Friday Five

1. It's Sir-Laughs-a-Lots' birthday tomorrow. (Happy birthday!) We're going to do silly celebratory student things. No, not that kind. The kind where you realise you have the reading comprehension of a grad student and a pile of children's books and what are you waiting for? Yay.

2. Today I wrote my last test of semester, and our lectures are finished. Exams are looming only in a manageable couple of weeks, so tomorrow we're going to do silly celebratory student things . . .

3. The test I wrote today may be the last maths test I ever write. (I take all my courses from the physics department next semester, and if I'm lucky that could be the end of coursework.) It's kinda weird.

4. Do I sound like Hermione Granger if I say I want an analysis textbook for bedtime reading? We've touched on functional analysis in this PDE course and while I don't feel much need to do the proofs myself (though it would be fuuuuuun), but I think it's be interesting, useful and, relevantly, doable to get a sense of the terminology and what the results actually are. Maybe I could find an analysis for physicists book. Hmm.

5. Although while I don't want a full-of-detailed-proofs book, I kind of want a rigourous one. We can pretend that makes sense, right? It's like, I was talking to one of my lecturers about an applied physics course and he said "Well, for a pure mathematician like yourself [. . .]" Now, I'm certainly not much of a pure mathematician if I haven't even read much analysis (I do know a very little), but I guess I'm pickier than most about maths being done properly. As it should be.

And there's today's allocation of nerdery. If you know of a readable introductory source on analysis, I'd love to know, though I don't promise I'll actually get to reading it.

Savo 'lass a lalaith.

End of Semester

I sat down to study today. I cleared my desk properly for once, and finally actually handwashed the tie-dye shirt that's been sitting there (now it can go into the laundry with everything else). I gave my hopefully-not-dead-yet pot plants some attention that they probably needed quite a while ago, and got mud all over my notes and the carpet. So while I was cleaning that up I gave the rest of my room a quick going over too.

It's almost procrastination, but the tidy, organised environment did seem more conducive to sitting down for two hours and making maths notes. Besides, it all needed to be done, right? It's nice to revel in the straight lines and neat corners that come with exam season before it really gets going.

Once exams are actually upon me I know those corners will seem poky, but a (relatively) clear schedule and a clear desk look quite inviting right now. There's space to breathe.

Not-Friday Five

1. We cooked spaghetti and meatballs for supper Friday night and it turned into a fancier meal than I expected. I'm not sure if it was because making meatballs is a little more effort than I usually go to or just Friday night fanciness or some happy serendipity, but it reminded me that cooking can actually be fun. I need to find more time and energy for that on a regular basis.

2. Quantum physics is weird. Niels Bohr (one of the founders of the subject) once (somewhat) famously said that "Anyone who is not confused by quantum mechanics has not understood it." This makes for some really cool stuff, but also makes it tricky to tell whether there's a typo in your notes or things really are just that weird.

3. I spent quite a while persuding the campus bookstore to source books from the suppliers for me. The online people would do it happily, but they couldn't process the gift card I'm using to finance the purchases. However, I now have a couple of books I've been wanting to read - that weren't even on special - on the way. This is exciting!

4. My siblings have all attended schools that presented book vouchers with academic awards, but I never did. I feel like part of the club now that university's doing it too.

5. Wednesday was a public holiday. It was wonderful to have a day off from classes, and while chunks of it were filled with homework, other chunks were filled with a tie-dye project It was fun! I could get addicted to this stuff.

Work and Play

I downloaded photographs for the first time in ages, and these seemed to more-or-less cover the spectrum of stuff I've been doing.

First year labs - taken during a lull in the questions. Using a torsion balance to determine relative densities. Demonstrating is actually a pretty cool job; and it makes for more interesting pictures than most of my "real" work (the stuff I'll hopefully get a degree for). You can just picture me moving between the computer and my notebook for that.

Afternoon tea - just off from the middle-of-town traffic is a lovely Victorian garden with hedges and archways and benches and grottos, which I was too busy exploring to photograph - maybe another time! After that it was time for tea. We try to do something exciting most weekends, although that sometimes means making tea and drinking it without doing work at the same time. Those times are slightly less photogenic, but they're good too!

