Let it (Not) Burn I think my first memory of cooking involves burning pasta. Bronze DofE practice expedition, some random field in Cerne Abbas in Dorset, and camping stove that looked like it had seen war. All I had to do was boil pasta, and I can vividly recall the dawning realisation that I had … Continue reading Measuring by Eye
Philosophical Tangents
The Things I Cannot Control
People often say “focus on what you can control” as if it’s that’s simple and isolating variables in life is as easy as it is on a problem sheet. There are so many things behind the phrase "let it go." History, attachment, hope, ego, fear, unprocessed conversations, futures that only existed in your head. Life isn’t a well posed problem. It’s chaos, entropy, with boundary conditions you didn’t choose. You can’t always cleanly separate the controllable from the uncontrollable when the thing you want sits right at that boundary. It is true that you can control the effort. But the gap between effort and outcome… that’s where frustration lives. And I wish I had something more reassuring to say about that.
On Proving Things (in Maths, and in Life)
As much as this blog is about Maths, it's also about rants. So here's another one. This one doesn't come with an answer, just a question, and one I keep circling back to in lectures, problem sheets, and increasingly, in life. What does it actually mean to prove something? I'm sure this is a moment every budding mathematician hits eventually. You're sat there in a lecture, staring at a proof that's being written down far too confidently, wondering where the hell it came from. Not about how it works1, but why anyone thought to try that in the first place. I think that's the weird thing about proofs, once you see them, they often look inevitable, obvious, even. And yet, before you see them, they feel like they've appeared out of thin air.
New Year, Old Confusion
Every January, without fail, I write the date down wrong at least once. That’s expected. But what’s less expected is that my brain occasionally still wants December to be the tenth month. Which, objectively, it isn’t, but linguistically? It kind of is. The names of the months don’t quite line up with their positions. September meaning seven, October eight, November nine, December ten, and once you notice it, you can’t unsee it. So, naturally, I wanted to know why does the year start in January, and why are the months misnumbered? As it turns out, the answer is not mathematical elegance, but rather Roman bureaucracy.
Lessons from a Pale Blue Dot
When I first watched Cosmos back in February 2021, I didn’t realise it would become one of the most comforting things I’d ever seen. I had just turned 14 at that time, and there was something about Carl Sagan’s gentle and reverent voice that made me ponder about life in a way I didn’t expect. … Continue reading Lessons from a Pale Blue Dot
Can a Machine ever be Conscious?
Introduction This post is adapted from a 5000-word essay I wrote for my sixth-form research project discussing whether a machine could ever be conscious. If you’re curious, a link to the full essay PDF with references is attached at the end of this blog.1 My blog doesn’t intend to dive straight into number crunching or … Continue reading Can a Machine ever be Conscious?
Maths Rant 