Recently I took a break from the book The Road To Reality, after reading a chapter about tensor algebra using some sort of diagrammatic notation (looks like hieroglyphics !!). I’m around page 250 and for the good last part of what I read, I felt pretty lost. It’s a bit like when I get one of those Japanese comics and I understand a word every 10: frustrating !
I’m strongly convinced that it’s not possible to really learn something out of math or programming, without actually putting things in practice, without exercises. One can’t go form the Plato to tensors in 250 pages without proper exercises.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I silently went back to the book store in Shinjuku and looked for an English book a little more specific to math study. There I bought Introductory Mathematical Analysis. I’m very happy with it ! It starts really from the basics, explains things in detail, gives formulas and a good dose of exercises.
Currently, I take about 20-30 minutes everyday at lunch break to do the exercises. I’m at the start, where I mostly need to refresh algebra rules and go about the exercises. Trying to become fluent in manipulating powers. I normally should know the power rules, but I never really did enough exercises (powers of 2 aside ;).
Knowing things in theory, again, means really nothing to me.. if one day I need to solve a problem at work, and I get stuck on some equation because I don’t have the confidence to solve some passes automatically.
To be useful, knowledge, should be readily accessible. It’s important to be able to think things through every time, but it’s also important to assimilate some things, in order to focus on more complex issues. That’s my final goal. I want to progressively move onto things that I understand fully because I have a solid background. I don’t want to have to swift through hundreds of pages of a book that tells me “don’t worry if you don’t understand this, and this and this”. Fack that ! I worry !!

Now, changing subject… yesterday (Sunday), my friend Marco invited me to his apartment to do something that we planned to do for some time. We are both fans of spaghetti Western movies (especially those by Sergio Leone). I once mentioned the fact that my uncle, when younger, used to sometimes watch those movies while eating beans with a wooden spoon.. they way they do it in the movies !! ..It sounded like something we had to try and so we did, yesterday 8)
I used the cell’s camera to take a few shots (bear with the quality !). I took the best shots and created an album in the gallery. I tried to be clever and I called it: The Good, The Bad and The Hungry.

Enjoy 8)

P.S. I’m going ahead and answer the most pressing question: my flatulence situation did not really change that much.. the same can’t be said for the host, which had a few good ones. Luckily he has been kind enough to either change room or warn me with a safe margin of time.

Posted by Davide Pasca in Diary