Sheeps

Awww

Bill and Tom

As I walked to my office today a couple of kids on bikes yelled out "Hey Todd." I looked up to see two of my math students from the park. They didn't stick around long enough for another lesson, but I'm sure we'll have another chance.

Feelin' old

I went to a birthday party today for my friend Sarah. I spent a few hours helping to make homemade linguine and tortellini for the party. Naturally it was a big hit, and like usual a large chuck of the credit goes to Jason.

In addition to the celebration of Sarah's birth, I got to celebrate the birth of Adam Thomas Gingrich, making me Uncle Todd. I ate an extra hunk of cake for Adam. Congrats, Mark and Kari (as if you have time to read lame blogs).

Mmm linguine

Spring

We've had some beautiful weather the last few days, which makes me thankful for my semi-private garden at Rhodes House. It's pretty awesome.

Judy Knudson

Judy Knudson, my piano teacher from back in the day, came to Oxford over the weekend. I'll be lazy and steal her work. She wrote about the visit in her blog.

Easter

I went to the Trout for Easter lunch. The nearby playground was too tempting to pass up. That's me in the orange. Check out that good form.

Why people shouldn't mess with me

Today was a beautiful day in Oxford, so I laid out in University Parks to read. Not long after I'd started, five teenage kids sat on a bench near me. Shortly thereafter I started noticing a bunch of pebbles landing around me. I ignored the kids for a while, assuming they'd get bored soon enough. After all, they had pretty pathetic aim. Eventually they did get bored, but just bored enough to up the stakes. They started creeping closer, wondering how close they could get before I'd finally notice them. Eventually when the most obnoxious of the little runts got a few feet away from me I informed him that I wasn't an idiot and would appreciate it if he and his little wanker friends would kindly leave me along. Naturally they then started playing the "what are you talking about I don't know anything about pebbles" card. After a little more verbal pestering they finally ran along.

About five minutes later they returned with friends. I'd already learned they were only 15 and they weren't hostile, so I was more annoyed than intimidated. From my original encounter it was clear that they were bored and just wanting someone to pester and talk to for entertainment, so I developed a good plan. As they approached I told them I'd talk only if they could solve a maths problem I gave them. I wrote down an infinite geometric series and asked them to find the sum

They were fairly bright and one of them quickly told me it was one. The others argued with him saying it wasn't really one, it was naught point nine repeating. I then proceeded to demonstrate the equivalence of the two. By this point in time the most obnoxious of the group had grown bored. He seemed a little obsessed with his recently discovered genitalia, so he preferred drawing pictures all over my paper while I regaled the others in some more maths. Several of them were vaguely familiar with the notion of differentiation, so we talked about basic calculus, the exponential function, the concept of Taylor series, etc. It worked out quite nicely since the interested guys kept the others in check. Eventually the group ran along, but I convinced three of them to stick around long enough to see the derivation for what is perhaps the most beautiful formula of elementary mathematics.

Back in Oxford

I've finally returned to Oxford. Thanks to everyone who made my American tour so much fun, especially all of the folks who hosted me for one or more nights. And now for the abbreviated recap.

The Hertz Symposium was incredible. The conference brought together a lot of really bright folks doing incredible work in all of the physical science (condensed matter, atomic physics, quantum computing, theoretical chemistry, biochemistry, organic and inorganic chem, systems biology, mathematical biology, etc.). It was great to see such a broad range of topics all presented at a high level. Bill Gates spoke the first night about his foundation and its work. He was very impressive. Gates is extremely well-read (he visited every poster presentation where he asked pertinent questions) and thoughtful. For example, when discussing malaria eradication, Gates discussed how it is important to model the effects of proposed plans to ensure that knockout punch can be delivered before a superbug could evolve. Other speakers included Jay Keasling and Xiaowei Zhuang talking respectively about engineering yeast to synthesize anti-malarial drugs and super-resolution optical imaging.

After the conference I hung out in the South Bay area with Anthony Chong, went to the touristy sites in the city with Sarah Stokes and her friend, hung out with Ryan and Kayte, then checked out Lawrence Berkeley Lab with Jordan Katz. It was great fun hopping from friend to friend. I tried to move on to the next before wearing out my welcome. Hopefully I was successful in that regard.

From SF I flew to St. Louis and met up with Gina Gage, who is now in architecture school at Wash U. My mom and sister joined me in St. Louis to go to the City Museum, a museum which is hardly a museum. It's really an abandoned warehouse turned into a giant fun house.

After a brief stopover in Columbia the family drove up to Iowa to visit Mark and Kari. What Iowa lacks in beauty it made up for in food. We ate at a restaurant called the Machine Shed, which was supposed to serve as a tribute to farmers. My all you can eat catfish dinner came out with two whole catfish. After struggling to put those away they came out and offered me more. Family time was rounded out with a visit to my momma's famous hometown then finally a few days at home.

Gifts for my soon-to-be nephew

The final leg of my journey was at Caltech. It's remarkable just how fun the place can be when there's no homework. In addition to meeting up with far too many friends to count, I got to partake in the prefrosh weekend activities - capture the flag, ruddock's hot tub, deconstruction, open mic night, etc etc etc.

Deconstruction - yes, I know this is horrible.

More photos are up on facebook.