Long-term project SITREP
Current status on some of my long-term projects:
Thesis: Up to 36 pages. I've got a couple more pages' worth of stuff to write up, and a fair bit of background stuff to write, and then I'll have to go back to doing some Serious Thinking. FWIW, pure maths theses tend to weigh in at around 100 pages (word-counts are largely meaningless for mathematical writing - particularly the kind I do, where pictures really are worth N words for some large finite N).
Birdshot!: I had some good ideas for this over the Edinburgh period (and was kindly given more by arifirh, dynix and others), and need to integrate them into the script. Probably about 35-40 minutes' material written, which means I just need to write some linking material and I'll have a usable script of approximately the right length (which will need further polishing, of course).
Moving in with wormwood_pearl: Nominally moved in at the beginning of August, but then went away to Cambridge and Edinburgh for three weeks; move basically finished now (and thanks to whodo_voodoo and Philipp for their patience). New flat is great, and it's really good to have both our stuff in one place.
Learning Haskell: I'm going to officially give up on this one for now. I'm just too out of sympathy with the core philosophy of the language to make any progress with it. My frustrations, coupled with the ridiculous level of Haskell fanboyhood out there on the Internet, mean that I now react angrily to any positive statement about the language, and this is not exactly conducive to the learning process. Maybe I'll come back to it in a year when I've calmed down a bit and the fanboys have moved on to Javascript 2 or whatever. In the meantime, I could learn more J, which I think is a tremendously cool language; I also read Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby last week, and I've been thinking about ordering a copy of SICP...
Diet: This is going really well. I finally dipped below 11 stone today (154lb/70kg), from a starting point of 12st 2 or so (170lb/77kg). My BMI is now firmly in the "normal" range: when I started I was several pounds into "overweight". In general, I feel a lot better and more energetic, and don't have the horrible feeling of bloatedness that convinced me to start the diet. I'm still a bit tubbier than I'd like, so I'll continue for another seven pounds or so (I spent most of my teenage years at 65kg/10st 3/143lb, but then I was exercising about 15 hours a week at that point), but at this point it's basically vanity. But I've decided I'm cool with that level of vanity. Sticking to the diet hasn't been too hard, and I've found the numerical nature of the exercise has been really helpful: it's a lot easier to convince yourself not to have that bowl of chips if you know they weigh in at about half your body's energy needs for the day.
The associated exercise programme's been a bit harder to stick to, and I fell off it for several weeks. But then I discovered that the exercises fit nicely into the time it takes to cook my porridge in the morning, so I've started again and am now up to rung 6.
On the one hand, it's given me a tremendous sense of freedom and relief: I now know that my weight is under my control, and I don't have to worry that I'll end up fat and out-of-condition (my father had the build of a garden rake in his youth, and now tips the scales at around 15st). On the other hand, it's a bit intimidating knowing that I'll essentially have to keep doing this for the next forty years or whatever. I'm sure it will get even easier with practice, though.
So in summary, early signs are that I was right, and all the naysayers were wrong. Yar boo sucks to you all :-)
Munro-bagging: up to 61 out of 284, after a pleasant trip to Schiehallion (where the first measurement of Newton's gravitational constant was made, and contour lines were invented) last Saturday, and a thoroughly miserable walk up Beinn Eunaich yesterday. I'm going to North Wales this coming weekend with a few friends, with the idea of climbing all 17 Welsh Munros in four days - I'll let you all know how it goes...
Becoming a l33t martial artist: I've been doing capoeira (heavily acrobatic Afro-Brazillian dance/martial art) on and off since the beginning of the summer, and so far I'm enjoying it. The aforementioned increase in energy has been really helping: at the beginning, I'd be lurching around drunk with tiredness by half-way through the sessions, but now I'm a lot more able to keep up. It's been very interesting studying something from outside the Japanese tradition: the differences are obvious, but there are some similarities too. But mostly I like the sense of informality and fun in our class.
Learning to juggle 5 balls: I'm getting 8 catches pretty consistently, but qualifications (10 catches) are still very rare events. It's still a toss-up as to whether I'll be a doctor or a solid five-ball juggler first...
