendly way) over the horizon:

1) After this blog post is complete, I'm heading over to Mark's room for a crazy boy's night. This is a response to the girl's night that the girl's have organised, on the "Anything their gender can do, our gender can do better" principle. There will be beer, films, Gamecube gaming, and other male things. Like KICKING ASS.

2) Hopefully, tomorrow morning, I will begin an 8 year old ambition: to play the Discworld MUD for 24 hours solid. Surrounded by drinks and snack foods, I will revel in internet geeky luxury. Will it destroy my body? My mind? Looking forward to finding out! Plus, Julia is hopefully doing it as well! Julia = Best Girlfriend in the World.

I will chronicle this heroic feat, logging my thoughts and state every hour.

Day 52 - Would you like some tea in your milk?

Again, little was accomplished today. Whenever I have a lecture at nine, I feel that my work for the day is over by ten, and so spend the rest of day trying my best to avoid anything which would actually be useful.

I am currently watching an episode of the Simpsons featuring Homer in erotic photographs. Point proven. In these 52 days (ish) of blogging, what have I really said? What have I contributed to the world of words and ideas? Less than most, more than some. Every little counts, etc, etc. Something original?

"He grabbed the world by the hilt and stabbed at the stars."

Boo yeah.

Day 51 - Merry Propositions

Happy Prime Day, everybody!

Today, I have been ill. Women in my audience will be scoffing, and muttering cruel words under their breath at this point. "Ill? Ha! Try giving birth to a child!" The men, on the other hand, will be nodding wisely and sympathetically, fully aware of the special viruses that seem to target men to the exclusion of all other genders.

Sexist, inaccurate, and wrong though this portrayal is, it's still sadly all too true. Why, Julia barely pitied me at all, meaning that I had to make up the slack with a bucket load of self pity. And self pity shouldn't come in bucket sizes.

My nose is aching, and my joints are running. My throat is congested and my chest is sore. Oh, woe is me. Fear not, gentle reader, as you go into the dying of the light - my constitution is strong, and I shall overcome. Though my body be weak and shattered, a mere husk, a remnant of the proud man I once was, I will recover. I will replenish my strength, and avenge myself on those who mocked me in my weakened state.

Pity not me, but these poor fools. For it is they, not I, who shall rue the events of this day forever more.

Day 50 - Yes, Yes, Oh Yay

In celebration of this exciting landmark of my blogging spree (2.5.5!), I have retreated to my secret bunker, from where I am sending this blog over a secret location.

I am hiding from slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and the laser rifles and nuclear warheads of curious fate. Send your scathing criticism, and it will bounce off the walls of my concrete fortress like so much badly written tapioca.

Today, I managed to finish my final Galois Theory sheet, and hand it in a mere 27 hours past the deadline. I scare myself sometimes (in a good way, obviously). I also attended the second of my Palin lectures on Algebraic Number Theory. It's scary (also in a good way) - they must be some sort of duplicate identical clones.

Day 49 - A Fare Gronde Attraction

Behold, the wonders of the two minute blog post.

I have had an extremely lazy day today - I had a bath at 8pm, and I'm still wearing my pyjama top. I went to an Algebraic Number Theory lecture at 9am, and used this as an excuse to do no work for the rest of the day.

I introduced Julia to the Discworld MUD last night, and she's played over 15 hours since then. She doesn't do things by halves. Or even wholes. There's at least 159% in her obsessions and crazes.

Finally, happy birthday to Daniel, my second oldest friend, and definitely the one with the best facial hair. "Best" being, of course, a subjective term.

Day 48 - Sensing Returns

Partially at the scornful derision from a friend over my last two blog posts, I feel ashamed. First I miss two days completely, and then I give two vomitings of words that probably never deserved to see the light of day.

Yet I have been doing quite exciting things recently; I stayed in Bristol for one night, then in Warwick (well, Coventry) for two nights with friends. I've walked the rough pavements of Gloucester Road, and eaten in the Greek pizzerias that glitter invitingly down its back passages.
I've slumbered in oddly placed beds, and watched Teachers TV while attempting to stack balloons neatly. I've been inside the Chaplaincy, and seen strange, wonderful and terrible sights within. I've met new, wonderful, terrifying people, and had exciting conversations in which I was labelled as "a boring man". I've toured the Warwick campus in both night and day, and left a trail of drool around its glistening (even more so, now) maths department. I've Mudded in odd places, and been to the birthday ball of a girl I've never met.

I've seen Nick in a sequined mask.

Oh, what things I've done.

Day 47 - Oops, Another Gone

Still ain't dead. This blog can serve more useful purposes than a mortality log, but what could be more important? I mean, really?

Day 46 - He Pokes Holes in my Testament

I ain't dead.

Day 43 - Signs Within Signs

This blog comes from Bristol. That's right, for tonight and tonight only, I'm in that happy town of maths, slavery, pizzas and pens.

"That's a fair description" - Nick, typical Bristol 'studen'.

As I am about to say, "I always enjoy quoting myself." Wise, wise words.

I came down for a PhD open day, which was educational and entertaining. *thinking*...

Well, after all that thinking, this is a very disappointing sentence. More details on Bristol tomorrow.

Day 41 - Grand and Terrible, Terrible Objects

My second day back in Oxford, and I really like Blues music. The two are not related, but I'm being conservative with my sentences. Blues is perfect both as background music when I'm doing something else, or when I actually want to listen to music. The refrain (melody? tune? I don't know the terms) is usually repetitive, but not in a boring way. More in a trance, relaxing way, that just opens you up more to the music.

