A week

Today was.. well, unusual, even by the standards of my fairly chaotic life.

It started with me waking up at 9, and reseting the clock to 9.30. Then getting up at 9.30, packing up my bass and my notebook and riding a bike to the Vanemuise lecture hall (1.5 km). I then spent most of the lecture working on a small mathematical problem that I had encountered the day before and which urgently needed resolution. And I got it done.

I then took to my bike again and rode to Annelinn (4 km) in search of the 2. childrens music school where my Bass teacher works. It took me 15 minutes to get there, and then about half an hour of riding around there (~1km) to actually find the building (my bass teacher and I had some communication issues - basically, the landmarks I knew, he did not, and vice versa). I had my last bass lesson. He corrected a few thing, but said that I was making pretty good progress...

Back to town again (4.5 km), this time to attend the institute meeting and to answer some e-mails in parallel. The university is doing something pretty idiotic as it turns out - from next year, it will not allow students beyond what the government orders, and faculties have to pay back the money they received for each student that drops out. This may make sense in humanities, but not in natural or mathematical sciences, where 1/3 dropout rate is normal, even in top universities.

Anwyays, back to the point. After that meeting ended, I had to attend a meeting of my research group. The project leader is a pretty cool guy, so that may well have been the high point of my day.

Once that was finished, I had about an hour for actual work. Which I utilized pretty well, managing to write down the solution I had come up with in the morning, leaving the paper in a state where I feel comfortable in putting it on hold for a period of time.

Then to Taiji (2 km). We did form exercises and then about an hours worth of spear/staff training.. And then back to town again (2km), to go watch "The Dissapearing Number" broadcast live in Ekraan. I arrived there, parked my bike and then met up with the co-worker who had suggested the idea in the first place and who had the tickets.. We went in, me still tired from practice and biking.. and bought a packet of popcorn - first food I had had for the entire day.

The production was good. Really good. Best theater I have seen to date, I think... funny, emotional, thought provoking... everything theater should be.

Then got home (1km) and took a nice bath.

So: to sum up:
All day running around
2 hours of actual work
15.5 km of biking and a 2 hour Taiji practice.
1 packet of popcorn to eat for the whole day

A week has passed since me and L. broke up. Still don't regret the decision, but...

I hate being single.

Then again, I better get used to it. Again.

Recovery

Of the things mentioned in my life:
The first three problems I managed to outsource.
The fourth will remain in the state that it is.
The fifth is recovering, slow but steady.

Again - I am truly glad I have as good friends as I do, for all of them have been very supportive throughout the past 2 days. I do not regret the decision to break up with L. and in the long run it is probably better for the both of us that way. In the short run, it is still somewhat painful, of course.

Yesterday I went to my other office, where I hadn't been for over two weeks. I noticed I had left one of my guitars there and - as improbable as it was - it was in tune. Which means someone had to have tuned it... It was tuned higher than it should though (the lowest and highest strings were both F# instead of E, and the rest were also tuned a full tone upward)...
Reminds me of the story of three bears (with porridge being too hot, bed being too big and now, guitar being tuned too high).

Met a lot of people over the past 3 days. Most of my close friends in Tartu, including M. and excluding only E., Mi., Ma. and Ra. For instance, I went to a dinner party at L2. and played table tennis with Ma2 (I should really find more friends whose names begin with something other than L or M :P). Also had a jam session with A., who was here for just a week.

Work has suffered though - I have a prototype implementation ready, but I haven't really stated seriously on the protocol itself.

Then again, the night is still young.

Broken

At the moment I have:
A broken door
A broken bike
A broken washing machine
A broken relationship
A broken me

Which ones of these can be fixed, remains to be seen. The plan is to bury myself in work in the mean time.

Theory Days

This weekend I was at Computer Science Theory days in Rakari, Latvia.

Usually, it has been a small conference-type gathering for estonian cryptographers and formal languages people. This year, it was held together with latvian complexity theorists, which explains why we had to make a 3 hour drive to get to the conference venue.

The venue itself was really nice, having small cottages with grass roofs. The sea was also quite nearby. And the weather was great. Only thing that was not so great was the internet connection, which was nearly unusable, since about 50 people were trying to use it simultaneously.

