Personal Blogs

It's been over a month since I did any groups & geometry stuff. Given that I have a TMA due in under ten days, and I haven't read any of the units, this would seem to be a problem.

Well not so much.

According to the assessment calculator I need twenty marks [out of a hundred] to have an OCAS > 70. Each unit text has a related question of twenty-five marks => two units will do the job. It's groups and I have enough days. I can ignore the geometry s&^%e.

It's not as if I can make a 1 in the exam anyway.

To some of you this type of thinking may seem wrong, shouldn't I try my hardest?

I will try my hardest but I'll try my hardest where it will do the most good. I need to spend my time on topology. If only because I love it the most. [Although I moan about it.]

I won't get a 1 on topology and I'll be lucky if I get a 3 for the groups. Still, I know that I'm right: focused effort.

At some point in your OU career, dear reader, you will be faced with the same problem. Save what you can.

Oh, and do the stuff that you like...

...feeling good about it?

Nope, neither did I. So here is my latest excuse.

It was all going so well, I felt like I was in the groove, study-wise, [what Maxy calls the flex]. And then it all stalled. This weekend I've done nothing.

It all stalled at exactly the same place that it did on the last block—as soon as I had to start messing around with tiling cards and overlays. There's something about sliding sheets of acetate that I just don't enjoy. Probably because I'm hopelesser at it than your average five year old.

In front of me I have a huge brown-envelope [the Geometry envelope] filled with the damn things. I lift things for a living, but such is the envelope's weight that I only move it with due care for my back.

I have a tutorial next weekend, so I have a week to complete the unit. I'm not sanguine. I could just shut-up and stop parading my ignorance during tutorials? Still, me as a black affront in the stupidity stakes hurts nobody, and may be a duty for me.

Enough of this navel-gazing neil, do some work!

I sit here, at the end of my holidays, amidst the detritus of papers/books/ashtrays/empty containers of the things that affect my mind/pencils and wonder where I am. That would be maths wondering.

I have, just over, four units left to do before June; I have two half-semi-fair-copy half TMAs done; I seem to be caught-up. So why the angst?

Because I've been here before.

As you delve deeper into maths you begin to find that you can't hide from your mind much, you get to know what you're good at, what you suck at, where you are lost. Why is this so?

• Everything that you do has to be supported by proof.
• You are constantly having to jump from the visual to the abstract.
• You need to put together results that don't appear to be related.

Anyway, bollocks as the above may be, I see that I'm approaching areas where, although I don't absolutely suck, I'm going to have problems.

I have a slight wiggle-space, should I go back to the basics of group theory? The answer is yes, the question is will I?

At least, those that centre around me being an idiot.

Today, if I did anything at all, I should have done maths. Although, I suppose that I did do a wee bit of maths.

Here's the story: I got interested in x-nomials [for reasons which my M336 course-mates will understand.] So I started writing a JavaScript script to do it for me.

I noted three things:

1. My JavaScript skills have withered to crap
2. I miss a proper IDE—NetBeans has spoiled me
3. I can do this

It will take me a couple of days, days which I will spend. Why? [given that  moaning about being behind].

Because writing such scripts is why I do all this maths/programming OU stuff—if I don't do them I won't be me. In which case I shouldn't bother.

Losing the Joy is worse than failure.

The thwack of doom.

Such is my eagerness, that when I have a TMA away and not back, I phone my wife to see if they have flopped through the letter-box. Today one arrived—M336—the groups course; the one I, supposedly liked.

I knew that I'd done badly, but really...

I should be gutted I suppose, as expected it was the worst piece of work that I've ever done, am I just not up to this?

Well...

Today I pulled a twelve hour shift, we won't go into the why of that, but I absolutely had to do something that I've been resisting for a while. That, something, would be using a crappy Access database that I was once proud to have coded.

[The thing is flakey beyond normal belief—it popped up many ToDo dialogues and one that actually said "hello!". I had a look at the code, and realized that I was just going to have to gentle the thing through it. There was no option of any quick fixes. It got done, but I was cursing myself.]

After. I was standing having a fag, watching the pair of blackbirds who seem to be nesting somewhere in the school when it came to me—"I could build a better thing than that now". I remember angling my head and slitting my eyes.

