Monthly Archives: December 2007

Message from a self-destructing turnip

Monday, December 10, 2007 – 21:59
Math lecture break

Time: Friday afternoon. 16:00 hours. Location: C1 lecturing hall. Subject: Integrals

For the last few weeks the longest and most intense lectures have taken place during the worst time of the week; the last lesson during the Friday afternoons. The whole week has finished, you are quite tired of five long days of intense studying, and then you are supposed to hold out…the…last…two…hours of new subjects, ideas and proofs. I took a few shots with the camera just to document the general mood.

Viktor and Maria, two normal people I know

Math? No, we make hats out of newspapers!

Luffarschack

Math? No, we play Luffarschack!

Forsling

Even prof. Forsling himself looks like he wishes to be somewhere else.

The Leaky Bucket project is now finally finished. We had the final customer delivery last week. And he approved of the solution!

The Leaky Bucket project group

Above: Me (far right) and my project teammates.

Tomorrow is the last normal day at school for this semester. There are no more lectures and almost no lessons left. We said goodbye to our mentor in Linear Algebra, prof. Rauch, who has been a good support to us during times of hardship with vectors and scalars.

Math

Tomorrow I am going home to Västerås for the rest of the week. I will mostly be studying for the algebra exam on the 20th, after which I will grant myself some well-deserved Christmas relaxation. After New Year’s Eve, there will be little rest. I am going to do three exams in two weeks, two of which are attempts to raise my grades in the introductory math and the digital electronics courses. The last and greatest one will be the Calculus I exam, which takes place on the 15th of January.

My room in a typical day of studying

The picture above is my moderately clean study. It contains all the usual stuff; a docked computer, math books and a notebook.

Course literature

Above: The two books that almost can be considered my best friends for the moment; Analys (green one) and Linjär Algebra (the blue one).

At the keyboard,
Jonathan

Me and my math
By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Photos | Tagged , , | Comments (4)

Full speed ahead!

Tuesday, December 4, 2007 – 21:56

The examination period is only a week away, and the current pace at school is tremendous. In the eleventh hour, before which everything in linear algebra had stuck and felt manageable then Pow!, and you listen to a lecture that introduces a ton of new ideas, proofs and formulas to remember. After working for a long time with the eigenvectors and now mastering them, there came the quadratic forms and systems of differential equations. The differential equations are especially tricky, since we are assumed to know how they work before they are introduced in the Calculus II course that starts in January. So a little confusion is nothing more than expected here.

The course in calculus is also coming to an end. Ending as in “we have one week left now let’s throw in something way new and let them students sweat a bit”-ending. Todays lecture in Calculus introduced the standard integrals, as compared to the indefinite integrals that we have consumed the last three weeks. And all those assignments! They really require you to stay focused during the whole lesson, and mistakes are costly because you lag behind quicker than you imagine.

There, I needed to vent my thoughts a bit. Y-linjen is a difficult education, just as I wanted it to be, and I do thrive. The last six months have given so much more understanding of mathematics, now that I look back to high school that feels like children’s games to me.

By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Life | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Sunday one of four

Sunday, December 2, 2007 – 17:53

I woke up quite late this evening, so I was not sure that I would want to hurry through breakfast to get to Ryttargårdskyrkan in time for the Advent Sunday service. But I did, and I did not regret that.

The service today was magnificent. The whole church was filled with not only a large choir, but also a large brass ensemble which filled the auditorium with wonderful music and singing.

Many great Advent songs were sung; Bereden väg för Herran, Gå, Sion, din konung att möta, Hosianna, Davids son. The church was packed to the last seat, and the worship was heartily and full of joy. The Old Testament promises about the Messiah, found in Isiah and Zephaniah, were read and pastor Daniel Röjås preached about how Jesus fulfilled them. The grande finale of it all was nothing less than Hallelujah by Händel, with all the bells and whistles.

Thanks to this service, the ordinary grey December Sunday of today became very beautiful.

By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Life | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Eigenhat

Sunday, December 2, 2007 – 17:02

The course in Linear Algebra is coming to an end. We only have one lecture left, and are now dealing with the most advanced topic in the course; quadratic forms.

Professor Rauch shows some tricks

On the 20th of December I will have  the examination, and  although there are three weeks left I already started studying. Going back to the beginning of the course does feel easy now when I have started to understand the topics and the notation. Scalar and vector products are no match for me anymore. It is strange how different every thing feels now after doing these abstract calculations for months, it just flows naturally now.

Tomorrow I and my project group present the Leaky Bucket project for the teachers. It is a project where we study control engineering and solve a simple problem. Our problem was to keep a level in a water tank constant with variable outflow. To do this we used a PID-regulator, a water pump, and a sensor.

The Leaky Bucket project

During the project, we visited Tekniska Verken, the local power plant, to see how they use automatic control in their systems.  It was interesting to see the fully automatic garbage ovens burn the garbage that comes from the city and produce electricity and heat that is fed back to the city. And those helmets really make you look hot!

Me at Gärstadverket, Linköping
The project group
Pumps
Garbage handling
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Under sail!

Sunday, December 2, 2007 – 16:50

I still haven’t published my photos from when I went sailing with Elida V in September. Here they come. As usual, click any of the photos to browse the whole album.

I ready the sails
All the cool guys hang around at the bow
Elida V under sail
Windy weather
Under sail
Under sail!
Sail handling
Me
Nils-Åke
By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Photos | Tagged | Comments (0)

Evad 0.0.2 – “Approximate”

Sunday, December 2, 2007 – 16:45

I have released version 0.0.2 of my coding project Evad, codenamed Approximate. This release is an unstable development release, so don’t blame me if it would steal your computer, eat your lunch or anything similar.

Evad is a keyboard-controlled client that controls the MPD music system, and is written to optimize screen usage and efficiency. This release is a great leap forward from 0.0.1 with an almost rewritten backend and core features. New features include seeking in tracks, much improved searching and increased performance.

Get it while it’s hot.

Evad 0.0.2 - “Approximate”

By Jonathan Fors | Posted in Life | Tagged , , | Comments (1)