Tuesday, Seeing Maths

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Today, as days go, was a pretty good one. Since I knew I was going out for lunch, and hence didn't have to make one to take with me, I could afford a little bit more time for breakfast. After a look around the fridge decided to make myself a spinach and cheese omelette, which was pretty tasty, and I had that with some small ciabatta rolls that my sister had baked last night.

On the journey in I didn't mysteriously break out in a cold sweat as I did yesterday, which was a bit of a bonus really as I was completely stumped when it happened yesterday morning as the train pulled into James Street. Not a nice feeling at all to suddenly have the world swimming around you and thin layer of sweat covering your body, I really don't recommend it to anyone. Quite disturbing, but yesterday afternoon's headache aside I've felt fine since (and that disappeared as soon as I had something to eat when I got home).

Work has been slow but steady today; I got a few bits and pieces done first thing and then a few more bits and pieces when I got back from lunch. The only articles which really interested me included this over on the BBC about how a maths savant is able to find thirteenth roots of 200 digit numbers; while I would never claim to be able to do anything near as complicated (and in some sense pointless) the description he gave of how he is able to do things, or how he "sees" the information really resonated with me, although whereas he describes feeling numbers as words or movies, I "see" things as strange sensations and structures of colour, impossible objects and patterns.

It's the curse of the knot theorist perhaps... I'm going to a conference in September, I'll ask around.

This evening I'm going to see Goldfinger at FACT - there is something about seeing a classic film, that you've previously only ever seen on the TV, on a cinema screen that is just amazing.

And I've also just heard from a friend in Edinburgh, so my plan of visiting for the Edinburgh International Film Festival is going ahead in a few weeks!

All in all, Tuesday gets two thumbs up.