Geeky love

I just finished(*) the shojo manga "Kimi ni Todoke". It's a bit slight but is adorably sweet. It's about a shy awkward 15 year old girl coming out of her shell and making lots of friends, my inner shy awkward 15 year old girl was very happy :) I was reminded of my first crush, on a guy who I also saw as kind and friendly and a million miles too cool to ever think of me that way.

Two differences I find significant are that most of the people who were nice to me on my journey into "Maybe I'm not too horrible for anyone to like" were themselves somewhat rejected by the social hierarchy rather than being the most popular kids (some popular kids were nice to me too, though), and that I was SO much more jealous and petty towards the people I liked (they were MINE).

Also! Set My World Into Motion is a very cool Dr Who vid about River Song.

I reread "Monstrous Regiment" by Terry Pratchett. It really is a great book, and I'm not just saying that because it has femslashy crossdressing women with swords fighting the Patriarchy² :D

1)Well, the part that's online. Which happily stops in a moderately satisfying place.
2)This is my favourite niche genre of fiction

Black box recognition of sporadic simple groups

Since the server is down until who knows when, and I very occasionally find it useful to link to: a description of what my Phd thesis is about, much the same as the link I posted here last January. I tried to make it as accessible as possible but I will understand if the math phobic of you choose not to click :D Sorry for all the tables.

( Warning: contains maths and bad puns )

Last Airbender links

Because who wants to actually watch it in the cinema? I tend to boycott really blatant whitewashing on principle, but I think I might have skipped it regardless.

A review: M. Night Shyamalan Finally Made A Comedy

Two youtube videos, no transcripts sorry.

The Last Airbender Abridged The dialogue is hard to decipher at various points but parts are quite funny and it hits a lot of the terrible points of the movie as described in that review.

A scene from the movie Aang explains to a bunch of earthbenders that OMG THEY'RE SURROUNDED BY EARTH. And the acting is AMAZINGLY bad. Here is a fanvid with scenes of the equivalent episode of the show notice that they are on a metal ship because they Fire Nation isn't stupid.