Date: 2008-10-06 14:36 Subject: Citation index growing Security: Public

I got cited.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.4791
Johannes Huebschmann is one of the bigger names in A-infinity. He did a lot of work on using an A-infinity module structure on an appropriate spectral sequence to compute group cohomology back in the 1980s, and it seems as if you can't really mention A-infinity and group cohomology without at least mentioning his work.

And in his latest preprint, he cites my preprint! I'm flagged as the person pointing out that you can algorithmize the Kadeishvili proof of the minimality theorem, and therefore start doing computer algebra with it.

Woohoo!

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Date: 2008-10-06 11:21 Subject: Random bullets of the past week (aka weekly report et.c.) Security: Public

Computers

In the end, my professor got fed up with all the bureaucratic fuzz and simply bought my MacBook Pro on his own credit card. He'll get reimbursed in the dollar amount taken from the card from the University, the MBP will be delivered to my parents who will send it on to Stanford using Stanford's own FedEx accounts.

So things are crystallizing - by and by - on the work computer front. In the mean time, I do my work from a windows box that happened to be standing around in a corner of the department, and from there, wherever I can. So I've ended up with a development cycle where I write and edit my code on my wardrobe box mneme in Stockholm, compile it there, upload it to the Departmental external shell server, and then go by a VNC session to cdt00 - one of the workgroup workstations that happens to have VNC installed, and from there with an X-forwarding ssh session to artin10 - a randomly picked grad student desktop workstation, where I run the code from a Matlab session.

It works, but it is annoying. Especially compared to the ideal - where I have one single machine on which I can do all aspects of the development process.

In other news, the church our IT guru Rich belongs to just bought a new Dell computer, since they didn't want to deal with restoring it's system after Windows grew too slow. So Rich took the old computer, removed the hard drive and kept that for data transfers. And then promptly donated the rest (Celeron 420, 1G Ram, CDRW/DVD-reader, PCI Wireless card, 1 free slot each of PCI, PCI-E 1x, PCI-E 16x) to me. So I have a computer - once I find a monitor for it somewhere.

(A computer I'll want to upgrade by and by - it won't hurt with a new mobo/proc - and DEFINITELY not with a new gfx card... Just saying :-)

Courses

I seem to be dropping off of the Infinity Categories course - I haven't actually attended any meeting, and I always seem to have better things to do. The Hartshorne reading group progresses neatly - though today it got missed altogether in favour of talking through a bunch of stuff related to my collaboration project with Vin. It was only a bunch of Scheme stuff anyway - I'm really in it for the Sheaf Cohomology bits.

And SLOrk continues with good fun. This week, we tried out a few of the orchestral pieces: Drone - where the MacBook motion sensor is used to drive a buzzing sound. Tipping the laptop back and forth controls the volume, and side to side controls the pitch. A few REALLY cool effects were had with 6 laptops droning along in chorus.
Gamelan - where all participating laptops each drive a "drum machine" sequencers with 32 time slots to place sample sounds in; and all the sequencers run with a tight network driven time synchronization. The director gives instructions for the timbre and intensity of drumming, and each musician places the sounds themselves. It gave a really cool drumming circle feel with extra tubular bells for effect.

Recognition

People start recognizing me. One of the math undergrads rides the same bus as me and pointed out this fact one day in the corridors of the department. A few of the people riding buses a lot up and down University Ave also have started recognizing me.

And as me and amerikabrev (see below) were riding back from San Fransisco, a guy on the train recognized me from going and eating at Tresidder Union a lot. So when he and his wife were leaving the train, they took extra pains to make sure we'd get their seats when they got up.

I've also gotten in touch (more) with the Stanford Postdoc Association. At least to the point of attending their BBQ party simultaneously with the VP debate.

Conjugal visits

My beloved amerikabrev came down from Michigan on Friday, and stayed until Monday early morning. In this time span, we managed to:
* Fail at getting a family plan. AT&T wants $1000 deposit to give us the plan. Sprint triggered some bad flag in the credit check and will be mailing amerikabrev some sort of explanation at some point in the future. We're welcome to try again in 60 days.
* See San Fransisco! China town! Market and Mission! While we missed the Lovefest (with Benny Benassi live), we did get quite a bit of enjoyment out of all the very gaudily clad kids headed there. Also, on the way back, we went into the train station simultaneously with a policeman carrying a shotgun with bright orange stock. The armed police went on towards the restrooms as we followed the massive stream of people onto the train.
* Play Arkham Horror with the Gaming Society crowd from last week.
* Consumed luxurious Cheesecake, good Bento (California roll, tempura and salmon teriyaki - mmmmmm!), and decent italian pasta as well as the mincemeat pie I posted about.

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Date: 2008-10-05 00:49 Subject: Mincemeat pie Security: Public

Following the links in Teresa Nielsen-Hayden's particles, I ended up in an old discussion about the merits of Properly Made Fruitcake and somehow was led from there to a discussion of modern (horrible) and old style Mincemeat and Mincemeat pies.

Following that nose, I then found the Wikipedia entry, described the whole idea for my dear amerikabrev, and we ended up trying to do our own mincemeat pie this weekend.

So - the following is what we ended up doing:

Boil 2lb thinly sliced T-bone steak with a cube of beef bouillon, 4 chopped carrots and 4 chopped stalks of celery. After about 1-1½ hours, hoist out the boiled meat and dice it finely. The bouillon got stored and will turn into gravy sauce and soup during the coming week.
Walk through the free weight portion of a Whole Foods store, and pick a little bit of anything that looks good. We ended up with about 0.1-0.2lb each of pecan nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, peanuts, dried cranberries, dried figs and prunes. Chop each of these finely - I did it by wrapping the plastic bag with the nuts in a kitchen towel, and then whacking it repeatedly with a hammer out on our yard. If you have a food processor, that's bound to be a better way to do this.
Also chop 4 Granny Smith apples finely. Heat up a griddle and fry the apples with sugar and butter until they are nicely Maillarded (i.e. browned).
Mix everything in a bowl, add some of that bouillon and sprinkle a bit of liquor over it. In the best case, this should be about half a bottle of some brandy or rum - but I had neither, and settled for a few sprinkles of my old Laphroaig bottle (och - a shame to use such fine whisky!) which brought a nice smell to it while resting, but couldn't be discerned in the final product. Also mix in generous helpings of Nutmeg, Mace, Cloves, Cinnamon, Ginger, Black pepper, Cumin and Mustard powder. (If you have more spices, by all means try to add them too :-D I did the selection I did based on what I had in my spice rack that wasn't herbal or chili...)