Book Logs

I've finished a handful of books in the last couple of weeks (mostly the last week, which was a holiday from lectures, if not university work) and since it seemed unlikely I'd write posts for all of them, I'm going to put a snippet about each here.

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

I am always impressed by the immensity and grandness of this story by the time I finish it. It starts out merely cheerful and exciting - by the end it makes me wonder if I could ever do anything so worthwhile. Then I remember Frodo telling Gandalf that he wished he needn't have lived in such a time, and Gandalf's response about having to live through the time we are born into (although I've a feeling he phrases it more eloquently). I can thus convince myself that I don't need to be a Frodo or a Samwise or an Aragorn or an Eowyn.

It's harder to justify why I shouldn't strive to create as magnificently as Tolkien did. Exactly what that means is a little fuzzy, but I come away feeling inspired; like it's no good if all the book does is make me sad and happy and incredulous and awestruck. One needs to do something, whether it's a trip to Mount Doom, making sure Gaffer Gamgee has enough to eat, creating something to reflect the glory of our world, devouring knowledge like it's gong out of fashion or - just something. It doesn't seem enough to let life happen to one, after that account. One must do something.

OpenIntro Statistics
openintro.org

It's been a while since I read a textbook from cover to cover. It's nice having work that's focussed enough to make it worth the investment. This was very accessible, but covered a fair amount of ground (at least it felt that way to me - I don't have much to compare). It was, at least, enough to springboard me from high schoolish level into a more specialised textbook with a fair degree of confidence. (I'm currently reading Christopher Chatfield's The Analysis of Time Series: An Introduction)

The Four Loves
C. S. Lewis

I read this and thought "Hmm, that's interesting, but there's nothing particularly mindblowing about it." But since then I've been remembering this quote or that idea in a bunch of different contexts. I'm not sure there's an exciting core message that the whole book works to convey - although it's all thematically consistent - but there are fascinating insights scattered throughout. I was a little disappointed that so much of the book seemed to address men only. I see Lewis's point that he doesn't have any other experience, but I still didn't like it. Nonetheless, this was an enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

A Skull in Shadows Lane
Robert Swindells

From the title, the back cover blurb, and what I've previously read from Swindells, I was expecting this to be a light-hearted five-find-outers-style mystery story. Instead it was a rather thoughtful look at post-WWII life through the eyes of eleven year old Jinty Linton, her brother Josh and their cohort, in a little English village where "nothing ever happens". I think Swindells exploits that ordinariness very well - this connected with me in a way that war stories generally don't. It felt like a children's book (which it is), but I still enjoyed it and have found a new way of seeing that time period.

Monday Miscellany

1. I posted recentlyish about knowing "nothing", largely prompted by the fact that some of the papers I'm reading for my honours project go way over my head. I also ended up emailing my supervisor to say "Wah! I don't know any stats!" (But in more grown up language, 'cause I'm boring like that.) He helpfully sent me an open source stats textbook. After reading about half of it, I was thinking "No, I know all of this. I meant the other stats." Oops. The second half of the book has been more helpful/new, but I suspect I'll need yet another book after that. So many things to know!

2. Easter was awesome. Easter is awesome. Something like that. And Easter hymns are amazing. Something in the music and the physicalness of really singing it out captures the wonder and excitement that is so hard to maintain through the year, but so much what Easter is about. He is risen! We are forgiven! He is risen!

3. In the sermon on Good Friday, our minister pointed out that Jesus was hated - and crucified - for showing love. I'm not sure how often I want to be liked more than I want to show love (and act on that). More often than I should. But at the same time it's definitely not right to alienate people. It's a tricksy topic, but one worth thinking about, I think.

4. I discovered that Google Reader was shutting down from my sister, who actually spends enough time on a computer (with internet) to use it regularly. I also discovered from her that there's a Feedly mobile app which works quite well. And now I have a feedreader on my phone (which, in fact, I really like). I haven't been so informed in months.

