On life and Halloween

Well, this is the first 'life' update for a while, and as is typical for me I haven't really done much :) I guess the biggest event was a family holiday at Butlins down in Minehead that was fun. Spent time with some members of the family I don't see much (my Dad, my step-mother and my brother, sister, step-brothers and their partners) and had a fun time. One of the more fun things I did was convincing Anita to allow me to spend out for the time on their climbing, hire-wire course thing (I have no idea what to actually call it, so it's a thing :)). Anita took some pictures of me doing this, and probably the best one was:

(hosted on my sisters Picasa gallery)

This was me making my 'leap of faith', where I had absolutely no faith and asked for the trapeze to be moved as close as possible. I didn't realise until I saw this picture just how close that was and how cowardly I was. All I can say is that up on the top of that totem pole, the trapeze seemed completely out of reach and I was worried I'd jump off into nothing!


So, that's my current life covered so onto future events. Anita and myself are going to a halloween party this weekend and have been told that fancy dress is required. We both have our costumes mostly figured out but I'm trying to decide on the last part of mine... what to wear underneath the mask I have (of some hideous ogre). My current consideration is to go as a cross-dressing hideous ogre and borrow a skirt and tight black top from Anita for the occasion :) I'll post pics up of my final outfit (and of Anita's, who is going as either a witch or as Susan D'eath depending on which she feels like explaining through the haze of alcohol) and if I don't chicken out, feel free to poke fun of me wearing women's clothing :P

Back on the road to reality

As happens every few months, I'm attempting to get my head around the content of 'The Road to Reality' again. This time I'm taking the more sedate approach though, reading it on the way to and from work and putting the book down when I find I'm getting distracted and not concentrating on the content. So I'm not reading it when I'm too tired, like when I tried reading it before sleeping at night (which also means I'm not getting odd looks from Anita :) ), and I'm not just looking at the pages without the content making it through to my brain as also frequently happens.

The result? I'm not sure yet. It's certainly taking longer as it can be 2 or 3 days before I get through a chapter, and as such I haven't yet really progressed beyond my normally familiar territory of complex numbers and the real number calculus. I think I have a better grasp of hyperbolic geometry from this re-read, and I also think I've grasped the explanations of power series and the like better.

I guess it'll be a little while before this style of reading pays off, but if it does then I may finally grasp some of the more interesting maths in a much more in-depth fashion. Whether this will be useful, I don't know but at least I'll feel like I finally learnt something more from this great book :)