Reading Ulysses: Haven't looked at it since I reached page 500 (out of 933, and yes, I know that number from memory). I keep meaning to pick it up again one of these days, but I seem to have so many other things competing for my attention :-)
Thesis: Up to 36 pages. I've got a couple more pages' worth of stuff to write up, and a fair bit of background stuff to write, and then I'll have to go back to doing some Serious Thinking. FWIW, pure maths theses tend to weigh in at around 100 pages (word-counts are largely meaningless for mathematical writing - particularly the kind I do, where pictures really are worth N words for some large finite N).
Birdshot!: I had some good ideas for this over the Edinburgh period (and was kindly given more by arifirh, dynix and others), and need to integrate them into the script. Probably about 35-40 minutes' material written, which means I just need to write some linking material and I'll have a usable script of approximately the right length (which will need further polishing, of course).
Moving in with wormwood_pearl: Nominally moved in at the beginning of August, but then went away to Cambridge and Edinburgh for three weeks; move basically finished now (and thanks to whodo_voodoo and Philipp for their patience). New flat is great, and it's really good to have both our stuff in one place.
Learning Haskell: I'm going to officially give up on this one for now. I'm just too out of sympathy with the core philosophy of the language to make any progress with it. My frustrations, coupled with the ridiculous level of Haskell fanboyhood out there on the Internet, mean that I now react angrily to any positive statement about the language, and this is not exactly conducive to the learning process. Maybe I'll come back to it in a year when I've calmed down a bit and the fanboys have moved on to Javascript 2 or whatever. In the meantime, I could learn more J, which I think is a tremendously cool language; I also read Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby last week, and I've been thinking about ordering a copy of SICP...
Diet: This is going really well. I finally dipped below 11 stone today (154lb/70kg), from a starting point of 12st 2 or so (170lb/77kg). My BMI is now firmly in the "normal" range: when I started I was several pounds into "overweight". In general, I feel a lot better and more energetic, and don't have the horrible feeling of bloatedness that convinced me to start the diet. I'm still a bit tubbier than I'd like, so I'll continue for another seven pounds or so (I spent most of my teenage years at 65kg/10st 3/143lb, but then I was exercising about 15 hours a week at that point), but at this point it's basically vanity. But I've decided I'm cool with that level of vanity. Sticking to the diet hasn't been too hard, and I've found the numerical nature of the exercise has been really helpful: it's a lot easier to convince yourself not to have that bowl of chips if you know they weigh in at about half your body's energy needs for the day.
The associated exercise programme's been a bit harder to stick to, and I fell off it for several weeks. But then I discovered that the exercises fit nicely into the time it takes to cook my porridge in the morning, so I've started again and am now up to rung 6.
On the one hand, it's given me a tremendous sense of freedom and relief: I now know that my weight is under my control, and I don't have to worry that I'll end up fat and out-of-condition (my father had the build of a garden rake in his youth, and now tips the scales at around 15st). On the other hand, it's a bit intimidating knowing that I'll essentially have to keep doing this for the next forty years or whatever. I'm sure it will get even easier with practice, though.
So in summary, early signs are that I was right, and all the naysayers were wrong. Yar boo sucks to you all :-)
Munro-bagging: up to 61 out of 284, after a pleasant trip to Schiehallion (where the first measurement of Newton's gravitational constant was made, and contour lines were invented) last Saturday, and a thoroughly miserable walk up Beinn Eunaich yesterday. I'm going to North Wales this coming weekend with a few friends, with the idea of climbing all 17 Welsh Munros in four days - I'll let you all know how it goes...
Becoming a l33t martial artist: I've been doing capoeira (heavily acrobatic Afro-Brazillian dance/martial art) on and off since the beginning of the summer, and so far I'm enjoying it. The aforementioned increase in energy has been really helping: at the beginning, I'd be lurching around drunk with tiredness by half-way through the sessions, but now I'm a lot more able to keep up. It's been very interesting studying something from outside the Japanese tradition: the differences are obvious, but there are some similarities too. But mostly I like the sense of informality and fun in our class.
Learning to juggle 5 balls: I'm getting 8 catches pretty consistently, but qualifications (10 catches) are still very rare events. It's still a toss-up as to whether I'll be a doctor or a solid five-ball juggler first...
Reading Ulysses: Haven't looked at it since I reached page 500 (out of 933, and yes, I know that number from memory). I keep meaning to pick it up again one of these days, but I seem to have so many other things competing for my attention :-)