Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Day in the life

  • Get up. Coffee. Tease flatmate.
  • Taylor's theorem, integration by parts, Cauchy-Schwartz. Rinse and repeat. Get error estimate.
  • Check numerically whether estimate holds for simple test case. Discover algebra errors in the proof. Correct proof.
  • Discover algebra errors in the test program. Correct test program.
  • Discover errors in the compiler. Swear. Let out cat, who is spooked. Lower optimization level.
  • Decide result looks too simple not to be standard. Search through references for something similar.
  • Discover promising reference. Wade through ten pages of dense functional analysis, decide that it's not quite the same, but close enough. Add citation to my notes. Let the cat in.
  • Add page to thesis. Get up, stretch, dance in circles to a song on the radio. Spook the cat, who I let out again.
  • Lunch. Let cat back in.
  • Go onto campus. Check mail. Read blogs for half an hour.
  • Add feature to HiQLab.
  • Index error, index error, type error, core dump. Swear. Rinse and repeat.
  • Fix index errors. Run test case. It fails. Swear.
  • Discover error in the test case. Fix it, discover a sign error meant I was computing the negative of the quantity I wanted. Fix sign error. Test passed! Code crashes on exit.
  • Swear. Spend half an hour figuring out and working around quirk in the dynamic linking system which led to the crash.
  • Walk home. Talk to Winnie on the phone as I go. Make dinner, which is salad, since there's nothing much in the fridge and I actually remembered to eat lunch.
  • Recommence work on HiQLab. Stall out. Take a tea break.
  • Tease flatmate.
  • Decide to work on compilers stuff for a while. Write an LL(1) parser generator in Lisp. Chortle after I reduce the code size to under 200 lines. All tests passed! Realize that it's 1 am.
  • Brush teeth. Fall into bed.