My own talk went pretty well. I talked about Bob and hish Hash... function. And oracles. It was by far the most politically incorrect presentation I have ever given.. so it got mixed reviews.. but it did get peoples attention. One of the questions I received after the talk was "will the slides be available somewhere".

Link for the readers of this blog.

After the talk I went to the seashore. The sun had just set and..

well..

it was magical

to say the very least...

There was a slight red glow on the horizon. And a barrier of sand behind against which the waves crashed.. and stars.. and no moon, and also a mist so I could barely make out the road when going there.

The way back was even cooler - as it had got even darker so I could just barely make out the outline of the path.. and it constantly felt like I would hit my head into a tree branch.

Walking back, I suddelny heared footsteps.. so I slowed and quieted down my own walking. They were moving towards me, but due to the darkness and mist I could not see anything. Then, suddenly, I could make out two small embers, at about belt level.. cigarette ends, as it turned out. They were pretty surprised to see me though, because they noticed when I was only a meter away from them.

Later, I heared another set of footsteps. 6 more people surprised :)

After that, the night was pretty uneventful. Practiced bass a little, had a chat with my collegues and got to bed around 1.

Woke up at around 8. Drank 3 cups of coffee during the morning session

On the way back, while still in Latvia, we were forced to the side of the road by a military convoy.. of around 50 cars.. bearing estonian banners and number plates...

Looked suspiciously like Estonia invading Latvia. Of course, that was not the case, as a later news program informed us that it was the Scoutsbatallion heading for week-long training and assesment maneuvers in Latvia. Still, you do not see a military convoy every day..

Life in general

I have been fairly busy the past month. Planning "Introduction to informatics", working on practice materials for "Programming 1", doing science on the side.

Finally started practicing with the band - and had a few jam sessions with other friends as well. Since we have been practicing a few punk songs, I have started learning to play with the plectrum - not too hard but not as easy as I first hoped either.

Yesterday I had a seminar talk about the machine learning book alluded to in the aforementioned post. About half a third of the staff of the statistics faculty came to see the talk - which was somewhat surprising for me. They seemed to understand what I was talking about pretty well, though. Not sure whether the normal students did though... but Im hoping for the best.

Been together with L. for nearly two months now. We have had our problems but at the moment, things seem to be heading in a good direction. I miss her when she is away, which sadly happens for 2-3 days each week. Thankfully, I have plenty of work to distract me from that feeling :)

Mathematics as a language

I have been reading a Machine Learning textbook for the past 3 days. It uses a lot of probability theory, something I know the basics of (up to Probability theory II course). I managed to get the gist of what the book was trying to say, but am still somewhat struggling to understand how the proof of the main theorem works and what its implications are.

At some point, my roommate (who is a psychology major and very fond of languages as well) asked me to show her the proof I was reading.. and then instantly turned away when she saw the formulae. So I tried to explain to her what my problem was, in terms she could understand. And then I stumbled upon a pretty interesting and deep analogy:

Mathematics is just a set of symbols used to very precisely say things that would take a lot of plaintext to explain without the special notation. Just a means of precisely expressing yourself. Like the alphabet. However, each branch of mathematics has its own key concepts and terminology (the words) as well as diffent proof techniques (syntax). Different branches of mathematics can, in this sense, be likened to different languages. And different languages can be either very close to eachother (Statistics and Machine learning seem quite like Estonian and Finnish, for instance - they have quite a lot of common ground both in terms of key concepts and proof methods, but they are nevertheless quite distinct, with quite a few things having nearly opposite meaning)

My mother tongue in mathematics is Cryptology, with a slight accent from complexity theory. Reading a Machine Learning textbook for me is akin to reading something in a language I have studied a little (a few years, maybe) but which I am not comfortable in yet - I can make out the meaning of most that is said, but I do not grasp the nuances of the more complex words (ideas) and sometimes get their meaning completely wrong (which happens if you are forced to deduce their meaning just from the context). However, this is a pretty good way of learning the new language, as it forces you into a very deep mode of processing - you have to build up the abstract "big picture" as fast as possible and constantly try to deduce the missing details back from it. Hard, but quite enjoyable, as it makes me feel I am actually learning and very rapidly.

