I keep meaning to write a more general post about my experience in professional year, but other things always seem to be happening. Such a post will happen eventually. Or maybe it won’t, and I’ll look back at this blog three years from now and wonder what I thought about learning how to teach—except that, hopefully, the threads of what my nascent personal philosophy of pedagogy will be visible in some of these posts. Now…

I woke up on Friday to see a page from Thursday’s Globe and Mail on the living room table. My dad had flagged an article by Margaret Wente as something that I might find relevant. You can find it online under the title “Too many teachers can’t do math, let alone teach it”, but in the paper itself it was published with the headline, “Go figure, because teachers can’t.” I encourage you to read…

Tonight a friend on Facebook asked me: why do you like math? I knew that any suitable answer to that question would be a long one, and as I was cooking at the time and logged into Facebook chat on my phone, and so I deferred. After dinner I began typing a response on Facebook, but then I realized that this is worth its own blog post. I think it’s evident from this blog that…

My summer research project involved extensive use of Macaulay2, a computer algebra program. Essentially, what Macaulay2 does is make it easy to do computations on different types of abstract algebra objects, like rings and ideals. Since there is no native version of Macaulay2 for Windows, my options for running it these past two summers have been: run it in Windows under Cygwin or, once again, dual boot Windows and Ubuntu (or Kubuntu). Ubuntu and…

I have rewritten my “About Me” page. It has needed some updates for a while now. I focused on making the page briefer while keeping it informative. Now people who come to my site can know who I am in a few paragraphs. If they need to know me more deeply, they will know where to stalk me.

Also, the page now includes an excellent photo that portrays my love of math and silliness. The…

This morning, we had two cats. Their names were Marble and Kaylee; they were sisters. I don't remember exactly when we got them, for I was very young, but they must have been 12 years old or even older. So they have been around for most of my life now, and I have grown accustomed to their curmudgeonly feline ways. Upon moving into our newest residence in 2007, Marble took up the habit of sleeping…

Last Friday marked the end of my summer research term. For reasons I don't entirely understand and don't need to understand, Jessica made a pie to celebrate the milestone. It was raspberry (my favourite fruit) and, more importantly, it was delicious. This summer feels like it has gone by extremely quickly, and I'm not yet eagerly anticipating school. I have two weeks off now, returning early on August 29 to begin the intense final year…

Yesterday was the deadline for voting in the Hugo Awards. I submitted my final ballot on Friday. I managed to finish all of the Hugo-nominated works in the novel, novella, novelette, and short story categories. I also voted in the best related work and best dramatic presentation categories, and I voted for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Here's an overview of my picks for this year's Hugos.

I wrote…

Having dispatched the Hugo-nominated works for the short story and the novelette categories, I'm now getting into the big guns: novellas and novels. I love long-form fiction, and so I look forward to reading all of these longer works. Here are my thoughts on the novellas. I wrote this post over the course of several weeks as I worked through the novellas while reading other things, so my reviews begin verbosely and diminish as my…

I continue my reading of this year's Hugo nominees with the novelettes. As with the short stories, all of these are available online, and I encourage you to read them.

"Eight Miles", by Sean McMullen

Although I wouldn't call "Eight Miles" steampunk, it is definitely a cousin of that genre--perhaps we can call it "Victorian chic." McMullen embraces the sense of wonder and pure flights of fancy that recall the science fiction of the…