Uncooperative Crickets

How are things on the West Coast?

Hi. I am currently in "reading period," which means that I am not teaching classes as normal, but rather helping students get ready for the final exam. As a part of their final grade, the students are going to give presentations on topics that will be covered in the next course of the sequence. I like this idea a lot - I think that we need to get students to learn on their own more. I am going to incorporate this idea into both semesters for next year.

My latest obsession has been the Rubik's Cube. It has been a slight embarrassment to me that I have been a group theorist who cannot solve the Rubik's Cube. This is the most widely known tool to describe the sort of math I do, and I couldn't do it. So I sat down this weekend and figured it out. This involved one late night to figure out how to solve it, although it took me about 40-60 minutes to solve it at the end because I didn't know exactly what I was doing. After another long night last night, I am down to 7-10 minutes. This is still 40-50 times slower than the world record, but I am closing fast.

I looked on the web, and the way I figured out how to do it is non-standard; I am a little proud of this. Most people solve it by doing it in layers. I do it by getting the corner pieces first, and then getting the "edge" pieces.

Music: Interpol has a new single that I have been enjoying: "The Heinrich Maneuver." A usual good-song-with-a-bad-name from Interpol. I have also been really enjoying "Kundalini Slide" by Tanya Donelly - particularly the end. I think that Skye might actually like that one, too.

Skye and I had our first class in bicycle repair last night. I learned how to change a flat tire. Then my tire exploded. The said it wasn't my fault, and repaired it free of charge.

Good news from sports: the Suns won. I was more excited about this before I realized that the game was played in Phoenix, not San Antonio.

More good news from sports: Morneau hit a walk-off home run in the 10th to beat the White Sox

Finally, we saw Spiderman 3 this weekend. It was a good superhero movie.

I couldn't find a way to fit any politics in this posting. Sorry, Skye.

posted by Dirk Awesome @ 12:38 PM