Lyssia

I'm reading through Introduction to Lattice Theory by Rutherford at the moment. Believe it or not I had to get some kind of background in lattices as they're used as a basis in a formal expression of semantic aspect. I'm usually rather wary of mathematical texts from that period (this book's from the 1960s) but it's pleasantly surprising so far!

Hm, I thought the comment about postgrads etc could possibly be misinterepreted. My bad. This sounds silly but the idea of axioms existing in my reasoning is so...uh, axiomatic, that to not have them would seem quite weird. Thanks for the link, I'll bookmark it and get round to having a browse sometime. What do you make of those works?

What are we all reading, maths-wise? Mention your second year complex analysis textbook if you really want to, but I'm interested in hearing about what people (especially postgrads, postdocs, whatever category Matt Grime falls into, and PeopleWhoOnceWereMathmosButThenTurnedTraitor - like me) are reading about maths in their spare time. I'll start off with my current - Modular Forms and Fermat's Last Theorem. It's not easy by any stretch, but it's interesting. What about you?

I'm voting for 3

Hihi, sorry about that Well, thanks for your in-depth analysis. Send the bill on to my office when you're done? Seriously, though, I think you've read a little too much into that post; there's quite a bit of background turmoil going on right now. On the other hand, that turmoil isn't general public knowledge (and I'm fairly sure you're not privy to it), which is why I'm more amused by your response than anything else. I think I am, actually, having emigrated twice on two continents and becoming bilingual. But...thanks for the reminder Ahhh, the joys of internet communication.

AVOID EYE CONTACT AT ALL TIMES. People need to understand this. I have a book. I have a hot chocolate (or a frappucino, or whatever). I do not need someone to come up and talk about the weather! Notice what book I'm reading, perhaps make an intelligent comment about it, maybe begin a sensible discussion about it's impact and further research avenues. Engage in a follow-on conversation about my work, your work, how klop-headed supervisors can be, and how annoying research is w-h-e-n i-t g-o-e-s s-o s-l-o-w-l-y. Maybe buy me another hot choclate All that is acceptable (although in a similar fashion to AP I'm liable to be very ratty and anti-social if you ever interrupt my reading). BUT PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T ASK ME IF I KNOW THE WAY TO THE GROTE MARKT. IT'S THE BIG OPEN SPACE IN THE MIDDLE OF TOWN. CAN'T MISS IT. KLOPHEAD. Sheesh. Time's running out in the sense that if I'm going to be a Mum, I'd rather start having kids before my 30th which (although of course you can't predict the future to that kind of accuracy) just doesn't look likely from here Hellbender - you lucky so-and-so! I should just go and be a nun. That's what people here are telling me. I'll be a nerdy nun. Yes. Don't mind me, I'm having a rough few days

And then you get to my grand old age and you feel your ovaries shrivelling up (there's a lovely image for you) and you start thinking that there's really no point in meeting anyone anymore anyway because if you want a relationship to develop into marriage (and I do) and if you want children (and I do) then you do some simple arithmetic involving factors like choosing which country in which to live, PhD locations, what you can accept as being your daily language without you going crazy...you realise that your time is running out. Books understand me better anyways. As does my research (pity I don't understand it terribly well at this point though ). And my maths. Oh, and God, He understands me quite a bit too - which is useful, eerlijk gezegd. Oh dear, I'm code switching again. It's time for tea, some work, and to get the hell off the internet where all I do is scare people....

I'd love to learn to dance - properly, not the jiggy bum-wiggling that goes on.

I don't know whether to be all "Aaaaah, look at that hurricane, isn't that cool!" or "Arrrrgghh is everyone out of New Orleans safely?!"

Wha, me? I'll nominate: YT - his life is horrendously busy with his expanding family, but he's always in a cheery mood in #sfn and is such a laugh to talk to. There've been so many times when I've been grumpy in there and his quips and encouragement have cheered me up. Lenale - because she's just freakin' cool. And she's my sister. Sort of. Well, that aside, there's a great amount of reassurance to be drawn from someone who a) lives in the same country as you, b) shares your faith, and c) is as much of a science nerd as you are. Klaynos - because he also understands the Hell Of Exonian Hills, and because of his bizarre spelling. mike90 - because he sat through about ten minutes of me ranting about atheist intolerance this morning and didn't totally flip I'm sure there are other wonderful people, but these were the first four that sprang to mind.

