Walking

On sat I joined Becky, Mobbsy[1], and two friends of Becky who work almost directly above me for a walk in Roystonshire[2].

It unfortunately rained for the first hourish, but I got it to clear up, and it was quite wet, but not truly fierce, and I'm glad I didn't back out, though I'm glad I brought a sweatshirt[3]. OTOH, I don't have a *good* jumper, so tend to grab the sweatshirt I got from CUIS, and all four of the others cornered my separately to ask what it was, why it had '#5 Computer Officer' on, if being in CUIS helped my career, etc.

But it was pleasant. It was nostalgic for me because I always used to go walk round heaths and go to shut pubs with mum or dad when I lived at home[4]. Dad taught me chess, and mum taught me maths, and I taught mum C, on such occasions :)

We got to a decent-looking pub, albeit without food, but might go back one day. People were not especially impressed with my flowery shirt.

We got back and I slipped off to a curry house round the corner to meet several old friends from Trinity, which was nice. Again several people conspired to persuade me to run away to the circus and become a quant. The trains were cancelled and J stopped at mine and we stayed up chatting.

[1] "This is Mobbsy, his real name's Andrew."
[2] *ring* / "I'M IN ROYSTON!" / "OH NO HE ISN'T!" / "Well, Roystonshire." / "Mwaa?"
[3] "Do you think he's allowed in the grafton centre in that? It's technically a hoody..."
[4] OK, living at home is technically redundant. You know what I mean :)

Review - A Beautiful Mind

I haven't much to say, but I finally saw this and somehow feel I'm supposed to have a strong opinion on this film because I was a mathematician and am a film-pedant.

* It makes no claim to represent Nash's life accurately. *shrug* I didn't really expect it to, and I didn't know anything about it before anyway, so this didn't bother me that much. I got the impression it was correct in extremely general outline (good mathematician, mental problems, eventually learns to work with them, aspired to fields medal, won nobel prize).

* The maths shown is pure window dressing. It is just about maths and that's all you can say. Again, I expected this. I'm somewhat annoyed because you feel you might as well get someone to provide something broadly appropriate but otoh it wasn't plot critical, so it doesn't really matter.

* "If all the blokes hit on the blond none get her so none should" isn't a good example of a Nash equilibrium at all, though it's a reasonable example of a prisoner's dilemma. *Except* this was a *group* of men interacting constantly, so they can easily co-operate throughout and don't have to choose and stick to an initial strategy at all.

* The idea of ignoring the illness spoke to me though. It was very tragic, very brave, supposedly reasonably related to what he actually did, and somehow a very mathematicians approach. He lived without his drugs because he couldn't concentrate on his work or personal life with them, and kept asking people he knew if they could see new people who spoke to him, and ignored his halucinations including old friends.

Miserable failure

OK, I hadn't actually seen this variant of google bomb before. Google for miserable failure. The first, second and third are all funny. The fifth is a genuine link!