Similarly with the lyrics. Most Blues lyrics are repeated often, but they're good. Some examples:

Robert Johnson:
I got ramblin
I got ramblin on my mind
I got ramblin
I got ramblin all on my mind
Hate to leave you my baby
but you treats me so unkind

BB King:
Everyday, everyday I have the blues
Ooh everyday, everyday I have the blues
When you see me worryin' baby, yeah, it's you I hate to lose

John Lee Hooker:

When I first thought to hobo'in, hobo'in,
I took a freight train to be my friend, oh Lord
You know I hobo'd, hobo'd, hobo'd, hobo'd,
Hobo'd a long, long way from home, oh Lord

OK, so they don't look great down on the screen. But you gotta listen, man, you gotta listen to the whole song. You gotta get the blues in the soul, in the gut. That's where you 'preciate it proper.

Day 40 - Flying Through the Etherene

This really is quite disgraceful by now. What is the use of a daily blog that says nothing of value? I must be the only blogger who posts pointless posts at the moment. I look at brilliant posts like this one right here, and I feel miniscule.

I'm back in Oxford! We went to Nando's for some chicken, the bar for a drink, and my room for fun conversations. Now I must go.

Day 39 - Towering Over the Hummers

Sad news, first of all. My beloved scruffy tabby cat was just savagely killed by a stray dog on the streets of Sto Lat. Don't worry, though; I will soon find a helpful priest who can restore both my cat and my swamp dragon (who had exploded earlier) to a better state of mortality.

Tomorrow, I will be returning to Oxford. Tonight, I need to pack. Right now, I need to go to bed. Read tomorrow, for more exciting quandries.

Day 38 - Sunshine and Tickle Gangs

My time is running short, and I don't have long left. The mission has gone disastrously wrong; I'm not sure whether or not I'll be able to complete the circuit. The spirit may remain unquiet, the elements unmodified. This can only mean bad things for us all.

Day 37 - Pressure Rises in the OmniDome

Tada! This blog post is done.

Day 36 - Create, Prosper, Collaborate

Today, I'm leaving on a secret mystery of great mystery. Hopefully I can get to the computer tomorrow, to do a cursory blog post. Is the proper phrase "blog", or "blog post"?

I'm in quite a rush now, getting everything together, anyway. The monkeys are acting up as usual, the death ray's in pieces on my laboratory floor, and I'm losing more and more henchmen by the minute. The mob is battering at the door, while the friars are mobbing the gates. The affairs of state are an intolerable state of affairs, and while I'm trying to attend to the matters at end, interfering heroes keep turning up and busting my drugs cartel - they're always rescuing the heroine.

Geddit?

Day 35 - Angled Towards Annuity

I'm currently watching Scrubs. Well, more accurately, I'm watching an advert for the current Double Showings season on Paramount Comedy, but you won't begrudge me some looseness in my speaking.

Scrubs is now back on, so I was distracted, explaining the temporal lag between this paragraph and the previous one. As the Assassins Guild has taught me, routine leads to death, so I'm going to make sure that I keep being unpred

Day 34 - In with a chance?

It's Monday the 5th of January so, naturally, it's Reader's Request Day. Today's question comes from Mrs C. H. Greahams of Reading, Arizona:

"What do the titles of your blog posts actually mean? They never seem to be very relevant to the actual post. [Long, boring middle section cut out.] Please let me know."

Well, Mrs Greahams, that's a valuable question, and one I thought would be coming up around now (I'm sure you know why!) The answer is quite simple. When I was eight years old, I was visited by one of the travelling wise old sages that seemed to frequent my house a lot around that time. This one was different from most of them, however, since he was awake, and taking an interest in me.

For one blissful afternoon, he took me under his (figurative) wing and taught me many things - of sailing ships and sealing wax, and whether pigs have wings (turns out they don't). All too soon, however, it was my teatime, and he had to go and fight...something...or possibly stop somebody else from fighting something. To be honest, Power Rangers had just come on, so I was fading in and out.

As he left, he rummaged in his backpack and pulled out a crumbling tome; its bindings were loose and the pages moth-eaten, but I somehow felt that this was something very important. I reached out a trembling hand for this treasure trove of wisdom. He leaned forwards, and then suddenly pulled his hand back, holding the book close to his chest. He peered at me, and teared a couple of pages from the front.

Winking with both eyes, he gave me those pages, and tucked the tome back into his backpack. Looking down with disappointed eyes, I saw that he had only given me the table of contents. Five hundred chapters, and all I had were the titles. He smiled, said "Like the rolling monk, everything circles the sun," and left.

I was not sorry to see him go. Twelve years later, and converting these chapter titles into blog post titles is the best I've been able to come up with so far. Jerk.

Day 33 - Granted, it never flies

Surf's up!

That was a subtle allusion to the fact that Julia and I (bodacious grammar there) just watched the film "Surf's Up", quite honestly one of the finest films I have seen in a long time. I loved the style it was filmed in, all of the characters, the writing, the jokes, the music, and the spectacular animation. Better than the Godfather.

As if that was not enough, there were even more activities in my day today. This afternoon, I began the laborious task of transferring our old home videos onto DVD. Thinking about it now, I'm not entirely sure why this should be done, but it is definitely a Good Thing. You know, one of Those Things Which Should Be Done (Julia is an expert on those sort of things, and reminds me of this often).

Unfortunately, I have no Universal Machine which can do this easily, efficiently, at the push of a button. Instead, I have to go to Julia's house (a trial in itself), play the video, while simultaneously recording it with the DVD HDD Recorder. This modern technology boggles me.

Day 32 - They're Everywhere!

In just a few short minutes, I'll be leaving this house to drive to my father's. Pay close heed, for I tell you for several reasons:

1) If nobody hears from me in the next few days, and people start to worry, at least they know where to start looking.

2) I am fully aware how much more interesting than yours my life is. In your lonely existence, at least you can live vicariously through my exciting deeds.

