psyche

I’ve begun wondering if there’s anything special I can find with recursion, or if it’s just a fun way of expressing things. Is there anything new in there?

Pax

If my muddled understanding of cellular automata and neural networks (and indeed the human brain itself), logic gates and the internet has taught me anything, it’s that the networking of nodes (simple[r] systems) can yield impressive, unpredictable or lulzworthy results. For me at least, pieces of fiction (films, books and such… not like, rubbish stuff) have an effect because I pick up on certain connections within the material to other parts of itself as well as to other things I don’t fully understand and stuff I already know etc.. This generates a kind of feel which I struggle to capture with my poor photography and endless blogging.

Maybe these complex network “feels” are also what govern sociology, love and anti-lulz! I think of this “feel” as a generalisation of the term zeitgeist, removing it from time. Geist, then? It already has a definition; I like mine better. How about nGeist? For network Geist? WordPress seems content with it… yes, that’s fine. Maybe The Node was just one Geist. Or the Universal nGeist. The uGeist! I MAKE WORDS UP.

Usually when I’m not fully acquainted with someone - or something - I get a more attractive “feel” than I will when I get more familiar.

Occasionally though, it just gets better and better until I get lost completely. Very occasionally. But when it does, it increases O(x^x!). These cases have been computing, maths and a few other special cases which maybe I’ll write about later.

Ha ha! Later!

Pax

I’ll standardise CPT1 and CPT2 to 3.7. Core 2 was 3.8ish? Have all three physics papers on Thursday, Stats 1 on Friday and then a break for a week. Then Core 3 and FP1 on Monday, all three chemistry papers on that Wednesday and Mechanics 1 on that Friday - AND I’M DONE!

Pax

I’d better give a quick rundown of what’s going on.

I’m going to have a numerical indicator for how well exams go:

0 - OH MY GOD 0%
1 - oh, Jesus!
2 - …okay
3 - good
4 - awesome
5 - absolutely certain 100% UMS (…)

I had CPT3 yesterday (3.5?), physics plan (…2.5) and chemistry practical (3.25?). I have the physics practical tomorrow; will be revising off Will’s notes from today’s lesson.

Looking forward to Core 2 on Thursday and then I have a short break to learn all of physics (got 5/10 in one of Mr Miller’s quick tests today. Oh well. At least ritual humiliation is an incentive to learn! :D).

Our computing set did question 1 from BIO ‘98 today; it was quite interesting. I learned how to actually make functions return a value in VB (having carefully avoided them so far, wondering why “return result” didn’t do anything). Also messed around with some recursive functions. Dr Eves, ever enthusiastic about random maths I bring up, showed us some chaotic stuff. Elliot displayed disgust and contempt after I gave him one that returned 61 for x = 0 or 1, some random value for 0 < x < 1 and negative infinity for all other values of x (useful).

Looking forward to awesomeness. Oh yeah!!

Pax

Yes, I forgot a lot of stuff.

I went to the CERN open day on Sunday April 6^th - I’ll put up videos (of the Computer Center) and general photos if someone reminds me. For now, here and here.

I saw Muse and The Futureheads on April 12^th (Teenage Cancer Trust) thing with Oliver Jones (I don’t think I give that guy enough credit for his sociopolitical intelligence. A good guy. One to watch.) and it was awesome.

With Bryant Tan and Charlie Patterson being prodigiously good informaticians and Vivan somewhere in Princeton talking to legends of computing, it actually seems like maybe some of the interesting things that are going to happen in computer science could, you know, be initiated by some of us. That’s cool. We’re not bad. As Mr Rokison despairs over our computing set, I can’t help thinking that actually we’ve come a long way - and are, for the most part, totally awesome.

Also, I’m going to buy this. It is an almost-perfect proxy for the experience of old computer stuff. Which I missed. Because of time.

I saw Iron Man. I didn’t think it was a masterpiece… but I thought it was very good, actually. The thing I liked about Fantastic Four was the characterisation (especially The Thing and The Human Torch) - but the rest of it was crap. Iron Man, however, had Mr Downey Jr. (who I thought was really good in this - REALLY!) as well as other general awesomeness. I don’t know about the Stane guy - I don’t think he had the villainous undercurrent these superhero bad guys usually do. I think a subtle hint of what a character will develop into isn’t actually that unrealistic and can be an elegant storytelling device, even if people pan things like that as making the plot too obvious etc.. Done properly, it would have added weight. Anyway, yeah. That was good. Yeah.

Good things coming up: The Dark Knight, Watchmen, The Incredible Hulk
Horrifying things: A-levels

Crippling self-doubt, not helped by genius of peers, can be remedied, I found out, with guitar practise*. Just practise. Seriously. You’ll be a better guitarist and worry less. Coping mechanisms: fun, fun, fun! I don’t even let the self-doubt thing percolate properly anymore. I just refresh my whole brain whenever it starts. It’s pretty good.

Pax

* lulz commas