carlo angiuli (blog)

I was just thinking about something in the shower–in RPGs, even after you’ve been universally hailed as the only person able to save the world from sure destruction by demon hordes, you still have to pay for armor and weapons and even health potions.

You’d think that vendors would realize that, since the world is about to end, they should probably be more interested in helping the hero save it than earn money and let the world be destroyed? I know people are greedy, but I don’t have any personal experience with how people act when faced with demon hordes.

This is a bit of a contrast with Half-Life 2, which I’ve recently been playing; there, the resistance forces do everything they possibly can to help you, knowing that you’re the only hope for the human race.

Actually, maybe that’s it–it’s set on Earth, unlike most RPGs. I suppose Earth’s denizens are more rational than those of alternate worlds?

Okay guys, so I remembered I’m supposed to be writing in this blog thing. Quick thoughts:

If you have not yet registered to vote in the election, you probably don’t have too long to do that. Seriously–vote. It’s important that we have a good leader the next four years. Don’t screw this up. (I mean, vote for whoever you want, but…seriously.)

If you are interested in the election from a strategic perspective, read FiveThirtyEight.com. It has a very in-depth mathematical analysis of all the poll results from this campaign, compiled by an accomplished sabermetrician. FiveThirtyEight analyzes the campaigns in terms of electoral math, unlike everywhere else, so it has great commentary about how the campaigns should actually win the election (i.e., get 270 electoral votes), not just get more of the popular vote.

My classes are going well, though they keep me pretty busy with four problem sets and a lab every week. I’m enjoying analysis more than algebra, which is a bit of a surprise. Mechanics is alright, though honestly it isn’t my cup of tea as far as physics goes. Computer science is, as expected, a bit underwhelming because it’s an intro course, but I have hopes for more advanced CS courses.

And…I’ll write more soon, I promise. Hopefully.

That’s crazy!

But I’m ready–I just finished organizing my desk. Thanks to some conversations with (a very bored) Nick, even my music library is organized by genre. (22 of them, no less!)

I got a free full mattress and boxsprings and metal frame from Craigslist! We had to strap them to the top of a station wagon and look really goofy for a few blocks, but all in all, I don’t think you can beat that deal.

Plus, it’s only two years old and really clean. I win!

Okay, so I don’t really get what’s with the Indianapolis and RIchmond airports. They have lots of restaurants and shops outside the concourses, but once you pass through security, there’s almost nowhere you can eat.

On the other hand, O’Hare, Lambert, and all other large-ish airports I’ve been to (as far as I can recall) have lots of restaurants after security, but almost none before security. Now, I understand that it might make sense to have some things before security, because then they’re accessible to people waiting for friends to return, seeing friends off, etc.

But it seems to me that most of the places ought to be after security. If people want to take food or drinks onto a plane, they would need to buy them from shops after they pass through security. Travelers on layovers might need to eat lunch or something but it would be obnoxious to have to exit and reenter the concourse.

And of course, in an effort to not miss your flight, you might want to enter the concourse before sitting down for a meal, because it’s hard to predict how long it will take to go through security.

If there really is some good reason to put all the eating establishments before security rather than after, can someone explain it to me?

Lastly, a story about foodservice at airports that happened to me yesterday at Indy:

McDonald’s worker: “What drink would you like with that?”
Me: “Do you have Mountain Dew?”
Worker: “No, we have Sprite.”
Me: (pause) “Um. Okay, I’ll have Coke then.”
Worker: (hesitates, possibly confused)
Me: “Or Pepsi, it doesn’t matter.”
Worker: (hits a button)

Guess which they had? Coke. It was a confusing exchange.

I haven’t been writing much lately because I’ve been focused on math research for my REU project. When I haven’t been working on the math, I’ve been actively developing GreekComm’s product for next year, which kinda has to be finished ASAP. And this weekend, I didn’t work on either, because I was in Richmond visiting my lovely girlfriend.

On that note, traveling between two small airports (IND and RIC) is kind of a pain, because you have to take tiny Embraer regional jets with three seats in every row. And you have to take two of them, because there are no direct flights between Indianapolis and Richmond! Also, let it be known that regional jets don’t land quite as smoothly as Boeing 777s.

However, I have just learned (through Wikipedia) that Embraer is actually a Brazilian company! (It stands for Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica! Who knew?) I did, however, know that they were the third biggest aircraft manufacturer, behind titans Boeing and Airbus. Which is pretty impressive, considering how big Boeing and Airbus are. Actually, the entire aircraft manufacturing business is really screwy, because (relatively speaking) so few planes are actually manufactured every year, and they cost so much to actually buy (much less actually operate). Makes me wonder what the future of airlines are: can so many separate airlines continue to support themselves?