Theme Thursday: Celebration

For the first time ever, I have actually found a photograph that sorta-maybe-of course it does fits the theme for Theme Thursday at Clan Donaldson. Taken with the great technical knowledge required to operate my cellphone camera, here is Sir Laughs-a-lot being all celebratory about big trees. Or bored of me taking five trillion and two pictures. But it looks happy, right? So, huzzah! Also, those trees are really big. It's awesome.

Wordless Wednesday: Burst Pipe

So Very Little

I have been very busy lately, with the masses of stuff I'm trying to cram into my head. Formalisms quantum mechanics and principles of thermodynamics and methods of solution of partial differential equations are all buzzing around, needing to be learned before I write tests and just because they're useful.

Then I move to reading for my project and there are all sorts of more specialised things I need to know - everything buzzing around my head is not very much at all.

Marking first year undergrad work reminds me of how much I do know, though. More than the owners of the scripts now covered in red ink (at least when it comes to physics - there are other spheres of knowledge, I know). But the difference between what we know is so very very much less than the masses of things we don't (even just in the realm of physics). None of us know very much at all.

There's a continual tension between ignorance and opportunity. We would never have the joy and excitement of discovery if we knew everything - but there's enough we don't know to go on discovering as long as we care. On the other hand, ignorance in its own right doesn't seem awfully lovely. Somehow, though, I need to love my ignorance at least inasmuch as it gives me the opportunity to abolish it. It's an odd kind of not-quite-dichotomy.

Sunday Seven

I was going to write a Friday Five post, but I went to bed instead. Then I thought I'd replace it with Saturday Six, but, yeah, well, uh . . . Maybe I can get Sunday Seven to work.

1. My Wordless Wednesday post was all done on Wednesday, I promise. My phone just didn't feel like publishing it till this morning. I think I'll just call today an honourary Wednesday. That works, right?

2. Tomorrow I'm getting on a plane and flying to Grahamstown, where I'm going to sleep for a week. Except for the sleeping part, alas. I'm actually going to FameLab for a week, which is nearly as exciting a prospect.

3. The name "FameLab" makes me think of Harry Potter's first potions lesson, where Professor Snape tells his first years that he can teach them to "brew fame and bottle glory". Do you think I'd be allowed just a tiny sip of the Felix Felicitis potion before the final?

4. Yesterday Sir Laughs-a-Lot and I went to The Last Night of the (Maritzburg) Proms concert with the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra under Richard Cock. It was really awesome. Now I want to go to the opera. And learn to understand all - or at least more - of the technical musical stuff.

5. The concert was in the city hall, and while one might admire the clock tower as one drives down Commercial Road, that has nothing on the sense of being inside a work of art. Inside it! With a pipe organ the size of a small house! And ornamented everything! Oh my!

6. One of the topics I've been covering for my honours project is neural networks - a system that can be implemented on a computer and mimics the brain in learning to make accurate predictions. Neural networks are not awfully like human brains, really, but the way the technique was inspired, as well as the technique itself, is fascinating.

7. Neural networks are one of the topics I'm playing around with using in the FameLab finals. If I don't do that (or maybe even if I do), perhaps I should write up a similar kind of description to put on here. Because I won't, you know, be trying to frantically catch up with my lectures before the slew of pre-Easter break tests. It would be fun, though.

Savo 'lass a lalaith.

Book Log: The Two Towers

Okay, confession: I get confused by this title. The two towers that spring to mind are Minas Ithil and Minas Anor, towers of the moon and sun. The latter doesn't really feature though. The former is probably sufficiently featured to earn a place in the title, although not in its capacity as one of Gondor's pair, but as Minas Morgul of the ringwraiths. The second tower is presumably Orthanc, which features noticeably, if sometimes indirectly, pretty much right through Book III. So the two eponymous towers are only related by, well, being eponymous. And in the book, I suppose.

