Art imitates... uh, is that meant to be some sort of bird?

The yearly local piss-up. The Moyston Art Show. It was summed up when one bloke said he'd been on his farm for nearly 20 years, so he was "nearly a local". Everyone laughed, but it was hollow laughter, as it was only too true.

The local ladies clucked around the art, those who weren't busily keeping a steady supply of savoury what-nots on constant rotation. The local men stood around uncomfortably, and tried not to crush their wine glasses in their enourmous hands, chafing in the uncomfortable restraits of non-flannel collared shirts. I passively participated in careful debates over the relative merits of different varieties of oats. And if that should get too rowdy, any disagreement could be settled in an disarmingly simple way, as nobody would disagree that we need rain.

I was repeatedly mistaken for my brother. Luckily, it wasn't the brother who, a while ago, ran over the dog of one lady I met in his big ute. For some reason, quite a few people thought I lived in America, or were quite shocked that I existed, quite content to beleive that I was a local myth. I also ran into two of my old teachers from high school, one from drama and the other from home economics. It was no dead poets society 2, that's all I can say.

Dad bought his bit of art, everyone purred in approval. When it finished, everyone stumbled out of hall, pissed as newts (newts are notorious alcoholics), waved one another a cheery goodbye, got into their cars/utes and swerved off down the road. If you'd mentioned point-oh-five, they'd think you were talking about a gun with a very, very, small bullet.

Fight triangle inequality!

The above emus are in the paddock over the road every morning. This is not a very good photo, but it's hard to get emus to line up and smile.

Well work on the thesis has been on hold this week, while I sort out some particularly technical details about some of the proofs in my last two papers. Thus the shamelessly nerdy joke about the triangle inequality.

Fuck me roughly with a broken bottle if the last pop77 mix (28) wasn't a big bag of bee's knees. Poor Kanye has been out in the cold this week.

Wen is heading down this weekend, arriving about half an hour before any self-respecting sparrow would consider letting off a crack-like fart. Apparently Katie and Greta will be breezing through the state sometime in June, and may drop in. I hope that they haven't washed their Sydney clothes so I can inhale the sweet, sweet residue of Sydney in them, now that I have a sense of smell coming back.

Mmmm other big news is that this company asked if I wanted to apply for a job in Sydney. It is doing very cool stuff, converting research (equations) into chips. They are offering a big bag of money, and all these grouse bonuses. Sydney is not a very exciting destination though (no offense, even though it's cleary an offensive statement).

xo & -:Peace in the middle east:-

Anzac day

My weekend primarily consisted of getting to know one of my older brothers, Mark. I stayed at his joint in Yarra Glen (go left at woop-woop and carry on for another few clicks...), then got wayy drunk with him on Friday night. I couldn't even rummage up a homeless man to go rock climbing with, so I made Choco swear on on his own black heart we'd do it next week. Heaven help us all if he should lose his sense of balance in some bizzare and tragic internet accident, leaving me stranded once more. He'd rue the day, as I'd use my marginally increased lifting ability to further disable him somehow.

What Anzac day means to you lot of juvenile delinquents:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Modern interpretation: Others grow old normally, while you age abnormally fast due to heavy substance abuse.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
Modern interpretation: Age may not weary them, similar to the way lack of sleep for 48 hours does not weary you, as you are meth freaks.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Modern interpretation: On Anzac weekends we party all afternoon, night, and into the next morning, and remember where we stuffed our stash.

Bastards.

I've got a gmail address now, finally. I really don't know why it has taken so long for someone to offer me one, as I'm a supernerd. I was kind of expecting an email from Larry Page and Sergey Brin fairly early on, actually, along the lines of "hi mat, how's things, would you fancy a nerdy email account to go along with your thick glasses and large bookshelf? toodles, Larry and Sergey". If anyone wants one, I can hook them up. Although, I imagine most people will be all like "got one, dude, from my uncle in Maitland who reconditions novelty blinker sticks".

Dad took me out in the above 4WD on Sunday for a 'drive', and showed me a few interesting tracks. There is a 'back way' to Halls Gap through the mountains, you see.

I've found a 3 page proof which does exactly the type of thing I need to satisfy the reviewers on my most recent paper. I've been poring over the proof all afternoon, and I'm starting to understand bits and pieces. It's a very boring and tedious proof, but somehow quite fascinating. Once I've got that sorted out, I'm sweet. I'm succulent and fragrant in fact, with delicate undertones of oak, raspberry, and rexona.

Kanye sez:

She's got a light-skinned friend,
look like Michael Jackson,
Got a dark-skinned friend,
look like Michael Jackson...

Add 10 inches to your elbow. Click HERE.

