Brett Hutley's Blog

I have been studying continuously for many years now. I am still refining my studying technique though. One of the things that I am being forced to do with the maths I am doing at the moment, is to read and re-read the course materials over and over again. My workflow at the moment is:

1. Skim the chapter. Scan the headings and sub-headings and try to build up the outline in my head.
2. Skim through the problems within the chapter.
3. Speed read the chapter. Get more of an idea of what is going on.
4. Read through the problems and the answers.
5. Read the chapter more thoroughly. Try and get a good understanding.
6. Work through the problems.
7. Repeat 5 and 6 until either clarity or the exam arrives!

I was just going through an updating a few things on my blog. I had accidentally removed Akismet, and accumulated a massive amount of comment spam in the last day or so. Anyway, I reinstalled and was going through cleaning out the spam comments, when I found a number of actual comments from human beings! Ones that I had completely ignored because I wasn't updating my blog regularly. Anyway, if you left me a comment a few years ago, and I ignored it - please forgive me! I'll try and be better at responding!

I just found Ram Murty's short course on YouTube - Introduction to Analytic Number Theory. So good! I am studying Apostol's book "Introduction to Number Theory" at the moment, and it is fantastic to get an insight into the subject from someone so brilliant! I ordered Murty's book "Problems in Analytic Number Theory" after watching the first lecture.

Helen and I started watching two shows on Netflix last night. The first is one that I've been looking forward to for awhile - Netflix's adaptation of Richard K Morgan's book Altered Carbon. The second is Riverdale - a reimagining of the old Archie comics, but set in the present day around a tale of mystery and murder!

Continue reading “Altered Carbon and Riverdale”

This morning I was wondering why my dreams can be almost indistinguishable from reality, yet when I visualise something, it lacks vividness and clarity. Not only that but I often get distracted when I visualise something - I vanish down a stream of consciously only to snap out of it a few seconds later and realise that I had lost focus.

Continue reading “Dreams and Visualisation”

There is an interesting video over on YouTube about creating no-etch circuit boards using a laser printer. I want to give this a try!

The World-champion chess player Gary Kasparov concluded that "Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkable, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process." He created "Freestyle Chess", pairing a computer and a human to make a stronger chess player. This hybrid combination is sometimes called a "Centaur".

Continue reading “Centaur Living”