Enough with the air travel digression, though. I’m going to head out for now, but I’ve got a bunch of posts in store for you guys soon, so stay tuned!

I have completely redesigned my website! It’s much more functional now, and it looks pretty good too (albeit simple).

I did have to give up my old front page, which I liked a lot, but maybe that design will appear somewhere else eventually… I did keep the general color scheme, except I toned it down a lot. And more importantly, I got rid of all the useless content, and significantly reworked everything else. Soon I’m going to change my blog layout to match the rest of the website, but that’s a big project in and of itself, so I decided to worry about it separately.

I also ended up making my acfdb project public in the process, though I’m not quite ready to officially announce it. That comes soon.

So, what do you think?

Yesterday was pretty interesting…at 11:30 AM, I was going about my business, when suddenly, I heard a very loud electrical ZAP outside my window. I turned back to my laptop, and noticed that my wireless was out. And that I was on battery power. Looking around, it didn’t take long to realize that the power had just gone out.

It sounded kind of like an animal getting a dose of high voltage, but whatever the cause, we were out of power for an hour. Oh well, just a random act of nature, right?

Then it’s 7:30 and we’re eating dinner, and we look outside, and Jaimie says, “It looks like it’s going to rain…” A few minutes later, it suddenly starts pouring. Not just raining, but Bloomington monsoon style. The rain has been going on for about two minutes when there’s a very bright flash of light outside the window, and an extremely loud CRACK of thunder. A car alarm starts going off. And the power goes out.

It appears that lightning struck the electrical pole right by our house, or somewhere near there, because the transformer on it looked somewhat broken, and the power company had to bring a guy on a cherry-picker up there to work his electrical magic. We got our power back two hours later.

I guess it wasn’t a good day for the power company. The worst part was when the power went out the second time, and I said, “Hmm…we do have a gas stove. We should bake cookies.” But alas, it has an electric starter! No cookies for us until the power came back.

So I think I should, erm, get going on this blog again. I realize I haven’t written here since March, but I guess I’ve been busy with lots of things. Anyway, it’s summer again, so I ought to start keeping up.

I’m staying in Bloomington this summer, subletting an apartment with my friend Jaimie. (You should come visit!) I’m taking Genetics for my bio minor, and then I’m doing math research until mid-August.

Meanwhile, I have a job programming and I’m trying to get a lot prepared for the quizbowl team next year. (I have a lot in store for everyone…) And of course, I ought to get some questions done for Aegis so we don’t have as many late-night crunches next season. In fact, right now I’m working on closing out the 2007-08 Aegis season.

I’m planning on redesigning my website and blog soon, so watch out for that too.

When I think of something specific to write here, I’ll have a longer post. Just wanted to let everyone know I’m still alive and all.

As I may have mentioned before, I’m in Douglas Hofstadter’s course titled “Group Theory and Galois Theory Visualized.” We’ve been talking a lot about the beauty of mathematics — a slightly strange concept which mathematicians universally acknowledge but cannot quite quantify.

I’ve touched on this subject before — what is beauty (or perhaps, elegance) in mathematics? Last time I addressed it, I concluded that elegance, to me, is a high results to complexity ratio. I gave the example of Euler’s formula, which I find incredibly simple but deep. Beauty is about the insightfulness and depth of results, not just the usefulness.

(Example from group theory: the classification of finite simple groups, as a single corpus, is neither insightful nor deep nor useful! And it’s certainly one of the ugliest — and longest — proofs out there! Not that there aren’t good moments. It’s just kind of silly to represent the whole thing as a “proof.”)

But I’m mostly commenting again on mathematical beauty because of a comment Hofstadter made about beauty in general — what is found beautiful and by whom? (After all, most people don’t find math beautiful at all!)

He noted that, while people claim “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” there’s clearly some sort of standard for beauty. After all, if there weren’t, why would we have art museums filled with the most “beautiful” art? It does, however, take a special sort of person to enjoy the sort of beauty that math offers. Though, in that regard, math isn’t unlike most other activities — after all, why do marathoners want to run 26 miles for pleasure? It’s just that, as Hofstadter points out, enjoying mathematics requires somebody who wants instead to… “run a matharon,” so to speak.

Have I mentioned that I love puns?