2021-06-28 #blog

Throwing a little four-person (two couples) party in late evening is a good way to patch up wrecked nerves. Although the last glass of wine is always excessive. I have to do some work today and tomorrow for reports on scientific work, and after that most of my time will be dedicated to rest and work on side project.

2021-06-26 #blog

The exam is done. I have no idea if I passed and honestly don’t even care at this point. The teacher did his worst and so did I. There are two reports on 28th and 29th of June, the second one is in English. These won’t be a problem, however, so I will probably start planning my summer break tomorrow. Only two months worth of time and so much to do.

2021-06-25 #blog

I desperately want to start new coding project with roughly 24 hours left until the exam. Let me clarify.

The academic education, the entire cycle from undergrad to PhD, is the ultimate form of delayed gratification. The first four years you torture yourself through numerous exams and test just to start the journey. No, sincere affection for the subject won’t save you, stress and struggles persist no matter how much you like the descipline.

And coding projects are an easy way out. Build something, compile the code and see if it works. Sometimes it works as intended and it is satisfying to see things you built working. And whenever I am in the midst of exams it takes a lot of willpower to resist the urge to build things. Fortunately, I will have two months to entertain myself with these projects. once this clusterfuck of a semester is over.

2021-06-24 #blog

The exam date was moved from 27th to 26th of June, which leaves me with little time for preparation and a few time management hiccups. So here are a few tips for working “non-stop” that generally help me. Probably useless, but I need a break from semiconductor physics.

1) Realism. You can’t work non-stop in a focused mode for a day. And you can’t work long hours multiple days in a row without ultimately burning out and sacrificing your efficiency. It’s important to keep it in mind, you need breaks and some time to sustain your body and mind.

2) Hydration. A lot of water and tea; coffee is good, but it won’t provide you with enough liquid. I’d say, during intense work I drink 1.5 times more than usual.

3) Nutrition. Three protein and fiber heavy meals with a bunch of carbohydrate snacks inbetween. Healthy? No, not really. Jumpstarts the brain? Yes, very much. Make sure to not make this a habit, though.

4) Breaks. You can do more in less time if you make short breaks once every hour. I don’t mention classic pomodoro here, since 25 minutes isn’t enough to go deep into a complex topic.

5) Workout and walk. A walk after the lunch or a workout before release some tension and allow you to go for longer after this break.

2021-06-22 #blog

I’m surviving in 30-35 C heat in Moscow, and hot water will be cut for a week or so for maintenance. This will be terrible.

I have fixed my physical shape and even cut caffeine consumption below one cup per day, partly because there is no jezve in this place and I’m a lazy ass to buy one. There is a good cafe nearby but it’s too hot to go there in the morning, and there is no way I’ll drink coffee after 4 pm.

Exercise routine is sloppy because playgrounds are closed and all the pull up bars are off limits as well. I manage to get by with pushups and various legs and abs exercises. This is good enought to keep me in minimal shape.

2021-06-19 #blog

I am temporarily living with my girlfriend, away from my parents. Not in a hotel, in a proper flat for the first time. It is only for a few weeks, but I am uncovering a lot of truths about myself everyday. It was necer evident to me just how many of my habits and rituals were imposed onto me by living with parents. It is, in a way, liberating. Maybe I’ll list some of these.

2021-06-16 #blog

Back to work. I need to write a ten-pages summary on thermoelectric semiconductor elements. At least the topic is interesting and I am expected to describe fairly complicated physics in there as well as some general information on how and why are these things used.

I wish I could brag about my mental stability, but this is not the case, unfortunately. The load is pretty heavy and wearing me thin. Fortunately there are less than two weeks left and one difficult exam to pass. The rest is at least feasible.

2021-06-15 #blog

The exam never happened. Professor decided to grade our work during the semester. Ones that disagree go to the exam, but I am fine with 5 (out of five). A can of dry Strongbow for celebration and tomorrow preparation for the next one starts. This time - solid state physics, interesting but complicated.

