More than a holiday

Seems I start my PhD on monday. Scary shit. I've always thought I'm the only person like me, out on the extremes everywhere. How many people get accepted for PhD candidature and get arrested in the same fortnight?

Probably only for Ben and Rick

I've decided to make a blog for dumping questions I don't know the answer to in the hopes one of you know the answer or know somebody who does.
helpmyphd.blogspot.com

Who knows, dumping random questions may prove fruitful, at the very least it is guiltless procrastination. First question which is on there, is what is a stratified manifold?

Are we human, or are we dancer?

The song "Human" by The Killers has recently been receiving a bit of airplay and I must say when I first heard it I was curious as to what is was about. People tend to bag out the lyrics thinking it's pointless and arbitrary, however in an interview with Brandon Flowers (vocalist, keyboardist, lyricist of The Killers) he said he put a great deal of thought into the lyrics. The line "Are we human, or are we dancer?" is a reference to a comment made by controversial journalist and author Hunter S. Thomson saying that we were raising a generation of dancers. With that in mind I invite you to listen to the song and read the lyrics again.

I did my best to notice, when the call came down the line
Up to the platform of surrender, I was brought but I was kind
But sometimes I get nervous when I see an open door
Close your eyes clear your heart, cut the cord

Are we human, or are we dancer
My sign is vital my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human, or are we dancer

Pay my respects to grace and virture, send my condolences to good
Give my regards to soul and romance, they always did the best they could
And so long to devotion you taught me everything I know
Wave good bye wish me well, you've gotta let me go

Are we human, or are we dancer
My sign is vital my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human, or are we dancer

Will your system be alright?
When you dream of home tonight
There is no message we're receiving
Let me know, is your heart still beating?

Are we human, or are we dancer
My sign is vital my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human, or are we dancer
You've gotta let me know

Are we human, or are we dancer
My sign is vital my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human, or are we dancer
You've gotta let me know

Are we human, or are we dancer
Are we human, or are we dancer



That aside, from looking for the name of the journo who said that, I ended up on an astrology page. I really should read up about the real ideas of astrology, all the tidal forces crap. I mean I know I've done the calculation and the position of Jupiter has less gravitational forces acting on me than the house next door but just maybe all this full moon shit has some kind of truth behind how it works. Maybe tidal forces really do mess with our brains? Some reading for another time

She's so lovely

Well this distinct lack of money is really starting to hit me hard. I have around $300 between my wallet and two accounts and no income. I have to pick up my new contact lenses "whenever I can" which cost $260 so don't see that happening in a hurry. Also there is the obvious Christmas coming up and at some point they are going to ask for money for that rather expensive window.

Man I dunno what else to say today. Emailed somebody else from uni so still waiting to find out about PhD. Felt slightly more motivated the other day so who knows, maybe I will be able to do it. Can't wait to get the income more than anything. Still seeking somebody to live with.

But only if you told me to

So since I last blogged. What's new?

Ah yes, I have disowned my father and been arrested. Both kind of happened at the same time. How exciting. Somehow I'm not as depressed as I would normally be. Normally when shit like this happens I'm pretty depressed for days. Maybe I'm fixed.

The thing that gets me most about Friday night, is that breaking that window is something my dad would do (and has done), and the fight was pretty much us blaming each other for the shit relationship we have and oh yeh I think the point that broke me was when he said something along the lines of I wish I'd never knocked you're mother up then I wouldn't have to worry about all this shit and drove off.

Ah, everybody though I had the perfect family life growing up(well at least Sean said that to me once a few years ago). Oh how very wrong they were.

Confusing stars for satellites

Note: This post seems to have no real structure.

This is now the 7th week since bball started and I'm about to play my second game. Hopefully. First game we played, 3 mins into the second game I had to be taken to emergency, Bye, Public hol, other team forfeit, other team was a no-show.
So freaking unfit too.

For a second I considered Amy's 101 goals thing, but I don't think I have the patience for it. But it might be interesting to have a crack at it over the next few weeks.

Been making a reasonable attempt to lose weight and get fitter. Kinda worked for a bit, but I think it's going to be a real struggle for me to keep weight off since I can't eat healthy, I can only eat less of the unhealthy stuff. Speaking off I might have my breakfast coffee now.

I was reading old blogs the other day out of interest. I came across the birth of the yoda (and chewbacca :S) among other things.

I've managed to cut back on getting drunk recently. Only time I've had too much to legally drive in last 2 weeks was singstar night, and I was far from being one of the drunker ones. Ah hangover how I haven't missed you.

The father, son and the holy ghost

Why is getting drunk so much fun? I really think I need to cut back on it. From now on I'm limited to drinking twice a week max... that sounds pretty bad actually. Twice a week is a goal to aim for. Hmmm, perhaps I should aim for once a week, either Friday or Saturday too. No more epic Tuesdays or Thursdays.

On that note: Singstar at my place this weekend? Either friday or saturday, what suits folks best?

It don't matter where I lay my head tonight

Well since I've last posted I've become single again. But everybody reading this already knows that. Also (almost) everybody reading this has been talking about it. Hopefully not too much though... I like talking about other people more :P

I'm really struggling to find motivation to get back into my PhD, unfortunately I've enjoyed all this time off far too much. There has also been a whole lot of recent epic. Which has taken a severe toll on my cash-pile and gives me more motivation to start this PhD to get scholarship money coming in.

Still looking for people to live with... Any takers?

