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.

First Day

I'm in the computer lab at BSM. SCOTT and I killed time by playing a fun paper game called BASH (not to be confused with MASH, a much more pansy game). Vehicles of destruction battle it out in a strategy/skill pencil game.

I don't actually have classes today. I am just going to a few. I really liked my first one and may end up taking it. I've narrowed it down to 6. I need it down to 4 or maybe 5.

25ish of us are playing this Assassin game I helped organize. I'm still alive, but haven't made any kills yet. SCOTT died moments ago.

Probability is next. It is starting 30 minutes late.

I wore a scarf today (thanks Joy/Cora for giving me scarfs!).

Party

I had a lot of fun at SCOTT and ALISON's birthday party (left). I also got a phone number and maybe a date. We'll see how it goes. Thank you everyone for the awesome time. I really love BSM.

Here's some stolen pics. MIKE ONE, PAM, BILL and EMILY, PAM, ALANNA.

Beer Pong

Just woke up. 2:00pm. I'm in bed. I keep my laptop close by for early morning email checks. I usually get a lot of email in the morning because of the time difference.

Still haven't met with CHARISSA and the other girls from McDaniel College. I'm not sure that will happen, but I hope it does. I could use another Christian in my life.

I might participate in a Christian gathering of some sort with BRUCE BUGBEE and other BSMers. We all have very mixed views about the Church and Jesus, so it will be fun.

Still excited about courses. Looks like I won't have class on Mondays! I really hope that works out.

Played beer pong for the first time last night. It is 3 times more complicated than I expected. I asked "So how do you play" and received a bucket full of jargon that went something like "2 reracks, girls can blow, guys' bows behind the table..." It took a while to explain. I was told I played a respectable game, but ALANNA and I lost our huge lead to BILL and MARCUS. They are experienced players. ALANNA is very small, so I did most of the drinking. I'm getting better at that.

JOE just made me a great kielbasi sandwich (which he does often). It was fantastic.

Alright, shower and then out. No idea what I'm doing yet.

Math

I'm very excited about my courses. No promises, but it looks like:

Conjecture and Proof (dropping to Math Problem Solving if/when I give up)
Real Functions and Measures
Theory of Computing
Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Probability (fancy title, eh?)

And something else, but I will probably end up with only 4.

At least one person is working on the gods problem. I'll post the answer in a bit.

OH! Check this out (mathys), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox

And, while I'm thinking about it do any of you use del.icio.us?

Ok... last thing. I just learned this fun game. Go to wikipedia and click random article. You then have 7 clicks to get to the article about Jesus. I can almost always do it, but I bet it is -always- possible. Using ctl-f or whatever to search is fine.

Party and Batteries

To celebrate the language school ending (for all but me), we congregated at my good friend PAM's house. The party was a blast. My favorite game was called Tourette's (sorry, I didn't name).


These are good friends of mine. From left to right, MIKE 2 (there are four MIKEs), me, ALISON, HAGGAI. This picture was taken at the party.


I apparently lost my bag of batteries somewhere in my apartment and/or my camera is broken. I know that made no sense, but I wanted to communicate two related ideas compactly. No, don't try to find a finite subcover (you will find my blog may cater to mathys as I now know an abundance, no apologies). I will also post puzzles and codes occasionally. I liked that from the livejournal days.

Here's a puzzle.

Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are 'da' and 'ja', in some order. You do not know which word means which.

• It could be that some god gets asked more than one question (and hence that some god is not asked any question at all).

• What the second question is, and to which god it is put, may depend on the answer to the first question. (And of course similarly for the third question.)
• Whether Random speaks truly or not should be thought of as depending on the flip of a coin hidden in his brain: if the coin comes down heads, he speaks truly; if tails, falsely.
• Random will answer 'da' or 'ja' when asked any yes-no question.

I'll give you a hint: This is very difficult. I could not solve this in a reasonable amount of time. Don't use the internet for the answer. Actually, I'll post the solution later if you want.

Rainy Day

It is raining today. It is getting colder. Good thing ALANNA is teaching me to knit. Mittens to come.

I'm hanging out with AMOL, BARRY and BOK CHOY (who is skipping today). I'll take some pictures... AMOL is pictured by himself.

Some pictures

For the record, I woke up at 11am today... which beats 4:30pm yesterday. Eek. Oh ya... I have a mustache.

This is my apartment right before the party. Well.. the living room/my room. I have a bed in the "bedroom", but I like it out here better. I sleep on that couch... it pulls out.


Here's some more pictures, while Im uploading...

You know JOE, but he is sideways now.







And this is KELLY and BILL, chilling in my apartment. Alright. I'm going to take a shower and go buy another metro pass. My first one was conned off of me by a pickpocketing gypsy.

So I live in a neat apartment with JOE (left)
and BILL (right). I mix them up sometimes. I capitalized their names because I think I'm going to do that with names in this blog. People are important to me. I'll put pictures up to. That will be fun. I have lots of new friends.

I dropped out of language school after a week. It saved me 36000HUF, which is about $180. Excellent decision. I've been enjoying playing my harmonica instead.

I had a big party. 30+ people came.

Food here is great. Goulash and Chinese food. I eat at this Kinai Bufe for 500HUF ($2.50). It is good and filling.

I have no clue what to write. Maybe post questions to this post.

Oh. I met a beautiful Christian girl, CHARISSA. I asked her out via facebook as she has no phone yet. We'll see how that goes.

Here are some stolen facebook pics of me and my friends.

First Post

What is this? My excuse for a blog. I'm too out of touch. I will write often, then seldom, knowing me. Tossing standard English to the pit. I can't handle censoring, so I will swear as often as I do. I also don't want this to be a repeat of my last blogs so I don't plan on getting overly intimate. I'm not going to work to hard. Don't use this as a gauge of who I am. If you are reading this to get to know me, listen to my podcast. That will provide a much better picture. Actually, as the title suggests, this blog is only to catch the excess when poetry won't work for me. Either because events are too technical or I lack artistic motivation or because I want you to grasp something in detail but I love the abstractness of my poetry, or the details, whichever. Expect grassroot rants and no backspacing. I'm in Budapest and I'm blogging for you. Just be happy about it.