Friday, February 24, 2006
Just Like Heaven
Another fairly busy week gone by. Feeling slightly tired and drained. I haven't done any of my final year project in the last 7 days as i've been preoccupied with other modules, but i'll be turning it back round for the next 7 days.
My Ongoing Assesment mark for my project (A) was confirmed. "Dave has put in a consistently high standard of work in the development of his fantasy football league application. This somewhat ambitious project is well on schedule." =)
Not a lot of news to report this week. I've been finding the love of the beautiful Sigur Ros once more, it's been helping me sleep and just enjoying quiet moments of reflection and appreciation.
I've also been reading Dante's Inferno in my spare time, which has been great. It's fast moving and interesting all the time and it's easy to pick up and just read a chapter. It can be a difficult read at times though, with all the references to people and events i've not heard of, but the translation (J G Nichols) also has notes and it reads really well. Apparently, in Hell, Magicians, Fortune-Tellers and Hypocrites are all below Murderers and Suicides.
This evening I downloaded and watched a Horizon episode on the guy who solved Fermat's Last Theorem (which i admit i never really understood fully before today). It was pretty inspiring, it was his dream to solve the problem since when he was 10 (also he looked just like Napoleon Dynamite, which kinda paints a picture of him) and it took him 7 solid years locked away in his attic, but the emotion he showed recalling all the events, especially when he finally did it, was quite moving. Respect to the guy, he was really humble and was just wanting to achieve his dream, and he's rightly gone down in history for his achievment.
In a nutshell, the theorem was:
(x^n)+(y^n)!=(z^n) For n > 2
But the problem comes about trying to prove that for whole number values of x,y,z,n. If it looks similar to you that's because it's Pythagoras' Theorem for n=2. The documentry hardly went into any details of the actual maths, but it's a very hard problem - it involved very cool areas such as elliptic curves and modular forms =)
I suppose there are few who have read this and not been bored so i apologise, it just interested me. Math is interesting =P
I'll leave you with a nice picture by William Blake, Whirlwind of Lovers (Illustration to Dante's Inferno) 
My Ongoing Assesment mark for my project (A) was confirmed. "Dave has put in a consistently high standard of work in the development of his fantasy football league application. This somewhat ambitious project is well on schedule." =)
Not a lot of news to report this week. I've been finding the love of the beautiful Sigur Ros once more, it's been helping me sleep and just enjoying quiet moments of reflection and appreciation.
I've also been reading Dante's Inferno in my spare time, which has been great. It's fast moving and interesting all the time and it's easy to pick up and just read a chapter. It can be a difficult read at times though, with all the references to people and events i've not heard of, but the translation (J G Nichols) also has notes and it reads really well. Apparently, in Hell, Magicians, Fortune-Tellers and Hypocrites are all below Murderers and Suicides.
This evening I downloaded and watched a Horizon episode on the guy who solved Fermat's Last Theorem (which i admit i never really understood fully before today). It was pretty inspiring, it was his dream to solve the problem since when he was 10 (also he looked just like Napoleon Dynamite, which kinda paints a picture of him) and it took him 7 solid years locked away in his attic, but the emotion he showed recalling all the events, especially when he finally did it, was quite moving. Respect to the guy, he was really humble and was just wanting to achieve his dream, and he's rightly gone down in history for his achievment.
In a nutshell, the theorem was:
But the problem comes about trying to prove that for whole number values of x,y,z,n. If it looks similar to you that's because it's Pythagoras' Theorem for n=2. The documentry hardly went into any details of the actual maths, but it's a very hard problem - it involved very cool areas such as elliptic curves and modular forms =)
I suppose there are few who have read this and not been bored so i apologise, it just interested me. Math is interesting =P
I'll leave you with a nice picture by William Blake, Whirlwind of Lovers (Illustration to Dante's Inferno)