Some conversation, no contemplation

Went in to uni yesterday to speak to prospective supervisor, since he is finally back in the country. Seems he went somewhere and would be back later so i waited 3 and a half hours and gave up and went home. About to go back in again today to see him.

Really quite scared about doing this PhD. I really don't know if I'll be able to motivate myself to do it. So far everything in my life has been cruise along into the next logical step. Sometimes it really amazes me how things turn out though. I nearly dropped out of school at the end of year 10 after passing three subjects in second semester with pretty crudalicious marks. I was also torn between law and joining an acting school and slowly over VCE I decided I was going to be a programmer. By some corny twist of fate (so-to-speak), the next logical course of action is to complete a PhD in mathematical physics. Who would have thought. Also really amazes me who we end up friends with and why.

All eyes on me will be met

PhD application has been lodged. Now I shall seek motivation under rocks etc.

The prospective supervisor is due back on Saturday so I'll try to get hold of him on Monday and try to organise starting something.

Holy crap Tuesday was a haze of drunkenness. Only have about 5 images in my head to figure out the rest of the night with. One of which is Hoogendork on the bonnet of the car going through the maccas drive-through. Two more are of him and Rach barfing.

Gotta be somebody

I finally got a reply from my prospective supervisor for my PhD. By the looks of the email I think he may have already though he spoke to me about a PhD because he gave me a list of possible project ideas. So I have to have a look at them and write a short research proposal asap.

1. spherical EYM with non-vanishing electric fields (SSEYMe)

2. spherical massless scalar field (SSEMSF) - are the critical solutions
singular?

3. Quasi-local mass with matter (Maxwell, YM coupling etc)

4. geometry and applications of spherical coordinate choices for space-time


He also commented that topics 1 and 2 would have a substantial computing aspect, 3 would be rather geometrical and 4 would be more of a review and he said it "would be marginal but could suffice". I think that rules out 4. These are just ideas though so I'm free to start with anything in between and outside (to a degree) and then let it change into something completely different over the first year.

3 leaps out at me as extremely interesting so I'm going to hopefully do some reading on that today and tomorrow and hopefully write my research proposal on that.

For those interested; Local mass/energy in general rel is something that still isn't well defined because if you take some area of space and ask the question 'how much energy is there in this area?' there is no clear cut way of answering it. A major problem is that there is gravitational contributions via the curvyness of space-time which is a global property. There have been several (less than 10 though) definitions of a local mass in G.R. which usually are either impossible to practically calculate or have flaws such as admitted negative mass or adding two things together and getting less than both individual masses or they only work for particular regions such as spheres. The reason I would think looking at mass would be good because my supervisor defined one (impossible to calculate though) in 89 which often pops up when you looks for anything to do with mass in G.R. Other people who have defined such masses include Hawking and Penrose who I'd hope most people have heard of.

(This paragraph also for the interested.) The incorporation of matter into the mass I think (based on the content in parenthesis) is that he wants to look at coupling Yang-Mills gauge theories to G.R. and try to make a mass definition still work. This bit is quite unclear to me right now though. Yang-Mills gauge theories are rather strange geometric interpretations of fields (or matter).


Back down to earth now...

Read this. Quite entertaining, especially reading the quotes.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=651937

I'm 22, for a moment

I've had enough.

Spent far too much time waiting around to start this PhD. I don't even know if that's what I want to do anymore. I want a life.

All I have been doing recently is sitting around watching tv and playing guitar.

Now I am off to write a research proposal, hopefully.

Impossible to find

Just a short post to inform the masses that lucky me got to spend the night waiting in emergency at Frankston hospital. Copped an elbow in the head at basketball and I now have 4 stitches in my forehead (thank god close to my hairline). Spent 6 and a half hours all up in hospital, 4 of which I was still bleeding in the waiting room.

Updatination

Well, bball started so that's one of my goals done. W00t.

I'm considering buying a windsurfer as my extra hobby but then i'd need ugly roof racks :S so we'll see.

On that note here is a recap of my goals I set a few months back.

"
Start my PhD or a career.
Get a basketball team organised for next season.
Learn guitar better.
Start some other non-academic regular activity.
Organise getting out of home.
More to come...


With the exception of getting out of home, the above are all short term goals. Basketball obviously has it's own deadline for next season which is a little over a month I think. As for the other's I'd like to get them (the goals with a definitive completion) together by say 18/10/08 as a somewhat arbitrary but sufficient deadline.
"

I guess as usual I've been slack. I have started the basketball at least and I have an idea of another regular activity. Guitar isn't really getting anywhere fast, though I guess I've kept it up and haven't given up on it. The PhD I've not been able to talk to anybody, but I got word this morning that it should hopefully be sorted soon and I've just got myself some references for the application so I'll finish that today. I guess in reality I haven't done too bad. Getting out of home will still be a while from now though.

Another call; anybody feel like moving in with me early next year? Ideally I'd like to be with Amanda longer and fingers crossed all goes well and end up moving in with her, but she needs to get a place soon so if all goes well with her it'd be a long time for that to happen. I'm not saying I'd move in as a major commitment either, I mean in reality renting a place with somebody is pretty easy to get out of if things went shit. But as I said that's not gonna happen anyway cos she needs to find a place soon and it still might be a few months too soon for it :P So any takers?

Also another option for a non-academic activity is indoor soccer. Would anybody be interested? (I'm determined to get fit and sports are the best way to go)

Punderful

I just heard there is a musical comedy about the Beaconsfield mine collapse. All songs are in A flat minor.