The next day, we put together a double helping pie dough, rolled flat and filled two metal round pans with dough, added the mincemeat produced above, and then a pie dough lid. Eggs on top, holes cut, and into the oven at 450F/220C for just over 30 minutes delivered a Really Nice meaty pie. We figure that a gravy sauce would be Just The Thing, and possibly some black- or red-currant jelly would help the taste a LOT. However, just as they were, they give a nice (if slightly dry) meat pie, filling, and original in taste.

Reactions from my dearest wife:

mm... delicious! The meat had taken on subtle hints of flavour from all the fruits and nuts and tasted great!

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Date: 2008-10-01 17:54 Subject: Booo-yah! Security: Public

I can now compute the relevant basis cycles of persistent homology intervals.

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Date: 2008-10-01 00:20 Subject: Late night insomnia observations Security: Public

So any sheaf is a presheaf. And any presheaf can be sheafified, with one construction setting the sections of the sheafification at an open set U to be functions from U to the disjoint union of the stalks of the presheaf over the points of U subject to
1) each point gets mapped into its own stalk
2) things vary "continuously" in a way determined by the behaviour of the presheaf on small enough neighbourhoods.
Alternatively, a section is a continuous map from U to the disjoint union of the stalks, with an appropriate topology on this union designed to capture the presheaf-induced continuity.

Also, if the presheaf is already a sheaf, then the sheafification won't change anything.

Thus, by inserting gratuitious sheafifications, we can ALWAYS think of a sheaf as a collection of locally defined functions, built so that at each point we have a welldefined group/ring/whatever, and so that these vary "nicely".

Also, "sheafification" is a funny word. ALmost as fun as flasque/flabby sheaves and perverse sheaves.

I wonder whether you can have a flabby perverse sheaf. Hey - there's a theme for my next fetish party visit!

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Date: 2008-09-28 15:58 Subject: Weekly update Security: Public

Wow. The weeks seem to go so fast nowadays.

The Computer Story

Still no laptop. However, at some point during the past week, I suddenly found a computer in my cubicle. Running windows, but with enough programs available that I can open a VNC session to one of the departmental Linux machines and do work that way. It's suboptimal - especially with the Java development work I do, where I write, compile, source control the code on my wardrobe server in Sweden, then copy it to one of the machines at Stanford, and finally test it by running Matlab in a VNC window to a different machine here at Stanford.

A week ago, the state of play was that everyone important (almost) had decided that the best way to get a laptop for me was to go via some middleman in Europe. Then, on Monday, the departmental chief administrator got involved, heard about the plans made, and immediately put a stop to all plans and workarounds. Middlemen simply wasn't The Way It Was Done. Instead, though, she put fire under the seats of the people responsible at Stanford Purchasing, so it seems something is about to happen soonish.

I also still haven't got a computer at home either. However, it seems as if our computer admin at the math department will donate his church's old Dell box to me - they just bought a new one since getting someone to fix it up (year-old Windows installation, maybe - maybe dodgy memory, main indication of problem being "it runs slooooooooooow") would cost comparatively almost the same as just getting a new one from Dell directly.

I'll get to see in the coming week whether this computer deal actually will come through or not.

Courses

This past week was First Week Of Classes here on campus. Thus, my Algebraic Geometry Reading Group (me and complexzeta and 4 other grad students try to understand sheaves, schemes and sheaf cohomology from Hartshorne), and the Infinity Categories Reading Group (reading some book on Higher Topos Theory - it sounds rather scary ;-), and also the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) all got started.

The first two are rather "ordinary" high-level mathematics study groups. The SLOrk, however, does deserve some deeper detail.

When I first saw videos of The Blue Man Group, I became an instant fan. As a part of this process, I started discussing ideas for a homage group among other members of the Stockholm Academic Computing Club - Stacken. We ended up a small crowd - me, luminalflux and a few others, who started brainstorming rather explicitly on how to do Coool Music with New and Weird instruments. While tinkering, we ran across ChucK - a music programming platform developed by the then Princeton-based researcher Ge Wang.

Ge, it turns out, has since then gotten a professorship at CCRMA (pronounced /karma/) at Stanford, and started running a mainly computer-based ensemble, called SLOrk, for credit (for the students that need it). When he heard that I was headed for Stanford, he invited me rather enthusiastically to join the ensemble - so I did.

The SLOrk will - as it turns out - spend two quarters brainstorming and testing ideas and generally preparing, and then one quarter essentially running into a crunch when the spring concerts season hits full speed. Last spring, they had a 9-week quarter in which they ended up playing at 8 different concerts - most of them within the same week.

I'll keep everyone updated on what happens as we go along.

Research

I have two lines running right now - I have my collaboration project with Vin, which just now got VERY ambitious plans for producing results. We decided the other day to try and get a paper written by the SOCG deadline, so that I (and he) can go to Aarhus for the conference in June. No idea whether we'll have anything decent to show by that deadline, but we can always try. For the research with him, I'll need to go and dig through the old algorithms used by the Plex library, and rewrite them to remember a bit more than they do right now. Connected to the programming and the tinkering is a bit of theoretical work we need to do too - mainly verifying that the "plug-n-play" connections we try to do are warranted and well founded in theory.

I also picked up one idea David Green was throwing around during the end of my time in Jena - and it turns out to work just as well as he suggested it might. So one of the crowning results from my thesis now has a "natural expansion", which has good uses in computation. Only - doing this ran me straight into slight problems with the code I wrote in Sydney. So I have a goodly bunch of debugging before me before I can start cranking through the examples I want to motivate my work with. Right now, something somewhere crashes in ways it's not supposed to do. And I really don't like debugging. :-/

Make new friends ...