Well, this was one of the minor reasons why I left him

Nee, nee. De twee die ik best praat zijn engels en nederlands. De betekenis van "huisgenoot" in het engels is "housemate" - nee, ben echt niet getrouwd, hoor Duits en nederlands zijn inderdaad heel vlakbij elkaar. Allebei west-germaanse talen, met een vergelijkbaar zinstructuur. Maar ook is de woordenschat wat makkelijker - ik kan al best veel duitse woorden herkennen. Het helpt ook dat we hier duitse tv kunnen ontvangen. Wou je (ik gok dat je jonger bent dan ik, en dus mag ik je tutoyeren ) dat ik je foutjes corrigeren? Want ik kon je laaste twee zinnen niet verstaan

Op school heb ik frans geleerd, en daarna ook wat italiaans, duits, russisch en spaans. Maar nu is mijn echte tweede taal nederlands. Dat zou helemaal geen verrassing zijn, want ik woon hier al anderhalf jaar lang ofzo, en spreek het elke dag met m'n huisgenoot, de poesjes, de buren, enz enz enz. Eerlijk gezegd, ik heb bijna alles van m'n frans afgeleerd. Of tenminste maak ik franse zinnen met nederlands woordvolgorder, en natuurlijk vinden mensen dit heel grappig. Dezelfde is ook waar voor m'n duits, maar vorige week toen ik in Keulen was, ontsnapte ik dat ik al best veel (gesproken) duits kon verstaan - veel meer dan ik zou verwachten. Echt leuk In ieder geval, ik hou van talen. Ik vind het geweldig om in een heel andere taal te praten. Het is voor mij een mooi ding als ik in een "vreemd" systeem m'n meningen kan uitleggen. Toch zijn er wel moeilijkheden. M'n nederlands is vast heel goed (heb ik gehoord, zou het zelf niet zeggen hoor) maar er zijn nog steeds zo veel dingen waarover ik in engels moet praten omdat ik m'n gedachten niet kan vertalen. Na achttien maanden in dit land vind ik dat wel frustrerend. Maar goed, ik heb al genoeg gezegd. Leuk om zo'n thread te zien! Hopelijk laten wat andere mensen weten welke talen zij spreken.

No no no no, you have it the wrong way round. I am the one who can determine my attractiveness most accurately; it's just that everyone who disagrees with me is either a) deluded or b) being nice and bending the truth On the topic of whether people should change in order to please their other half, I think there is a certain give and take that goes on in a relationship that is quite healthy. It comes from compromising on the washing up schedule (irc folks will understand why I bring this up as an example...) - a lazy ar*e has to change his habits and do the washing up more often, and this should lead to a general trait change whereby he just generally isn't as lazy as he was (although such a person is always going to be a little bit on the I-can't-be-bothered side).

I'm semi-recently single (I split up with my boyfriend about a month ago, and I have no idea how time scales work...they're probably individual anyway). You can be terribly, terribly lonely and isolated in a relationship, and it's one of the signs that something's wrong. Sometimes I think people need to learn to like themselves enough to spend time on their own without thinking that there's something abnormal about it. At the moment I'm not particularly worried about my relationship future. I don't think you can second-guess these things - if it's going to happen, it'll happen just through me being me. Most guys are put off me by the fact that I believe some really rather strange (to them) stuff anyway! Mind you, if a guy is one who ridicules someone's belief system using ad hominem then he's not worth my attention. On top of all that there's the attractiveness thing. I think I'm not, others say I am. Yardi yardi yardi. But given that Lenale and I are probably going to run off and start our own convent, this is all quite moot

Hm. It'd be tempting, and who knows, really...but ultimately I don't think I would. I mean...it'd be cool to live to be a hundred, I suppose; I'd be able to see lots of things change, hopefully for the better. But forever? No, I don't think I'd like that. There's a kind of life-weariness that hits after a certain amount of years, and I'm pretty sure that living forever would get that kicking in

You know, it is actually possible to be in Amsterdam and not go near anyone/thing that would result in dodgy photos. On a different point entirely, no photos exist of me from Toronto really. Although there's one from Niagara, which looks a bit silly so I won't post it here.

