I’m teaching a math camp for students entering 6th grade. It’s my first time being the teacher of record for a course, and luckily it only took a few minutes for my anxiety to subside. It’s a small group – only 9 kids – so it reminds me of my days being a camp counselor, except now it’s talking about math with very advanced kids for 3 hours a day. It’s been a blast. ...

I’ve written a short post on the triangle inequality for altitudes. As usual, I put it over on the math blog I have with my company, just because the support for literally everything is much nicer. But, in the off chance you want it, I have a PDF. I’ve played around with a wonderful program called Typora, which I’ve been using for a few months to write any blog posts when I’m not in my iPad. It has great Mathjax support (miles better than Wordpress), and so it’s easy to switch between the blog I use and this program, and I can export cleanly to PDF, as well as EPub and other formats that are really difficult to work with if I were using straight up LaTeX.

I never actually thought this would happen to me. Despite years not regularly going to coffee shops, and never drinking coffee, I finally came to terms with the fact that I have a drink of choice at Starbucks. It comes with the realization that I go to Starbucks enough to justify having a go-to order. ...

There are more direct spoilers in this review than some of my past ones. The short version is that I recommend watching this movie. I never explicitly say it anywhere else, so go watch it. It’s worth your time if you’ve seen the previous movies. ...

I decided to rearrange my room this past weekend. part of it was for convenience, and part of it was just to switch things up. It also gave me the opportunity to go through my things and reorganize. ...

Assessments are a tricky business. Writing an exam that successfully tests a person’s knowledge or abilities, without inadvertently giving preference or advantage to certain demographics, is very difficult. The examinations I’ve written so far for my job fall into the category of testing whether a student has mastered a certain curriculum. After a couple of months of class, we give them an exam to check if they learned all that they were supposed to. Everybody is used to such tests, and everybody has experienced them. ...

I’ve been thinking about the experience of attending a movie in a theater, and how it compares to staying in to watch a film. I often feel conflicted, with my current opinion being adjusted based on the most recent experience I’ve had in a theater. ...

For the last two months I’ve been reading Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I’ve legitimately enjoyed the book whenever I’ve sat down to read it, but there is something about it that doesn’t quite grab my attention. I’ve struggled to sit down for very long stretches and just finish it out, and I can’t put my finger on why. ...

Due to travel and being home in Minnesota all last week, this post is coming late today. This past weekend, my girlfriend graduated from college. It was an exciting time, and she officially finished up this chapter of her life and began to look forward to the PhD program she begins in the fall. Going to commencement was exciting, having this official moment to mark the occasion. This is what I appreciate about commencement, is its role as the milestone. ...

I am not very much of an audiophile, nor do I do podcasting to make any money. As such, all of the hardware I use is hobbyist at best, and completely amateur otherwise. But, I’ll give a quick rundown of what I have. ...