Oh yeah, and forgot to post about these yesterday:
1) I've started including some (sane!) source code for my tex notes
And
2) Some significant updates to last year's notes on moduli spaces! Fixed a lot of broken/missing diagrams, and moved it to the most recent template to defs/theorems/exercises are highlighted.
I made a lot of the gnarly diagrams and equations actually readable, and added some very exciting Inkscape+Tikz diagrams lol
For anyone interested in such things, I think I've found a nice workflow for sanely reading + annotating papers on a tablet:
- Run Zotero in the bg on your PC, and use the "Save to Zotero" Chrome extension on PDFs
- In Zotero, use Zotfile's "Push to Tablet" feature..
...with its settings pointing to a Dropbox folder.
- Use Dropsync to automate folder syncing to the tablet
- Put a link to that folder on your home screen, then set Xodo as the default PDF app
- Read, annotate with a stylus
- Next time you're on your PC, "Get From Tablet"
And it just updates the existing PDF attachment with the annotated one. It seems like you can just push/pull files en masse too, so the 2 manual steps aren't awful.
Also, Xodo is great, it distinguishes pen/touch: touch for scroll/zoom, pen for selecting text to highlight
Biggest goal for the new year: consistently tracking things! I feel so much better when I throw things into my todo list and stick to them.
I'm working on better tracking long-term goals now, since these end up needing slightly more than lists 😅
I need to make time a meaningful concept until vaccines are out, so I'm trying out daily/weekly/monthly goals. Just some light "# of Pomodoros doing X" kinds of things, like practicing scales, re-synthesizing old notes, or reading new math books.
Incidentally, I think this is one aspect of student life that we don't talk abut enough! Seeing how other people accomplish goals and stay productive can be really inspiring imo. Tons of people share their methods in the fitness world, way less so in academia.
A small thread about (part of) the solution to this problem! (1/n)
For now, let's just think about computing the fundamental group, π_1(X). First things first: what exactly are we working with?
For Topology questions, often a good start is to ask yourself "What's the picture?"
(2/n)
Here's a depiction: we're starting with two 2-spheres (in equations, just subsets of Euclidean space of the form (x-a)^2 + (y-b)^2 = r^2), here A and B.
Both have an "equator", i.e. a distinguished embedded copy of a circle S^1, say all of the points with y coordinate 0.
(3/n)
2/ The first talk was about how certain H-spaces (a generalization of topological groups) -- those with no "v_n torsion" -- can be expressed as product of certain irreducible H-spaces Y_k that 1) also have no v_n torsion, and 2) are somewhat understood.
3/ This parallels how spaces can be characterized (up to homotopy equivalence) as "twisted products" of Eilenberg-MacLane spaces (the "atoms" of homotopy theory) using Postnikov towers.