Forgot to post for the past couple of days. However, I do have rather a good reason for it. In fact, I have a very good reason for it: namely GTA: San Andreas which has just been released for PC. It’s rather a good game, and has taken up pretty much two entire days of my existance to get somewhere near completion. The map is so incredibly large, and there are so many things to do that I think I may have to spend at least the next week or two trying to get to the coveted 100% mark. Oh, what a hardship.
In other news, I get my exam results on Friday which I’m currently not looking forward to. So, in order to keep my mind off it I’m going to work on the site a bit (as well as playing GTA). I haven’t got around to doing anything yet, but I’m going to try and get the Mandelbrot set generator up and running in the Projects section today. It’s a pretty cool program, but I need to optimize it and generally get it to work better. I do have a minor problem in that I forgot to set the precision of cout and cin; by default, it only reads in numbers up to about 7 decimal places, so you can’t get most of the interesting shots.
I’m also not sure as to whether I should get the Photos section back up or not. There are a lot of photos - last count, over 500 - and although I have more than sufficient bandwidth for now, I can’t help but wonder what will happen if the site takes off a bit. I’m also considering putting some kind of Google AdWords on here, but at the moment the pendulum swings towards “no”. For starters, not enough people visit the site to make it worthwile, and I’m not sure that I could get them to blend in properly. I will only put them on if it doesn’t compromise the layout of the site.
The world of maths is looking quite diverse for next year. I’m considering what modules to do for next year, and this is quite a hefty challenge - the sheer number of courses on offer makes it quite hard to make my mind up. Like most other universities, we’re allowed to choose a variety of modules in the third year, totalling 120 CATS (module points) or more if we desire. Most of the third year modules are worth 15 CATS each, and the fourth year modules 18 CATS. Now, assuming that I actually get on the MMath course - which I really hope I do - I have to take two courses from the fourth year modules. At the moment, this is looking like it’s going to be Manifolds, since it’s needed for so many other 4th year modules and a choice of either Lie Groups (taught my my tutor) or Mathematical Recipies, which is more of an applied module.
My worry at the moment is that I’m not sure which “route” I should be taking. This year, I pretty much took a 50/50 pure/applied route. However, I’m finding myself inextricably drawn towards courses that concentrate mainly on the pure. I find that they’re extremely interesting and, for the most part, make me work harder on them. Metric Spaces went really well for me - it was a really nice exam, and although it didn’t have the same insane marking that it usually does for definitions, it had interesting questions that made you think, but were still managable. I have to also admit that the applied courses are also interesting, but my concern is that I’m going to screw them up, and I don’t quite have the same understanding that I do for the pure.
Of course, the other issue here is my postgraduate opportunities. Again, assuming I get onto the MMath and I’m finding the 4th year work enjoyable and I can cope with it, then I’d quite like to do a PhD. Even if I didn’t actually go on to do research and other insane mathematics then it would greatly increase my job opportunities. However, that’s a good two years away yet; not to mention that if I don’t get on the MMath, all of this talk is a complete waste of time.
Anyway, I think that’s enough for now. I’m going to concentrate on SFN now, and try and catch up on the backlog of posts that I have to moderate. Woo. See you all later.
3:13 pm | Posted in Computing, Maths, Personal, SFN, Site Development, University
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