1. The unnatural nature of asymptotics

This article came out a while ago, but I just never had the time to mention it. It’s the first expository article I’ve written on my own research, and I was fairly happy with the way it turned out. iSquared magazine, by the way, is a very professionally run popular maths magazine coming out of the University of Nottingham.

You can get a taste for the magazine by reading my article here.

2. The Sixth IMACS International Conference (Georgia, USA)

I’ve been invited to give a talk at this conference March 23-26. What’s in Georgia, anyways? Not much, apparently.

I’ll be presenting some of my work on stern waves, which I talked about here.

Anyways, it should be fun. A lot of big names in the field are supposed to be there. And they’re paying for my stay at the uber-fancy hotel. Dare I hope for an open bar at the conference banquet?

I debated going to spend a day or two at some friends in the US, but decided against it. I’m already stacked enough for work, so I guess this one will be a straight-forward in-and-out. that said, anybody want to come and bunk with me?

3. British Applied Maths Colloquium 2009 (Nottingham, UK)

I’m giving another talk at the BAMC from April 4-9. It’s sort of the standard thing for applied mathematicians to go to in the UK, but the talks also have a ridiculously cap of 15 minutes(!)

I’m still wondering what in the world I can say in 15 minutes. After all, everybody knows I usually dick around for the first 8 minutes, anyways.

4. Waves 2009 (Pau, France)

Not much to say, here.

I went to the Waves 2007 conference in Reading, UK before I started at Oxford. In fact, I wrote about it here. The Waves conferences tend to be more on the theoretical side (and consequently attracting a more European-flavoured crowd), so I decided this would be a good place to upload my work on gravity-capillary flows — which, at least for the moment, hasn’t been applied to any particular physical systems.

Just submitted the proposal early February, so I we’ll see if it’s accepted. The conference takes place June 15-19.

5. SIAM Oxford Poster

My poster took first prize at the SIAM Student Chapter Conference in Oxford a few weeks ago.

Fairly happy with how it turned out. The whole thing took me about a week’s worth of nights to design.

6. Jowett Senior Scholarships

I have an interview for the Jowett Scholarships this coming Thursday, so I’m spending some time preparing for that. Winner gets a tidy sum of cash, plus free food for a year. Dear lord, is there anything I won’t do for free food?

For the interview, they’ve asked me to prepare a 15 minute talk on my research to be presented to, get this: (1) a professor of computer science, (2) a professor of legal philosophy, and (3) a professor of Sanskrit.

Can you believe that? Man o’ man, what a challenge; it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: “So the other day, a mathematician was giving a talk to a computer scientist, a legal philosopher and a historian…”

7. Transfer of Status

Oxford doctoral students are supposed to write a report on their current progress a year into the program.

This one just takes time.

8. Teaching

I’m teaching two forth year classes this term.

They depress me.

9. After the perfect non-date

After the perfect non-date, nothing of significance happened in my non-professional life.