The titles of the three parts are kind of curious that way, actually. The Fellowship of the Ring is only half about the fellowship proper and The Return of the King is not in my mind the most exciting part of the third volume - although it is a kind of culmination. I'm not entirely sure how much should be read into those titles anyway. Hmm.

Last time I blogged about The Lord of the Rings I wrote a fair bit about the loyalties of the fellowship. Boromir's loyalty to Gondor seems to be somehow twisted into a desire for the ring. Certainly the ring uses that loyalty. But having met Faramir in the second part of the story, we encounter a much purer loyalty. Early in the fifth book Gandalf comments to Pippin that the blood of the Numenoreans runs truer in Faramir than in his brother. Faramir, unlike his brother, resists the temptation of the ring. I think his loyalty to Gondor and her ideals helps him; it's the other side of the coin, perhaps.

At the end of the fourth book, outside Shelob's lair, Sam's struggles with his loyalty to Frodo and the need to see the task through; to make sure right is done. In the end he berates himself for trying to go on with the task and acting out of something other than his loyalty to his master. But it seems to me that his loyalty would be misplaced if it didn't have some sense of the greater purpose and good it serves. I think the very title of the final chapter of Book IV "The Choices of Master Samwise" reflects this dilemma. Tolkien seemed to like the phrase too, judging by its inclusion later in the text.

Faramir and Eomer both aid the Fellowship, thereby disobeying at least the letter of the law issued by their "masters"; Sam would have abandoned his master to complete the quest too, but realises that this is the wrong choice - although with the information he had, it certainly seemed like the best decision.

Sam's status as an obedient follower almost seems inferior to those who thought for themselves and made decisions contrary to instructions, but he gains a peculiarly high position from the fact that he doesn't seem particularly affected by the ring. Only Bombadil comes to mind as being notably less so. Nobility of heart is not, of course, the same thing as holding a noble title or being admired among men, but Sam is a peculiarly concrete example of it. I admire Sam, but I suspect I understand him less than Aragorn, for all his apparent simplicity. Hmm. This probably says as much about me as it does about him!

There's certainly plenty to ponder in this book! I intended to consider a handful of other characters, but this post seems to have grown long and rambly enough already. I think I'll end it here. (Pretend it's not abrupt, okay?)

Savo 'lass a lalaith.

FameLab

I missed my Wordless Wednesday post this week and then I missed my Friday Five too. And I've started reading The Return of the King without blogging about The Two Towers. I could probably blame my honours quantum mechanics course or my insistence on making the wraps we had for dinner from scratch, but I'm going to pin it on FameLab instead.

FameLab is an international event/competition that promotes young scientists "Talking Science" with the general public. Conversely, it promotes people hearing - and hopefully learning - about science, which is a Good Thing in my book. It's all done through the form of three minute presentations where PowerPoint slides and more props than you can carry are banned. This works really, really well, despite its simplicity.

For one thing, "Death by PowerPoint" and related maladies were almost entirely banished. For another, three minutes is barely long enough to get bored. The time limit was strictly enforced by vuvuzela (I assume other countries have equivalents) - although just the threat seemed enough for the people I watched. Regional heats were open to any (practising or studying) scientist in the 21-35 age range, which seems to have ensured that everyone had something worth saying - and not enough time to make it boring.

There was feedback from the judges after each presentation - I was impressed at how much this stayed positive, helpful and interesting to the audience. Presenting and being scrutinised was a little scary - the cameramen and microphones and masking tape squares on the floor didn't help - but an awesome experience.

A handful of us were invited back to regional finals - another three minute presentation a couple of hours later, taking into account the judges' feedback. The fact that it had to be a different presentation seems like a rather effective test of breadth. It felt like a test of improv skills too when we were suddenly called for on-camera interviews! It's surprisingly tricky to do that sit-sideways-and-smile-at-the-camera drill, never mind actually answering questions! Not that I'm complaining: it was all part of the excitement.

The regional finals were awesome. While some of the first round presentation were a bit rough, these were all fascinating. The kind of thing that would make for a great school field trip or the like, I thought. The scientific basis for the zombie apocalypse; a eulogy for coal; forensics and DNA testing. (You can see something of the impressive breadth the presentations covered there too.)