You know they all pretend

Where the hell did all that motivation I had a few months ago go? I've been enjoying this time of FAR too much to want to go back to long days of reading in my uni office. It hardly seems worth it anymore. I just want my independence.

The baffled king

Meh!

About blogtime. Today I (and also J) bought a cd from a busker in mornington. He's pretty good for random busker. Speaking of random busking... Who's in? Who wants to take to the streets with me and rock out the streets of frankston!?

Nothing exciting going on really in my life atm so nothing too good to report. Just Amanda. Which is really good on the surface but I'm really paranoid, I've been trying so hard to put aside my insecurities and overprotectiveness and I think I've done damn well to be honest. However there's been a few things that I think most people would be a bit upset about but I don't know how to bring it up. Is it worth bringing it up? I want her to do what she wants, I just want it to coincide with me being happy. Part of me says just to hold tight and sit through it and she'll come around in time but part of me says what if she doesn't? I can't go through it for that long it'll mess me up. El sigh... Just venting.

Also basketball and busking... I need numbers

I'm a brand new sky to hang stars upon tonight

It's been a good while since I've updated this. Now is as good a time as any. Since I last blogged (I think it was that long ago) I have aquired a girfreind though I'm sure everybody is well aware of this now. Seems like a more normal/adult relationship than I'm used to. It's good. Taking some adjusting though, for both of us.

Still can't freaking start my PhD, the guy comes back on Nov 1 so until then I guess I'm just waiting. El sigh. I guess it's good in some ways because I've got heaps of time on my hands to just bum around and do whatever and so far I've not been bored too much (other than now, hence the blogging).

Nothing exciting to report.

Someday I'll be Saturday night

Well the sorting out the PhD thing just got made a whole lot harder. I went in to uni yesterday to talk to the person I'd probably have as a supervisor to see if he'd take me on and to pretty much get started straight away. Unfortunately he seems to be M.I.A. until november. Don't really know what to do now. Really don't know where to start now. Also I might be slightly adicted to buying textbooks from teh interwebs. Just bought two more for a combined cost of US$31.

Things with Amanda have been a bit strange, seems I'm being the clingy one. Her only prior relationship was a 3 year long distance one where we all know my experience has been much shorter and more clingy ones so it's been a bit of an adjustment for the both us.

How sick is everybody? I wan't to organise a mass drunkening on saturday if possible. Anybody in?

Makin' freinds with shadows on my wall.

Well I'm finally getting over the plague. One of the worst things about being sick is that you have too much time to sit around and think. Thinking too much is a little too demotivational for my liking. Having some doubts as to what I'm doing with myself, if I'm looking at this PhD thing to avoid the real world for a bit longer or if it's really what I want to do. If it's really what I want to do will I be able to handle it?

As of this morning I've decided to pick myself up, you know one of those goals and ambitions deals. So here are some goals and such in no order:

• Start my PhD or a a career.
  
• Get a basketball team organised for next season.
  
• Learn guitar better.
  
• Start some other non-academic regular activity.
  
• Organise getting out of home.
  
• More to come...
  

With the exception of getting out of home, the above are all short term goals. Basketball obviously has it's own deadline for next season which is a little over a month I think. As for the other's I'd like to get them (the goals with a definitive completion) together by say 18/10/08 as a somewhat arbitrary but sufficient deadline.


For basketball I need to round up people, I'll ask one last time here for expression of interest in playing bball. So far I could go either mixed or mens as I don't have enough interest in either case for a full team. Also the team would be about as crap as me so no need to feel too crap too play.

Also I attempted cooking a curry from scratch last night, and I'm still alive. It made me decide we should have a curry night for those that way inclined.

bleugh

I'm sick. I think it's a fairly average case of the flu. Mostly cold/flu symptoms with a slight fever. Was quite funny on saturday when I thought it was a hangover for most of the day then realised it was getting worse so I took my temperature.

Maybe I was stooged by cheap books, because none have shown up yet and one was due last wed and another on friday. Gonna give them til later in the week before I start abusing people.

The other day I had been pretty set on what I wanted to look at for my PhD though this demotivational sickness has made me have second thoughts. It could be a little too difficult and too "physics" for me. Quantum Yang-Mills theory.

All eyes on me will be met

Well I guess it's gone around the traps by now, but for those who haven't found out; I've decided to give things a go with Amanda. So I now have a girlfreind. Feels kinda strange to say. Wish me luck.

In other news 6am is too early... and holy crap random link. That is footage from melbourne uni.

Yes, as I was saying its too freaking early to be awake. Gotta go take my 8am tutorial, and then I'm taking a lab til 5 then hopefully free pizza follows. Going to be at uni for 12 hours today.

Poll

Ok so today's life decision poll is:
What the fuck should I do with myself?

The more Ben thinks about what he wants to do after this year is up, the more I want to do something epic. Any suggestions?

I still want my PhD though.

Updated

The angle question seems to be solved. Well done to both Rick and Ben.

The square root of 2 thing, is actually quite easy for anybody interested, you begin by saying let root(2)= m/n where m,n are integers, n non-zero. Without loss of generality you can assume they have no common divisors because you could just divide them out and then start from there. You then find that 2 is a common divisor, thus there is a contradiction so the inition assumption that such an m and n exist is false. It's quite neat.

Have a good solid think at the other one. Its really quite amazing that it is possible I reckon.

