I am a software programmer working at RealVNC with many interests including singing, and am a Christian. Many of my friends remember me as a Part III mathematician at Peterhouse. Find out more or contact me!
Lovely bean shoots being put out today and being trained in an arch over the p’lodge door.
Very excited after first Tosca bash-through. Immensely looking forward to it. Scared of B♭.
My apologies go out to the senders of the ninety emails I need to respond to.
Not sure what to say; lots of funny feelings. For days, I’ve had those pounding bells from Tosca in my head, tiredness, and all the usual. I’ve emerged into the sunlight today after my last exam, in a slightly funny sort of mood. I think I’m happy, but sad, regretful, relieved, and more. It’ll take a while before I can describe it and move on. What a four years! Praise be to God who gives life and more. Not to us, not to us be the glory, but to God who in his surpassing faithfulness hasn’t left us to wallow in life, going from exams to parties to more work, fleeting toil and pleasures, but gives us the deepest, truest, new life entirely, so that God the eternal Father himself can receive us before himself, and give us his worship as a goal and honour.
Work has been good, knowing it’s for him, the seminars and sheets and bits and pieces all year, in which, despite my moaning, I have been getting through some good maths each week, as well as the crunch time in the last few weeks. Fun ahead is also wonderful only in knowing what relationships really are when we see them in the light of Christ’s relationship to us; parties and other temporary pleasures satisfying only when we work to set our desires on remembering the joy the come and understand the few weeks revels ahead in that context. What a good and faithful Lord we have, who comforts every heart which calls on him before exams to ask for repentance and a new direction that satisfies, and all the more will take us in in May week when we drink and find that the world is not enough! Who can count himself rich to gain the whole of Cambridge, if he forfeit his soul?
So, I’m free now, from one job and one lifestyle, but Christ offers for us to be anchored not just to the familiar and predictable, but in the unshakeable. I’ll be getting out and hitting May week, and I’ll have something wonderful to sing of his works among my friends. That’s life to the full.
Yaroo! Set theory roughly 50% vised (that is, [non-re]-vised). Unfortunately, sleep not going so well. Two hours last night before I got to sleep, thinking about someone I don’t want to think about, and waking up lots in the night.
Also, another mystery: I’m feeling sore in my legs and shoulders and all over, all the time, and I don’t know what it is. I don’t feel all that tense when I’m hunched in the library, and though I am exercising fairly often, I’d expect it to hurt more in arms or thighs or whatever if that were it, or some other muscles I actually use.
Nom nom. Looks better than Soreen. I might try some.
Apologies for posting these ad nauseam if it’s been peppering your news stream, but it’s too good not to pass on.
Finished a biro for the first time ever! Zaphod, you just lost a sale.
Loving the fact that one of the URLs Amazon redirects you to is view-upsell.html.
[The love duet Qual’occhio provides] an almost erotic lyricism that has been called pornophony.
Can’t help thinking we expend disproportionate effort composing preces compared to actually writing new prayers. I mean, some people think I’m like this already, but suppose I went up to you in Hall, every day, and had exactly the same conversation, regardless of what you said to me? It just doesn’t really make sense to pursue variation so much in the music when it’s not clear why the words have to be the same each time. Also, do you hate it when people find out you’re a something or other (mathmo, Wagner-lover, Christian, woman, etc) and talk down to you, or in a funny voice? Four years of doing it to God, and I still can’t get over the weirdness of treating him like he’s some temporally-retarded seventeenth century guy we have to speak a little bit slower to, and in language he’ll understand, poor dear. Oops, I’m in a church; shouldn’t do that here, or talk like that (like he’s not quite in touch with touch with lunch queue banter a few yards away). It’s like, Oops, mummie’s not meant to say rude words in the nursery, goo goo ga.
Maverick Tom Forster set a great exam today, with a nice Ackermann question, Y-combinators, and non-decidability of the set of gnumbers of machines with given function graphs. For about one and a half days’ work in total, ever, the lowest of any of the courses, that one came out well. He’s the kind of guy who might have thought it fun to set some of PTJ’s “challenging excercises”. I’ve actually already done the revision for Graphs on Monday, so I just have to start Set Theory for Tuesday; plenty of time, so I’m tempted to have half the evening off. (Tosca came in the post today! Score.)
This looks pretty cool. I might even have some use for these soon.
Annoyed by authors who distinguish between oblique and italic. We all know CModern well enough to handle it, but equations should be clearer.