This is very interesting. My brain is always curious but past experience has taught me that asking all of the questions in my head ends up being very interrogative and intrusive and overbearing. I've learnt to temper/filter these thoughts down, at least!

Knew a fellow PhD student consistently eats lunch at 1:30pm. Things lined up today such that I could eat lunch around the same time, thought it'd be nice to have a chat over lunch. Heated mine up a bit earlier and waited. Reader, I didn't realise he didn't come in today 🥲

Just a general FYI about AirPods doubling as hearing aids (see link), they would not be strong enough for my personal use case (moderate-severe loss on left). There's still merit in traditional hearing aids, but it's good to see competition. techcrunch.com/2024/09/09/app…

Current Gripe: Bluetooth seems to be broken on my current Android phone (and I need it to configure my hearing aid settings and other things) but everything else still works, so while I can afford a new phone it feels like the rest of the functionality is going to waste. Hmmm.

I've started reading "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers" (about Paul Erdos, famous mathematician) and I've noticed so many neurodivergent symptoms that my brain has decided to catalogue & group them. Ugh why do I always create more work for myself 🙄

Without providing further context I'm calling this second iteration of my (mathematical biology) model "No Cap" so I can pretend to be a hip Gen Z'er 🙃

I made ~130 wontons because I absent-mindedly bought 1kg of pork mince instead of 500g. Anyone nearby me want me to make them a nice & flavourful wonton noodle soup? 🙃 Or I can boil a bunch and you can enjoy with some chilli oil, or something...

NEW Blog Post: ‘Pedagogical puritan or pragmatist?’ I wade into the pedagogical quagmire to ask a fundamental question: Where should educators stand in a divided landscape? amiealbrecht.com/2024/09/18/ped…

First crochet project is almost done but now I need to buy stuffing grrrr Watching The Witcher on Netflix while doing it has been fun, though!

Two big things I learnt from my psychologist yesterday: 1. When dealing with my anxiety, I was missing closing the feedback loop by attributing my success to control measures e.g. overpreparing 2. Deep breathing for calming oneself has to be diaphragm breathing.

Wisdom that I've had in my head for a while, but Vicki is a master at putting words to them in a way that I always appreciate reading (among other unique voices).

First crochet project done: a basic wrist rest because I get a bit of carpel tunnel these days. Alternating between half/double crochet stitches for each row. Amateur-ness can be seen in the last two pictures 😅 It definitely was an exercise in perfectionism restraint!

I've always mildly wondered how niche these SWE (software engineer)+subfield specialisations are and how much in demand they are 😅

I have mental imagery like this, but had never seen it manifested before! There’s a subfield of “simplicial geometry”, but it’s always simplicial *complexes*; geometric thinking about probability simplices is quite underrated imo

TIL. Excellent thread of uniquely Australian spins on overseas cuisine due to immigrants.

New blog post! "AirPods replacing hearing aids? Definitely not mine!" Software for the Apple AirPods was recently approved by the US FDA, and I ended up having a lot of thoughts about it. That said, there's no alarm nor call-to-action. matthras.com/2024/09/22/air…

Confession: This was definitely when I realized learning things on my own terms/time was much easier than being pulled/led along by a semester schedule and attending lectures at set times etc.

Have an itch to draw one of my internal mental representations that I tend to describe to my psychologist (who has commented that I have a very rich visualisation). I'll definitely do it but wishing I had proper drawing chops. Will get there eventually!

New comic: "Applying differentiation to students" One for the maths educators 🙃 Credits: Lyron Winderbaum for bringing up the topic, and Amie Albrecht for the sanity check on a sufficiently correct indication of differentiation in a teaching context.