New pop77 mix out. It has a woolworths-like Guarantee of Freshness.

I've now got all three reviews back on that paper. The other two reviewers were also positive, but hardly as gushy as the first one. The third reviewer made one good point, and now I have to prove something explicitly, which I had previously just assumed was correct. It's related to the weak law of large numbers, which I was checking up on MATHWORLD, and it told me to see also the "Frivolous Theorem of Arithmetic", which is my first, and possibly last, fun theorem of the week.

Chapter 3 is a dirty, stinking, 2 buck whore, harboring an impressive menagerie of STDs, grumble, grumble, no account son of a bus driver! The results it will contain are completely superceded by subsequent chapters, and they were written by an innocent youth still blinded by the bright lights of formal measure theory. The sweet, sweet, nourishing pastures of Chapter 4 beckon, however, where I can bask in the dull light of my own cunning.

Tomorrow night is the opening night of the auspicious Moyston Art Show (Note the $2 entry fee and the dev' tea). Dad has made a point, several times, of ensuring that I'll be going along with him, often with raised eyebrows and direct eye contact, and a hint of conspiracy. I think that means we'll be getting sloshed with the locals, surrounded by, let me go out on a limb here, uh, landscape portraits.

Kanye West rap-o-the-day:

I say fuck the police, thats how I treat em
We buy our way out of jail, but we can't buy freedom
We'll buy a lot of clothes when we don't really need em
Things we buy to cover up what's inside
Cause they make us hate ourself and love they wealth
That's why shortys hollering "where the ballas' at?"
Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack
And a white man get paid off of all of that
But I ain't even gon act holier than thou
Cause fuck it, I went to Jacob with 25 thou
Before I had a house and I'd do it again
Cause I wanna be on 106 and Park pushing a Benz
I wanna act ballerific like it's all terrific
I got a couple past due bills, I won't get specific
I got a problem with spending before I get it
We all self conscious I'm just the first to admit it

Shush now, clamoring horde of two people!

This is the woolshed, as photographed at the crack'o'dawn this morning, as I was going to the gym. Not a bad shot, eh!

Well I squeezed a whole lotta goodness out of last weekend, including ascending a few cocks with Choco on Friday evening, and then playing squash the following morning with my half-brother Mark, who, might I add, I've only seen once in the last ~15 years! That went well, and we are going to do it again next weekend. Then I caught up with Steve, by accident actually, at the Vietnamese joint we all go to all the time. Then Steve got me to carry furniture from the Salvo's to his joint a few blocks away. We got reasonably drunk that evening on Coopers Red, and shared a few laffs. Oh, how we laffed. Went for a ride with Choco and his g/f Feebs on Sunday. Climbed for 7kms, then got muddy and lost. Had to backtrack, and only just managed to get the bikes back in the car before it was pitch black. That's the shopping list version of events.

Mondee morning, however, I had a little valentine in my inbox from the Associate Editor who is handling that paper I submitted earlier in the year, the one that I've been blathering on about, which b-roq is convinced is going to score me loads of hot chicks. Well, I got one review back, from Phillipe Loubaton from Université de Marne la Vallée, who is a big wig in the area. His wig is monumental in fact, and smells little like an old dog. In the review, he has said:

"I believe it is one of the best papers on applications of large random matrix to communications systems .... The authors have sketched an apparently new approach to (something boring). Taking into account the number of mathematical works devoted to this problem, this is a quite remarkable point."

So, bugger Viagra.



This was how the Grampians looked this morning from the farm...

Thesis is going well. Did a big stint today after getting home from the gym with shaking hands, ripped up the stuff I had dumped into Chapter 3, then started putting it back together.

I think this update is best wrapped up with a quote from Kanye West and Ludacris. The last line makes me giggle and do my hip-hop dance.

Yeah, breathe in, breathe out
If ya iced up, pull ya sleeves out
Push a big truck, pull ya keys out
Girls go wild and pull ya deez out
Breathe in, breathe out
Let them hoes fight, pull her weave out
If a nigga act up, pull a Desert E's out
When I pull the piece out niggas like "Peace out!"

Wikky wikky weekend...

I'm going to chuck my bike in the car, and head down to Melb to go for a climb (this evening) and a ride (tomorrow) with my indigenous friend, Choco. Toodles!

Pumping, er, iron.

I was up slightly before the crack of the proverbial sparrow's fart this morning, and off to the local YMCA to pump some iron. It was quite, er, envigorating, and I'm sore, which must be good. The only downside was this old guy (who was the only other person there, as was the case on Tuesday as well, and who I suspect was the old principal when my brothers were in primary school), who did his excercise in a rather muted matter-of-fact fashion, then slung his towell around his neck with a flourish, and walked off and said "see ya. (brief pause). I hope that it's all worth it for you", to which I wittily gave a strained grunt in reply, which in all honesty was probably more due to the fact I was concentrating on not lobotomizing myself with some freeweights at the time. Hmmmm. He might be the first person I maul when I become as massive as Charles Atlas. No, seriously, what in the good name of fuck was he on about?