My nails probably owe their continued existence to all the interesting people I had to talk to while the judges deliberated, between the scientists and the competition staff. The compere seemed less friendly when she started stalling the results, though . . .

Three of us went through to the national finals. One of them was me! Um, what? I entered this thing just for kicks - the first round really is an experience in itself (next year I'll be telling everyone else to do it too). I'm just this girl who likes showing people how things work, not some kind of professional anything.

But apparently I'm going SciFest Africa in Grahamstown. I think. If I were dreaming I would've woken up by now, right? And it wouldn't have left me so ridiculously tired.

Game Mechanics

In a roleplaying game that I'm currently running/playing/somethinging, there's a mechanic built around an attribute called will. Roughly speaking, fighting monsters and making arduous journeys depletes will. Sleeping or relaxing in a safe place replenishes it. Will is also regained after achieving success in some way, which is a more complicated/interesting mechanic.

I think it has interesting consequences for how much attention one pays in lectures. See suppose the characters in the game had to sit through a quantum mechanics lecture (if you're playing the game: ooh, foreshadowing). One character pays attention, takes complete notes and asks questions. She loses a will point for all the effort, but regains it when, at the end of the lecture, she understands operator methods better and can consider her time well spent. Another character disagrees with the lecturer's interpretation of quantum mechanics, but thinks better of starting a philosophical debate in class. Rather than spending a will point stewing over it, she starts doodling in the margins between taking down the most salient points of the lecture. Her understanding of operator methods improves, but she's not satisfied enough to gain a will point. Nonetheless, between taking some notes and worrying about philosophy and doodling, she's lost a will point. She'll be more tired than the character who paid attention. (The character who bunked the lecture is also doing better, but only until exam time.)

Now, if only real life could be modelled by such simple mechanics. Quantisation of willpower, at least, sounds like a viable physical mechanism.

(This picture is mostly just because I like it. It has to do with lectures (phase space representations, not operator methods) and end-of-long-day/weekness. That's all.)

Friday Five

1. It's the weekend. Yay! Given the amount of time I've spent drawing isometric projections of spiral stairways in the margins of my lecture notes, you might not expect me to be tired. But I do keep track of what's going on in class too.

2. We were going to play Catan tonight, but due to aforementioned tiredness it ended up abandoned. Instead, one who shall henceforth be called the Velociraptor-with-a-pea (kinda like Anne-with-an-e?) postulated that a goose is just a kind of iceberg with a periscope. We discussed other similarly profound topics too.

3. We made homemade potato chips (fries?) which were awesome and not as hard as I'd have thought. Chop up taters. Boil in microwave. Put in pan, drizzle lightly with oil, toss. Roast at 200ish C for twentyish minutes, tossing at intervals when you remember. Eat.

4. People seemed a little concerned by how thoroughly I executed the last step. Going to the bank burns many calories, okay? Or, uh, something. I do not regret it.

5. I got distracted by marking, so I could make this into the Saturday Six now. Oops! I think I'll go to bed instead, though.

Savo 'lass a lalaith.

These Are a Few of My Favourite Things

Or at any rate, things that have made me happy recently, even if they aren't absolute all time top favourites.

Pausing to stand under a cascade of pink blossoms spilling over a fence on the way back from the supermarket.

Finding that an example I made to help some students has osmosed into nearly every workbook in the group.

Eating a perfectly ripe plum after a long afternoon.

Having my own keys to [parts of] the Physics department.

Lying on my bed with a supersized mug of milky tea.

Working out a proof until it suddenly blossoms into understanding of the general case.

Finding a skirt that hits at the ankle even if you're tall and high-waisted, marked down from the markdown price.

Watching and helping a student 'get' a new concept.

Scheming to make homemade hamburgers and chips on Friday night.

Drawing Koch snowflakes until the iterations get smaller than my pen strokes.

There are moments on the other end of the scale too, of course, but life is good.