3) My father's internet connection and computer were both engineered by incontinent squirrels, so I probably won't be able to blog this evening. In a fit of cunning so astounding I giggle girlishly whenever I think of it, I have reworked this warning about not being able to blog into an actual blog.

PS - This blogging website's spellcheck marks both "internet", "blog" and "blogging" as spelt incorrectly/not actually words. Go figure.

Day 31 - Falling Through the Epsilons

Only seven minutes to go; I have no ideas of what to write right here. I have great ideas earlier in the day, but I can never be bothered I remember what they were by this point.

That sentence made sense, I promise. It's just your mind playing tricks on you/mugging you in the dark alleyways of your subconscious and the boardrooms of your conscious.

I just played another game of 40k against Nick; he still outnumbered me, albeit by a paltry 2:1 this time. He massacred me, but I put up a good fight. My Lootas were the men of the match, laying down a withering storm of fire at anything that moved, whether friend or foe. They're an enthusiastic bunch.

Discworld MUD has become even more addictive with the addition of achievements; they're pointless, time-consuming, and give a miniscule feeling of accomplishment. Yet still I struggle towards them.

Day 30 - Invention and Infection

Happy New Year!

2009 = 7x7x41

As promised, here is my current New Year's Resolution:

Blog Every Day. Come rain or shine, hail or sleet, volcano or riot, I'll struggle, bloodied but defiant, to a computer and hack out some words to please the silent infinite mass that stares back at me. A month ago, I would have secretly known that I would fail at this, very quickly. With my recent very near success at this blogging spree, however, I feel more confident. Perhaps it could actually be done. After all, I did write a diary almost every day for a year a few years ago.

After watching Starter for Ten, I also now want to learn more general knowledge trivia. I'll have to work out a more detailed target for that, however, as with a few other things. More New Years Resolutions to come, don't worry.

Day 29 - Dashing Yonder and Thither

Happy New Year's Eve, everybody.

No update on the news from yesterday; I still can't remember what that third item of news was to be. It definitely was not:
3) I have been abducted by a sinister cult and used in their sinister experiments.
It might have been:
3) I have been abducted by a sinister cult and used in their sinister experiments AND THEN HAD MY MEMORY WIPED.

Is it traditional to make New Year's Resolutions on New Year's Eve, or New Year's Day? I'm not entirely sure, but the Day seems more appropriate. To compromise - for what is life without compromise, other than a fulfilling one with a strong moral code? - I will present my own Resolutions tomorrow, and today I shall give the Resolutions of Mr H. R. Cramworth, who lives in a suburb of London, in the year 378 P.G. (Post Gralling), in a universe differing only slightly from our own.

1) Tell Maria how I truly feel about her, instead of panicking and buying yet another marmouth slave each time I go to her shop.

2) Lose 30lbs so that I can join in the annual Synchronised Poison Marching Parade Spectacular Competition.

3) Kill the Beast Within.

4) Tame the Beast Without.

5) Check the sage about the Beast in the Basement.

6) Learn French.

Next blog in 2009; be sure to check for more exciting Resolutions.

Day 28 - A Gun Too Far

Four bits of news, two good, two bad.

1) Discworld MUD now has achievements - yet more things to achieve and feel good about. Plus, lots of free XP.

2) This post is at 12:08 am, so judging by GMT I have failed to blog on Tuesday. Therefore, this blog post will count as being European.

3) I have entirely forgotten what this item of news was to be.

4) I discovered today a previously unknown reader of this blog. Hello, friend! Come, and leave some of the happiness you bring.

Yippee-ki-yay, John MacClane.

Day 26 - Fronds of Summer

Well spotted, astute reader - in true "25" style, yesterday's post was a secret one, hidden somewhere in the internet. Find it, and I will find you.

I was just lured into watching half an hour of net_work, by Black20. I've seen them all many times, but I do love them. Some people I've shown them to seem less impressed; I have noticed that in many cases, people's tastes are simply poor when compared to my own. They must have other gifts.

Still, I strongly recommend you to check out net_work, if you haven't already. They're short, funny, addictive, and oddly seem to obey the inverse of the Comedy Law - the less people watching, the more you laugh.

I have been doing other things with my time. Yesterday, me and Raf drove Up North for our friends' 21st birthday party. I assume you're a southerner, reading this (do they have the internet Up North?), so I don't need to speak of the terror that fills our weak southern bellies at the thought of such a journey. After a harrowing five hour journey, I can confirm that all of our worst suspicions were true.

As you drive through the blasted heaths of the midlands, away from the metaphorical bosom of the south, the skies begin to darken. Thick, black smog fills the air, covering everything it touches with a faint odour of coal and gravy. Strange, feral creatures scamper by the side of the motorways, constructing primitive talismans to ward off our "Devil Carriage". After a few brushes with some of the grimmer aspects Up North (including an eternity spent in Rochdale), we arrived in Burnley.

Luckily, my superior navigation skills brought us immediately to our friends' house. Yes, there were many northerners present, but they were the good kind. If only their dependency on pies could be reduced, they could even be rehabilitated in the south. A minibus took us to the Party Palace [it wasn't actually called that - it was a pub owned by their aunt, but I forget the name. It should be called Party Palace, anyway.] We talked, laughed, ate, drank, merried, danced, and watched amazing card tricks. They hadn't hired a magician, it was a just a cool guy there who knew card tricks.

Back to the house for chats and jaffa cakes, slumber, and then a drive back Down South. It was an enjoyable trip Up North, and a great party. Still, those lands are just too harsh for my pampered sensibilities.

So Happy Birthday Vicky and Helen, and thanks for the hospitalities. Thanks especially to Molly, whose enthusiastic face-licking caused me to feel like a saliva-based Two-Face for part of the night.

