20 May 2008 No Comments
First semester almost over…
It is not really a news that I open this post saying that I did not have so much time to write and bla bla bla… But it is actually the truth. My first semester at the University is almost over. I did not touch that much my research project, but I had a lot to do anyway.
I took three courses, the first was Category Theory, the “theory of arrows” as the professor defined it, abstract mathematics for humans… The second was Norwegian Level 1, pretty self-explanatory, and the third was Theory of Science and Ethics, a very interesting course about possible ethical problems of scientific research. In the latter I had to explain my research plan in about 300 words comprehensible by “a guy on the street”. It seemed trivial at the beginning, but believe me, it was not. At the end I reached a good compromise between details and understandability, maybe I will upload it here as well, at least some of my friends will understand what I do in my life. 
I have been also teaching assistant for Programming II, a course about basic/intermediate Java staff. I was mainly preparing some mandatory assignment and relative solutions, taking care of the organization of the students into groups, and last but not least doing some system administration to create user accounts, something that took so (too) much time. It was really strange to be at the same time a student and a teaching assistant.
I had some little trip at least. During Easter I visited Sognefjord and slept in Selseng, Sogn og Fjordane. Incredible experience there: we had an outdoor jacuzzi with 40C inside the water, and -20 in the air… To complete the atmosphere we had clear sky, full moon, mountains covered by snow all around, beer, and very nice company… almost a perfect night. I have been also in Lindås, Nordhordaland, with the Department of Computer Science. We had the research school there, a series of seminars mainly given by PhD or Post-Doc students. The social event was canoe, this was the first time for me.
I had the chance to try my new waterproof camera. Yes, the Canon EOS is great, but I wanted a point and shoot camera for extreme situations, so I bought a new Olympus 1030SW: waterproof, shockproof, crushproof, freezeproof… I can do almost everything with it! But I also bought two new Canon objectives, an EFS 17-55mm f/2.8 and an EF 50mm f/1.8, together with a new Sigma 530 flash and a Gorilla Pod SLR, just to avoid that my reflex camera becomes jealous. 
You probably saw an improvement in the quality of the pictures, don’t you? At least I hope so…
What else? Well, next Sunday I will climb all the 7 mountains surrounding Bergen in one day. It is an annual event, called “7 fjellstur” (literally the 7 mountains trip). I am training a bit more this week to be in shape for the event. Let’s see what happens…
As always, pictures will follow.
). To please some of my geek friends I also add that I have a very powerful Dell PC with a 24” LCD monitor, running Fedora GNU/Linux 8.