A few years ago: A few months ago, being silly in a church in Amsterdam:

Gaz, that's a really cool link. Thanks for posting it Lyssia

I think that I'd agree wholeheartedly with Aeternus' recent post. I'm not an advanced user of either Windows or *nix; I'm not a hacker who isn't happy with her machine unless she's just broken it; on the whole I use my comp for my work, irc, and messing about with other *nix boxes trying to break them The last Windows machine I used seriously ran (wait for it...) 98. It wasn't a pleasant experience but then it was a rubbish laptop and I had a dial-up connection, so let's not blame the entire sorry tale purely on the OS. WinXP was a huge improvement on 98 (which was the jump I made); I never used ME or 2k so I'm not about to comment. But whilst I was using XP I was also playing about with Red Hat, and whilst I don't pretend to be able to read assembly or all that sort of hip-hop, I was hooked into this non-Windows way of doing things. Perhaps the biggest difference between Windows and *nix that I notice and appreciate is that in the former (even in XP, although here especially it's not as bad as it was in 98), if a program crashes then it takes the box down with it and I have to restart. In all the *nix incarnations I've run on my laptop this hasn't been the case - I can kill a process without it affecting anything else I'm running (which is of course terribly important when you're having uptime battles with people ). Running XP, frequent reboots were a fact of life; now it's a rarity. (Oh, random book rec - Rebel Code. Charts the history of the open source movement. There are bits in it that make me want to shout "OMG YOU'RE SO BIASED!!!" but that's all part of the fun) As for the difference in philosophy between prop and open source, then I prefer the latter. I think that there are enough businesses out there marketing and supporting open source software (not just operating systems) that show that it doesn't need to be prop to be profitable and viable. As a concept, I like the idea that a geek closeted in his room several thousand miles away from anywhere can contribute to the code and get satisfaction and experience from that, rather than be restricted in his "career" by where he lives, how well he does academically, and whose arm he can twist at Redmond. In many ways the idea of closed software seems to me to be taking copyright too far, beyond it's originally intended boundaries. There is an attitude about Microsoft that rubs me up the wrong way. Take for example when they announced plans to introduce a "successor" to the .pdf format - it's not like such a thing is needed, as .pdf works fine and has the advantage that almost any computer on the planet can deal with it. It smacked of Microsoft not liking the fact that here was something that was tremendously popular which they didn't own and thus weren't getting any money out of. There are, of course, more superficial reasons for me choosing *nix over Windows. I like KDE (especially the games bundled with it which you don't find on a Win box); I like the fact that I can choose from at least two different types of "office" program suites (OOo annoys me these days; KOffice is fast becoming my favourite; never used Star Office). What don't I like about *nix? The file system. Well, it's not that I don't like it per se, it's just that it takes some practise to get to grips with it, and I haven't had the time to do that yet. My solution would be to encourage more people to use *nix systems (I started with RH/Fedora, then switched to FreeBSD), as too many just use Windows because it's there. Manufacturers should give home users a real choice in the OS that their computer comes pre-installed with (this kind of issue makes me quite supportive of the EU's rapping of M$'s knuckles over it's monopoly abuse). If the market share is more evenly spread between different ways of organising the hard disk, then this will surely lead to more mainstream programs (yes, games too, for the gaming freaks amongst us ) being portable, hopefully a reduction in Windows prices (we can dream, can't we!) and quality being kept up and increased. However much Mr. Gates and his empire may annoy me, I think there's going to be a place for his type of computing. I'd just like to see a fair crack of the whip being given to those who dare to think differently. Lyssia

Together PlanetMath and Wolfram suffice for me Whilst Wolfram seems a little more dandy in the way it's put together, I prefer PM. I'd love to actually take an active role in PM but I never seem to have the time

One of my algebra texts defines a binary relation like this, as a subset of the Cartesian product. It seems perfectly logical to me now but when I first read it I was like "Woooooaaaaaaah!"

My guess would be to assume that there are two distinct such modules, do a bit of wiggling about, and then be forced (by reductio ad absurdum) to concede that your assumption that those two modules are distinct was wrong, and thus that they are identical. My ring theory's horrible rusty so I'd need to dig out some books to go into any detail, though. Hope this helps a little.