Worked too hard start of this week. Only Thursday today and very ready to mentally check out for the remainder of this week. (Need to plan more things to do that require less brainpower and more gruntpower 🙃)

You guys, I'm so flipping mad at myself. Last week my supervisor noticed a mistake in my code which was changing a 2.5 to 2500. This week my supervisor noticed another mistake, and changed a "=" to a "+=". Cursing my inability to notice my small mistakes /flails

Today's Doctordle I only got after Clue 4 because of learning about the disease in a Horrible Science book in my childhood that had a comical illustration of a person suffering from the symptom in Clue 4. I wonder how many kids nowadays would be exposed to that knowledge.

So, like, with hearing aids they're engineered to be small. But that limits battery capacity + processing power. I was musing to a friend today how much more effective hearing aids could be if people were comfortable with their not being small 🤔

Current Brainworm: I want to suggest to my university to consider installing Auracast (one-to-many Bluetooth) in all of its lecture theatres for accessibility, but I don't know who I should be contacting. My best guess is either IT or some Building Manager. Advice welcome.

There's chatter on my Twitter/X timeline from Chinese people about Wang Hong's time back in China and how she struggled, being surrounded by Olympiad students, before she made it out to France and the US and therefore winning the Fields Medal. Makes me mad, very glad she persevered.

Today's Nice Thing: Discussion at the (mathematicians') communal lunch table was over Balatro, its relevant mathematics, and similar deck-building roguelikes. It was very interesting to watch Balatro explained to another person (who'd never played it) on a whiteboard 😁

I realise this probably doesn't happen as much, at least in the maths departments I've been in, but I'd like to have more moments where I casually walk by a group of people doing maths on a whiteboard and I just sit down to casually watch and possibly join in.

It's amusing/annoying to see Youtube A/B test video titles because it's not uncommon for me to not click on videos for the first time, but my brain makes a note to watch it later, and then later I see the same thumbnail but with a different title and I'm momentarily confused.

/r/pchelp has bubbled up onto my main Reddit feed and I really didn't need a reminder of people going through PC problems that I'd already encountered in my youth and know how to avoid, that I'll inevitably have to teach my future children...

TIL one of the Field's medallists plays the cello but I'm mad at the post-production editing on the video done by the Simon's Foundation because it overlays the audio over multiple video cuts that are not synced, grrrrrr. Y'all didn't expect another cellist+mathematician, huh?

Today's interesting thing I learnt: I got a bit of insight into the Hebrew alphabet and how some words in Hebrew have implied vowel sounds whereas they're much more explicit in English.

If you ever see me randomly switch to audiology it'll be because I've built up too much spite from: - Not being able to tweak my hearing aid settings at a finer level, - Being blocked from additional assistance because I need a certified audiologist's recommendation.

Today I had to create a Microsoft account with my personal Gmail address so I could accept an invite to a Teams group. That felt very very wrong.

Today: Me at the communal lunch table: *quietly crocheting but visibly reacting to the conversations and stories other people were telling* Me (temporarily) chairing a meeting over Zoom: yapyapyapyapyapyapyapyapyap *facilitates conversation smoothly*

Yesterday I installed a LED strip around the back edge of my desk and....I get it. Sigh. I'm still definitely against excessive LED lighting on everything (e.g. keyboard, computer internals), though. Just wanted a bit more indirect lighting for my room.

Me: Okay, I have to write out an invoice and send it through 🧠: "Wouldn't it be cool if you used this opportunity to learn Typst?! This is such a simple document to give this new typesetting language a spin!" Me: /sighs heavily and installs

Funny Thing Yesterday: I was chatting with an exhibitor and he randomly hits me with "Did you hear about the constipated mathematician?" I was his first to answer smoothly and correctly 😁

Today's Really Really Cool Thing: Seeing @davidkbutler.bsky.social #TryMathsLive and his "workshop presenting personality" in person 😁

Today's Nice Things: 1. Was running a workshop today, had a really good and deep conversation with the two attendees. 2. First response + comments also came back from related ethics application today (which was delayed by a month).

Today's Nice Thing: Volunteered some private maths tutoring for a colleague's high school daughters who'd immigrated from their home country this year and it was nice to interact with students who engaged with the learning compared to the overall AI doom & gloom. 1/2

Trailer's out for Behemoth which has Pedro Pascal playing a cello and...there's about 3-4 points it already fails in terms of accuracy of cello playing that I saw on the initial watch arrrrrrrrrrrgh.

BEHEMOTH! | Official Teaser | Searchlight Pictures

A gifted cellist, Alex Serian (Pedro Pascal), returns home to Los Angeles after 20 years on the road. Music, which has been the constant, all-consuming river of his life, begins to carry Alex on an adventure that will change him forever. Written & Directed by: Tony Gilroy Produced By: Tony Gilroy,

youtube.com

According to one of my supervisors, in my PhD work I should only need to sit with a problem for a few days before reaching out for help and not necessarily have to exhaust all of my options before doing so. 1/2

It's fascinating to me how both maths and (classical) music have the same problem of the messy process not being very visible to outsiders so there's a noticeable subset of the population that incorrectly assume when they try it, that it has to be perfect from the get go.

Today's Nice Thing: On my walk home I usually go around a corner where there's a guy who usually has up to 5 cats chilling outdoors. Today, two of them actually walked up to me and I got a healthy dose of oxytocin 🥰

I feel like the contrast between what I'm seeing at the loss of Sam Neill compared to some other public figures recently really demonstrates this fact beautifully

A.R. Moxon@juliusgoat.bsky.social · 3w ago

You write your eulogy in life. If you want people to mourn, make your life something to celebrate. If you want people to celebrate, make your life something to mourn.

Today's Satisfying Moment: Using my meat press to flatten my chicken steaks in the pan and seeing them have golden crust evenly over its whole surface 😋 (I'm not obsessed enough to use a meat thermometer yet, though!)

I wish for the simpler times when the only time we had to decide if things were real was to answer the question, “Is it cake?”

Yesterday's minor win: I was going to get a spice mix from the supermarket because I was thinking of making chicken steaks for meal prep, then on a whim I read the ingredients and realised I had them all at home already 🥳

Over the last two days my brain has passively planned & storyboarded a whole short video explaining a maths meme/image I saw on the internet and so I guess I'll record some footage at work today... (This definitely will not be a regular thing)