Author Archives: matt

The bottle of wine I’m currently going through lists tasting notes of “Sweet blackberries, raspberries, and plums”, but somehow omits the much stronger taste of burnt twigs. (Note that this is not meant as a put-down of the wine in … Continue reading →

The root of the word happy is hap, also found in happenstance and haphazard; the original meaning is something like “chance” or “fortune”. To be happy, hence, is to be lucky.

There’s all kinds of sites that offer driving directions, but fairly few that give walking directions. Since when walking one often prefers to avoid multi-lane highways with no sidewalks, the two are not always isomorphic. (Of course, even if such … Continue reading →

clvrmnky reports that switching from Blogger Classic to New Blogger broke the RSS feed for the Nutshell. If the problem persists, then I’ll see about doing something about it. This is post #222 for me, which means headache, which means … Continue reading →

Just upgraded to the new version of Blogger, which presumably shouldn’t change much except that I know better. We’ll see how this goes. For those of you who live in Ontario, there’s a series of Citizen’s Assemblies regarding electoral reform … Continue reading →

Look at me, I’m posting from a game console! A more substantial update will follow, sometime when I have an actual keyboard.

Some days, research happens. Other days… One of the things that distinguishes mathematics from the sciences (and from almost every other field of academia) is that a mathematician needs no lab, no physical apparatus, no research subjects; while all of … Continue reading →

Yesterday I got a postcard from my dental insurance company, briefly explaining how much they value the privacy of my personal information. My very first thought upon reading it: “Who have you sold my information to, you rat-bastards?”

Today’s linguistic oddity: I’m currently in possession of a computer part that I’ll be delivering to its rightful owner in good time. The box lists specs and a marketing blurb in three languages: English, French, and German. I don’t know … Continue reading →

Been a little more preoccupied than usual, which is a bit of a trick for me. Much of the extra time’s been going to work-related endeavours: the conference I was organizing two weeks ago, of course, but also a bunch … Continue reading →