20 X 2022

well, google, one of them is a giant fuckin red dog

“Mathematician Henry Segerman demonstrating how a linear 3rd dimensional plane is only a projection of the curved 4th dimensional space time.”

13 I 2023

two days ago I went to the 0th term exam for commutative algebra and received the highest possible grade!

the thing I noticed when studying for it was that the topics that used to be fairly ok but not very clear became completely intuitive. the best example of this would be fibers of maps induced on spectra. it feels so good when after trying to understand something for two months everything finally clicks and I obtain a deeper level of understanding

also I realized that making pretty notes actually doesn't help at all, so I switched to making more messy, natural ones. maybe I can no longer look at them and admire the work of art, but I think the principle behind it is that the more I focus on making my notes pretty the less attention I pay to actual information processing

so maybe these ^ don't look as good as they could and they are probably hardly useful for anyone other than me lol but the benefit is that I started learning really fast compared to how it was going when my notes were a work of art

currently I am studying sheaf cohomology and preparing for a complex analysis test (it's next week). I have two courses left to pass and I would like to ace them too, although that's rather unrealistic

the second batch of topics for complex analysis includes: order of growth of entire functions, analytic continuation, gamma, zeta, theta functions and probably elliptic functions. significantly more sophisticated than the first part of the material. for the course on algebraic methods, everything is hard lol I am waiting for the moment when homological algebra and sheaf theory become intuitive

next semester I am going to take algebraic topology (fucking finally), differential geometry, number theory, statistics and algebra 2 (mostly galois theory). I have never taken 5 courses in one semester so I'm very scared

Okay I’m currently furious that migraines are often so blindly easy to treat and I had to find this out myself at the age of 26 when I’ve been to a neurologist since I was 11 lol so I’m about to teach you two neat and fast little tricks to deal with pain!

The first is the sternocleidomastoid muscle, or the SCM muscle.

This big red section is responsible for pain around the eye, cheekbone, and jaw, as well as some temple pain. Literally all you have to do is angle your head down a little, angle it away from the side that hurts, and then you can gently pinch and rub that muscle. I find it best to start at the bottom and travel upwards. The relief is so immediate! You can increase pressure as you feel comfortable doing so.

Here is a short and easy video showing this in action

The second is a fast and easy stretch that soothes your vagus nerve, which is the nerve responsible for calming you down. The vagus nerve, for those unfamiliar, is stimulated by deep breathing such as yawning, sighing, singing, or taking a deep breath to calm your anger in a tense situation.

You can stretch this out by sitting up as straight as possible (this does not have to be perfect to work) and interlacing your fingers. Put your hands on the back of your head with your thumbs going down the sides of your neck and, while keeping your face forward, look all the way to one side with just your eyes. Hold that until you feel the urge to breathe deeply or yawn, or until you can tell there’s a change. Then do the same thing on the other side. When you put your arms down, you should clearly be able to turn your head farther in both directions. If the first session doesn’t get rid of your migraine, rest and repeat as many times as necessary. I even get a little fancy with it and roll my eyes up and down along the outer edge sometimes to stretch as much as I can.

If you need a visual here’s a good video on it. I know some of the language they use seems questionable but this is real and simple science and should not be discarded because it’s been adopted by the trendy wellness crowd!

I seriously cannot believe I didn’t hear a word of this from any doctor in my life. Additionally, if you get frequent recurring migraines, you may want to see a dietician. Migraines can be caused by foods containing histamines, lectin, etc. and can also be caused by high blood pressure in specific situations such as exercise, stress, and even sex.

If any of this information helps you I’d love to hear it btw! It’s so so fast and easy to do. Good luck!

22 VIII 2022

I will have to give a talk soon, in a few days I'll be attending a student conference. I decided to prepare something about my latest interest, which is knot theory. what makes it so cool for me is that the visual representations are super important here, but on top of that there is this huge abstract theory and active research going on

I decided to talk about the Seifert surfaces. this topic allows to turn my whole presentation into an art project

other than that I'm studying euclidean geometry and unfortunately it is not as fun as I thought it'd be

my drawings are pretty, ik. but there is almost no theory

I had a thought that working through a topic with a textbook is a bit like playing a game. doing something like rings and modules, the game has a rich plot (the theory), and quests (exercises) are there to allow me to find out more about the universum. whereas euclidean geometry has almost no plot, consists almost solely of quests. it's funny cause I never played any game aside from chess and mine sweeper

commutative algebra turned out to be very interesting, to my surprise. I was afraid that it would be boring and dry, but actually it feels good, especially when the constructions are motivated by algebraic geometry

commalg and AG answer the question from the first course in abstract algebra: why the fuck am I supposed to care about prime and maximal ideals?

oh and I became the president of the machine learning club. this is an honor but I'm understandably aftaid that I won't do well enough

I'm stressed about the amount of responsibilities, that's what I wanted to run away from by having the holiday. good thing is I gathered so many study resources for this year that I probably won't have to worry about it anytime soon, or at least I hope so

30 VII – 1 VIII 2021

done some stuff

sleep: I'm on it, gonna get better soon

concentration: alright

phone time: alright

did some multivar calculus today, didn't do any topo unfortunately, finished the functionality in the coding project, finished the art comission, watched some lectures from MIT

tomorrow going to a different city, gotta wake up early so will be dead all day ugh. plan to do some coding and finish the chapter from the multivar calc book. at the end of it i will find out what the manifold actually is and some of what can be done with it, pretty excited

omg this + bonus points if this is yet another "autistic genius" representation. don't even get me started on how harmful both of those things are for various reasons

Fuck the way media talks about “child prodigies” and “geniuses” especially in fields like music and mathematics.

Like they are gods whose level of understanding we could never reach.

How come we rarely hear about all the people who started young and then fizzled out? How come we never hear the stories of people who started late in life and made a huge difference.

Why do we only hear about their natural aptitude and not the hard work and misteps they took to get there.

For gods sake…

Terry is just a guy!

12 XII 2022

I have a test at the end of this week so I am mostly grinding for that, kinda ignoring other things along the way, planning to catch up with them during the christmas break

the new update for my tablet's OS brought the option to insert pictures into the notes, so now I can paste the problem statements directly from the book. I am not sure if this is actually efficient but it surely looks better and the notes are more readable

(I can't vouch for the correctness of those tho lol I just started learning about the Rouché's theorem)

I have been trying to keep up with the material discussed in lectures on commutative algebra and agebraic methods. with each lecture there is a set of homework problems to solve and I predefined a standard for myself that this week it's alright if I don't do the homework because grinding for the test is more important

I made some pretty notes on valuation rings

during the break I need to study finite and integral ring maps and valuation rings for commutative algebra course; resolutions, derived functors and universal coefficients theorem for algebraic methods course. I feel pretty good about the test that's coming up. sure, you can never be too prepared but so far I've been able to solve a good part of the problems I tried, so I should be ok

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)