Entry tags:
- books,
- language,
- life,
- mathematics,
- pets
Doldrums
The last two or three weeks have been largely uneventful for me; there've just been a handful of things remotely deserving mention.
1) The handle on my briefcase broke last week. I thought that I could buy a new one at Kohl's, but they don't seem to have any. I'm thinking I'll run over to Target tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm carrying my bus book and such in the shoulder bag I got at MathFest '08.
2) Today, looking through some of my old notes on capped cubes, I realized that the data my algorithm had given me was incorrect. Turns out, I'd fed it the wrong data. I tried again, this time being careful to get it right; in addition to the three simple closed geodesics we knew about, there was one more, and a rather more interesting one.
3) A bit more explanation: my capped cubes are built by erecting congruent pyramids on all six faces of a cube. The pyramids can be completely described by giving the angle between any two slant sides, which can be anything up to ninety degrees. The theorem I worked out a while back covers the ones where that angle is at most forty degrees, but I don't see any way of pushing the limit up above that. I have, however, worked out what happens when it's exactly forty-five degrees, and there are a few other specific values I might be able to pick off as well.
4) My current bus book is Fortson, Indo-European Language and Culture. There's a lot of detail that I'm not finding interesting, but nice bits of etymology keep popping up: the connection between "alumnus" and "alimentary", between "human" and "humus", and the like. I'm just about done with the detailed description of PIE morphology and syntax; after that, Fortson goes into the development of the various branches of IE, which should be more interesting.
5) Gracie's gotten a lot better about going outside to do her business. She still forgets once in a while - usually with piddling - but it's a big improvement nonetheless.
I've got to get cracking. There's a lot I need to do this summer.
1) The handle on my briefcase broke last week. I thought that I could buy a new one at Kohl's, but they don't seem to have any. I'm thinking I'll run over to Target tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm carrying my bus book and such in the shoulder bag I got at MathFest '08.
2) Today, looking through some of my old notes on capped cubes, I realized that the data my algorithm had given me was incorrect. Turns out, I'd fed it the wrong data. I tried again, this time being careful to get it right; in addition to the three simple closed geodesics we knew about, there was one more, and a rather more interesting one.
3) A bit more explanation: my capped cubes are built by erecting congruent pyramids on all six faces of a cube. The pyramids can be completely described by giving the angle between any two slant sides, which can be anything up to ninety degrees. The theorem I worked out a while back covers the ones where that angle is at most forty degrees, but I don't see any way of pushing the limit up above that. I have, however, worked out what happens when it's exactly forty-five degrees, and there are a few other specific values I might be able to pick off as well.
4) My current bus book is Fortson, Indo-European Language and Culture. There's a lot of detail that I'm not finding interesting, but nice bits of etymology keep popping up: the connection between "alumnus" and "alimentary", between "human" and "humus", and the like. I'm just about done with the detailed description of PIE morphology and syntax; after that, Fortson goes into the development of the various branches of IE, which should be more interesting.
5) Gracie's gotten a lot better about going outside to do her business. She still forgets once in a while - usually with piddling - but it's a big improvement nonetheless.
I've got to get cracking. There's a lot I need to do this summer.