Waning

Well, the semester's almost over. Yesterday, my Senior Assignment student made her presentation, and passed; I'll be meeting with her this afternoon for post-mortem edits. I gave a final review session in Intro to Analysis afterward. Tuesday will be the Cinco de Mayo potluck, then two finals on Wednesday and one on Thursday, and the semester's done.

I won't be teaching this summer, but I will be busy. I'm starting to organize my research on polygons into papers; I tentatively see a set of three, overall title "Towards a Taxonomy of Polygons". ("I: Isolated Classes"; "II: Affine Transforms and Extremal Classes"; "III: Families and Singular Classes".) Also, teaching QR forced me to use the Blackboard electronic supplement system, and now that I can see some of its potential, I'll be putting together materials for my fall classes. Meanwhile, there's stuff to be done around the house (replacing weatherstripping, fixing the roof, etc.) and databasing to be done (finishing the Skyrim db, revamping my financial software, and redesigning my library catalog). Not to mention, at the tail end of August, a three-cornered visit to San Diego and Spokane.

But first, a week or so of lazing around....

In Praise of Showers

Showers are wonderful. Not merely for their sensual and hygienic benefits; they are marvellously conducive to thought - and, for me, specifically to mathematical thought. Not calculation, but thought - how do things fit together?

This morning, while showering, I had a mathematical epiphany. (Central affine transforms preserve order and type!) I'm tempted to activate my office computer from home to check out some of the implications, but I need to do some other things before I go in to work, so it'll have to wait.

:rubs hands: