LIfe

..is good. I put some pics up on facebook, but I'm a little too lazy to put them on here right now. Sometime though.

I can't even try to recap the last month, but it has been one of the best in my life. I'm solidifying friendships and doing math all the time. Life is a party.

I went to Eger, another city in Hungary a few weeks ago. I also went to Krakow, Poland with LIZA. Both trips were a blast and very relaxing. Everything was totally pleasant the entire time except it was freezing cold in Poland (it was snowing when we got there!) and the trip to Auschwitz was good in a very different sense. I can't really talk about it, but LIZA did on her blog a little, so you could read hers.

I'm learning some new skills. These include blindfold cubing, speed 5x5x5 cubing, harmonica and Lindy-hop swing dancing. The latter two are worth expanding on.

I'm actually serious about learning to play the harmonica. I was practicing everyday until a certain friend of mine started stealing my time, but I still play a lot and I feel like I will continue playing the rest of my life. (Note to FUTURE DAN reading this: "Well, if you aren't playing, do you at least know where it is?").

Swing is amazing. Turns out LIZA and HAGGAI are swing instructors at their school and I may have mentioned I coerced them to teach a few of us once a week on Tuesdays. I hope to keep dancing in Santa Barbara when I go home.

I miss home a lot, but having such a great time here keeps me from thinking about it overly often.

Ok, the real reason for this post was to write a problem down that I thought of. If you don't do math, don't work too hard on this problem because it is pretty tough.


Everyday I walk to my girlfriend's house and pass a TV store that played Return of the King for weeks on end and I thought of this problem which my Probability Theory professor couldn't do.

I walk passed the store once a day and see t seconds of a looping movie with a runtime of m seconds. What is the expected value of the number of days I need to walk by to have seen the entire movie out of order (ie having viewed every instance of the film at least once)? In order?

I don't really want an approximation, unless its really good, but I'll take what I can get.

Damn.

I knew keeping this wouldn't work. Life just gets to be too much. I'll still post pictures though... whenever I get my camera back from MARCUS' house.

Birthday

Thanks everyone for an amazing birthday. I feel very loved.

It is 2am though, and I have to get some sleep before class tomorrow!

Knitting

I learned to knit today and it is going really well. Thanks ALANNA!

Harmonica is getting better too...

WC

Ron van Bruchem wrote me a personal email today. He's a speed cubing celebrity.. I thought that was fun. Less than a month until competition!

THC and naps

Lovely title for Theory of Computing. I wonder if the abbreviation translates. It was my only class today. I'm not sure what I think about it. I'm guessing it will be interesting and fun as opposed to stretching and difficult.


I just woke up from a 3 hour nap, I think. I kept having "fake wake-ups". It is bazaar. And I have no idea why I slept for so long. Whatever.

Conjecture and Proof

...is candy. I've never been more excited about a course. Today, we dove right in and were shown 4 or 5 proofs of impossibility in 2 hours and boy. were. they. slick. This course is being taught at a pace much faster than I'm used to, but if I concentrate, I've been able to understand so far. Actually, the proofs today weren't very difficult, but coming up with them myself is going to be an enormous challenge. To give you an idea about how hard this course is, 60% is an A. "I've known a few people who survived this course" said our professor with a smile. It isn't show.

Other then that, I still don't have any homework and most of my courses aren't even starting this week. I'm at 6 right now and need to find one or two to drop.

Going to a party tonight. LIZA, HAGGAI and DAVID are having a few people over.
I'm excited about spending time with them and getting to know LIZA more.