(Molly is a dog, I hasted to add.)

Day 24 - Daggers of Imminence

Too ill to blog. Heartfelt apologies.

Day 23 - Fnord

Happy Boxing Day everybody! I hope you've treated your servants well, and given them plenty of Turkish Delight. As noted in yesterday's post, today there was a lot more of family seeing; lots of food; a Christmas quiz; secret santa; and a ridiculous amount of truffles and socks.

I just cast (casted? cost?) my eye around for what to write about, and spotted "Death's Domain" immediately. Fate has dictated a brief explanation of what I think about death, it seems.

Death is, at the very least, the end of life as we understand it. The brain stops sending signals, the heart ceases to beat, and the brain generally shuts down. If the individual survives in any meaningful way, then the mind (or at least a substantial portion of it) must be independent of the body, and can go on thinking.
Thinking's all well and good, but to keep things interesting (and preserve our sanity), we'd also need to perceive things; get some kind of changing input. Ideas that I've considered:

1) The mind stays in the world, but is no longer attached to the body. We float around and watch people, see the world, presumably forever. There might be a lot of very bored ghosts when the Earth explodes.

2) As above, but we can also travel through Time as well as Space. Past, present, future: all will be available for voyeuristic exploration by the enthusiastic spectre.

An obvious question that arises, is the relationship between ghosts. Would we be cut off from all the other dead people, or once we have died, can we suddenly see and talk to all the other dead. If so, the world is extremely crowded.

3) More scary: we cannot move in Time or Space. While we can continue to think, we are stuck in the moment and place of our death. Not good for deaths under traumatic circumstances (or, in fact, boring ones). Sadly, exciting and fun deaths are hard to come by.

4) Usual heaven-based answer - we leave the world altogether, and go to some other place. Since we're not very good at thinking in new ways, this is usually pictured as us in some other physical place. Then again, since we do perceive things in a very specific way, to preserve our identities, perhaps heaven (or hell) would need to be this way. All this talk about "planes of existence we cannot conceive" is rubbish, since then we wouldn't really be ourselves in this bizarre reality.

5) Nothing. Zip. Nada. The mind is not independent of the body. Death, and then no self, no thought, no anything. Either comforting or terrifying, depending on my mood.

My preferred option: transported to a universal library, infinitely large, with all eternity to read them. Plenty of reading rooms, with big fires, and food stalls serving all kinds of deliciousness. Doors to the personal heavens of others, so I can visit them and vice versa. Mine is the best, of course.

The Word of the Day is Elliptic.

Day 22 - Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! If you're reading this, I wish you happiness, health, and the fulfillment of all your dreams (well, the good ones at least).
This may be the chocolate pudding talking, but I am filled with a great joy and love. For whatever reasons you celebrate Christmas, the real reason that it is so successful is that everyone loves an excuse for a holiday. To be happy, cheerful, and festive. To give and receive gifts, see family and friends, sing bad songs terribly, eat and drink far too much, watch rubbish TV, and generally do all those things we want to do but feel we shouldn't.

Of course, this is also why Christmas only comes once a year. It's like an annual blink; without it, the eyeball of our lives would dry up and crackle, but if carried on for too long, we'd be blind and society would crumble.

Enough of this, I think. I was woken up by my little brother at half past seven this morning; then the present opening began. Breakfast, more presents, drove back to my mother's, more presents, lunch, games, TV, and now bedtime.

People I have seen today (in chronological order):
Little brother
Me
Stepmother
Father
Two sisters
Stepmother's mother
Stepmother's brother
Grandmother
Grandfather
Mother
Stepfather
Girlfriend
Girlfriend's mother
Girlfriend's sister
Girlfriend's father
Sister's boyfriend

People I shall see tomorrow:
Three aunts
Two uncles
Six cousins
Two grandparents

Pretty crazy, no? Enough of this blogging; I have precious Christmas books to savour (Logic of Provability; Measure, Integral and Probability, GURPS Powers; QI Book of Quotations; Gentlemen of the Road).

Merry Christmas.

Day 21 - Opinions of an Ungulate

Merry Christmas Eve everybody! Hopefully, whoever and wherever you are, you're being very festive and merry, looking forward to all the yuletide joy that's coming tomorrow.

Unfortunately, my time is short (family trivial pursuit is calling from the other room). At the same moment, I'd like to give you as much quality in this limited quantity as I can. So here's Frege in six words:

Logic. Function. Concept. Sense. Reference. Object.

Day 20 - Between Three Impositions

Happy 23rd everyone! It's 12:35am, and I nearly forgot again. It's been a very busy day; I cooked Christmas dinner for eight of my friends. The power cut did not faze me, having to prepare thirty dishes left me a cool as an Arctic cucumber. The shortage of crackers in town, however, nearly drove me over the edge.
The only crackers that could be found were a £24 set in Lakeland, with bells and a score included, so that the diners could merrily ring in the evening with an array of traditional yuletide tunes.

I was sorely tempted, but decided against it in the end. The crackers should never cost more than the meal. In the end, the meal went well, everyone enjoyed it, and Trivial Pursuit was played. Trivial indeed.

Day 19 - Pearl-Handled Tusks

Exciting news everyone - I am blogging in the presence of another. That's right, my friend Nick, of Hogshine infamy, is present as I type, telling me to download Battle for Wesneth. Fear not, my loyal retinue, I'll remain faithful to the alliance.

We just finished a game of Warhammer 40,000, to gently ease our passage back into the hobby. As he so eloquently put it, "It sounds like we're being shat out by some celestial..." Exactly what this celestial being is, seems best left to our imaginations. You know, if your imagination really is that bored at the moment.