And now for something completely different

If anybody is interested in cheap books, check out this site. It's fairly good from what I can tell and somebody at uni has ordered stuff from it already and says its good. Found a book for $9 plus $9 postage which retails for just over $100 here. Basically I'm ordering 3 books which combined would retail here for $400+ for $85 including postage from 3 seperate countries. Huzzah for international editions.

http://www.abebooks.com/


Good old Sunday at uni... Left the assignments I gotta mark in my office so I'm going in with Ben (as he has to do open day stuff) to spend the day in a (probably empty) maths building.

In retrospect; $1 vodka hour was probably not the greatest idea ever.

It's about time I posed some problems for the bored/keen to puzzle over.

#1. Using only a compass and a straight edge, how would you exactly (without fussing over the definition of exact) half an angle?

#2. Prove that the square root of 2 cannot be expressed as a rational number (fraction).

#3. Provide a one-to-one corrospondance (bijection) between every point in a unit line (end points excluded) and every point in a unit square (edges excluded). That is; for each number between 0 and 1, assign a point in a sqaure of side length 1. For Ben and Rick, provide a bijective map from (0,1) to (0,1)x(0,1).

Now for something to argue about...

Smokes and booze should be made illeagal, or at least regulated better. Perhaps raise the legal drinking/smoking age, even only allow alcohol to be served with meals. Remove spirits completely.

So many people would think that I'd be the last person to support this, in reality I beleive it would be a good idea to try to sober up society.

Bitter sweet symphony

So can I convince anybody to share a unit with me beginning end of the year or start of next?

Lots on my mind to blog about but half asleep and on msn too much... And it'll just be another stupid whinge... i'll post something real when im more awake.

Share the love.

Funny enough to cure a hangover... (almost)

Funny exam answers

I don't wanna get inside your mind or your pants

Does anybody still beleive in true love anymore? What about just love in the sense of falling in love? Is this just another thing that our fucked up social structure has put into our heads?

Its like I date somebody, feel like I'm "in love" then it doesn't last very long. So why bother? Does anybody still have a copy of "Guide to dating for scientists and engineers" floating about their compy?

I'm sure (almost) everybody who reads this knows I've been seeing a bit of somebody this last week. For those who don't her name is Amanda and she's pretty cool. The problem is I never stay single enough to test the waters I guess. I just go for the first person who is interested and isn't a complete freak/slut. Should I be trying to enter into a "relationship" with amanda? Or should I try to cut back time with her to figure out if I'm just diving into this again because I can, or if it's because I think it'll work?


/end whinge


This semester I'm tutoring a complex analysis class for engineers which will be quite difficult I think, but hey money is money. I also have friday lunchtimes in the MLC (maths learning centre) which is like the lunchtime help for all uni maths subjects. That could be interesting, again money is money though. Also last week and this week I've managed to get a physics lab to do but I don't think I'll get it for the rest of the semester.
I've been putting thought into PhD options and I'm currently leaning towards something to do with the Einstein-Yang-Mills equations for anybody interested.

And the man on the moon

Time for the afternoon news.

Well after leaving Scotty's party on friday night, everybody expected I was going for a booty call. I proved you all wrong!!! (as tempting as it is to let your ideas about me turn out right)

My head's been a little all over the shop lately, too much stuff to think about and I end up thinking about none of it for long enough to come to conclusions. I might go take a drive to my thinking post sometime soon.

I think everybody knows by now, but due to the science faculty covering the costs, scholarships are now available to anybody with first class honours, which means I don't have to fight for a scholarship :) I should be able to get one whenever I'm ready to start. I should really find out the ins and outs with that one since I'm just going by what the office lady said and haven't seen anything official yet.

Hmm can't find anything official on it... That is kinda scary :S maybe she got something wrong! freaking out time... Ok calm blue ocean... found it finally. There's like a tiny paragraph about it somewhere.

As soon as I get on my feet and start my PhD, I'll be looking to move out of here. Anybody looking for a place too? I'll need a roomie or two :)

Call me irresponsible

So I just felt like blogging, don't really have alot to say.

Last night was probably my last drinking at karaoke for a long time cos i'll be taking an 8am tute on wednesday from now on which means getting up at 6. However it was a fun night :)

Stupid wine and raising my glass to Jason as we say goodbye to each other before skulling.

I think I've decided what I'll do my PhD on, at least what field I'll be studying. That is, general relativity. It keeps me somewhat in touch with the physics side of things but is still very much maths.

And I'm pacing by the phone, 'cos I hate to be alone

523323171004

Well uni started back up today, not that I am technically a student there anymore. I still went in today to try to secure my office for this semester, so I can hang about and try to learn more before leaping into a PhD. I'm kinda worried about doing a PhD too, like it's 3 years of working on one thing and coming out with something decent at the end. It's huge. If I'm serious about this I need to pick an area and a supervisor soon then start applying in the next couple of months.

I just nearly dozed off here after that paragraph, bloody tired. Not used to waking up at a reasonable time, it's like jetlag. I've also got quite a bit on my mind lately.

Now I'm an amputee god damn you

And I've been doing just fine

El hangovered again... I think it was worth it though. I hope it was worth it. Gah.

I have a maths class to teach again this semester :) yay I'll have a (very small) income again. I've also told the guy at uni that I'm not actually studying this semester so I'll take anything thats going if he needs to fill any classes. I might get around to asking if I can stay in my office until the end of the year too. Then i'll be like a student but not officially :P

Gah I feel in such a strange mood.

Torn

Guitar or Geometry

Been a while since I've lodged a quiz in here

Known as:
Steve (or Jnr around JD's people)

Born:
22/04/86

Haircolor:
Black


Eyecolor:
blue/green/grey

SECTION 2 - HAVE YOU EVER...