2021-06-14 #blog

The exam is tomorrow. It will happen online because Moscow went into a five days long quarantine. This helps, but not that much; at least I won’t have to commute to University.

I am more or less on track with my recovery plan, except for limiting sugar consumption. Carbohydrates are addictive and kickstart brain activity fairly well, despite the price one pays later.

2021-06-12 #blog

I give up; I choose to protect my mental stability, exchanging it for worse performance on the exam. Because the exam is a one-time occasion and my brain should last as long as possible.

2021-06-12 #blog

I am walking on a thin line between mental breakdown and full on apathy. Successfully, for now.

2021-06-11 #blog

Yesterday I passed another exam. The one on continuous medium mechanics; I got an “A”. The next one is on the 15th of June, on crystal chemistry. That one is a lot harder and I am studying a lot.

The recovery plan is going fine for the most part. I still tend to consume too much carbs. It should be easier to cope with now, since I have a 4 days break between stressful exams. I even got back to writing on a somewhat regular basis, that’s something.

20211-06-10_2 #blog

At the moment I have cut excess coffee (3 days ago) and all alcohol (5 days). This solved the majority of immideate problems, but I still operate on like 70% of my average capacity. Today is the first day of fixing sleep schedule, woke up at 7 am. This is reasonable by my standards. Hopefully I’ll stop waking up in the middle of the night once the cyrcadian rhythm stabilizes.

2021-06-10 #blog

The premise I wrote yesterday but lost due to unfortunate circumstances.

I sometimes have to give up healthy habits and rituals in order to get work done for a tight deadline. I did it a few weeks ago to deal with intense finals. Now the annoying ones are done and I can’t afford this lifestyle any longer. Excess of caffeine, carbohydrates and disrupted sleep schedule are taking a toll on my body, along with high levels of anxiety.

To offset a consequence of unhealthy behaviour one generally needs at least as much time as was spent engaging in an unhealthy behaviour, or longer. I estimate a month long recovery after roughly two weeks of questionable choices.

Of course I have a plan. It includes:

• limiting coffee by one cup a day
• having a break on Saturdays
• moderate physical activity (I tend to exercise more during stressful periods, and it’s not always healthy)
• decent food with high protein/carbs ratio
• no alcohol (which is default for me)
• fixing a sleep schedule
• writing rituals

This is more or less default “get back on track” sequence I have to do every once in a while.

2021-06-09 #blog

A wandering mind always comes up with ideas. And if you have a good idea and don’t start working on it within the first 24 hours - it’s unlikely that you ever going to do it.

So whenever a good idea comes to your wandering mind - hold tight onto it and start working, even if the time is annoyingly unsuitable for it.

2021-06-08 #blog #daily

So I’m now in a weird position where there is a lot to do for all the finals and not much resources left to actually make progress. I’ll post here on how it’s going.

Currently it’s 13:30, Tuesday, I’m more or less done with lab work and starting exam prep, there is a bunch of stuff I need to read and take notes on for tensor analysis and mechanics exam.

I’m a polymath, in a bad way. There are a lot of things I know and some things I’m decent at, but there is nothing I’m obsessed with and nothing I could say I’m a specialist in, and this upsets me. Because choosing something to focus long-term on becomes a pain in the ass, and staying focused is even harder.

Fluency in math

Fluency in language is relatively easy to measure: you can give a talk, keep up in a coversation and write jarry, more or less gramatically coherent texts. Math is trickier: most people struggle with it, some people seem to be better at it naturally. I have no idea why is that the case, but there is an interesting observation.

Math is language we describe universe with, because words aren’t suited well for this purpose. There are a few major concepts that are tough to describe in plain language, like limits in calculus and tensors in algebra. And math is a weird language, mistakes are punished way more than ever, infact, one wrong symbol renders the entire “text” meaningless. This breeds frustration.