... and keep your old ones. The mantra of globetrotters. Naturally, once I got here, meeting new friends got upgraded to a rather high priority (and still stays there). I met a bunch of cool geeks by going to programmer and tech talks in Silicon Valley (I've seen Google Campus *squeeee*).

This process continued this week:
* Grad students and mathematicians in general - you got it! We had the departmental Welcome Back Party on Friday, and everyone got together, ate nice food and all the new faces got introduced.
* Stanford Gamers: The Stanford Gaming Society is still trying to get their gear together for the coming year, and seemingly haven't quite gotten started yet. However, a few CS undergrads spontaneously organized a board game night simultaneously with just after the presidential debates. So I got to meet a bunch of cool people - and play BANG! - there. After BANG! came Scrabble, and then midnight hit us, so I went home.
* Scandinavians: Yesterday was the Annual Crayfish Party - and I had been planning on going, and preparing, reprinting the snapsvise-printouts I had for midsummer's in Jena, hunting a decent snaps and generally stocking up for the event. And then, it turns out, I was incapable of finding the right place. It was announced for Escondido Village: the lawn between Studios 5 and 6. I spent the first 45 minutes standing just by Escondido Village: the lawn between Houses 5 and 6, and didn't discover the difference until I got back to my office and quadruple-checked all relevant maps. By that time, over an hour had passed, and I was annoyed and cranky. So I went home instead. So no Scandinavians for me.

---

All in all, the things I whine about are normalizing. That should mean that my life, too, is normalizing. Right? Right?

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Date: 2008-09-23 23:21 Subject: Europe in internet culture terms Security: Public

SO this one political history post over at doqz describes 1848-1945 as one long flame war, and then pozorvlak points out that this was true long before that.

Which, of course beckons the observation that Pax Romana must have been the reign of a bunch of rather dedicated moderators, and invites comparisons between the gothic population redistribution initiatives and the eternal september.

But who is AOL?

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Date: 2008-09-23 20:21 Subject: Internal dialogue Security: Public Music: Trust is Shareware

I don't wanna go through The Persistence Algorithm! whine whinge pout!

So read up on Hartshorne and Liu for the reading group (shoutout to complexzeta! :-) instead.

mumble mumble reading mumble I don't wanna read all this! It's stupid! And it doesn't use functors for presheaves! whine whinge pout!

So think through that regular sequence argument David wanted you to look at. There might be a paper in it for you if you figure it out.

mumble mumble writing down conditions mumble recalling proof steps mumble Hey! I think it just works! And can help us deal with a Lot of other cases! I can haz spiced brownies now pleaz?

So ...

Yeah. It seems I end up proving new stuff as a defense mechanism against having to learn stuff.

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Date: 2008-09-22 17:12 Subject: Past week - salary arrives! Security: Public

And with the salary the excuse to make several different shopping trips! Yay!

So, by now, I've managed to equip my home with most of the essentials. I've a microwave oven (for the first time in 3 years), a water boiler, a rice cooker and a combined mop and vacuum cleaner. I also have figured out where to put most of my books, so any week now I'll be able to empty that last suitcase and clear the Pile Of Stuff off of my floor. Any week now.

In other news, I've hooked up with the Stanford German Stammtisch - with a whole bunch of cool Germans gone to Stanford to study or do research. I've filed my interest in joining the Stanford Scandinavian Club for their Crayfish party. I've secured a (very unofficial) place in the SLOrk this term. And I've seen a Jewish street festival - with live Klezmer, community dancing and weird food.

The saga of My Computer continues. It got upgraded to a debacle today, when the department chief administrator joined the fun. Apparently, currently, people in Procurement are running around blaming each other and generally generating conflict, while the high-ups in my department are actively waving a Bunsen burner beneath all bottoms to get the paperwork in order to order me a laptop. We'll see how this all progresses.

Also, an early heads-up all you east-coasters. It seems I might end up going to Pennsylvania again in mid-late December for a while. If anyone wanna meet up, that'd be one of the more ideal times.

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Date: 2008-09-18 23:15 Subject: Seriously? Security: Public Mood: speechless

Seriously!

I wanted to figure out where I need to go to get my Social Security Number tomorrow morning. So I go onto ssa.gov and use their office locator.

And it's closed for the night.

A webpage search tool.

What moron included in the spec of that webpage that it should lose its usability at 1am est? And WHY??

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Date: 2008-09-14 22:39 Subject: Weekly report: getting a shower and friends Security: Public Mood: content

So, another week past, another update due.

Apartment troubles

I was promised move-in on Monday. So Monday, I went out to the lease agency and asked to be moved in.
'What makes you think you can just walk in here and expect us to have everything ready?' was the first answer I got.
It then progressed. All I required was for the carpet to be replaced by ordinary hard floor. It turns out that instead, they'd remodeled the bathroom and hadn't touched the floor. And there was I - my professor scheduled to drive my bags up at 1am, and my furniture to arrive at 4pm. No apartment.
After a lot of back-and-forth, they eventually put me overnight in another apartment in the same block, and even - by some fluke - received my furniture for me.

The next day I was supposed to be moved in at 11am. Turns out, though, that my seller was off work to go to a funeral, and the manager wouldn't appear until her lunch break at 12.30. I ended up getting two kids from the maintenance crew to carry down my bed and replace the locks for me. So I had an apartment.

Only ... the bathroom had been remodeled. So it didn't actually have any of the plumbing in place. At all.

And in the week to come, a farce would play around this apartment. I'd grow fed up just before noon, and go to work; noone'd be able to come do anything that early, and I'd have stuff to do in the evenings. Eventually, on Friday, I simply staid put until everything was done. This at least helped.

In the end, it all got fixed, and they even knocked $200 off of my next rent, so it's not all bad.

Computers and connectivity

As of Friday, I have internet at home. This was a refreshing change of pace from my German experiences. However, the plans to have me set up with a work laptop have met with about as much resistance as the home situation.

It turns out that if you're in the US, Apple won't actually sell you laptops with Swedish keyboards. They can find the part numbers, but can't actually place the order. Our current plan is to get someone in Sweden (or Germany) to receive my laptop and then mail it on to us. Meanwhile, I surf from my cell phone at home, and we'll be setting up a work desktop next week as an interim solution.

Work

I've gotten started, a bit, on my work stuff - and immediately discovered that WHOA! topology really is quite different from homological algebra, and I still have quite a bit to learn before I'm up to speed. Things like 'What is cohomology, really' are much trickier than I expected, and de Rham cohomology gets VERY cryptic for someone who tricked his way out of even the vector calculus course. I am waaaaay underprepared for things this close to analysis! I've taken to reading a bunch of introductory works to get up to speed, and have something like two courses each in Winter and Spring I'll need to audit. Yikes!

Friends

As some of you might know or have noticed, I tend to have large circles of friends, and will be unhappy if I don't. Thus, one high priority post-arrival action item has been to find new friends. Alas, my timing for this sucks. Stanford quals start next week, and classes the week after, so the past two weeks, camous has been pretty empty. Also, any of the organized things I'd go to - like Swing Kids, or the campus gaming group - aren't around because we're not actually in the normal term time yet. Thus, I've been feeling a bit lonelt at times.

However, I found the SIlicon Valley coder geek crowd! Planet Haskell tipped me off to a talk about the Real World Haskell book project that I went to. There they told me about the BayPIGgies meeting the day after, which I also went to. Between these two events, with attached dinners at fast food joints, I've made at least 3-4 friends good enough to poke and ask to spend time with. Thus, today me and two programmers went to a Peet's in Palo Alto and played Fluxx and Bohnanza ocer coffee/chai latte, and rhen had dinner at a gyros joint.

Nice!

Also, when Susanne visits in October, we'll go see Neil Gaiman live.

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Date: 2008-09-09 16:50 Subject: Oi, pozorvlak Security: Public

http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=355

I’d like to issue a plea to any mathematicians and scientists who might be reading: please go easier on the extreme outdoor activities. Let those who live for such things demonstrate their daring by gambling their lives; those who live for the ages can find safer recreations. The world needs more nerds, not fewer.

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Date: 2008-09-08 13:53 Subject: Rental troubles Security: Public

Last week:
Salesman: "We'll rip out the carpeting and have a floor laid in until Monday. You'll be able to move in Monday, no problem."

Today:
Me: "Hi, I was going to move in today."
Various comments from the rental agency:
"You can't expect to just come in here, Monday morning, and think we'll have everything done!"
"Your studio isn't ready. They haven't touched the carpet. Instead, they've been remodeling your bathroom. But they say they'll be done tomorrow at 11am."
Manager on site: "Whaddaya mean you're supposed to MOVE IN now? Nobody told me that! You can't move in HERE! It's not DONE! I don't like this ONE BIT!"


Current status: they think they'll have my studio done by tomorrow. The manager'll get me another unit, "much nicer", in the same house to tide me over. My belongings are locked in the container she uses to store Various Items in.

Oh, and I still need to get lunch somehow.

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Date: 2008-09-07 11:50 Subject: Week 1 in Stanford Security: Public

Inspired by my beloved wife's amerikabrev, I probably also should sit down and write a weekly journal entry, summarizing the latest events.

Traveling

The trip here went well. I was met up by David Green and his wife in the morning, and we packed all my luggage into their car and drove over to Weimar. There, Michael Hinz met up with us, and we were just settling for a cup of coffee when I discovered that the 20 minutes margin to the train departure we'd arrived with was gobbled up completely by waiting for Mrs. Green to park, for Micha to appear, and for everyone to order.

So I grabbed my cookie, my coke, and a few of my bags, Micha a few more, and David the luggage cart, and we raced up to the platform - arriving just as the train did. A hasty goodbye, and then off I went.

In Frankfurt, I was met by Markus Lilienthal, and we navigated - somehow - out to his apartment. Seeing the stairs, we decided to just lock my four trolleys to the railing of his staircase, instead of shlepping them all the way up, only to get them down again the next morning. Markus and I then cooked, watched TV-series, played computer games and chatted through the evening. The next morning, he took off for work early, and I went to the airport by door-to-door shuttle bus.

As usual, checkin was painless and easy. By some miracle, my bags all weighed in at about 500-1500g below the sharp weight limit, so I didn't even have to fuzz over my packing skills. And once the bags were gone, so was the need for me to hurry, at all. I leisurely browsed around for a while, went through security, and relaxed. Along the way, I got rid of the last of my Euros by eating an early lunch at an American-style diner, just before the gate entrance security check.

Once in London, again I had a bit of time to just browse around. I found a shop that wasn't only selling alcohol in insane amounts - but also giving some away! They had a promotional stand for Bombay Sapphire, giving away small drink recipe leaflets and mixing the drinks in the leaflet on demand. So, inspired by the lady before me, I asked for a Bombay Bramble: Bombay Sapphire, Lemon juice, Sugar syrup, Crème de Mure (blackberry liqueur) and blackberries. And all of a sudden I realized what hadn't been apparent when drinking Bombay Sapphire on the rocks: it has a wonderfully subtle, mintish, touch to the taste.

Then off over the Atlantic. After the boarding pass check, but before actually reaching the plane, I got picked out for a bag search, and had to open all bags up and let an airport official look through them. Once on the flight, I discovered that my middle-seat had MUCH less leg room than expected, and politely asked one of the stewardesses to be moved. Just before liftoff, they picked me up, and sat me just by one of the wing exits, in a row with just two seats, instead of three. JOY!

During the trip, I caught up on a few movies and tv-series I'd been meaning to see: Iron man, The Big Bang Theory, and rewatched a few I liked: Kung Fu Panda, and a few I couldn't bear watching through: You Don't Mess With The Zohan and All The President's Men (which I was watching when they rebooted the entire system, and didn't feel like restarting...)

And then I was in San Fransisco, late afternoon, figuring out the door-to-door transfer bus system, and getting billed extra for the ride because I had too many and too heavy bags.

Initial bureaucracy

Wednesday and onwards, I spent trying to get all my paperwork in order. This, it turns out, is a long exercise in dodging Catches 22. I seem to be required to acquire a California driver's license within the first 10 days. This requires a Social Security Number. Which I won't be able to even apply for until it's been 10 days after Bechtel International Center confirmed my arrival to the DHS.

