This week will be incredibly productive. I have many dangling projects -- research and personal -- that are nearly done. This week I will finish them all, clearing my work and home desks. I'm committing that to you, o impersonal internet witnesses. Partly this is just a good thing to do, and partly this is necessary: I'm a little bored with my current research projectlet and need to move on to stay interested. Plus, I leave my home projects "out" and cluttering up my room, so finishing them will mean my room is clean again. (Indeed, this self-knowledge that an untidy room irks me is the very reason I leave unfinished projects out.)
This might even mean you get a bunch more posts here, but since draft blog posts are all very tidy -- stored away on the computer -- I might not get to them until after I patch my clothes, prove some theorems, and vacuum.
I hope you have a productive week, too.
This post's theme word: sirocco, "hot wind." It's been hot and humid here, except in my cold, arid cave of a windowless office.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Good progress
I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth. And by "mirth," I mean "enthusiasm for my current research project." And it is a slight lie to claim that wherefore I know not. I have some musings on "wherefore."
My advisor tells me I am making "good progress," but I am doubtful. (Note: advisor's word = pronouncement of truth, and can be accepted as true axiomatically in every model. I AM MAKING GOOD PROGRESS.)
My project is insubstantial, as so much theoretical computer science is. I'm not building anything real: I'm not gluing or sawing or constructing anything that can be held in the hands, passed around in a circle, plugged into a socket, or brought in for show-and-tell. The only sense in which I'm building is a metaphorical one: I'm building mathematical tools. I'm holding theories in my hands and passing them around for comment. I plug one logical system into another. I write on blackboards and tell people about this mathematical project I'm constructing. It's exceedingly abstract, even in metaphor.
If I were to wink out of existence, little of my research would endure. Some papers, some files. But most of my project is in my brain: the motivations, the way each little mathematical tendril wraps around another thing to root my project in the context of significance to computer science.
I think I need to get some Lego robotics kits and spend some time outside. Maybe find a pottery studio -- that kinetic therapy improved my abstracted, mathematical senior[thesis!] year. This frigidly air-conditioned cinderblock cell where I work is responsible for this funk. It's beautiful outside. Maybe next summer I'll get a job as a bike messenger. I'll deliver your messages promptly, with a quick side-dish of context-appropriate Shakespeare. ("News from Verona! How now, Balthasar? How doth my lady?")
This post's theme word: recondite, "abstruse." (That is, "difficult to understand.") Abstruse is the 13th most-looked-up word on the New York Times website (via MetaFilter).
My advisor tells me I am making "good progress," but I am doubtful. (Note: advisor's word = pronouncement of truth, and can be accepted as true axiomatically in every model. I AM MAKING GOOD PROGRESS.)
My project is insubstantial, as so much theoretical computer science is. I'm not building anything real: I'm not gluing or sawing or constructing anything that can be held in the hands, passed around in a circle, plugged into a socket, or brought in for show-and-tell. The only sense in which I'm building is a metaphorical one: I'm building mathematical tools. I'm holding theories in my hands and passing them around for comment. I plug one logical system into another. I write on blackboards and tell people about this mathematical project I'm constructing. It's exceedingly abstract, even in metaphor.
If I were to wink out of existence, little of my research would endure. Some papers, some files. But most of my project is in my brain: the motivations, the way each little mathematical tendril wraps around another thing to root my project in the context of significance to computer science.
I think I need to get some Lego robotics kits and spend some time outside. Maybe find a pottery studio -- that kinetic therapy improved my abstracted, mathematical senior[thesis!] year. This frigidly air-conditioned cinderblock cell where I work is responsible for this funk. It's beautiful outside. Maybe next summer I'll get a job as a bike messenger. I'll deliver your messages promptly, with a quick side-dish of context-appropriate Shakespeare. ("News from Verona! How now, Balthasar? How doth my lady?")
This post's theme word: recondite, "abstruse." (That is, "difficult to understand.") Abstruse is the 13th most-looked-up word on the New York Times website (via MetaFilter).
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