(no subject)
I'd intended to go to the 84th Peripatetic Seminar on Sheaves and Logic last weekend: however, what with getting my passport renewed (YOU HAVE A WEEK TO GET YOUR PASSPORT RENEWED BEFORE THE COST GOES UP AND THEY GET EVEN MORE INTRUSIVE! IT'S REALLY EASY IF YOU'VE ALREADY GOT A PASSPORT!) and general lameness (and the secretaries losing my request for travel funds) I still hadn't booked any transport to Braunschweig by Thursday*. So that idea was out.
Fortunately, there were not one, but two juggling conventions on last weekend: one in Durham, and one in Aberdeen. A couple of friends from the club were going to the Durham one, so that seemed like a reasonable plan.
Of course, I didn't do that either: I went to the mountains instead. We went up to Newtonmore, one stop beyond Dalwhinnie on the Inverness line, and climbed three Munros. The first two were close together, then we walked round a huge horseshoe ridge (more a plain, really; still, a good chance to practise some compass-work) onto another one. It was a bit misty and fairly windy on the tops, and the light was rubbish for photography. But we saw lots of wildlife - hares, grouse, loads of deer (including stags, doing the Monarch-of-the-Glen thing by posing on crags; oh, for a telephoto lens) and our favourite, Huge Weird Furry Caterpillars. I'll have a look at the photos, and maybe post some if they're any good. After we'd got off the hills, we had to walk back to Newtonmore, which took another couple of hours: it was getting darker, and our feet were sore, and by the end we were starting to worry that we were on the wrong path and would miss our train. But it was OK in the end. My Munro-count is now 47, for what it's worth**...
Anyway, while trying to decide what to do the next day on Friday night (I actually packed both sets of kit, and only made the final decision at six o'clock the next morning), I discovered that my approach of stalking juggling tricks using all available cover was starting to pay off, and that I can now do a reasonable 3-ball shower out of my right hand! It's actually quite wonderful to watch it, this trick that for so long seemed out of my reach, and into which I don't remember putting any actual effort. I can't do it with my left hand for more than a couple of cycles, but that will come. My approach to learning juggling tricks is to pick something hard and impressive, give it a brief go, decide it's too hard, then look for easier tricks a bit like it and learn those. Then decide that they're too hard as well, and look for easier versions of them, and eventually I'll find a trick that's either easy enough to learn or irreducibly hard, and work on that. So I'm currently working on the 5-ball cascade (whose Siteswap is 5), but that was too hard, so I briefly tried the 3-ball shower (51 - the balls travel round in a circle. Dunno what that page is on about, saying it's a "fairly easy pattern"), then the Box ((4, 2x)(2x,4) - a shower that changes direction every time), then 441 (kinda like a Box, but asynchronous and a bit easier) and 531. 531 was too hard to start with, so I got my 2-ball shower (31) solid, and then tried 501 (531 but without the 3-ball). Somewhere in the midst of learning all that, I acquired the ability to shower three balls without explicitly practising it :-). Currently, I'm stalking the 5-ball cascade via 55550 (first four balls of the five-ball cascade) and the three-ball snake (siteswap 50505; juggling the three balls of a 5-ball cascade that start in the hand that throws first).
It occurs to me that I'm probably more serious about learning to juggle five balls than I am about my thesis at the moment.
Speaking of maths, I was talking to a friend today, and it seems she had an experience very much like stronae's: someone else published a solution to most of the problem she was working on, and claimed that the rest was easy to do. She's just finished her third year, so it's a bit problematic. She was considering giving up, but her supervisor reckons it's fixable, and that she'll be able to submit in March. God knows how. stronae, how's that going for you? Did you decide to publish your stuff in the end? Or are you working on something else?
* It turns out to be surprisingly hard to get to Braunschweig from Glasgow if you don't have unlimited time to spend on trains...
** Out of 284, currently. They keep changing their minds about which mountains are Munros - we walked over a couple of tops that were Munros in the 1971 tables that I have, but aren't in the new ones.
Fortunately, there were not one, but two juggling conventions on last weekend: one in Durham, and one in Aberdeen. A couple of friends from the club were going to the Durham one, so that seemed like a reasonable plan.
Of course, I didn't do that either: I went to the mountains instead. We went up to Newtonmore, one stop beyond Dalwhinnie on the Inverness line, and climbed three Munros. The first two were close together, then we walked round a huge horseshoe ridge (more a plain, really; still, a good chance to practise some compass-work) onto another one. It was a bit misty and fairly windy on the tops, and the light was rubbish for photography. But we saw lots of wildlife - hares, grouse, loads of deer (including stags, doing the Monarch-of-the-Glen thing by posing on crags; oh, for a telephoto lens) and our favourite, Huge Weird Furry Caterpillars. I'll have a look at the photos, and maybe post some if they're any good. After we'd got off the hills, we had to walk back to Newtonmore, which took another couple of hours: it was getting darker, and our feet were sore, and by the end we were starting to worry that we were on the wrong path and would miss our train. But it was OK in the end. My Munro-count is now 47, for what it's worth**...
Anyway, while trying to decide what to do the next day on Friday night (I actually packed both sets of kit, and only made the final decision at six o'clock the next morning), I discovered that my approach of stalking juggling tricks using all available cover was starting to pay off, and that I can now do a reasonable 3-ball shower out of my right hand! It's actually quite wonderful to watch it, this trick that for so long seemed out of my reach, and into which I don't remember putting any actual effort. I can't do it with my left hand for more than a couple of cycles, but that will come. My approach to learning juggling tricks is to pick something hard and impressive, give it a brief go, decide it's too hard, then look for easier tricks a bit like it and learn those. Then decide that they're too hard as well, and look for easier versions of them, and eventually I'll find a trick that's either easy enough to learn or irreducibly hard, and work on that. So I'm currently working on the 5-ball cascade (whose Siteswap is 5), but that was too hard, so I briefly tried the 3-ball shower (51 - the balls travel round in a circle. Dunno what that page is on about, saying it's a "fairly easy pattern"), then the Box ((4, 2x)(2x,4) - a shower that changes direction every time), then 441 (kinda like a Box, but asynchronous and a bit easier) and 531. 531 was too hard to start with, so I got my 2-ball shower (31) solid, and then tried 501 (531 but without the 3-ball). Somewhere in the midst of learning all that, I acquired the ability to shower three balls without explicitly practising it :-). Currently, I'm stalking the 5-ball cascade via 55550 (first four balls of the five-ball cascade) and the three-ball snake (siteswap 50505; juggling the three balls of a 5-ball cascade that start in the hand that throws first).
It occurs to me that I'm probably more serious about learning to juggle five balls than I am about my thesis at the moment.
Speaking of maths, I was talking to a friend today, and it seems she had an experience very much like stronae's: someone else published a solution to most of the problem she was working on, and claimed that the rest was easy to do. She's just finished her third year, so it's a bit problematic. She was considering giving up, but her supervisor reckons it's fixable, and that she'll be able to submit in March. God knows how. stronae, how's that going for you? Did you decide to publish your stuff in the end? Or are you working on something else?
* It turns out to be surprisingly hard to get to Braunschweig from Glasgow if you don't have unlimited time to spend on trains...
** Out of 284, currently. They keep changing their minds about which mountains are Munros - we walked over a couple of tops that were Munros in the 1971 tables that I have, but aren't in the new ones.