+ Fallen off the bed?
Lol there's a funny story about that...

+ Broken someone else's heart?
Yeh pretty sure on that one

+ Had your heart broken?
yeh

+ Had a dream come true?
Most of my dreams are a little too weird to come true


SECTION 3 - CURRENTLY...

+ Wearing:
Trackies

+ Listening to:
3 doors down

+ Located:
In front of the computer, der.


+ Watching:
Computer... again with the der


+ Should REALLY be:
Doing nothing cos I'm a bum.


SECTION 4 - DO YOU...

+ Do you brush your teeth?
Usually

+ Have any piercings?
Only ear


+ Drive?
Course

+ Have a cell phone?
as above

SECTION 5 - THE LAST PERSON YOU...

+ Hugged:
Random chick from last night lol

+ IMed:
Ez

+ Talked with on the phone:
Rob


SECTION 7 - PERSONAL...

+ What do you want to be when you grow up?
happy

+ What comes first in your life?
Birth, or conception or something in between depending on opinion

+ What are you most scared of?
Spiders :P


+ What do you usually think about before you go to bed?
Weird maths. What's going on in my life.



+ Did you lose someone you really loved?
Who hasn't

SECTION 8 - FAVORITE...

+ Movie:
Fight club

+ Store:
Dunno... Maybe YD

+ Cousin:
Thats completely inappropriate and I'm not answering

+ Food:
PARMA!

+ Candy:
None



+ Day of the week:
None

+ color:
Orange

SECTION 9 - DO YOU...

+ Like to give hugs?
Usually


+ Like to walk in the rain?
As long as it's not too cold.

+ Prefer black or blue?
Black


+ Sleep on your side?
yeh

+ Have a goldfish?
no

+ Ever have the falling dream?
nope




+ Have stuffed animals?
nah


FIRSTS

First best friend:
I guess a little girl in scotland, who's name I can't seem to remember





First screen name:
who knows




First self purchased CD:
Something queer no doubt.




First pets:
Sandy

First piercing/tattoo:
ear


LASTS

Last car ride:
Mum picking me up from chris' at 9am this morning

Last good cry:
Get smart was a good cry :P



Last phone call:
Rob (haven't I had this question already)

Last time showered:
Hmmm I don't think I should answer this. Lets just say I was going to go in the shower and came on the net instead. So it'll be done soon

Last shoes worn:
The ones that always look dirty

Last item bought:
A beer

Last annoyance:
People


Last website visited:
Clearly blogger since im blogging

Last word/s you said:
I'm not sure... Woulda been something about kevin to mum, to the effect of when will he be home

What's under your bed?:
Nothing of interest.



What time did you wake up today?:
LOL erm.. 4pm

Current mood:
Spaced out

current food:
Fried rice!


Current hair:
yesterdays hair gel

Current hate:
None

It's the only one you've got

Results: Fear and confusion.

I got my uni results on friday. I haven't completely decided how I feel about them. I guess I'm kind of disappointed. My project wasn't close to as good as I would have liked it. However my subjects were the best marks I've got in my uni life. Both of them.

For my project which was worth four subjects I got 77, and for the two subjects I took I got a freaking 95 and a 98. To give me an overall average of 83.5% same as what I had up until this point. It kinda sucks to get those marks for my subjects and end up with an 83.5%. At least I think it gets rounded up to 84 on the record :P

Hopefully it's enough to get me a scholarship somewhere, now once I've had enough holidays I need to start learning some stuff and organising a PhD.


Also; I've been sober for a week now. Dunno how long I'll keep it up but hopefully I'll be not wasted from now on when we go out. Might go another week before starting to drink again.

Save tonight

Well, seems I've become a creature of the night. For it is now 7.35am thursday and I haven't been to bed from wednesday. Goodbye sleeping pattern! I'm not even really tired either, just hungry. In fact I think my brain is tired because I'm struggling with these quantum problems and don't really have anything else to blog about. Lame.

Oh and I still have remained sober! :)

To the place where I belong

Hello world.

What can I do with myself? Anybody wanna give me a short term job? Just a couple of months really.

So that probably didn't work at all. How about does anybody want to buy my car?

That either hey?

Give me free money?

Yeh ok I'm really pushing it now.


So who wants to play a sport? I really wanna play some kind of sport again. Preferably basketball again, would I be able to convince anybody to play? If not would anybody play any sport?

The scientist

I wonder when I'll find out my results. I'm actually really scared about it. Also the longer I sit around doing nothing the less I can be bothered going back to learning. I want to spend the next semester just learning stuff so I am in a good position to start my PhD.

Though I so very much want to get my own place, which is kinda hard when your an unemployed bogan. I don't like the fact that I'm still at home.

Also, we should have themed karaoke more often. Whats the next one we should suggest? Should convince them to advertise say the first tuesday of each month is themed, might get more people in.

What can we have for the next theme?
Rock, Brit-pop, Aussie, Gangsta :P

I reckon we do an Aussie karaoke night... Break out the inxs, acca and chisel. If anybody dresses as Peter Garrett I will salute them!

Who's in?

Camping in tasmania... Early August... Who's in?

Comin' through in stereo

It's been a long while since I've sat here on a friday lunchtime and posted about the epic drunkness from the night before. Unfortunately, I can't do it in full detail today because many of the details are missing from my recolection. The only thing I really remember which is of interest is the following.

Random english dude thats freinds with dave starts talking to random chicks and somehow I end up in the conversation. I ended up kissing one of them. Then in my drunkest efforts to start some form of conversation I ask, so what do you do? At which point she tells me she goes to Padua. (The high school)

Woops. How awkward.