Things they said

Discussing Lent at Sunday School, we mentioned doing things like giving up chocolate or taking up reading your bible. So one little girl asked "Can I eat chocolate every day for Lent?" Uh, not quite.

Also at Sunday School, one seven-year-old didn't like the way a game was being played. So she marched over to her own game and announced "I'm going to play this in the third person."

In my other natural habitat, the physics department, from a grad student who's competent in such mathematical topics as multivariate calculus and tensor analysis: "Why do minus signs have to be so confusing?"

And on the blackboard after a lecture involving the emission of UV light: "the ultra-violent catastrophe". Guess Max Planck was more of a hero than I thought!

Savo 'lass a lalaith.

Book Log: The Lord of the Rings Part 1

We all know that Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is one novel and not a trilogy, right? It was only published in three volumes because of paper costs and such. So I can just write about the three parts as I read them without ranting about how the first two parts do not have proper endings because they're actually middles and it's a pity so many recentish novels seem to think they can end as incompletely? Awesome.

I've read The Lord of the Rings too many times to want to write a proper reviewy thing as I read it. I get a bit too excited about details like when exactly the reforging of Narsil is first mentioned and will forget to say anything about the obvious and crucial aspects. So I thought instead I'd sort of pick out the theme of fellowship from The Fellowship of the Ring and talk a little bit about loyalties and motivations. (I shan't try to avoid spoilery things, since if you haven't read the book you've probably seen the movie.)

The most obvious at the end of the first part is perhaps Borimir's loyalty to Minas Tirith. I don't think it's just loyalty that makes him so desire the ring, but certainly the loyalty nearly gave the ring a path to being used as it wished. It's interesting to contrast Boromir with Aragorn, who shares a strong loyalty to the city, but tempers it with the counsel of the Wise, a better sense of scale and somethin akin to greater maturity (not that Boromir's immature by any ordinary standard). It's also interesting to compare Sam to Boromir, since he's loyal to Frodo in a way that strikes me as similar to Boromir's loyalty to Gondor. Sam's big tests of character are much further on, though, so there may be more to say later.

Legolas and Gimli are fiercely loyal to the elves and the dwarves respectively; but in Lothlorien and Moria both have to face up to certain shortcomings of their own races and merits of the other's. Ultimately their loyalties don't seem to lessen so much as to mellow into something wherein they can appreciate other civilisations along with their own. They grow, perhaps. I'll try to remember to revisit this thought at Helm's Deep.

Merry and Pippin follow Frodo, although Gondor and Rohan will, I think, claim their loyalty later. Gandalf is rather mysterious; I am inclined to think that he answers to Illuvatar. Gandalf the White may shed some light on that when I get there.

Frodo goes through an interesting change that pretty much frames the first part of the novel. Early on Bilbo says that Frodo still loves the Shiore too much to leave it. Although Frodo thinks of following Bilbo, he never does. It is eventually the threat to the Shire, through the ring, that motivates Frodo. But by the time Frodo sits upon Amon Hen, he is wrestling with fear and his knowledge of what he must do. The Shire isn't particularly a player in his decisions any longer. His new loyalties are perhaps to Middle Earth a a whole; I'm tempted to say to what's right, but I think there are right and wrong ways to express loyalty, which may be the difference between Boromir and Sam.

Frodo is beginning to gain some of the perspective that tempers Aragorn's actions and which Boromir never found. But "the finest hobbit in the Shire" is made of sturdier stuff than Boromir from the start, I think. Even Gandalf and Galadriel are sorely tempted by the offer of the ring; Boromir would take it by force; Bilbo only gives it up with much assistance from Gandalf. Frodo, even after bearing the ring and after the Morgul wound freely offers to give it away. And that, I suppose, is why he must be the ringbearer.

Friday Five

1. I made substantial progress in sorting out the direction of my honours project this week. It's really nice to have something worthwhile to direct my energy at, instead of worritting about admin. And the admin is slowly diminishing. Hurrah!

