It’s been a pretty calm week this end. Things are picking up on the course, the first few courseworks are popping up so I’m trying to get into a habit of batting those down and getting a submission in. Larger work is looming on the horizon. Autumn is settling in down in Bromham. I can just about see the church spire over the trees from my study window. The colours are split between the evergreens and yellow dashed trees on their way to losing their leaves. By the time I’m at my desk the light is still streaking in low. It’s very nice just to be around, which makes it easier to get things done and keep feeling good.

Something one of my tutors said this week stuck with me, it was while he was teaching us how to construct DFA diagrams from their formal definitions. He made it clear that this was a creative practice, that there was no way to brute force this kind of thing, and that the only way to become good at it was through studying examples and attempting exercises. I think that essentially holds true across a lot of the aspects of programming and CS that are incredibly creative processes. You’ve just got to put in the work, and look at the examples, and take it from there.

I’m very much getting into the note taking and prep work from all of the lectures and online materials. I think the shift to online materials is absolutely fantastic. Compared to lectures only held at a certain time, it’s so much more freeing as a student to be able to manage your time, batch together topics, and move through them at your own pace. There’s so much less time lost with all of the interstitial bits of moving about a campus, or commuting. Although, the one in person session a week is still a highlight purely for the chance to get a few beers at the SU afterwards. Meeting people in your discipline or adjacent areas is one of the best things that being at a University affords. It’s obviously a weird time with the many safeguarding measures but it’s amazing how normal it can feel. I’m still very envious of my partner who spent every Thursday afternoon for the second year of her masters boozing in the grad bar with the professors of courses she was a TA on. Hopefully we’ll get there soon.

Starting to get güd at MathJax has been a saviour for my notes. I’ve got a reasonable amount of Algebraic topics, each using their own subset of notation. I’m using Obsidian.md for this which just makes taking notes really pleasurable. It’s objectively quite Nerdy Shit ✅ but it also feels very freeing. Slightly hackerman-esque, like the guilty rush of using Vim that makes you want to brag to everyone that you’ve figured it out and you’re a productivity machine.

Picture showing some notes with mathematical notation

Look at that sweet subscript.

The most exciting news of the week was that Canada is now making travel exemptions for people in unmarried committed relationships! My partner is Canadian, and we haven’t seen each other since February so I’m hopefully going to get out there for Christmas. There are a few bureaucratic hoops to jump through (she has to swear a very formal oath in front of a notary) but it’s really not too bad. This is thanks to the activism of people who have it a lot worse than us, families who’ve been separated while relatives are dying. It still feels like we’re just beginning but that’s a very exciting thing to look forward to, government willing.

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Reading List

Classic I was listening to:

Joni Mitchell, Ladies of the Canyon