Weblog Yuli Nazarov
First lecture Fairy Tales 2012
has also happened today. In addition to this, there was a long real-time bureaucratic meeting and an organizational skype meeting, that made my day complete.
The interaction with the audience was somehow similar to that during the first lecture of quantum transport, and, being rather unprepared for, I’ve found a physical overlap between the audiences. It did not happen last year, if I recall correctly. So I went slow, did not say anything about inverse scattering matrix technology (could do this for sine-Gordon), yet we’ve explicitly done all simple variations of the Lagrangian: was nice.
It’s inspiring that there is still a group of students sufficiently charmed by theoretical physics.
First lecture Quantum Transport 2012
has taken place today. I felt something strange about the audience: it stirred me to go slower, talk calmer, and give more details than usual. We did not progress much with the stuff of the first lecture: basically, we had to stop at Landauer formula. However, I feel reasonably satistfied with the contact. I hope they liked it as well.
First lecture Advanced Statistical Mechanics 2012
The semester has begun. Today I gave my first lecture in Advanced Statistical Mechanics.
I enjoyed a rather big audience, typical for the first lecture. I’ve been honest about the level and manner of the course, so, thinking logically, the audience would shrink soon. From the other hand, why should I be logical? I was just glad to see and welcome new faces. Two students had to go earlier to catch the train to Leiden to attend some bio-directed course. I guess they were a bit dissapointed when I revealed that statistical mechanics is not meant to serve bio-sciences, but were polite not to show this and took active part in the lecture.
To compare with the last year, the audience seem to be a bit more active in general, I saw many people attending and questionning. I went faster than a year ago. Although I have not covered the whole thermodynamics, I made quite some progress. We are almost done with the laws.
All right, we’ll see how it’s going. The problem solving session will be given by Alina on Monday. So far all presentations are booked.
The dentist was joking
The story of yesterday had a happy end after all: my computer was pronounced clean, and I was admitted to internet. Perhaps I was overreacting as usual. I am sorry. Anyway you recognize I’m afraid of dentists…
Rootkit: what’s rotten?
Today I was deprived from the biggest and most fundamental priveledge of modern man: internet at working place. Another click lead me to an internal TU Delft web page which stated that my computer was infected with a deadly virus and has been quarantined indefinitely, at least till I clear it up and produce convincing proof that it has been indeed cleared. This given the fact that the TU computer administration runs a real-lime virus protection program at my computer, prophetically called F*-secure, that I cannot stop, that swallows 30 % of CPU power and has so far found two adwares for time period of four years.
So the day was ruined. Thinking back, there was something on Friday afternoon that could justify the warning. My comp has been doing strange things. I had to opt for an inspection where I’ve found a trojan and removed it with SpyBot. Was not the fist time for these years.
So today I’ve checked all over again, produce clean scan reports and submitted to the authorities hoping to have internet again. Guess what? I was kindly proposed to have my hard drives wiped and sys reinstalled… Looks like it was the only TU Delft ICT solution to supposingly identified rootkits.
Imagine a dentist who works as follows. He hears from an informer about your light tooth pain. He lures you to his practice, locks you in his working room and suggests you to solve the problem yourself. Since he is very insisting, you do your best and upon his return proudly demonstrate an unrooted bloody tooth. No, he doubts your pain is over. He produces a machete to chop your head off.
I wish to be wrong, yet so far I am not able to provide a better description of TU Delft ICT services.
Electronic Agenda Madness
Do not write much to the blog during January: a sign of “busy inactivity” state where activities are directed to things not needed and accomlishments remain to be completed. A part of non-needed activities was devoted to sweet art of scheduling.
While I has been dreaming of writting regular daily notes and making things done in a scheduled way since my early childhood, I did prefer the dreams to reality for most of my life. It is a slow intellectual degradation that came with age that lead me to an important discovery: the scheduling itself is an occupation worth the time spend, the occupation a way more pleasant and rewarding than the occupations to be scheduled. It gives a thrill of knowing and mastering the future, living life on full thrust, and immediate sense of accomplishment. It is about four years that I got mad about electronic agendas.
I’ve tried out several dozens of various PIM software titles that left me unsatisfied for one or another reason, mostly reason of taste. Most soft treats you as an idiot not able to customize the prog neither aware of advantages of such customization. They would suit if you are in jail, or feel like being there. Few softs really offering customization do offer too much of it, you tend to constanly change the colors of your appointments and end up missing them all. I was only satisfied with a wiki-style prog that I made functional with a dozen of home-brewed python scripts.
The crisis came when standart electronic agendas become wide-spread to the degree of being compulsory. It is already a year I feel a pressure to use TU central agenda, to synchronize my activities with those of society. I decided to give up this month. It gave me a head-ache of solving the compatibility problems between my custom things and — could not belive this — Microsoft Outlook. I have solved them today, it was interesting and gave me some programming fun, yet what a waist of time…
that could be devoted to proper scheduling.
Polarons
rock, especially in carbon nanotubes: our paper with Izak Snyman has been accepted for PRL today. Please search this blog for ‘polarons’ to find out the whole story. It took a bit less than eight months and three rounds of the referee reports. The research made is quite simple in fact, while the referees, especially one, have been very curious about every detail so that our communications exceeded the volume of the paper by a factor of five.
Christmas!
Chirst is born, dear reader, after all for me as well. I’m happy with my family and ready for all wonders of this year.
Happy New Year
to you, dear reader! I wish you not to get bored, and not to loose your mood in all troubles the year might provide. The Lord will look after us all, just keep fit and open to him.
Old and new
All right, it’s almost time, time to think of good and bad, achievements and losses, old and new, whatever silly it is.
My Lord kept me and keen reasonably healthy and active. Kids gladden my heart. I could enjoy love and friendship. As to research, six papers have been published, two in PRL. We have made 11 arxiv submissions. I got 475 citations this year reaching h-index of 47. I’m happy I could work on Renyi entropies and hope to continue with this, we cracked the polaron in carbon nanotube. I’ve learned about several interesting experiments to think of and had a couple of prospective ideas. I made into several very good grant application teams, this schould work over a time. I collaborated with visitors, Izak Snyman and Tomohiro Yokoyama.
On negative side, my laziness and lack of feeling for my neighbour yet prevail. I could not finish papers I would have to, no grant application was sucsessful, many things planned have been smoothly transferred to next year plans. One of my best scienific achivements has not been sufficiently appreciated. The “weather” for research becomes increasingly bad: less and less money for real science. And overall “wheather” might be better, with all signs of economical and political instability appearing as ugly blotches at the made-up face of our prosperous civilization, that accompany signs of moral degradation and devotion to sin.
And my own aging, on the top of all. Less people smile at my jokes and understand my motives. Less news in my life, all runs along the trajectories known, and to my astonishment I even do not get bored with this…
Challengies for next year. I have to finish the book with Jeroen, and pretty soon. I need to learn how to run the group, and actually why. And grant applications, articles, students finishing, students (hopefully) coming… I just do not want to be boring, you know.