Fluency in math, in a particular parts of it, consists of two things. Firstly, the ability to derive new relations and transform existing ones effortlessly and without mistakes. No, there is no “I know this, I’m just so inattentive” when you skipped a minus sign. Mistakes show gaps in either knowledge or skill, they are a signal for you to get some more practice.

Secondly, the internalization of concepts. It boils down to the Feynman rule: you only understand it if you can explain it. The only way to internalize a concept is to link it to existing knowledge: think of the knowledge as a map, and your competence grows in a tree-like shape all over it, creating nodes and lines. As long as there are enough nodes near something new, you can learn it. If you struggle - roll back and explore the area around, maybe go slightly sideways or practice what you already know.

#math #uni #blablabla #thoughts

Digital nihilism

Intro

A term I have just came up with to quickly describe my idea. It is not the next logical step after “digital minimalism”, rather a diffirent approach: not limiting and controlling device usage, but using a computer strictly as a tool and not using it when there are more effective tools. Setups matter little in this context, as long as you have bare minimum of programs and shortcuts the work can be done.

There is an app for everything

Do you really need an app for that? I’ll start with the basic premise of digital minimalism. There are a lot of apps for almost everything out there, and not all of them are good or even useful, let alone optimized and functional.

Your phone and computer can do everything

They can’t. More importantly, there are a lot of things they suck at and relatively few things they are good at. Actually, let’s list some stuff.

What a PC or a laptop can do really well

• Computations and programming, any kind of it
• Typing and, more importantly, editing text and documents
• Processing and visualising formatted data
• Editing images, audio, etc.
• Storing data on drives
• Research

What a phone can do really well

• Keeping you in touch with people
• Looking stuff up
• Taking photos, videos, recording audio

Here is a new feature for tagging your tasks

So, here is my point: any computer, being a fancy physical representations of mathematical algorithm enclosed in shiny box, is terrible at processing loosely-organized data. And your life, personal notes and planning are loosely organized and won’t fit a nice layout of that app, no matter how hard you try. The entropy will take over, partly because these devices were not designed for it. If you can’t do it with spreadsheet and a barebones txt file, you are probably better off with pen and paper.

Ditch notion, todoist and whatever it is you use. The only real application for them is to organize work tasks, with well-known workflow and a need for shared access. Ditch habit-building and note-taking apps on your phone and throw a small A6 notebook in your pocket or backpack. It will nicely replace all of them and do a better job at it. You need backup? Photocopy the necessary pages and throw them into the cloud. This is faster and more convenient than all the popups, tables and pages you could neatly organize on your screen.

Only use your device when it’s the best tool for the bank. Forget about using your phone to learn or read, you will end up on tiktok or other time sink of choice anyway. People who designed this get paid to make sure you do, your “willpower” is no match for the team of engineers. Buy e-book reader or get paperback in the library. Get a mobile, lightweight laptop and use it to learn stuff on the go if you have to.

But how about all my friends on social media?

Messaging apps are great for keeping in touch. Social media are terrible at virtually everything, especially at supplying you information. Use them if you have to, but do keep in mind that what you read is an algorithm maximising the profit and not the depiction of real world.

Outro

This is, for the most part, a rant. Maybe it will prove useful for someone, who knows. The majority of it is inspired by Luke Smith and George Hotz and the linux laptop I am typing on.

Dixi.

Pink flowers were glowing against the gloomy sky. I saw the sakura tree bloom for the first time in all it’s glory, with petals gliding to meet the lawn. There were no words left, only a faint smile and a silent stare. It’s been a long time since that smile has visited this face. Five years ago in Barcelona I was in Sagrada Familia, and even before that in Norway fjords, and a gothic cathedral comewhere in Europe.

There is now an image of pink petals engraved in my head, along with a single line that I hope to carry through my life, unchanged: be worthy to live in the world where sakura blossoms. And if your heart is in the right place and your mind is clear, you’ll see it and remember, and carry it’s light within you.