2. We played Settlers of Catan for the first time (except for one of the group) tonight. It was pretty awesome. I suspect some of the appeal is just in the newness of the system, but there's quite a bit of scope. I really enjoyed playing a strategy game that doesn't require attacking people. (Although the cutting off of other people's roads can get surprisingly intense.)

3. I think board games like Catan can be considered kind of nerdy, but do you know what would be even nerdier? Getting really frustrated that nine gets rolled more often than seven, which is not what the maths says should happen. Not that anyone I know did this. And it certainly didn't cause more upset than pretty much anything else in the whole game. Because we're not that nerdy. Oh, no!

4. My lectures start on Monday, except they don't, which is confusing. Depending on electives, we can end up with whole days free for project work (if you're disciplined) and other things (probably regardless). I don't have a timetable for my elective yet, so my actual first lecture is currently set for Wednesday. I'm finding that kind of weird.

5. The varsity notices today included a FameLab flyer. Now I'm wondering if coming up with a three minute talky thing about physics for the general public (and videoing it or driving a fair bit to actually speak in front of people) constitutes unnecessary stress. I think it's probably worth a shot, because it seems like there should be more fun than complicated, if there's some of both.

Savo 'lass a lalaith.

Friday Five

1. It turns out that running around varsity trying to perform multitudinous administrative tasks is more tiring than sitting at home doing interesting projects. In consequence I'm going to borrow some things other people have said (as well as I remember them) to make five.

2. While discussing shapes of trees that are good to climb: "a melting candle, which is like a squid."

3. Talking (initially) about time zones:
"I always get my pluses and minuses mixed up."
"Always? What's three minus four?"
"Seven."
"And four minus three?"
"Seven."
"So subtraction commutes! Is addition distributive then?"
"Yes."
"And multiplication."
"Yes, it's normal."
"Wait, the integers aren't a ring then."
"Nope, they're a helix."

4. Trying to work out if I can take PDEs as an elective:
"The lectures aren't timetabled; the students and lecturers will negotiate the times."
"Clashes shouldn't be a problem then."
"Well, that depends on your negotiating skills."

5. "Can I quote you on that?"
"Yes. In or out of context."

Seni Crines

Kinda like this, I think.

Before I start rambling, you might like to check out Cari's awesome Snapshots from a Sunday timeline, now also with a weird photo by yours truly.

Recently - well, recently-ish, anyway - Melanie posted a collection of interesting links, including a story about recreating the seni crines, the hairstyle worn by the ancient Roman Vestal Virgins (and some other people). Which looked kind of cool. And a bunch of people commented saying, amongst other things, that they would've liked to try it, if they could. Which made me think, perhaps belatedly, "Hmm. I could probably do that." Probably a true classics geek would've thought of it earlier, but hey, I got there eventually.

Pictured here is my willing victim, complete with period-appropriate magenta nylon ribbon, er, structural vitta, I mean. Also period-appropriate plastic-coated bobby pins, because her hair was too short to go all the way around her head. (I think it hits more-or-less on her shoulder blades.) I think rolling the hair worked quite nicely (wish I'd got better pictures), although I didn't have enough hair in the end-of-rollings plait to do much so I . . . kinda just ignored it. It seemed to work out okay anyway.

 I was kind of amazed at how so much plaiting disappeared under the smooth part that's pulled over the back. The beginnings of four plaits just disappear. Presto! and they're gone. At that point I was on a bit of a roll, so I thought I'd try it with my hip length hair. The plaits were more than long enough, although thinner than my sister's, I think. This is probably because a bunch of my hair is cut into a straight-across fringe which really didn't want to cooperate with the whole rolling thing. I s'pect that would improve with practice, though. I bobby pinned the front knot in place, because I couldn't figure out how else to make it stay.

 And lo, it was awesome. Apparently those Roman priestesses were tough, though, because both of us enjoyed the fancy hair for a few hours and then took it out because it was getting headachey. A few well-placed bobby pins might help with that, though. And while it wasn't the trickiest plait I've ever done, it's certainly a special occasion kind of style. A fun one, though, about which I've no doubt written more than anyone really wanted to know. Herewith, The End!

Savo 'lass a lalaith.