Other than that, only god knows what I ended up doing.

I don't need an alibi

Paintballing was awesome and overall the weekend was amazing. Though I think many of us pushed our bodies and minds further than we usually do in a weekend. Was worth it though.

Quinten is going away :( I think I speak on behalf of everyone in saying we'll fuckin' miss you man!

Today I've spent all the day (after waking up at lunchtime) watching season 1 of "Dexter". I recommend everyone watches it, it's a pretty cool idea for a show, or a book which was turned into a tv series. I gotta get a copy of the book.

Anyway the main character is a sociopath (man that doesn't look right but I can't think of a better way to spell it), so basically the show is about how he is trying to fit in and be normal when he is far from it. It really got me thinking again about how we really differ from animals. But then most animals do have some kind of (loosely speaking) moral code, many animals have 'morals' which overlap our own. What drives this instinct? What does it mean to not have it at all? Some serious psychos really are less "humane" than most things which are indeed inhuman.

Ok I got completely distracted from this so my train of thought is lost. I'll come back to this one day though.

I've said enough and so have you

Prosthetic limbs for all!! {y}

I think it's about time for a completely new blog. A new post too for that matter.
On that note; does anybody know/recall why my blog is called 'violet haze'? There's a few subtle things. Also does anybody ever look into certain things I say in posts (mostly my titles)? Often there are so many thoughts hidden in my blogs which go unnoticed. Of course there is also just random stuff which has no meaning thrown in too. This post still doesn't have any meaningful title, but who knows what it'll be by the time I finish.

The world of Steve as it stands today.

Today was a good day. The only thing I had to do which I didn't want to do was finish mowing the lawns cos I left part of it the other day in the hopes my mum would finish it. That didn't work. I think most people know by now, but for those who don't; I'm single now. My last exam was on monday so technically I am nothing more than an unemployed bum. Results don't come out for like a month I think; so no idea what's going on until then.
I'm on a diet again. Well a not so strict one though. Just from now on my normal dinner will be diet instead of trying to count every meal. I've done 5 sets of 10 pushups today too. Going to get fit. I need to get fit. I've finally got some more self esteem.

Drunk update:
I swear somebody put more alcohol in my beer! Myself and Ben got a little too wasted on Monday night. It was so very very cold and we had to walk back to the boys place to crash and neither of us had jumpers, or even sleeves. Ben also threw up on a table at the Robin Hood, and I may have called the bass player from The Screaming Jets old :P

I killed a man in a far away land.

My enemy, I'm told.

Sorry folks; I don't think I have anything provocative this time. We'll see where it goes though.

The first matter I'd like to discuss is what the fuck did I drink last night? I haven't actually been proper hungover is a long time and I think I nearly barfed. Hopefully I didn't destroy the brain cells containing all my exam preperation. That would be sucky as all sucksville.

So yeah, exam preperation. I know several times I've claimed that each has been the first time I've actually studied. I beleive it's because my idea of what studying is, has been changing. Wow, "is has" seems a bit weird. Anyway I'm determined to get at least 90 in both of my subjects. It currently is possible to get 100% on both I think, thats a bit optomistic though. But I'd like to go into these exams optomistic.

I think I've complained to most people about it but just for perspective, I should mention that I'm aiming for a Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) to do my PhD which is worth 60-70k approximately in total over 3-3.5 years. I'd really, really fucking like one of these scholarships.

(Also please don't comment saying you'll be fine your smart or something to that effect, because I'm in the bottom half of the smartness scale in my office)

Though I have decided that I want to spend my life doing maths.

On that note, I will leave you with some problems. :)

1. Draw 7 disjoint triangles with 6 straight lines. (bonus points if anybody uploads an image)

2. One can easily associate every point between 0 and 1 with every point between 0 and 10, simply by taking some number say 0.463728265 which is between 0 and 1 and then multiplying by 10 to get 4.63728265 which is between 0 and 10, and go backwards by dividing by 10. The fun with infinite things.

The question is; can you associate every point between 0 and 1 (excluding 0 and 1) with the same set of points but with the extra point 1 included? So essentially you have to jam an extra point in somehow. It took me a long time to figure it out but you don't actually need any complicated maths to do it you just need to think for ages.

3. Two trains start 100km appart on the same train line travelling at 50km/h towards each other. A (super)fly starts on the front of one train and flys ahead of the train at a speed of 75km/h until it reaches the other train then turns around and flys back. The fly continues this until it is inevitably crushed in the middle. What total distance does the fly traverse?

Ok that'll do.

Those questions are all questions people have posed to me.

#3 is the easiest, then #1 isn't too bad but #2 is a bitch. Give them a shot if your bored.

Welcome to the saving grace

Ok I started rambling a bit on a comment on chris' blog which went a little too far on a tangent and decided it deserved to be a post of it's own.

Some portion of humanity have no possible opportunity to better the human race. They are nothing more than any other animal except they are genetically the same as those people who are able to contribute. I propose there should be some method of evaluating people and deciding if they should be allowed to contribute to the gene pool. I do quite like the idea of putting the druggy lowlife freaks and just general scum of society on an island somewhere with no technology and let them live like any other animals on the land.

Ok so this may seem slightly crazy but it would certainly make the world a nicer place for the rest of us.

Pork and beans

All your pork and beans are belong to us.