Also, I'm currently on an AT&T prepaid cellphone plan. I want to convert me and my wife to an AT&T family plan. This, however, requires me to go through the hoops AT&T has in place - which include having a SSN. Even with an SSN, I can expect to need to deposit somewhere in the range $150-$250, but without it, I'd be looking at a minimum deposit of $1000.

Getting hooked up to the internet, though, was much easier. I ran into a Comcast sales agent in a WalMart. Five minutes later, I was scheduled to get hooked up with a 4Mbps/384kbps DSL plan, rented modem, student offer giving me a monthly fee of $28 for the first 9 months, and with no contractual obligations to stay on specific times.

I'm still working on the insurance bit. The web tools won't give me accurate quotes, since they won't accept a German adress as my previous lodging.

New lodgings

I got hold of an apartment! Wednesday afternoon, I met up with a salesman from Woodland Park, who manage a bunch of gated community blocks just on the Palo Alto side of Freeway 101. Formally, they're still in the city of East Palo Alto, which has recovered a bit from it's 1992 position as murder capital of the US (42 murders on a city population of 24k). My apartment - a neat small studio on the bottom floor of a two-story apartment complex - got its carpeting torn out and replaced by laminated floor tiles since Wednesday, as having an apartment without a wall-to-wall carpet is high among my preferences: my asthma really doesn't like wall-to-wall carpets.

And to my surprise, they agreed! It took a slight rent increase: instead of $1000/month, I'll be paying $1100/month - but it still stays within the parameters I was hoping for.

And so, I went to IKEA on Friday, to make sure I have furniture to fill the room up with. Queen sized bed, linen, quilt, pillow, table, chairs, bedside table, bookcase, drawers, kitchen utensils, and so on... One $800 shopping spree later, and I have a decently equipped home that'll be delivered on Monday afternoon.

Speaking of IKEA, it really shows that we're in the US. IKEA sells Swedish meatballs in their restaurant. Either with mashed potatoes (a pathetic little blob), or with Mac'n'Cheese.

Empty campus

The Quals start in a week. The academic year starts in two weeks. Hence, the campus currently is almost completely empty. Buses don't run on weekends. The special buses (Midnight Shuttle and Shopping Express) don't run at all. And all the social activities I'd have liked to join have yet to start. The Stanford Swing Kids haven't even updated their webpage to reflect the coming quarter.

And so I sit here, slightly starved on social interactions.

Finding my boss

To make the isolation seem even worse, my Professor was out of town all of last week. He did arrive in on Saturday though, and I got to - mainly - say "Hi" before his already scheduled meeting started. But at least I've shown my face. :-)

He agreed to help me move into my apartment on Monday too - he'll drive me and my insane pile of luggage from my motel to my apartment on Monday early afternoon.

And then I should get started with mathematics. My first scheduled collaborator is here already - and we should start talking over our plans in detail during this coming week. And my laptop should be arriving as well. Access to all computer systems is already settled - theoretically I have everything I need to get going.

The weather

I have yet to see a single day without glaring sun, clear blue skies, and yellow, wilting grass. Watching the news reports, though, makes for good distraction: hurricanes and tropical storms over the southeastern states. And an earthquake just a bit inland, in the East Bay area. Not that I noticed anything at all...

They promise fog (the closest we get to rain before december, it seems), and thereto connected drops in temperature from the ~100F/~40C we've seen all the time so far. I've come to value the AC unit in my motel room very highly.

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Date: 2008-09-06 17:20 Subject: Birthday plans Security: Public

This year is unusual. My birthday is coming up, and I still just barely know with whom I'll be celebrating at all, not to mention how. Normally, my birthday parties have some sort of thought behind them, I'd invite everyone I know (more or less) home, and there'd be many nice people and good things to eat and much fun.

This year, I just arrived in Stanford. I know only a few here. And all the usual venues to get to know more people haven't quite geared up yet, since the academic year hasn't started yet. Hence, herewith, my call to anyone regularly reading me.

Are you in the Bay Area? Would you like to go out on a pub somewhere with me, and probably sigfpe, and celebrate my birthday with a drink or three? Poke me!

(complexzeta - I know you used to be hereabouts. Are you still in the area? Care to meet up?)

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Date: 2008-09-02 10:23 Subject: Liftoff imminent Security: Public

With about an hour left to liftoff, I'm now through security and passport controls and sit in a reasonably comfortable airport chair waiting for boarding. I have a good view over the hustle and bustle out on the tarmac.

While my bags are so heavily packed that they start breaking down from the strain of their contents, checkin was surprisingly unannoying. My only beef, really, is that web checkin malfunctioned, forcing me to check in on the airport, which in turn gave me less great seats thsn I'd have hoped for. Specifically, I got a middle seat for the long haul - which is quite a nuisance.

Anyway. 17 hours from now I'll be in California.

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Date: 2008-08-27 17:06 Subject: Suuuuuushi Security: Public

I've had a craving for good sushi for ... well ... most of the past week.

And at the same time, I carry a voice in my head telling me that
1) the sushi in Jena ... REALLY sucks.
2) the sushi in Jena ... is rather expensive.
3) within a week, I'll be in the Bay Area. Where there's bound to be BETTER sushi to be had.

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Date: 2008-08-26 17:44 Subject: A year and a day Security: Public

But with an eye to eternity together.

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Date: 2008-08-25 08:55 Subject: Välkommen till LiveJournal... Security: Public

... min kära amerikabrev. Rese/gradschool-blog för min älskade hustru S. I första numret: CUNT diskvalificerat i Scrabble med mormoner, nedgångna törnrosastäder och ett autentiskt Root-Beer-recept.

English summary: My wife just appeared on Livejournal, writing a travel/gradschool-blog as amerikabrev.