For those who find mathematics courses hard, this analogy might help understand what is going on: you are usually expected to learn the rudiments of a new language, often up to the point where you need to be able to not only understand it but actually "speak" it to a degree by the end. It is not harder than learning normal languages, and as with normal languages, the more different languages you learn, the easier it becomes to acquire a new one.

Don't try this at home

Me and Riinu went to the countryside yesterday to visit her grandparents. Mostly a fun and relaxing trip.

When we got off the train at Valga, we got picked up by her grandfather. Riinu asked if he would drive us to go fetch a bike lock she had left somewhere about 15 km away around a post, when she had left in a hurry a few weeks back. I bet her (a beer) that it would not be there, since she had left it unlocked. However, when we got there, it had been moved a bit but was still there - so I got her a beer at the nearest gas station.

When we got to her grandparents house, we were greeted by their overly friendly dog Sammy. We had sandwiches for breakfast and then watched a few episodes from some TV shows from the laptop before heading out for mushrooms.

I had not went gathering mushrooms for over 10 years. It showed - she returned with her pail nearly full, while mine had maybe only a third of it filled. The forests were really full of shrooms though. Problem was, quite a few of them had worms inside already. Nevertheless, it was quite fun.

We then proceeded to the kitchen to prepare dinner. Mushrooms with garlic, onion and sour cream. Delicious. I did most of the cooking. Me, Riinu and her grandma talked about cooking for nearly 2 hours.

There was also a 5-year old girl there whom I had a brief discussion with. She was very intelligent for her age - could add and subtract up to 10, could read pretty well and was already learning to write with handwriting letters - all that two years before going to the first grade. She was also pretty social and could keep up a fairly interesting conversation :=)

We then went to the other building and watched one more episode of "The Outer Limits" before heading to sauna. They have a very good one - which due to a lot of moisture is already quite strong at 65-70 C. Also, they had a nice pond nearby with cool water.

After a few rounds in the sauna, we decided to call it a day and she filled three pails with water - one cool, one warm and one near-boiling. Problem was, I did not know which one was which.. so I stuffed my hands into the one with near-boiling water. Not fun.

I quickly ran to the pond and held my hands in the cool water for a few minutes. I then returned to the sauna - only to discover that even the front room temperature (35 C maybe) was unbearable to my hands (so I had to water them down every now and then). This was just the beginning, however, as pretty soon all I could do was hold my hands in cool water. After about an hour, I finally decided to call Ma., who is a 5. year medical student. She said I should seek immediate medical help... so we woke up the grandfather and he drove us to the emergency room in valga where they tied my hands up. In the car, I held my hands out of the window most of the time for the pain to be bearable, but that was not an option while waiting in the emergency room, where even the room temperature felt like holding my hands inside a flame. And then they tied my arms up in fairly thick bandages that formed mits - so it got even warmer and even harder to bear. They told me that it was too early to tell how bad the damage was but that I should check back the next day.

We got back and then watched yet another episode of outer limits - on a bed in an unheated room with the door open with me holding my hands straight up above my head (to decrease circulation of warm blood there). Paracetamol was not helping much and it was still highly uncomfortable. I could not imagine how I could get to sleep.

Nevertheless, it turned out to be somewhat easier than first feared. Initially, it was just very cold - as I had to keep my arms out of the sleeping bag and I was essentially sleeping just next to the open door. At some point, however, pain started receeding and I could pull my arms inside the bag and close the door. Next thing I remember is waking up.

Morning went pretty slowly. I woke up Riinu, we had coffee and then just lounged around for a while. Then she made lunch after which we got dropped back to Valga for me to catch a train and for her to do some shopping.

In the emergency room in Tartu, they retied the bandages and told me to go see my family doctor on Wednesday. Since she is still in Tallinn, however, I plan to make due with Ma. and her friend S. who had plans to visit me on Tuesday evening anyway.

All in all - I am very grateful to have as good friends as I have. Riinu helped me out with quite a few things without even asking and Ma. was also very happy to come and retie my bandages Tuesday.