Martin Geisler Online

Sorry about the lack of updates here at GimpsterDotCom lately — I’ve been busy preparing for my next exam in DAIMI:dPaSS. I’m going through the 15 questions with Mikkel Krøigård and it’s going very well, so I’m looking forward to the exam this next Tuesday. You can see the results on the page for BetaExamQuestions.

After the DAIMI:dPaSS exam we have the final exam in DAIMI:dArkOS. There we’ll only have eight days to go through anouther 15 questions, so it’ll be a bit difficult… but let’s see how it goes.

We hear so much about how we’re living in the an Information Society these days… To help that become a reality, I’ve just ordered two pizzas online from http://evonax.com/ for myself and Camilla. It’s really easy: you can either select a pizza from their menu, or you can compose your own pizza — I’ve now made “My Pizza | Martin” with my favorite ingredients, very cool! You order and pay the pizza online, and then you only have to go to your door to pick it up when it arrives.

I’ve now had my pizza and both I and Camilla Johnsen agree that the pizzas were a little boring. Mine tasted fine, but it was not as warm as it could have been, and it would also have benefitted from a stronger taste. Camilla said that hers didn’t taste of anything… The conclusion is, that we might as well order our pizzas from the local pizzaria next time. They can make two good pizzas in 15–20 minutes compared to 45 minutes for evonax. It’s not as hightech, but it’s better and cheaper that way.

I had my exam in Algebra yesterday, and it went fairly well. I could answer most of the questions, except the most difficult ones. I solved most of the questions in two and a half hour, but then got stuck in the last three subquestions. I just sat and starred at them for the remaining one and a half hour, but it didn’t help… It was quite annoying, and even more so when the exam finished, and I talked with Thomas Mølhave, Mikkel Krøigård and others from my class who had solved them :-/ As it is almost always the case with algebra, the solutions were fairly simple once you’ve seen them — they would fit into only a couple of lines for each subquestion.

So, I don’t really know what to expect of this exam, I guess my grade will be around 10 or perhaps 9 which is a very good grade, but still I feel that I should have been able to answer the last few questions too. The reason this bothers me is, that I can follow the arguments when someone presents them to me, but I’m having difficulities making the arguments myself. It’s not that I don’t understand the math or that I dislike working with this kind of math, it just that I don’t have the necessary routine to recognize the solution to the questions.

And now we’re getting close to the core of the problem: I don’t have the necessary routine because I haven’t spend enough time this semester solving the weekly algebra problems gives to us by our lecturer. All the way through school and high school (the Danish gymnasium) I’ve been able to get really good grades without having to work real hard, so I’ve continued that line at University of Aarhus, believing that I would somehow automatically do good… It’s a real shame if this doesn’t hold true :-)

But there’s nothing to do about all this now, I’ll have to look forward to the next exam, which will be in DAIMI:dPaSS.

I’ve just been to our local Føtex where I bought some chocolade for my exam tomorrow in Abstract Algebra. I’ll also take some bottles of CocaCola with me so that I can get enough energy for the brain :-)

I’ve also been at the University of Aarhus today to hear the last words of wisdom from our lecturer and to talk with our instructor. There I found out that a Rasmus Villemoes has published a full solution to the exam questions from the previous years. And a very good solution that is. I’ve been training with these questions myself for the last couple of days, and there has (unfortunately) been a couple of questions that I couldn’t answer. So it’s interesting to see how simple and elegantly you can solve most questions — I hope it’ll help me tomorrow. –Martin Geisler

Today is Camilla’s birthday, she turns 23! Congratulations! We’re about to go in and wake her up and sing her a birthday song… I’ve just got wake up Christina, Jesper, Hanne, and Mia so that they can help me.

Later in the afternoon…

I’ve now got back from Uni and we’ve just had a really nice birthday cake in Camilla’s room. Christina has made a really good carrot-cake with Happy Birthday Camilla! written on top in red icing and Camilla has also made a cake using dough as described here. As the Danish tradition bids, she has formed it like a human but it’s hard to tell if it’s a man or woman because Torben has decorated the cake with both long hair and other, hmm, more male features… :-)

We finished the day by seeing IMDB:Thirteen Days (2000) which is a great movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, see my post about war movies for a longer review. After that we started to watch IMDB:Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), but I went to bed before it was finished because it was getting really late. We’ve booked tickets for IMDB:Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) tomorrow night — I’m sure it will be fun!