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Date: 2008-08-21 14:23 Subject: Random Bullets of Leaving Security: Public

* I'm currently a tourist in Jena, instead of a citizen. I terminated my registration today, not wanting to deal with it later on.
* My visum has arrived. The piece of paper stating my and the University's agreement to terminate my contract still hasn't.
* Oh gods! how am I -EVER- going to fit everything I want to bring into the bags I'm planning on bringing???
* Real work? Yeah right. I'll have my hands more than full dealing with moving stuff: no time left for mathematics.
* It seems it'll be one of the lonelier birthdays I've ever had. A week'll be too little time to build the kind of circles of friends I'm used to having around for a birthday celebration.
* S arrived in one piece and seems very happy with her reception at Ypsilanti.
* Money problems suck.
* My application for grant money now has come out of evaluation. It will be decided upon pretty much simultaneously with my move.
* How to cancel the cellphone plan:
1) Convert it to an essentially prepaid plan.
2) Cancel that plan effective September 30.
* I'll be able to give away a lot of my kitchen stuff to the guest house I'm living in. Also, I'll be throwing away / giving away at least 2 IKEA bags stuffed to the bursting point with clothes. Gotta figure out if there's some charity in Jena I can dump them with.

Can't think of more rbol right now. There will be more, later, however.

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Date: 2008-08-21 10:41 Subject: Food meme Security: Public

From http://unapologetic.wordpress.com

I have eaten…

* Venison: yes
* Nettle tea: no
* Huevos rancheros: no
* Steak tartare: no
* Crocodile: no
* Black pudding: yes
* Cheese fondue: mmmmmmmm, yes
* Carp: yes
* Borscht: yes
* Baba ghanoush: yes, but I don't like eggplant...
* Calamari: yes
* Pho: I think so, yes...
* PB&J sandwich: yes
* Aloo gobi: probably not
* Hot dog from a street cart: yes
* Epoisses: no - but it sure looks good
* Black truffle: no
* Fruit wine made from something other than grapes: yes
* Steamed pork buns: yes
* Pistachio ice cream: yes
* Heirloom tomatoes: no
* Fresh wild berries: yes
* Foie gras: no
* Rice and beans: yes
* Brawn, or head cheese: no
* Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper: yes
* Dulce de leche: yes
* Oysters: no
* Baklava: yes
* Bagna cauda: no
* Wasabi peas: yes
* Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl: no, but gulasch in a sourdough bowl, and wild mushroom soup in a wheat bread bowl
* Salted lassi: no
* Sauerkraut: yes, yuk
* Root beer float: no
* Cognac with a fat cigar: no - never touched cigars
* Clotted cream tea: yes
* Vodka jelly/Jell-O: yes
* Gumbo: yes
* Oxtail: yes
* Curried goat: no
* Whole insects: no
* Phaal: no
* Goat’s milk: no
* Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$130 or more: yes
* Fugu: no
* Chicken tikka masala: yes
* Eel: yes
* Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut: yes
* Sea urchin: no
* Prickly pear: no
* Umeboshi: no
* Abalone: no
* Paneer: yes
* McDonald’s Big Mac Meal: yes
* Spaetzle: yes
* Dirty gin martini: yes
* Beer above 8% ABV: yes
* Poutine: no
* Carob chips: no
* S’mores: yes
* Sweetbreads: no
* Kaolin: whu? Google seems to think this to be a mineral.
* Currywurst: yes - and I know where to get the best Currywurst+fries in Berlin
* Durian: no
* Frogs’ legs: yes
* Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake: no, yes, no, yes - funnel cakes are an integral part of my wife's family's christmas celebration
* Haggis: yes
* Fried plantain: yes
* Chitterlings, or andouillette: no
* Gazpacho: yes
* Caviar and blini: yes - standard fare in my family, I have our recipe memorized
* Louche absinthe: yes
* Gjetost, or brunost: yes
* Roadkill: probably no
* Baijiu: no
* Hostess Fruit Pie: no
* Snail: yes
* Lapsang souchong: yes
* Bellini: no
* Tom yum: yes
* Eggs Benedict: yes
* Pocky: yes
* Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant: no
* Kobe beef: no
* Hare: yes
* Goulash: yes - in Budapest, as well as our family recipe
* Flowers: yes
* Horse: yes
* Criollo chocolate: no
* Spam: yes
* Soft shell crab: yes
* Rose harissa: yes
* Catfish: no
* Mole poblano: yes
* Bagel and lox: yes
* Lobster Thermidor: no
* Polenta: yes
* Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee: no
* Snake: no
* Elk: yes
* Ostrich: yes
* Moose: yes - is this really different from elk???
* Whole hog BBQ.: yes
* Wine @ >$400/bottle.: no
* Home made bacon/sausage: yes
* Chocolate and chilis: yes
* Moonshine: no
* Quail eggs: yes
* Monkfish liver: no
* Live scallop: no
* Fried chicken giblets: yes
* Duck cracklings: no
* Grappa: no
* Amarguinha: no
* Applejack: no
* Cavy: no
* Lambic: no
* Sauternes or Tokay: yes
* Skate (or ray): yes
* Szechuan peppercorns: no
* Tiết canh: no

And some of my own to add to the mix:

* Surströmming - fermented hering
* Kloß - German boiled potato dumplings
* Hefeklösse
* Crayfish
* Lussekatter - saffron sweet bread eaten to the feast of Lucia
* Nürnberg Bratwurst
* Thüringer Bratwurst
* Steak-in-a-bun from a street vendor
* Khinkali - Georgian dumplings

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Date: 2008-08-15 21:05 Subject: Birthday meme Security: Public

Meme from reynardo.

Wikipedia your birthday and pick 4 events, 3 births, 2 deaths, and 1 holiday:

Four Events
1543 - Mary Stuart, at nine months old, is crowned "Queen of Scots" in the central Scottish town of Stirling.
1776 - The Continental Congress officially names their new union of sovereign states the United States.
1947 - First actual case of a computer bug being found: a moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University.
1993 - The Palestine Liberation Organization officially recognizes Israel as a legitimate state.

Three Births
1737 - Luigi Galvani, Italian physician and physicist (d. 1798)
1828 - Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist (d. 1910)
1941 - Dennis Ritchie, American computer scientist

Two Deaths
1901 - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter (b. 1864)
1976 - Mao Zedong, Founder and first leader of the People's Republic of China (b. 1893)

One Holiday
California - Admission Day (to commemorate the state's admission to the USA).