He had a 1500 Space Wolf force, assembled and semi painted. I had 588 points of Orks, with various wheels and height missing. My Orks were slaughtered. I managed to kill 9 (count them!) of his marines; 3 from Deffkopta rockets, 1 from a Warbuggy shoota, and 5 at the power klaw of my Warboss. Nick just wondered why I'm specifying who killed who. He does not understand the intricacies of the glory hug, rooting in forests of battle for the truffles of fame.

Commercial announcement: point your internet scopes at http://joth.wordpress.com, which will soon be the site of a Daily Mathematics Morsel, or some other, even more interesting name. The world's press are waiting.

Day 18 - An Interloper Rules

They called me a fool when I invested £7,500 into a crack Research Team of Research. They scorned when I spent another £10,000 furnishing their secret hideout lair with the latest in synthetic nylon fashions. They split their sides giggling when I agreed to have their MySpace addresses tattooed across my back in exchange for their genius.
Yes, my Research Team of Research laughed at all these things, and many more, but finally they have come through for me. All those hard, hard months of pain, stress and kidney-splitting tension have paid off. Behold, their new, patent pending idea: Blogging from Bed.

'Nuff said.

The blogging world is nothing without cross-fertilisation, and mutual cooperation. I'd like to present three blogs of my friends. Please, go and have a look. Maybe they'll link back to me, in a fit of generosity. For your benefit, I've also included brief reviews.

The New Utovsky Bolshevik Show
When the word 'blog' was hatched in the Word Caverns of Dictionairre, surely it was to describe this fine example of keyboardmanship. No other display of digital craftsmanship can come close to shining the polish on this magnificent, daring example of what Man is capable of, at his highest. 3/10.

Blogshine/
It took some effort to stop retching enough, and gather the blasted remnants of my higher brain functions to actually form these words after just a cursory glance at this putrescent pile of excrement. I pray that the...producer of this insult to the universe does not regard himself as human, for it would be a crushing argument against any sort of order in the world that it had managed to produce a being that could throw up such vile and egregious work.
10/10.

An Enlightening and Fascinating Read
Written by a lady of the highest taste and eye for the finer things in life, this is an honest and compelling account of life as it should be lived. Read this today, and just realise how much better your life could be. Nick.

Day 17 - MicroPrimes

Another tiring day. Started off with a nice lie in (till 9am!), then I spent a couple of hours playing with my little brother, and watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He insisted that I close my eyes whenever the boring love songs came on; I'm not sure why, but I didn't mind that much.

Then a horrendous three hour drive up to Nottingham to pick my sister up; picked her up after getting lost in Nottingham's warren of streets; had the best burger in my life for lunch; drove back, laughed at on the way; got into a car accident just outside Bourne!

It was dark, somebody had stopped in front of me, confusion reigned and the front of my car hit the back of theirs. Nobody was injured, fortunately, but both cars were quite badly damaged. My dad came out, sorted out a recovery vehicle, and I get to make the happy call to the insurance people tomorrow.

A terse blog; but I am quite tired. Hence the overuse of semicolons in this post; you're lucky I blogged at all. Damn lucky.

Day 16 - Architectural Darkening

Check it out. 5:16pm. I'm the biz, alright. Some people are clearly toying with me, however - my threats are not empty (human nature abhors a vacuum). If you don't comment within the next 48 hours, you will be named and shamed. There are 56 people on my list so far, some of whom would no doubt rather stay out of the media attention for now. I'm looking at you, Dark Lord of X...

My quest for how to include LaTeX maths in this blog continues to be fruitless. I have, however, learnt the perils of typing any phrase including the word "latex" into Google. Always check the description of links before you click on them. This is important.
http://wolverine-mathematic.blogspot.com/ claims to have accomplished this, but I can only see little white boxes. Anyone else see different?

I'm going to my Dad's in four minutes. Another early morning - I was very busy. Episode of the West Wing, then read Batman, then played Blood Bowl on FUMBBL, watched Invader Zim, had a bath, watched some more West Wing, had some pizza. I need to do some revision soon.

Day 15 - Elements in an Automobile

Exhausted, is the word for this feeling right now. Yet here I am. Again. Damn you, Blog! Damn yoooouuuu!!!

Still, I can't let down my loyal readers. Make yourself known, everybody! Comment on this post, answering the following questions:

1) Why do you read this blog?
2) What's the best thing about me?
3) What would be your preferred method for my execution?
4) Who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes?
5) Shoe shopping. What's that all about?

If you don't come forward yourself, I will name and shame you in the next blog. I know who you are; a little known rider on a recent Act of Parliament allows all bloggers to install secret cameras in the internet to film people reading their blog.
And running will do you no good. They're wireless cameras. Fooools!

[I may have been watching too much Invader Zim today.]

I also went to see Julia sing in the choir of St Martin's church, Stamford, in a beautiful performance of ye olde English christmas songs. Overall it was a mellow, melodic...choir sort of event (all-female), with the occasional bit of dynamism and fun. A great mixture.
"Inspiring. Four stars!" - Me, the Internet.

Day 14 - Adeptus for Scouts

I must stop blogging so late; it leaves me no time to say anything of substance. Still, as the saying goes, "Better saying something than nothing at all." I think that's how the saying goes, and has the dark gremlins of Sleep and Sore Eyes start to circle, it'll have to do.

A friend of mine at university is deeply involved in the local - indeed, the national - bell ringing scene. A keen Campanologist. Apparently, there is a big subculture, where everybody knows each other, and gossip spreads faster than vibrations through two hundred year old copper.

There must be millions of subcultures in British society alone, which are everything to those involved, and nothing to those who aren't. Whole microcosms of intrigue, lust and betrayal, where the actual hobby in question is nothing more than an elaborate password into this hidden social world, where recognition is easy but acceptance is impossible (or possibly the other way around).

