psyche

This blog post will grow as I remember more details.

Imperial College (or Imperial Lollege, as it was when my dad was there, reading Mechanical Engineering and putting the lulz in Lulz…ondon) was pretty awesome. Four year course with industry placement looked awesome.

They coincidentally brought up Richard Hayden, whose CV I had read online previously. I lulzed up the talk with some banter about stochastic fluid flow. Hot female Japanese CS applicants were in awe of me, or at least noticed me in order to be contemptuous. Halls of residence full of lulz: Southside and Eastside. Talked to Dr Jeremy Bradley (DoC admissions tutor) about quantum computing and mathematical preparation; he suggested that if I have “any maths ability whatsoever” I should do JMC (Joint maths and computing) - he essentially said “don’t believe the prospectus; it’s actually the entire maths and computing undergrad in one”.

Met guy applying for physics. He plays Command & Conquer. Was from Wales; friendly. Also met Yen-Ming and his father. His father was doing his PhD - all research, no teaching - at Imperial while my dad was undergrad. How interconnected of him.

Saw some projects. Fantastic. Eye tracking, torso modelling, game playing lulz ensued. Dad saw that one of his professors from 198x was still a member of the mech eng faculty (lulz).

Ray Hammond and James Bellini were shockingly down-to-earth and non-speculative. Predictable themes included delocalisation of working environment, epic lulz, “conscious internet”, ubiquitous computing etc.. Hammond talked about what was essentially The Wired. Reminded me of Masami Eiri when he said, and I quote, “The next step in human evolution is merging with our creations”.

Audience was mostly pretentious pseudo-intellectuals like me. No-one else under 18 had entered (or made an entry decent enough to get an invitation). I guess young people don’t care about future. Short-sighted info addiction stuff. Lulz. Highlights included tipsy Tesla fanboy rambling about something no-one cares about, man whose life goal is to make jokes about Microsoft and Drunk Freelance Philosopher (one of the runners-up, in fact). I thought the winning entries were okay - not as great as Hammond and Bellini, though.

May remember other stuff. Cambridge had better be good, after that.

I like quantum computing. I like internet. I like artificial intelligence. I plan to lulz stuff up. Throw off crushing weight of friends with superior mathematical ability with attitudes ranging from condescending to hostile. Now irrelevant. Before I cried! NOW I LAUGH IN THE FACE OF ANTI-LULZ!

Ha ha; lulz!

Pax

P.S. News from Cambridge:

Dear Farhan,

Thanks for your query. Although it will depend on the College to which
you’re applying, the Faculty expects that you will be interviewed as a
computer scientist and will have one extra interview by the
mathematicians to check your mathematical ability. The Faculty also
expects that, should you be made an offer and then fail just the STEP
requirement, you would still be able to come to read Computer Science
with one of the other six options.

I hope this helps,
Fiona Billingsley

======================================
Mrs Fiona Billingsley
Student Administrator
University of Cambridge
Computer Laboratory
William Gates Building
JJ Thomson Ave
Cambridge CB3 0FD, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1223 763505
Fax: +44 (0)1223 334678
Email: fmb37@cl.cam.ac.uk
======================================

—–Original Message—–
From: Farhan Mannan [mailto:farhanmannan@mac.com]
Sent: 25 June 2008 21:48
To: undergraduate.admissions@cl.cam.ac.uk
Subject: Computer science with mathematics

I was planning to apply for computer science in 2009 but recently
decided that I may apply for the 50% maths option in the first year.
Does this mean my interview will essentially be a maths interview and
devalue the books I’ve read, or will it still be a computer science
interview with the proviso that I do well in STEP?

Thanks,

Farhan Mannan

Now:

• Made it to final of Aerospace Challenge - team meant to be called “The Pauli Effect”, listed as “Pauli”
• Doing terrible, terrible physics competition
• Used distribution of points in a square and circle to approximate pi
• Watched 2001: A Space Odyssey - totally awesome. Combination of pacing and philosophy reminded me of SEL - wonder whether Rokison liked 2001?
• Had fencing epiphany (remembered how to fence)
• Working on iSAMS MySQL JavaScript plugin thing

Over the summer:

• Fabric stuff
• University of Arizona stuff
• Science essay (applied computer science)
• Philosophy essay (Baudrillard)
• Revision for TSA and (horror!) STEP…
• Become a good fencer

Pax

Exams were OK. Made binary and quadratics for lulz. Not useful, really.

Doing S2 and C4 in maths. Interesting. Fred and I continue to brutally annihilate Dr Eves’ extension questions. Kishore pays no attention (and sometimes falls asleep) but easily completes all of Mr Motion’s work very quickly. We’re a good set. Dr Eves has to write references. Joy. Sentences becoming fragments now…

Doing physics competition thing with Will, Fred and Elliot. Must make mechanical or simple electrical clock to time 2 minutes with well-defined start- and endpoints. Then make a machine to raise an egg 1 metre (I think) as slowly as possible while still being continuous. Wonderful. Perhaps if I get Elliot and Fred working on proof that space is well and truly quantised making the task impossible (all distances discrete) then we’ll win for ingenuity.

Have to use BMAT to revise for TSA over summer. Also, 2000-word “science prize essay”. Will do on LHC and CERN grid computing systems and such. Also, 2minutechallenge.

Haven’t heard back from Aerospace Challenge people. Got sick today (dehydration). Good to be happy. Forgotten how good!

Pax

Those other things are still up (plotter, graphics, recursion) and this is an Excel spreadsheet which I used to do a bunch of simultaneous equations to determine that the sum from r=1 to n of r⁴ is n⁵/5 + n⁴/2 + n³/3 - n/30. I’ll simplify that later I suppose.

The idea was that the sum of r^p can be expressed as a polynomial of order p + 1, so I just got 5 simultaneous equations involving the 5 coefficients of the quintic expression and got Excel to solve them in an “algorithmic” way similar to the triangular form thing we have to do.

I was revising FP1 and the sections on triangular form and summations of r^p “inspired” me to do this.

Pax

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

I like exams. I will revise for them.

I very quickly read Counterknowledge (the book, not the blog). I kept thinking about Baudrillard and his simulations - probably to do with hysteria and mass media stuff. The book is acerbic. I think I like it, although I haven’t really considered it in great detail. It’s very angry. As in most cases, a balance (here of “credulous thinking” and assumption of good faith) is probably necessary.

I’m going to do the Turing Omnibus exercises in more detail and then read Algorithmics, and if I have time (…), The Pleasures of Counting.

Must be ready!

Pax