All who haven't seen this must click

It be over

huzzah

I need a little room to pray

Nearly done... So very nearly done. 1 week today and it's over. Well the hard part is almost over. I have my talk on friday and the project is to be submitted on the monday. I really have lost my will to keep doing it. I wouldn't say I'm not motivated, I want this so bad. It's the first time I've ever actually strived for something like this. I'm just worn out. My brain has been used and abused and doesn't want to do anything anymore.

It'll be over soon.

All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces...

Ok... latest project update. Not that a single soul will read it. I'd like to think people click on it and swear at disbelief at the sheer quantity of 'stuff'

CLICK IT... Click it good...

You say it best, when you say nothing at all

Just thought I'd put the fruits of my labour on the interweb. Not that I expect anybody to read it, just even to see why it's so painful to do.

BEHOLD!!!
The first 27.5 pages of my project

It has lots of notes to me and reminders to do things.

Glasgow Kiss

Check it out. Particularly Jason and Benji.

Glasgow Kiss

A quote

Below is a quote from Michael Spivak's comprehensive introduction to differential geometry. An infamous text amongst geometers.

"In this addendum we will derive the formula for the second variation of volume, and give some applications. The calculation itself is a real bitch"

This is a calculation I've been trying to figure out for a good while now. How comforting.

Be anyone I wanna be

Thanks everyone for the input. It has been decided as follows.

As long as I can still do a PhD after taking some time off, I'm going to loiter until Ben finishes his honours and then we will travel the world! If anybody else is interested in such a plan let me know... Anybody want to buy my car?

Closer to where I started

Fuck I'm tired.

My talk is done. Coulda been worse really so thats good news, and since it's not assessed all that really matters is that it's done. I have approximately 6 weeks to have a 50-60 page project typed up so thats probably bad news.

I spent the majority of the weekend marking assignments, which both sucks and blows simultaneously. Still have one left which I really can't be bothered doing right now. It'll be done tomorrow night. I also have assignments of my own to do. One which I should have done for tomorrow morning which really isn't looking very optomistic now and the other for thursday.

I'm coming up to a very important crossroads in my life. Hmm that'd a good cd. :P

After the 6 weeks or so have passed and my project is out of my hands, I should have two exams then nothing. I currently have no plan for what happens next.

Perhaps I shall make this a choose your own adventure for anybody who's actually reading my blogs :). Everybody select an option. (This includes people who read it occasionally and never usually comment. I.e. Kirsten :P)

And no saying it depends on what I want to do, because that's cheating. It's a choose your own adventure now.

Options are:

A. Do a PhD here.
B. Do a PhD elsewhere.
C. Buy a round the world plane ticket and adventure for 6 months to a year.
D. Buy a one way ticket elsewhere and see what happens next.
E. Look for a job for which I only need what I've already studied.
F. Look for a job which will support me in further education while working.

9 in the afternoon

I had a point when I logged into blogged. But it's gone.

IMPROMTU TOGA ATTIRE!!

I'm sick inside without a sense of feeling

Ok so the aftermath of yesterday is less than pleasant. Lack of sleep kinda bites, but what is worse is what I did to my ankle after a far from graceful descent from jd's stairs.

After the most recent comment conversation on bens blog, I decided to make a forum aptly named 'geekspeak'. Hopefully I'll get a few people from uni on it and we can use it to have random weird conversations pondering the mysteries of time and space.

I'm gonna go hop to the showed now.
Sigh

Makes me wonder

This year, two of the drunkest days of the year coincide. I'm excited. Tomorrow is not only St. paddys day but it is also mexican monday at Monash. Should be nuts :D

On that note I did start my diet since my last post and I've been eating WAY less junk food. Though I wish I could just instantly lose weight :(. I can see how people don't lose weight once they are fat cos it simply takes WAY too long to try to get it off.

Remind us all of what we could have been...

The other day I did the most creative thing I've ever done. So it's not really that creative, but then again neither am I.

Clickamajig

Ok so as Jason pointed out already, I said 'bottom-right' where I mean 'bottom-left', and I know there are heaps of little dodgy things, but I think it'd be good if I ever finish it.


Youth seems so long ago. Sean and I were looking at old photos from year 11 or 12 and holy crap we look young. And we were. We thought we knew everything then, now we look back and realise we knew nothing.

I'm back on a diet. For those who I haven't complained to, I hit 101kg sometime last week and according to BMI I'm borderline obese. Here's a little poll; who thinks BMI is a poor measurement of healthy weight?

Personally I know I could lose 10kg and I think I'd be fairly happy. However to be healthy according "to the biggest loser" healthy weight thingo based on BMI, If I lose anything from 15-35kg I'd be healthy. If I lost 35kg I'd need to be in a hospital bed I reckon. I mean that's fucked!

I can't listen, to all your reasons

Since I started uni, it never has felt like I'm really learning anything. But then every now and again I realise that I actually have learnt alot. I have til mid-may to have my project finished which I am nowhere near getting done. But I am finding this paper much easier to read through now. When I first picked it up it took me weeks to turn a page just because I couldnt understand a thing on the page. Now at least I can follow bits and pieces of most pages.

Whenever anybody asks me what I'm doing at uni, the next question is something along the lines of "where does that get you when your finished?" And I never really know how to answer them.
(How close to legitimate is the Capital 'A' in 'And' there?)

I am technically done in june, I need to decide if I'm doing a PhD (if they let me) or if I'm taking time off to travel. Or I could just finish? I'm sure I could get some kind of job somewhere being some form of number cruncher. I'm still enjoying being young too much to get a real job I think. Although I'm not sure how much of that I've got left. I already feel so old sometimes.