Then I went and bought a new squash raquet, so I can fuck Choco up good on the weekend. I only went into the shop to get a new grip, but the guy who runs the store talked me into it. He went to school with my Dad, by the way, and was asking about the wellbeing of my brothers. Then I went to three other shops (parked out the front of each one) in which I knew the people working there, and spent about half an hour in each shooting the breeze...! Oh, country people are funny! And ugly. When will they ever learn?!



I then came home and carted off the roo remains, which stunk, a lot. Then I realized that my brother's sprogs had forgotten to close the gates on the weekend, and there were sheep cruising around the home paddock, and could have gotten into Mum's garden, or out onto the road. I mounted the motorbike, and summoned the help of a trusty companion, Toffee (the dog partial to the odd rancid corpse). She looked fairly disinterested in the sheep, but was desperate for me to throw her a pine cone to retrieve. So I, showing some rat-cunning which has made me so wealthy, threw the pine cone in the direction I did not want the sheep to go. Disaster averted.

Anyhoo, I miss youse cunts, even if it don't sound like it.

Keep rockin' in the free world. xo.

Also, I ran across this somehow. The quote from Machiavelli early on the page is great. The rest makes me bored.

Look what the dog dragged in...

I ducked into town to have dinner with my Grandparents, but forgot to feed the dog before I left. So she dragged in a partly-decomposed roo.




In other news:

I woke up and saw Shane Warne in his undies.

Whoo-eee.

A special hello to those who live in the Gay Capital of Australia, Sydney!

The fact I haven't posted this week means that either I'm working incredibly hard, or, I've moved on to more advanced forms of procrastination. Maybe that should be 'and/or', or just 'and'.

I had a rather entertaining weekend in Melbourne. Climbing with Choco was good, but we chose to go on half-price night, which meant the place was a brothel (assuming brothels get really busy). Choco managed to stuff his enormous blessing into the harness, but spent most of the evening hanging with his weight on one of his nuts, much to my delight.

We then went down Brunswick street and met up with Steve, who was doing his best 'Junkie Jesus' impersonations. He read me a 'Limerick of the Libertines' he'd written especially for the occasion, a take-off of a dirty book called 'Lusts of the Libertines' by the Marquis de Sade. We then performed the time-honored tradition of buying a hip flask of bourbon and sneaking into a bar. During this period I may, or may have not, had a ciggie. Steve assured me that baby Jesus in heaven would still love me either way. Choco and I then went home and drank a bottle of wine, and became heinously intoxicated. Another bottle of wine was opened, it had gone off, so we both threw up and went to bed.

I finally signed up at the gym on Sunday... one months membership is 26 bucks! Fucken-A. I made an appointment to have a fitness assesment at 7 am on Tuesday, which meant I got up at 6am yesterday morning. Anyone familiar with my sleeping habits realizes that this would normally require constructing some form of device which will set the house on fire at around 5:30am. Anyhoo, I get in there and the guy doing the test first attempts to take my blood pressure, but the pumpy-hurty-county thing is busted. He then attempts to untangle a measuring tape, and then goes, "Are you one of those guys who really cares about measuring your muscles all the time?", to which I wisely said "Heavens no! I'm not one of those nancy-boys! I prefer vagina!". He asked what I was coming to the gym for, I explained, and he said, "No worries, I'll have your plan done by Thursday". Furry muff. I had a go on the bike and rower anyway.

Mum has headed off to Perth, so I'm home alone till Sunday, although I beleive Adam is arriving with a large Chinese contingent tomorrow. I think I'll bugger off again.



... and the thesis is going swimmingly. Check it out on the information superhighway!

I have downloaded about 4 or 5 arseloads of music this week. Even though the ISDN connection here has quite a modest speed, we are on an unlimited plan, and bittorrent rulz. Hot stuff includes the new FIDDY album - `MASSACRE', the DEPECHE MODE REMIXES 81-04, the KANYE WEST album and the KANYE WEST remixes, which is a 'collectors edition' no less! I've also updated my back catalogue of stuff I never managed to get my hands on, or lost, including Nick Drake's three albums, the Mylo album, and the Killers - Hot Fuss album.

Kanye on education (mp3 link)

People fail to care that I fell a long way.

