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Headshot of me with long hair, pink lip stick, light makeup Kara Babcock

Articles Tagged with “NSERC 2011”

6 articles found

  1. Tying the knot with Ubuntu

    Published

    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…

  2. Updated my “About Me” page

    Published

    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…

  3. Now the summer begins

    Published

    Jessica displays her raspberry pie

    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…

  4. Good books and a sleepy conscience

    Published

    Sunday was mostly an odds-and-ends day. I cleaned my room, organized things, and finished some books. Although the threat of rain hovered constantly in the air, I even managed to do some reading outside. So I had a pretty good weekend.

    I managed to finish both Persuasion and the Iliad. My to-read shelf was finally empty, which meant I could restock it with books from the rather oppressive overflow stack. I have forty…

  5. I'm at it again!

    Published (Updated )

    So I've finished my first week of summer research, which I began on Tuesday (as Easter Monday was a holiday). I am re-revisiting the spreading and covering numbers, those devilish little fiends from combinatorial commutative algebra that plagued me last summer. You can read about last summer's research here. I shall try to blog often about this summer's efforts as well.

    This week was very much about settling in and trying to get…

  6. I'm almost finished my fourth year of university, and with it, my HBA in Mathematics. It doesn't feel like four years! It feels like barely yesterday I was a nervous first-year student trying to figure out how to get around our campus (which I now realize is tiny compared to other campuses).

    I won't be graduating at the end of the year, because I'm actually in a five-year concurrent education program. For those of you…