Skateboarding!

I'm buying a skateboard I think.

Skateboards are fun.

Back at uni now.

Finally finished all my summer school crap.

Ok so maybe a list isn't the most always the most appropriate method of communication. Imagine talking to people in "the real world" with a pause between each sentence fragment. Sentence fragment is also a sentence fragment. In reality I probably shouldnt have taken two subjects for credit at the summer school cos it was really too much but who cares. It's done now. I have approximately 2-3 weeks to come up with a talk on the project I've apparently done over the past 8-9 months. Thats gonna be embarrassing when they realise I haven't done that.

Oops distracted. Maybe I'll make a real post later this week.

To see the day the pope gets high...

Ok so maybe it's time I stopped drinking for a while again. I'm getting too drunk too often. I'd feel pretty rude to stop drinking for bens coming home thing. So I may drink for that... Though I'd like to be alright the next day. Then no more alcohol aside from meal beers for a while. No Binge drinking.

Though my getting drunk last night did serve a purpose. I was getting shaz wasted cos she is never the wasted one.

Sorry shazticles :P. I think my plan worked a little too well.

Shazzie barfed lots!



These are strange days we're livin' in today
C'est la vie, I say
I hope I'm old before I die...

I'm goin' home to the place where I belong

I think you got me all wrong, I don't regret this life I chose for me...


Time for another obligatory "I'm getting old" post. I'm 22 in less than two months. Many of you are already 22. Are you really happy with where you are? With where you're going? Who you are?

Who are you?

Another summer passed me by and I'm still overweight and unfit. Another semester went by and I'm back behind with my uni work.

Going slightly away from this topic now. The so called 'butterfly effect' (in chaos theory, not the movie or band) is pretty amazing. Not just in the sense that some tiny event in brisbane could ultimately affect our lives significantly, but also in thinking of all the events that lead us to where we are now. Just to think of how you met everybody you know right now is enough. Then think of the impact each of those people had on your life. I couldn't imagine where and what I'd be doing right now if anything had happened differently. If I hadn't been freinds with Robert I would have never met any of you guys who are my freinds now. With maybe a few exceptions from people I met otherwise, but even then I couldnt be sure. If I hadn't been freinds with Ben and Jason (which was a result of Robert) I couldn't gauruntee I would have pulled my head in at school and ended up at uni. Because it was just being around bright people that got me to actually try. I could be working full time in a trade, not knowing any of you that I know now.

I remember the night I saw the aftermath of a car crash which was fucked up enough to see, though if I had left 30 seconds to a minute or so earlier then I would have been waiting at the traffic lights exactly in the path the car rolled through. The car would have hit the drivers side of my car and it's quite likely I wouldnt be here today.

The scariest thing about it all though is that I wouldnt be the same person I am today if any single event hadn't happened the way it did.

Ok so this is another bit of a tangent, but what if you consciously thought about every little seemingly unimportant thing and what repercussions(probably spelt wrong) that would have later. Would you do what you would want to do at the time? Or would you do what seems to open more doors later in life?

Would you shag an ugly chick to meet her freinds? :P
..
.


But these places and these faces are getting old...
So I'm goin' home.

The joy of Wikipedia and Weird Terrain

Somehow the course of my Lie Groups take-home exam took me to the wikipedia article Caloris Basin.

It never ceases to amaze me (sorry for the cliché) how easy it is to get between two seemingly unrelated wikipedia pages just by following links. I wanted to make sure antipodal was the right word for describing opposites points on a circle, I know it is for a sphere but wasn't sure if its correct terminology for other dimensions. The page has a list of antipodal points on earth and then on other planets and the moon.

As it turns out, Caloris Basin is antipodal on Mercury, to a location known as "Weird Terrain".

My weird mind

An indication that I've been doing too much maths... This could actually be made into a cartoon but I cant be bothered.

It occurred to me that guitar tabs can be modelled as sequences in a weird group Z6xZ18 (if the guitar has 18 frets).

Would be cool if there was something useful to come from it but I doubt it. It's just one of those weird things that my mind tends to do these days

No time for losers cos we are the champions... Of the World

There are 6.6 Billion people in the world. How many of these people will be remembered in 150 years, when everybody who knew them is dead. Why is it important to be remembered? How do we get remembered? Maybe it's not being remembered that is important. Perhaps it's being respected enough during your lifetime to warrant being remembered.

How do you stand out enough to be respected like that? (Other than being a murderous dictator)

Is greatness something anybody can aspire to? Or are certain genetic, social and/or geographical predispositions required? Clearly these predispositions help, but how hard is it without any of these factors if possible? Is it more a question of drive?

The cyclops fell into a drunken stupor

The title to this post is the first line I read when I opened a book I found that looked interesting. Without the use of a search engine, I'm sure nobody could figure out which book this came from.

"The nothing that is: A natural history of zero"

Not sure how it relates, though if the book is interesting enough to get to that point I'm sure it'll make sense eventually. What does a cyclops have to do with the number zero?

Quack

I haven't posted much lately and it seems about time I did. I'm back at uni atm, at summer school. Kinda weird cos there are more math geeks ive ever seen in my life in the one building for 4 weeks.

It's officially been 3 months with mel now. Feels longer. Things are great.

I really need to start writing a thesis but I don't have a clue what I'm meant to be doing. Sigh. I also need to start thinking on where I'd like to see myself working in the future. Might see what jobs are available in maths.
Nothing good.
El Sigh.

Havent adjusted to waking up early again either... hence blogging at 12.30am