Bonus mention: in the eastern Orthodoxy, September 9th is the day to celebrate the Holy and Righteous Ancestors of God Saint Joachim and Saint Anne (parents of Mary the Mother of God)

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Date: 2008-08-10 16:25 Subject: Luggage rates Security: Public

I just checked out BAs rules on luggage.

And got a really NICE surprise!

We understand that there are times when you will need to exceed this limit. Therefore, from November 2008, a flat fee of £25 GBP will be applied to bags weighing more than 23kg (51lbs). This charge is to cover the additional handling that bags weighing over 23kg (51lbs) can attract.

Until this charge is implemented, we will continue to accept a single piece of baggage weighing up to 32kg (70lbs) without charge.

Since I'll be travelling in September, not November, they won't charge me for checking in 30kg bags.

Also - I can purchase, ahead of time, additional bags to carry with me for £60 each bag. This means that for a mere extra €75 extra I can bring 30kg extra along! YAY!

It's gonna make navigating at the airport obnoxious. But I'm only moving so often, so I can take that.

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Date: 2008-08-09 12:31 Subject: Deflating gracefully Security: Public Tags: jmc jmc2008

It's over.

It's done.

The week is through, and most of our participants are now on their way back home. A handful - mainly Bulgarians and Italians - have train and bus connections that don't leave until Sunday, so now they are in Weimar, sightseeing.

It's been intense. And a lot of fun. The kids were happy, we were proud, and everyone satisfied.

We've had a very broad spectrum of talks: from the tips and tricks for IMO-talks to analyses of systems of PDEs or exposes of projective 3-manifolds.

What surprised me this year were two things: First of the participants - we got more, and to some extent better, projects here than I remember from Stockholm and Miskolc. And second the press reactions. The university press office has been cooperating very closely with the congress organisation - and as a result we've been in one radio spot, two TV spots and about 10 different newspaper articles. I spent Monday and Tuesday almost exclusively talking to journalists. And, more surprisingly, the press coverage we've been getting hasn't been horribly wrong!!!!!

Now, however, it's time for a vacation. Taking care of my visum application (including the embassy trip) during the time I was one of the main organizers of the Junior Mathematical Congress, while not as taxing as organizing the European Mathematical Congress simultaneously, still was a bit more than I would have wanted to handle. However, with not all too many mishaps, my visum is on its way, my flight is booked and I have lodgings in Los Altos. Along El Camino Real, and within acceptable walking distance from Stanford.

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Date: 2008-08-03 12:16 Subject: The good, the bad and the ugly Security: Public

Good: The Junior Mathematical Congress is about to launch, and things are looking darned solid! Also, we're getting media buzz: I'll be interviewed in German TV (ARD) and Radio (MDR-Figaro) tomorrow, who both are doing reports on the congress.

And my paperwork for the US Visa is coming through.

Bad: On Monday, I need to care about:
1) Receiving and coordinating the press
2) Talking to the Dignitaries for the opening ceremony
3) Moderating one congress session
4) Moderating the opening ceremony
5) Two different interviews, getting hold of students to feed to the media monsters and more
6) As it turns out, getting a visa interview slot at the embassy

Ugly: I need to pay three different fees for my visum application. One of them is done. One of them went from "Unknown technical error" to "Down for maintenance" since yesterday. And one of them refuses to accept payment from credit cards that do cover the fee requested; and only accepts phoned in appointments weekdays 7-20. So I'm going to need to deal with the embassy DURING the Monday-from-hell.

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Date: 2008-08-01 18:04 Subject: What I did today... Security: Public

The TV station MDR, part of the national TV station ARD, want to do a spot about the Junior Mathematical Congress. And I'm responsible for our press contacts.

So it's up to me to talk with them about what works.

It turns out, that in order to get ARD interested, it needs to be ready to send Tuesday at 1pm, and so needs to be produced on Monday. Monday is the day when EVERYTHING happens at once. I need to moderate the opening ceremony and the morning session, and then deal with an oral exam I have to sit in on in the afternoon.

And now, as it turns out, also be interviewed for TV.

Oh, and they want sexy illustrations. Like. This one talk here, Optimal strategies in mathematical game theory - that's with cool computer graphics, right? Like WoW or Counterstrike or something? Right?

Or Billiards! Can you get a cool Billiards animation for us?

Or the pretzels! Can you get something cool that moves for us?

Y'know, if you cannot get anything cool that moves, you won't get to be on national TV. Just saying...

At last, when office hours here died out, I got hold of a nice lady at AK Peters, who would try to get hold of Klaus Peters at whatever conference he's currently at, and ask him whether they can give ARD rights to show excerpts from their Not Knot on German television. She hopes she can get back to me during the night.

And they want a student they can shadow with a full TV team. Throughout the day. Preferably one who's gonna give a talk. Because, you know, they won't be nervous enough already WITHOUT a TV-camera following their every move...

Oh, and the laptop projector glitches. And the security guard doesn't understand what I'm asking for when I want to borrow the wearable microphones. And apparently, according to a baked goods saleswoman, I have a very weird German accent.

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Date: 2008-07-30 10:40 Subject: That pizza meme Security: Public

Want to find out what pizza you and I can share? Put your name in the box next to mine and click the button to find out!

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Date: 2008-07-17 15:30 Subject: Magna Cum Laude Security: Public

And I now am a Doctor rerum naturalium.

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Date: 2008-07-16 13:26 Subject: 24h 35m to go... Security: Public

...and I still haven't even STARTED thinking about my thesis presentation. Gleh!

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Date: 2008-07-09 21:10 Subject: Show, don't tell Security: Public

The slacktivist series on Left Behind often talks about how "Show, don't tell" is a good adage of writing that the authors of Left Behind tend not to follow.

This particular adage, and the power of following it, and the haplessness of not following it, were ilulstrated very clearly to me just recently.

I've had The Manchurian Candidate flagged for some time as a movie I really should watch. So, yesterday I picked it up from the local video rental and watched it. I ended up being somewhat disappointed, since the movie featured Wycleaf Jean instead of Frank Sinatra, the Gulf War instead of the Korea War and An Evil Biogenetics Megacorp instead of Evil Communist Top Brass. In addition, to add insult to injury, the elegant symbolisms used in the 1962 version were almost completely removed from the modern version.