Fuck I had a weird dream last night. I was in a plane, and there were seats down inside the wing. Then the wing broke off and all these people fell out. I was fairly smug because I had my seatbelt on, and someone who annoyed me sitting in front of me didn't. The plane broke up, everyone died. I fell and hit the ground and didn't die. I was wandering around telling people how amazing that was, but they seemed mostly unimpressed. I was going through the calculations with them in terms of potential energy, terminal velocity, momentum, area of impact, etc., but it failed to sway their indifference.

There's a message in that for all of us.

I ordered this book earlier in the week on a whim:

I had it delivered to Adam's house, so I'll pick it up this evening, because this arvo I surgically extract myself from my trackpants and tea-mug, and go to Melbourne for a climb at this gym: http://www.cliffhanger.com.au/ Affe titte turbo guile!



1 week and counting. Damn I feel self-righteous.

In other news, Barry roolz [source: Barry].

Productivity.

Today was `new music' day, and to a lesser extent, `force new chapters to start on odd-numbered page' day. The latter took me effing ages to work out. I've got to stop fixating on these little things...

Three top mash-up sites I stumbled upon today:
Get your bootleg on
DJ Earworm
Eve Massacre

Worked mostly on Section 2, which introduces the system model and its notation, and then gives background results from random matrix theory and free probability theory. It's a bit ruff'n'ready, yeh. (Link to draft version is given in the links section of the right-hand-side of the page.)

Went for a ride and scouted out a few tracks in the late arvo. Simply sublime sunset over Mt William, I have to remember to take the camera next time.

I guess it's quite possible that if I was in Sydney, I'd be sinking a few frosties at the Royal right now, sharing a few unlikely anecdotes with B-Roq under the avuncular eye of Habib...

Peace out.

New pop77 mix

http://www.pop77.com/blog/

I quiver with anticipation.

On a side note, I haven't had a smoke since Thursday night. It's actually been terribly easy. It really is just a habit/routine thing, and here I'm out of my routine, so I don't smoke. It helps that I haven't had a drink either. It will be interesting to see how I go on Friday night in Melbourne.

Damn, damn, and damn thrice, Katie's gift of a book.

I didn't look at what time it was last night when I finished reading that damn book Katie gave me before I left. According to the plot, (The title is "5 people you meet in heaven"), I'm at least two-fifths through it.

Thesis update: I started cobbling together the file structure I need for the thesis. I spent most of last night formatting my bibliography. It turns out Iain's harvard-like style file was incompatible with the hyperref package (which allows the final pdf to have hyperlinks within the document). This error took about two hours to track down, as the error message was:
! Use of \global doesn't match its definition.
l.11 \global \let
\hyper@last\relax
?
Which is typical of the completely cryptic LaTeX. Anyway, the bibliography looks schmick now. I'll keep an updated copy of the thesis here.

Today's plan: go for a ride, work on thesis, sleep. Tomorrow I need to go to Centrelink, and to the gym to check out membership prices... Friday I shall climb with my negroid/mongoloid friend Chris.

Initial update....

Firstly, this is mostly for me. As a record of my state of mind during this period. Not that it's going to be all that hard..., right?

So I've moved from Sydney to Moyston in order to focus on my PhD dissertation, and also because I've run out of money. When I first arrived, I helped my brother Luke put the canopy on his ute (he and Dad were driving to Perth the next day), then helped dad take a round bale of hay out to the sheep, since everything is quite dry and there's not enough grass for said sheep. I unpacked the tardis, and caught up with Luke and Dad before they buggered off for Perth. They were off before I got up in the morning, and Mum was away until the evening, so my first whole day on the farm was by myself. I got set up, unpacked, and did some work. Mum arrived, there was great rejoicing.

I put together my bike and went for a ride on Monday morning. I photocopied a fire map, then set out on what I intended to be a bit of a 'heart-starter'. The map turned out to be a bit misleading, and I ended up doing the last third of my 30km or so jaunt lifting my bike over fences and riding through paddocks, completely bewildering several mobs of sheep. Luckily, my sense of direction (or, more likely, luck) had me pop out just up the road from the farm, out someones driveway, as it happens. A car came up behind me as I was making my weary retreat, so I stopped to explain my dilemma, but instead the lady driver just gave me a very cheery wave and kept going. The ride was supposed to get me all motivated for work, but I had to go into town with Mum, come back, have dinner, and then it wasn't until about 7pm that I managed to start looking at some work.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any indoor rock climbing gyms nearby, even though some of Australia's most famous outdoor rockclimbing is in the Grampians/Arapiles. I'm hoping to meet up with some old chap Mum knows and get him to take me. I've also arranged to meet up with Choco at the nearest indoor gym on Friday... which is in Altona! At least it's on the western side of the city.