Campanologists, I'm sure, are nothing like this, and just really like bell ringing. Let's hope, anyway. The nation's Sunday mornings are in their hands.

Day 13 - Up Like a Lead Rock

Phew, that was close. I just stumbled in from baby sitting next door, my eyes already tired. "I must sleep now," I thought, as I shambled upstairs, "I have to wake up at 5:30am again." Fortunately, my laptop screen was on, and the harsh glare stared at me accusingly.
(Can a glare stare? It can now.)

So, here I am. What did I do today? Drove Julia to work, slept, watched Zim, played Crossbow Training, watched Speed ("Spid"), read Frege, babysat. Why would you want to here about that though? Heck, I've only got seven minutes before I go to bed, and I'm not going to waste that precious time telling you all the little details.

Six minutes. A stitch in time saves nine. Oh darn. So what should I write about today?

Topology. Five minutes.

Topology deals with properties that hold of a shape (surface, space, object, etc) no matter how you stretch or squeeze it. Topologically speaking, a coffee cup is the same as a doughnut (the kind with a hole in the middle, that is). Mathematically speaking, this is done by giving a certain set (i.e. the space, all the points on the coffee cup, or doughnut, or sphere) and a certain structure on them.
This is how anything is given, really. A mug, regarded 'normally', is just a set of points with the structure "this bit goes there, this bit goes underneath it, ..." and so on.
Viewing it topologically, we're not concerned with all this elaborate structure; only the sort of structure that doesn't change when we squeeze, stretch, inflate, and so on.
This is done via 'open sets'. That is, a notion of 'closeness' that is preserved under stretching. When the surface is stretched, so are the open sets, so this closeness is preserved. Of course, poking a hole in the surface is not allowed, since this might change some open sets.

So, a topology on a set is a collection of sets, which we call the open sets, obeying certain axioms to make sure that we can't just have any old sets as the open sets. We can still have a lot though; especially remember that the same set can have many, infinitely many different topologies.

A topological space is a set with a topology, i.e. a collection of open sets. Topology deals with topological spaces.

0 minutes. Good night.

Day 12 - The Doom Song

I would like to introduce the newest hopeless appendage to the student body: his name is Zim.

'Nuff said, people.

I did indeed wake up at 5am this morning, and it was tough. I managed it though, and after swiftly dressing in my usual style, I brewed an emergency cup of tea and drove through the misty streets to Julia's house. I picked her up (discovering that the emergency cup was in vain) and dropped her off at the Post Office.
Taking advantage of the early morning, I squeezed in two games of Blood Bowl before 8am (I forget the results), had a bath, watched OutNumbered, then walked into town to do some Frege reading at the library. Unfortunately, I got distracted and instead read Sandman graphic novels. An equally valuable use of my time? I think so.

Tomorrow morning, however, I will do some proper work. Really, this time. And now, to bed.

Day 11 - An Of Course in Trivia

Happy Repunit, everybody!

I managed to wake up at the earlier time of 9am this morning. I'm going to bed after I've written this as well; I'm waking up at 5am tomorrow, so I can give Julia a lift to her new Post Office employment by 6. I'm either mad, bad, or dangerous to know. I'm just not sure which.

Haven't accomplished much in these twelve hours; I did some reading, some gluing, watched a bit of TV, and went to my grandparents for three hours. It was my grandfather's 83rd birthday, so me, my father, and my little brother went over there. He was a terror (in a cute way, obviously), but he was easily distracted by lego that I remember playing with when I was his age.

In a further blast from the past, we had tea (i.e. sandwiches, cake and tea) on the same little table and the same tablecloth that I remembered as a wee lad. We used to have tea like that every Sunday afternoon. Aah, halcyon days of childhood.

I'm impressed with myself, I have to say. I've done 9 out of the 11 days so far. And, as everyone knows, \inline \small \lim{n\rightarrow\infty}(\frac{n-2}{n})=1

Happy 57 months Julia :)

Day 10 - Double Trouble

Here's more of this Blogging Malarkey. Me and Julia just finished watching The Truman Show - a film that I love, especially Jim Carey's performance. Julia was less impressed; she gets too emotionally involved with her films.

The film was on my laptop, so we couldn't watch it on the TV. I bravely offered to rig up the showing with the large external monitor, for Greater Viewing Enjoyment. This proved to be a major technical undertaking. The desk had to be moved, speakers unplugged, laptop moved, monitor found, and everything set up in a different location. Then I fiddled around with my laptop, while the external monitor flashed ever more worrying shades of green. Nothing should be that green, especially nothing electronic.

Fortunately, it was all fixed, and Our Viewing Enjoyment was Enhanced. Another catastrophe this evening; we'd gone out to a local restaurant, but after the meal, I discovered that my wallet was missing my bank card. I screamed, I shouted, I tore out the hair of both myself and nearby diners, but to no avail. My card had been forgotten back at my house, which was not in the same location as the restaurant.

So, I walked back through whistling blizzards and humming hurricanes, found my card (which was looking annoying smug) and drove back to the restaurant. Julia had been sipping a gin and tonic and laughing with the bartender, no doubt. I paid, and we drove home. Another hilarious episode in the Tom Show.

Day 9 - 9 8 8

My titles have just become injokes with myself now. They're not even very funny injokes, to make matters worse. I know, I know. I missed Day 8. My shame is incalculable. No excuses, let's press onwards.

Imagine my dismay to come back to my laptop to find the following message from a 'friend' on identi.ca: "You are failing at this blog malarkey. Sorry."
I'm not sure which I should be more insulted at. The insulting second person pronoun? The one word apology? Or the shocking use of 'malarkey' to refer to this noble pasttime? How the heck do you spell pasttime? Pastime? Past-time? Tricky.

