Foreshortened

May week: the transition from concern about Ps. 127 v.2 to v.3. Quoted last MMPM and Central.

St. Anne: heard across the court going to Hall! +1. Turns out people can be useful even though they never existed.

PubSubHubbub: frustrated with Superfeedr

Slightly frustrated with Superfeedr, the real-time feed service Tumblr uses. Tumblr pays them some socking amount to do the dirty and implement the notification hub, but I’ve had trouble getting it to work. Subscribing is fine, but they just don’t deliver updates. They should come within seconds, but sometimes come very late or not at all. I’m using Feedburner now, ironically, which has its own feed scraping service, and automatically adds Google’s appspot hub to any feed, and that does work. Unfortunately, Feedburner scraping can’t deliver realtime; it just guarantees that I do get notifications if I subscribe to the Feedburner feed at appspot.

What makes it seem like a bug to me is that Feedburner should be able to interface well with Superfeedr. I don’t trust my own PubSubHubbub implementation, but if anyone can get it right, surely they have? So, I’m aroused by the fact that sometimes I get Feedburner notifications properly instantly, within one or two seconds of posting, which is simply not possible with polling—the probabilities don’t quite add up. So, it seems Feedburner subscribes when it spots a hub and avoids polling where it can. On the other hand, they sometimes get notifications very late, which suggests to me that they must be having the difficulty getting pings from Superfeedr that I am. All very dodge.

Happy: bubbly given to Pt. I diddlies, duly fêted, and kindness dispensed. Peterhouse and Pembroke, still the only truly social colleges. Feeling bad after realising quite how unlike champagne cheap substitute is.

Excited by mad plan to perform Tosca with Kate, William, and Alex in May week. Could it happen?

Titus, reprise

It felt like a bit of dejà vu to hear a good sermon on Titus last Central, after writing and talking about basically exactly the same thing last term (cf “be a tool” mentality mentioned to Daniel Thomas and Daniel Sim). James Fletcher was back after not seeing him for a few years since he left Ridley, and gave a really stonking piece of exegesis. He had lots of padding and illustrations, and gave a training slot at the end as application, but at the start I was impressed how cleverly and unobtrusively he managed to get exactly the flavour of the Titus attitude from gentle use of just a few verses. Best exegesis of the week.

This morning also, Julian gave what will probably go down as a bit of a classic. Very cautious, tidy and thorough exposition going through leadership in Proverbs. One of the top Eden sermons of the term to listen to.

In the evening, a Westcott chap gave a rather more confusing and bizarre talk instead of a sermon. Exegesis, alas. Some interesting ideas, but somehow didn’t quite work for me. Oh well.

Some good combinatorics today, but I’m a meagre shadow of what I once was (addled brain ⇒ been cracking lots like that recently)

In other news, keeping my mind off work by rewarding myself with some exercises at suitable intervals. It’s the ultimate round-up distraction though. Did 2500 assorted today, including 1000 press-ups. Mixing it up a bit by doing more tough variations. V. puffed now from doing last few hundred extremely quickly to make my goal of midnight.

First exam

Just to keep people informed, I had my first exam today. It turns out that actually two and a half days are enough to own a 24-lecture course: day one, read notes through for first time and do questions on sheets likely to come up; day two, learn content; day three, brush up on material and sit exam. Clearly the people who went to the lectures, did the sheets in Michaelmas, and started revising early were onto a good thing. In all seriousness, the status is that some last-minute intensive work is pulling the courses together, just about. Analysis was fine today, and I just completed the paper in time. With an average of 2 days already spent revising each remaining subject, and twelve days to go, I am now expecting to pull through, though some exams ought to be better written than today and show me up.

The plus side is that I know Analysis now very much better than previously, and with my memory I’ve locked a good number of very nice theorems and proofs up there, and I actually understand the subject well now I’ve finished working through Bollobás. Indeed, in previous years, I started revising earlier, and focussed more on the sheets and the course, and I’m rather preferring looking instead at the subject, and with a bit more intensity and adrenaline. Corol.—I hope not to be too tired to do the exams well, because I’ve not made much calculation for that.

I also took a sleeping pill last night, and it worked at getting me a few extra hours sleep. I’m extremely against those sorts of things usually, but it’s a pretty harmless thing, basically a deliberately drowsy hayfever tablet (antihistamine), enough to turn the two or three hours awake in bed I’ve been having recently into about half an hour. It’s not stress, just so many things whirling in my very active brain. Exercise hasn’t been helping, nor anything. I’m only planning to use them just before exams.

Ha! 100 one-armed pressups before bed (with some rests…)! I’m getting back into practice quicker than I’d expected. Still getting a bit tired after 500 each of core exercises, but I’ll soon have dips/squats etc back up. I’m still just too lazy to do aerobic exercise, so running’s kind of embarrassing.

Singing the oldies without syncopation, very crisply and loudly: self-righteous fogey.

For the third time this week… Midichlorians are not canonical. Still tempted to get the prequels at some point now they’re so cheap.