(no subject)
Although there's no proscribed word count for second year essays, apparently most of them are 2500-3000 words. Mine is roughly 3300 and I'm not yet finished. So I figure I should probably wrap it up soon. I worry that I haven't included enough mathematical content, which is semi-deliberate: I know I can do maths, so I'm more interested in seeing whether I can communicate the ideas well without explicitly resorting to theorem-proving and the like. It's also because I don't find the actual maths involved in cryptography (at least at this level) to be all that interesting. RSA is a cool idea, but could be implemented in many different ways. There's nothing about the factoring problem in particular that makes RSA possible, so explaining the implementation of RSA using the factoring problem doesn't seem important.
I wanted a pair of fingerless gloves to play ocarina in when it's cold outside. I couldn't find any in Tesco. So I bought a cheap knitted pair, and cut the fingertips off. Then I tried to work out how I should sew to keep them from unravelling. I got the basic idea (turn inside-out, fold, and cross-stitch the hem down) on my fourth attempt, and now I seem to be getting pretty good at it. The last one took less than half an hour. It doesn't look very good, but that's partly because I deliberately chose bright thread so I could see what I was doing. I still have two fingers to go, and then I might redo some of the earlier ones if I decide they need it.
I also lost the cloth bag that came with the ocarina, so I made a new one out of bubble wrap and string that were lying around in my room. It's not as good, but it works, and it justifies my "well, you never know when a ball of string and a roll of bubble wrap will come in useful" buying habits.
Jon was involved in a musical put on by Singaporean society. Tickets were £10, which I was never going to pay, but his mum came up and bought me a ticket. It was a really bad musical. The acting and singing were mostly competent, but the script was awful. Mostly in terms of characterisation and plot development... I don't feel like I have the vocabulary (or memory) to fully describe what I didn't like about it, although I could take various bits and explain what was wrong with them. (Example: if a character has a solo song with nobody else on stage, she's talking to the audience. Noone actually sings about their problems, but we suspend disbelief because it's our window into the world. If another character overhears them, that violates expectations and disbelief comes crashing down around us.)
Fortunately Jon's mum was even less impressed than I was, so I didn't have to pretend to like it (or to feel rude about not liking it, which would have been easier). But the experience was mildly depressing. How did something so bad get produced? Did the people involved feel guilty about charging £10 for the experience? Or did they honestly think it was worth that much? Why didn't they get anyone involved who knew what they were doing? The best thing about university is that you're surrounded by intelligent people, and some of them must know something about scriptwriting.
I guess I'd like to expect some level of competence from people, or at the very least honest self-evaluations. I don't like the idea that you can succeed without those. But it seems like they didn't happen with this production, and it sold a lot of tickets anyway. (The venue seats at least 500, at a guess, and seemed to be nearly full.) That makes me a little sad.
I wanted a pair of fingerless gloves to play ocarina in when it's cold outside. I couldn't find any in Tesco. So I bought a cheap knitted pair, and cut the fingertips off. Then I tried to work out how I should sew to keep them from unravelling. I got the basic idea (turn inside-out, fold, and cross-stitch the hem down) on my fourth attempt, and now I seem to be getting pretty good at it. The last one took less than half an hour. It doesn't look very good, but that's partly because I deliberately chose bright thread so I could see what I was doing. I still have two fingers to go, and then I might redo some of the earlier ones if I decide they need it.
I also lost the cloth bag that came with the ocarina, so I made a new one out of bubble wrap and string that were lying around in my room. It's not as good, but it works, and it justifies my "well, you never know when a ball of string and a roll of bubble wrap will come in useful" buying habits.
Jon was involved in a musical put on by Singaporean society. Tickets were £10, which I was never going to pay, but his mum came up and bought me a ticket. It was a really bad musical. The acting and singing were mostly competent, but the script was awful. Mostly in terms of characterisation and plot development... I don't feel like I have the vocabulary (or memory) to fully describe what I didn't like about it, although I could take various bits and explain what was wrong with them. (Example: if a character has a solo song with nobody else on stage, she's talking to the audience. Noone actually sings about their problems, but we suspend disbelief because it's our window into the world. If another character overhears them, that violates expectations and disbelief comes crashing down around us.)
Fortunately Jon's mum was even less impressed than I was, so I didn't have to pretend to like it (or to feel rude about not liking it, which would have been easier). But the experience was mildly depressing. How did something so bad get produced? Did the people involved feel guilty about charging £10 for the experience? Or did they honestly think it was worth that much? Why didn't they get anyone involved who knew what they were doing? The best thing about university is that you're surrounded by intelligent people, and some of them must know something about scriptwriting.
I guess I'd like to expect some level of competence from people, or at the very least honest self-evaluations. I don't like the idea that you can succeed without those. But it seems like they didn't happen with this production, and it sold a lot of tickets anyway. (The venue seats at least 500, at a guess, and seemed to be nearly full.) That makes me a little sad.