I went to my Dad's last night, to babysit my little brother. Me and Julia watched the Matrix. Now there's a film with symbolism. It had symbolism literally coming out of its ears. I was struggling to watch the film properly, worried that I had missed some wayward sigh that was an esoteric reference to the struggle of the Cathars in Languedoc.

Darn, I was going to post about analytic number theory in this paragraph. I can't figure out how to put nicely laid out mathematics in a blog, however. This seems like a problem that must have been overcome. I've seen good mathematics blogs; I've read them! It must be some sort of Mathematical Mafia, trying to lock me out. Harsh.

Cat urine removal continues. Vinegar is a powerful tool, but not powerful enough, it seems. Perhaps if I persuade a bigger cat to urinate on it, it will cancel it out. I should have listened in GCSE Biology. I'm sure this came up at some point.

Day 7 - Another Close Shave

11:58pm! I made it! Also note that I'm counting these times from the start of the writing, rather than the end. Just returned home from Julia's house, where we were watching Ratatouille - an excellent film, especially due to one particular scene. Fantastic.

I was also present for the decoration of Julia's christmas tree. Being generally incompetent at tasks involving small delicate objects, I gave myself a battlefield promotion to official Documentor, with responsibility for photography and a minute by minute log. Hopefully Julia will blog that soon, to save me the trouble.

She has also suffered a feline urinary catastrophe (pun not intended, though subsequently noticed and left unchanged). I need to find a way to remove the lingering smell of cat pee from a small box. Any ideas, Internet Readers? Open book, now.

My reading on Problems in Analytic Number Theory continues. I really need to become good at maths. I mean...I'm good at what I do, but I don't really understand it properly. It feels like everything I'm doing is trivial manipulation - sometimes very difficult or impossible trivial manipulation, but still. I need insight, I need understanding. A fresh view of things. Playing with pebbles on the beach, when I want to be windsurfing.

Such things will be resolved, after sleep.

Day 6 - An Assortment of Dishwater

Another lonely day at home, just me and the dog. Julia was gallavanting in Leicester, and the rest of my family was out at work, leaving my itinerant student self to roam the echoing halls like an industrious ghost.

Industrious, indeed! I did some housework, played with the dog, tidied the kitchen, read some of Rudin's analysis, and watched SIX episodes of Frasier. My stamina astounds me. I also watched the Dark Knight whilst attempting to construct the rest of my Ork Horde.

Unfortunately, the glue is either too weak, too old, or inproperly applied, so most of my good work so far probably won't last too long. Such is a summary of the day's events, but that's not what you came for, is it? You want me to dish the dirt, the skinny, the low-down, the real Red Mary on measure theory.

You sly dog, you. Wassamatter, Riemann integral not good enough for you anymore? Integrating continuous functions over compact intervals just doesn't get your jazz flowing? Don't worry, you crafty mathematical artiste. Lebesgue integration can sort out your troubles.

Even more so, the definition can be extended to work out an integral for ANY measurable function on ANY measure space, not just the same boring old real numbers.
In fact, by defining different measures on the same space, lots of different facts from different areas turn out to be special cases of quite broad theorems in measure theory.
For example, an infinite sum is 'really' just a normal integral with counting measure rather than Lebesgue measure.
Don't understand what I'm talking about? Check Wikipedia for now. When I figure out how to put nice Latex into blog posts, I might start doing some nice exposition.

Well, I've just received an interesting proposition: Blood Bowl against an old opponent. He mocks me with his "\o/" smiley. So you can raise your arms above your head, eh? He's just trying to make me jealous. I've had the nickname "Acute armpit" since Year 4. Sickening.

Today's trivia: "Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the righteous." Thanks, Exodus 23:8!

Day 5 - No, really

This counts, OK? I won't let my days be bound by some dictatorial clock. This is still part of my working day, and so this counts as a post on Day 5. I blame Paramount Comedy for stealing away my evening. Let this be a lesson to me: never too early to blog.

So, today, I started gluing my Ork models onto their bases. So far: 8 models done. Now just the arms, heads, undercoats, and paints. Apply to many other models, and an army is formed, ready to hack and slash their way to a fictional victory.
Perhaps I could create a new Grey Clan of Orks, so I don't have to paint them? They'd still stare accusingly at me with their plastic eyes. "Grant us life!" they cry, but I must be strong. Through weakness lies madness, and then it's hard to hold down a steady job.

Also today, me and Julia drove to the Royal Mail Parcel Depot on Papyrus Road {{Emergency announcement: The Playbus TV theme just started playing on my laptop. Beautiful.}} to collect parcels for her, my mother and my stepfather. None for me, sadly (donations always welcome).

Julia would here expect some embellished tale of our journey to the Parcel Depot, full of trials, dragons and other hilariously dangerous elements. I simply refuse to indulge her, however. The truth will stand, however dragon-free it may be.

We drove there, uneventfully. There was a good CD in the car, and the roads were reasonably busy, but not inconveniently so. The sky was such an unmemorable shade I don't even remember it, and no scrapes or shindigs were suffered by anyone. A moderately convenient parking space was found, and after a brief but manageable queue, we collected the parcels, hassle free. We drove back to Julia's, again uneventfully, and had tea there.
And throughout, the dragon had slept quietly in my back seat, alright? I will not make stuff up simply to jazz things up. My life is full of jazz already; it's a constant midnight show.

Today's reading: Problems in Analytic Number Theory, again. I've started working through them properly now, mostly while watching the mentioned Paramount Comedy. No big problems so far (though some of my reasoning is a little sketchy, I admit). I also haven't used one of the conditions in the statement of a theorem within my proof of it, which is always a bad sign. Maybe something will occur to me later.

Today's trivia: Poseidon made Pasiphae, wife of Minos, fall in love with a bull. She got an architect to build her a wooden model of one, so she could copulate with it. The result: the Minotaur.
That's the disgusting part of the legend.