Now, that I'm watching the 1962 original today, I notice repeatedly how much better it is than the remake. One of the many reasons is that it actually SHOWS the ghastliness of the ghastly characters. Instead of the Manipulative Mother doing Something Bad to scare away the Love Interest and force The Main Character into the army, the old version shows The Main Character reminiscing about his Summer of Love with the Love Interest, and how The Mother then talks him into breaking up with her because of her being, as it were, A Daughter Of The Communist Enemy.

Similar examples are sprinkled throughout. There simply is an elegance to the storytelling in the original, that is completely eradicated in the remake.

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Date: 2008-06-25 15:59 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

That book meme.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them
5) Put a star next to those you've only partially read.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible *
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis I'm with reynardo: Why the repeat between this and no 33?
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - why is there no code here for "and HATED HATED HATED it"?
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle *
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - saw the movie?
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Only 29? And a surprising amount of these were school assignments!

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Date: 2008-06-25 12:19 Subject: Where I'm going next Security: Public

...and what's currently happening there:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010367.html

Hopefully the fires'll have died down by the time I move. Otherwise, I'll be very afraid.

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Date: 2008-06-25 11:11 Subject: Summer? What's that? Security: Public

fluffboll is sharing her summer plans. I could do the same:

29 June - 5 July:

Oberwolfach conference on Computational Algebraic Topology

8 July:

First oral exam for the PhD

9 July:

Second oral exam for the PhD

10 July - 13 July:

Tingsryd, Småland, Sweden - my grandpa is celebrating his 80th

14 July:

Prof. Ron Umble, one of my external thesis examiners, arrives in Jena

17 July:

Thesis defense; family arrives in Jena

19 - 20 July:

Tourism in Berlin with my family, my wife and Prof. Umble

20 - 25 July:

Algebraic structures in Geometry and Physics in Leicester

25 - 27 July:

Visit Anders Sandberg in Oxford

3 - 9 August:

Junior Mathematical Congress in Jena

And that - mid-August - is more or less where my event horizon lies. I know I'll go to Stanford, once my visum clears. When that happens, I don't quite know.

Hopefully I'll get time to do some heavy-duty relaxing after the Congress. I'm starting to notice that I might need it.

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Date: 2008-06-20 19:08 Subject: All the other cool kids do it. Security: Public

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Date: 2008-06-18 21:33 Subject: Big Brother comes to Sweden Security: Public

And now "Lex Orwell" has been approved by the Swedish Parliament. A law concerning guidelines for our military signal intelligence that stipulates that the Institute of Military Radio Surveillance is tasked with tapping and analyzing all wire-bound communication passing the Swedish border (including, due to routing, all mobile phone traffic, all non-ISP-internal traffic, all SMSs, ...) and this with minimal control systems. Among the reasons advanced for this law, we see arguments such as The TERRORISTS are coming!!, We want to be able to sell information abroad et.c.

I weep for my country tonight.

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Date: 2008-06-17 19:44 Subject: Announcements Security: Public

Good news has been trickling in at a decent speed the past few days.

• All my thesis evaluation reports have arrived as of yesterday. In three weeks I can start taking my oral exams, and in a month, my thesis defense is scheduled.
  
• All the events in the previous bullet have been scheduled today. I'll be tested on
  
  
  
  • homological invariants in commutative algebra on July 8 at 11.
    
  • cluster computing on July 9 at 13.
    
  • Thesis defense on July 17 at 14.
    
  
  
• Gunnar Carlsson at Stanford tells me that the ONR grant he wants to hire me on is coming through. As soon as the paperwork at Stanford gets done, he'll write the formal invitation, but I am to view it as a done deal already. So - come autumn, as soon as my visum clears, I'm going to California.
  

So, I'm about a month away from a doctorate. And less than half a year away from a multi-year postdoc at Stanford.

Life is good. Intense. Stressful. But essentially good.

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Date: 2008-06-14 15:12 Subject: Cute meme Security: Public

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don't speak often, please post a comment with a memory of you and me. It can be anything you want -- good or bad. When you're finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people remember about you.

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Date: 2008-06-12 15:57 Subject: Things I need to do Security: Public

Next week was packed as it was. I have two separate teaching sessions, and the weekly seminar, and I need to pack my apartment for the move I plan to make July 21-22.
I also need to spend at least 2h a day on studying for my oral exams.

Since yesterday, though, my schedule for next week went nova. It now seems to include one fullday seminar on general purpose GPU programming on NVidias platform on Monday, displacing one of my two teaching sessions - and one fullday departmental conference about an externally funded research project cluster on "Complex systems" that kinda sorta almost includes Algebra in its various definitions on Friday.

Friday was the day I thought I could displace the teaching from Monday onto.

The Friday session also is kinda important to the workgroup and kinda REALLY important to the things I've chosen to care about over time. They're going to discuss building a Jena supercomputing cluster. And applications thereof. Including topological applications. And they're going to discuss blogging and Web2.0 in science communication.

All of which are issues I've involved myself in. Heavily. I really -really- REALLY should be there.

And thus, all my time disappears.

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Date: 2008-05-29 23:02 Subject: Five questions meme Security: Public Tags: meme

Actual posing of questions might be dependent on my workload. I'll try - but then I still haven't been able to cover the photo request meme from way back.

1. Leave me a comment saying anything random, like your favourite lyric to your current favourite song. Or your favourite kind of sandwich. Something random. Whatever you like.
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be asked, you will ask them five questions.

Questions from thette:
( Memeage )

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Date: 2008-05-25 13:59 Subject: All the little angels Security: Public

While we have a lot of lilacs here in Jena, they all tend to be bloomed out, and half-brown, by the Glorious 25th of May. Not that I'd wear one today - I wasn't there - but still.

Even so, the plight of having early lilacs is nothing compared to the plight I know some of you suffer under: having no, or next to no lilacs. All my life - even before Pratchett wrote Night Watch - have I looked forward to the lilac season, and I still love and adore the smell of lilacs in the air.

Hence. For silmaril and other unfortunates. Here is a Jena lilac. May your lives fill with as many fond memories as mine does.