You have to remember that I'm tired and not thinking straight.

I fired up the command prompt and ... what do I do now?

After a couple of hours of fretted typing and much consultation of the docs I went to see what the blackbirds were doing: having a fag in fact.

I was ragging. I noticed that my headteacher was still in my building so I approached.

He didn't actually say this, but he said, "you look happy for the first time in forever".

That was because I had been programming.

Or was it me a-scurry-in-my-head because I got a bad mark?

Happy-again maths geek

[Whoops linked to the localhost again. Nothing says home quite like 127.0.0.1 ]

My last post was border-line nutcase.

Today has been no better: too much coffee, too much ersatz-red-bull, too much time spent scrawling figures onto paper and walls.

[I have a kind of stickyback plastic. A plastic that's meant as a temporary window repair material that I've stuck all-over one of the walls of my office—presto, a huge magnolia-board.]

As I walked home, or floated a few feet above the ground, as felt, I was happy that I was close to a finish. But the bottom has fallen out of one of my proofs. I fretted around for a while, that would be a shaking panicked thrashing, before the programmer in me took over—leave it, walk away, sleep on it. A first. Still tomorrow this stuff has to be in.

It's not right that I should be this close to finishing, never mind angling at a good mark. The toplogy course has been done, but the groups course? Basically I've done one unit, should I get any marks at all? No, but I'll get many.

Which leads me on to something that I've been fretting about: do you get better marks by attending tutorials? Are you disadvantaged by not having ... an let's be straight here ... being given an example of the ideas that you'll need to do one?

There have been at least a couple of times, over the last couple of days, where I had to re-write the fair-copy [FC] because I'd seen a more elegant way to do a something. There have also been times where I seemed to be groping in the darkness for even a kluge [:an inelegant solution may break.]

If I'd seen someone [A Wizard] work through, said things, I wouldn't have had to jump through so many personal-hoops. Is this good or bad? This having to work things out for yourself?

Today I had a breakthrough [I thought, maybe] , Titanium was on the radio, I was dancing around, singing along, when I spotted beaming workies watching me like a fish in a tank.

I don't want my discovery taken from me, but I do want good marks.

I'm a stupid sod.

2012—03—23

getting back…and problems

Because I’m, again, marooned, in my other building, on a Friday night where I can’t post to my nonsense I will format it as if I was posting there; and fix it tomorrow.

Tonight we have the PTA race-night. Which is OK as they are all getting drunk and I condone that type of behavior. They tend to interrupt a janny trying to focus on his maths and there are, what might be their, strange yoofs gathering outside. Still, I’m always up for nonsense…and the quashing thereof.

how’s maths?

Slowly-slowly this week I’ve been ramping my maths back up to speed.

I’ve been on back-shift: but every day I’ve tried to do a wee-bit before, during and after work. Some days it hasn’t panned out. Most days I’ve gone to bed with a fear in my heart.

I made a decision last week—one that I think was the right one—to just do something. I think that it’s paid off. Here is the balance sheet:

• Woefully behind at work: disciplinary action hovers over my bonce for my massive undone
• I have a tutorial tomorrow, the venue has been changed, I might not even be able to find the place—never mind do the maths involved.
• I looked at the course-fora for the first time in ages today, I didn’t have the bottle to open up a single post, nevermind reply
• I’m a whole four weeks behind with the groups course. For the first time ever I can’t read Nilo’s stuff, because it’s like a blade turned into my failure.
• I’m still behind on the topology course
• The end of the financial year is coming up, there is everything that I haven’t done.

still…

Been here before, will be again. I’m alive, I have food, drink and drink-drink and a better life that 99% of the people on this planet have ever had…

The problem is, that, often, in your day-to-day the above doesn’t make you feel better, when you have been massively blessed; to be thwarted once or asked to pay seems to be an imposition of the worst kind. All you see is that others have more, others who out-shine you with their…, others—cheats & scoundrels all, do better than you. Just others.

Tonight I found the first diagram in the topology units that actually reduced my understanding of a concept. [Although these diagrams have been on a cusp for a while.] Something that I’d predicted.

I don’t care about others. Any more.

Now, it's just me.

{obviously I will edit out the many mistakes that I've made}