Day 4 - And then he turned on the death ray

Bwa ha ha ha ha ha. That's four (minus one) days in a row, oh you naysayers. The scale of my triumph grows like bamboo, and the giant panda of disappointment is nowhere in sight.

In the hoped for side effect, the more I am blogging, the easier it becomes each time. Hopefully, by day 31, it will become an ingrained habit that I can't kick. I'll start blogging every day, every hour, and eventually every minute. My life will grind to a standstill as I blog about blogging. My fingers will start to bleed, my feet will turn to rock, and my eyes will become square. Oh, the grandmothers' adage is oh so true.

Today, I had two roast dinners. The first was beef, at my father's home, and the second chicken, at my mother's. In the interest of parental harmony, I won't compare the quality of the meals here; I loved them both. After the lunchtime dinner, I watched Wall-E with my family and Julia.

I was slightly distracted by my younger brother clambering over me. He made fart noises on my elbow, and then proudly announced that I had a "bottom on my arm." Unexpectedly, he didn't descend into his usual fit of giggles after this use of the word bottom. He clearly appreciated the severe medical consequences of having your rectum entwined with your biceps.

He should be a doctor. Sadly, however, his dreams of lumberjacking are still strong. When we left, he was helping my stepmother/his mother assemble an artificial tree, that will "never come down". May Christmas last forever.

Reading today: An Introduction to Hilbert Spaces. I only managed the first two pages, whilst on the toilet. I must try to concentrate on more than a couple of pages of these books.

Trivia for today: Charles Darwin was on the Galapagos islands for five weeks.

Day 3 - A Non Orientable Post

I did it! Only 16 minutes to go before the day ends, but I remembered. The seal has been cast, the die has been broken. Let the good times roll.

I'm back in Peterborough now, much to the chagrin of the nomadic tribe of bird-men that had taken up residence in my room in my absence. I explained to them (politely, of course) that my day to day life and the international smuggling of Grade A corn just wouldn't be compatible. I must have ruffled some feathers, however, and they left, threatening "We'll be beak!"

They were South African, of course.

Tonight, I went to see Julia's sister in her school's production of Fame! (the exclamation mark is obligatory). A sterling performance, and she soloed in easily the best song of the night. Very talented.
Amusement was also afforded by a few technical glitches and rogue hats, but mar they could not such a night. Awkward sentence structure there, but a true artist must never revise his work.

Reading for this evening was "Problems in Analytic Number Theory" by M. Ram Mury. I should try and actually work through them this vacation, instead of just reading the solutions at the back. It's a soul/knowledge building exercise.

And your parting trivia:

Marian Anderson was the first black soloist to sing at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, in 1955.

Learn it, use it, love it, live it.

Day 2 - There is no number one

Oh dear, oh dear. I let myself down on the first day. That is truly shameful. I'll have to stop referring to the blogging process like this, lest it become too self-referential and end up in some dreadful logical paradox (a blog that denounces itself as constantly wrong...)

This morning I had a class in Godel's Theorems; the last class of the term, and we've moved onto provability logic. It's either a topic that appears very simple but is actually very complicated, or vice versa. It's hard to tell, really.

Also, tomorrow I return home, back to Peterborough, city of sunshine and smiles. My packing has not been started, and there are many books I need to get out for my vacation reading (finals only 24 weeks away, y'know?). More pressing that these concerns, however, is my stomach.

About two hours ago, I felt the first pangs. I knew what was coming; "No breakfast?!? You fool!". I cursed myself inwardly as my innards were cursing. I thought I could pull through. I had a large supper the night before! Midnight cake! Yet it was all for nothing, and hunger consumed my mind.

I can think of little else. The only reason I'm writing this now is that I've dangled an eclair above the monitor, and accidentally hit the keyboard with my flailing limbs as I lunge desparately towards it. The hunger consumes me, and drives me to consume in turn.

My focus is fading. Sight grows dim, and The Who is singing about Teenage Cakeland. I must go; blogging is important, but so is a good hot lunch. Farewell.

Day 0 - Or How I learned to start blogging and love the moolb

Aah, it's been a long time. In fact, the last time I blogged was almost 18 months ago; I had just finished my first year of university, and was generally much less mature and rounded.
I read my previous posts and scornfully mock myself and my writing. Now, fortunately, I return to my dusty fan base with writing that has immeasurably improved and much wisdom to share with you all.

Following sterling example, this month (from today onwards, at least) I shall blog at least once every day. They may not all be great, or original, or even that spectacular, but they will all be written.

I'll begin with some musing that I got done whilst soaking in the bathtub this morning. What do I want to do in my life? That is, really want to do? I devised a test which I humbly label Tom's Deathbed Test (patent pending):

If I were an old man, lying on my deathbed, thinking on my life, what would the absence of cause regret?

Take that test, rewrite it, change the meaning and style, and you've got something pretty neat. (Does anyone even say neat anymore?) Applying the TDT to myself, I came up with the following list, in alphabetical order:
Mathematics. Writing. (Languages. Musical instrument.)

The brackets are ones I'm not sure about. Of course, this list overlooks such things as having children, a loving wife, beautiful home, and all that jazz. That is larger than the list; it would be more than regret. So let's stick with this level of stuff - purely personal activities.

There are many things that I want to do, that I'm sure I'd enjoy, and hope I do get to do: magic, juggling, travelling, drawing, philosophy, and many other things as well, I'm sure. Heck, most things probably.
Applying the TDT quite strictly at the moment, however, and it results in the limited list above. It may change, but this seems a good way to focus my activities and bear larger goals in mind. Right, this blog has run its course, and now it's time for some sort of treat to reward myself.