Posted by martin on
Wednesday, 16 December 2009 at 19:48
Last week I gave a talk on Hodge theory. For the Differential Geometry course, all the students have to give a talk on a topic related to the course. The talk was very long - 1 hour 45 minutes - but this is about the average length of the talks so far. I did my best to shorten it by leaving out unimportant details. Had it not been for the fact that many other talks were longer, I would have removed sections of it entirely, but it did cover about the minimum needed to reach a point of interest to me as an algebraic geometer.
This was the first time I have given a talk of any length in French. This was not too difficult, as I had practised the talk, but probably did slow me down a bit. I am sure the language was far from perfect; for example, I probably should have used the subjunctive all over the place but I didn’t bother with it. But the audience were not too concerned about that.
The first half of the talk contained a lot of analysis, needed to prove the Hodge theorem. This is not my area, but it was fun to learn a little bit; I skipped out all the tedious calculations. The second half contained applications of this to complex manifolds, leading up to the fundamental example of a Hodge structure. I shall need soon to learn about the latter in a more abstract setting; no doubt preparing this talk has given me some of the motivation for them, but I am not sure how useful all the proofs will turn out to be.
Tags hodge, languages, maths, talk
Posted by martin on
Tuesday, 17 October 2006 at 20:29
Two weeks into term, here's a bit of what I'm doing. The courses I'm doing this term are: Analysis II, Linear Algebra, Methods, Quantum Mechanics and Markov Chains. Of these, Methods is probably the most interesting as it is techniques I know nothing about. Linear Algebra is particularly boring; this is not really a good term for pure courses. I am also going to the lectures for one course on General Linguistics, and this week I will be starting classes in Mandarin Chinese as well as continuing my German classes.
On Thursdays I am singing with the Trinity Singers, the non-audition chorus run by Trinity Singers who are doing Handel's _Messiah_ this term, and doing some of the organisation for that. We appointed a Singers Secretary last week, relieving me of much of that. And on Wednesdays I am going to swing dancing classes. This is nice because it is not just a university organisation although there are quite a lot of students who go. This is also one reason why I like Emmanuel United Reform Church (besides being Protestant and non-Established): there are few students there but well-integrated with the rest of the congregation - hard given the temporary nature of students and the ease for a church of catering to them as a distinct group.
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Martin
Tags emmanuel, languages, lindy, tcms, tripos
Posted by martin on
Monday, 28 November 2005 at 08:46
Yesterday I was stewarding at the College Advent service, the biggest service of the year. This meant welcoming people and directing them to seats; but also being in charge of fire safety. In fact in the event of a fire I was responsible for getting people through the main doors from the Chapel into the ante-Chapel; this is a major job as there were 500 people in the Chapel and only one other fire exit (and that exit is newly added). Fire is in fact a significant risk at this service because it is all candle-lit. Fortunately that part of my duties was not required.
The last few days of this week were very busy as I had one examples sheet due in on Thursday and another on Friday, as well as a German class and supervision on Friday. I now have just two more questions left to do on my last examples sheet for this term, and two more supervisions. Plus a German listening test on Friday, the day before I come home. In terms of going to all courses' lectures, there are three left: Law, Oriental Studies and History of Art. There are also three more days of lectures. History of Art in particular is difficult as there is only one first year in the college doing it and I don't know who they are. So I may or may not get that completed.
For those in Focus, see you on Sunday,
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Martin
Tags chapel, languages, lectures, trinity
Posted by martin on
Monday, 24 October 2005 at 08:32
On Saturday night we had our Matriculation Dinner. This is a very elaborate (and very nice) dinner in the college Hall, attended by all the freshers as well as the Master and Fellows of the college (who are seated among the students). The catering department failed to put me on the seating plan, but they put me in the seat of someone who didn't turn up and I greatly enjoyed the dinner.
On Saturday afternoon, a number of the Methody people in Cambridge met for coffee: Leo, Rachael, Paul Ross, Ivan, Kathleen, Fiona Mulvenna who was up from Oxford, Peter Wasson, Nick. It was good to see people again.
On Friday I started my German class. We had a two-hour class so covered a lot of the basic phrases. I have also been to lectures in Anatomy and Anthropology this week. In two of the three Maths courses, we have reached the end of what I already knew and are starting on new stuff. I have two supervisions on Tuesday so I have had quite a lot of work this weekend (in so far as there is a weekend with lectures on Saturdays - Sunday is the only day which is really different from any other).
Just for you to see where I am living, I have taken a "few photos of the college":http://www.martinorr.name/2005/Photos.
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Martin
Tags cambridge, languages, lectures, trinity, tripos
Posted by martin on
Monday, 17 October 2005 at 19:34
Things have begun to become more settled this week: lectures in the mornings, working and relaxing in the afternoons. I have signed up for a German course on Friday afternoons, and I am going to the college Amnesty International group. Each Tuesday they have a meeting to write letters to governments about specific people around the world who are in danger of being tortured, executed, or unjustly imprisoned.
I am also going to an ecumenical discussion group on Thursday evenings, who have a speaker from a different church each week. This week it was the Orthodox Church, which was something I didn't know much about and was very interesting. On Sunday I went to the College Chapel. This is an Anglican chapel, but the service is (apart from changing the order of some parts) almost identical to the Catholic Mass.
Last Tuesday I had my first supervision, on differential equations. This was great and I think I learned a lot from it. I have another tomorrow, on algebra and geometry. I have also set out to go to a lecture from every subject - this week I went to Physiology of Organisms from Natural Sciences and Spanish Linguistics from Modern and Medieval Languages.
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Martin
Tags chapel, churches, languages, lectures, tripos