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Member: PDExperiment626

CollectionsAcademic Publications (100), Short Story Collections (6), Art Collections (11), Written in French (1), Limited, Special & Signed Editions (28), Graphic Novels, Mangas and Comics (7), Banned (3), Your library (264), Wishlist (70), Read but unowned (25), All collections (265)

Reviews18 reviews

Tagsnon-fiction (146), fiction (103), mathematics (81), literature (65), science fiction (45), classical literature (35), physics (34), for the apocalypse (24), partial differential equations (21), fantasy (18) — see all tags

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

GroupsAustralian LibraryThingers, Bikes and Bicycles, Cycles, Cyclists and Bikers, Board for Extreme Thing Advances, Cyberpunks, Graduate Students, Mathematics, Outdoor Readers, The Green Dragon

Favorite authorsFyodor Dostoevsky, Lawrence C. Evans, Jeff Noon, George Orwell, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Rhodes, Marquis de Sade, Carl Sagan, J. R. R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, Neil Trudinger, Howard Zinn (Shared favorites)

Favorite bookstoresAbbey's Bookshop, Blackwell Oxford, Dalton's Books, Galaxy Bookshop, Librairie du Musee du Louvre, Powell's City of Books, Powell's Technical Books

Favorite librariesAustralian National University (J.B. Chifley Library)

About meNormally, I give expositions about myself via the medium of interpretive dance; but, alas, my skills are not sufficient to achieve this through typing. Let us start with some of the drier material.

I recently finished my Ph.D. in mathematics (but there is no need to call me Dr. PDExperiment626... my username is already long enough to give whomever typing it a finger crampy. And 'Dr. PDE' is a little too close to 'Dr. Phill' for my tastes (I don't like Dr. Phill... I mean really, would you trust a psychologist... from TEXAS?!)). Sorry for my digression and tangent into experimental punctionation there. I've had blue hair for about seven years now, and my tongue has been pierced about the same amount of time. I used to have my nipples pierced; but those grew out. I don't believe I will ever get a piercing on the exterior of my face (no ears, noses, etc.) In case you are wondering, I got my piercings to see what they felt like... and to overcome my fear of needles. I have tattoos of equations I study on the inside of both my forearms. If you can figure out why I got my tattoos, I'll send you a cookie ;). If this somehow gives you the idea that I am "cool" or "hip", then I have mislead you; I'm a dork plain and simple (albeit somewhat "fluffy").

If you will, indulge me to digress for but a moment with a story. Back in the day, when I first started university, I was like any other bright-eyed freshman: eager, self-important, irresponsible, hyperactive, etc. etc. etc. I decided to study maths and physics because someone told me that was the path paved with money and surrounded by women sporting beautiful eyes, curvy figures, etc. etc. etc. That someone lied, and they will pay someday--perhaps. Alas, by the time I realized the terrible lie, the diploma was already being shoved into my hands, twitching in denial as they were. From there, I figured 'What the Hell, this partial differential equation sh*t is pretty dope; let's see if I can get a Ph.D. somewhere'. And, indeed, partial differential equations ARE pretty DAMN dope yo; thus, ensued my downward spiral into irrevocable geekdom and uncoolness. At some point in this whole debacle I got my nerdy little 'Yank' butt transferred to Australia where I convinced a poor, unsuspecting--albeit totally awesome--mathematician to be my supervisor. He's not as cool as my undergrad supervisor but DAMN the dude is smart. He's so smart that I've seen the top group of honors/grad math students in Australia not be able to understand anything he said in a course he once gave on dope elliptic equations. I know this because I was the tutor for that particular set of lectures; who'd thunk that teaching maths could make you feel like a damn field lieutenant in 'nam. But I thunk it: I swear those smart kids with their smart questions were like Charlie trying to snipe my arse when some yahoo private would run up to me saluting to make an impression. Sigh... those were the days.

You know what I find funny is that all these "fanboys" who follow anime, manga etc; they wear the badge of 'otaku'--or some such nonsense--as a badge of honor and achievement. No no no, that is nothing. It is easy to be a fanboy of anime, etc.--nice pieces of animated flesh to look at and all that. I, on the other hand, am a fanboy of a bunch of 50+ year old mathematicians. Beat that (but I would definitely NOT suggest actually TRYING to beat that).

Anyway, I digress from my digression twice over. My apologies. About two years ago, life had finally beaten the idea into my poor soul that my path was NOT paved with riches, delicious females surrounding. As I was pontificating this to one of my fellow Aussie grad students, I got an email from a stranger saying they saw a web page of mine and that they liked my blue hair. I eventually made the stranger my wife; what's really cool is that the stranger was a real woman, the type with beautiful eyes, curvy figure, etc. And while this is only one half of the money/woman equation, fate smiled upon me doubly. Yes, your humble protagonist had also procured himself a "sugar mama". One word: dopeyo. That conclusion gets an emoticon: :).

What followed from that email was an adventure; a very damn awesome adventure filled with insane parents, spontaneous purchasing of breathtakingly expensive plane tickets, spontaneous generation of very high credit card debt, spontaneous generation of rambunctious nephews, expanding cats, oblate spheroid bunnies, helpful immigration officials, quirky mathematicians, a tear-stained thesis etc. etc. But that, as they say, is another story. Another emoticon for that one :) BAM!

About my libraryAlright... FIRST you must know I take LibraryThinging very seriously *serious face*. Second, I expect you to appreciate just how bored I was to make such an intricate rating/tagging system for all my little paged friends. I mean, when you see this you are going to think 'Gee... this is such a beautiful tribute to boredom and obsessive compulsive disorder'. INDEED! LibraryThing has robbed me of my web surfing time, swindled me our of hours of leisurely reading in real life, distracted me from writing THE THESIS, etc. etc. etc. Yes, LibraryThing is my crack and I be a snortin' away... day.by.day (because I'm too po' to have a proper drug addiction). Behold! the fruits of my addiction!

Phase 1a: the rating madness. I have (mentally) divided my library into the following groups based on tags

science fiction (in which my cyberpunk books are contained... even compactly so!)
mathematics+physics
literature
art collections
graphic novels+comics
sexuality
philosophy

Each group is somewhat disjoint (I'm sure my maths supervisor would be beating me for the term somewhat, but what can I say? I live on the edge. A DAMN hard edge... albeit the edge being nebulously defined, which paradoxically makes the edge "hard" in a proverbial sense when taken in the mathematical context... oops I made my ears bleed). Anyway, within each group I rate my books relative to one another with my favorite (HA! I have defied the Aussies yet again!) book in each category being rated five stars. From that top book all others are rated. The ratings are constantly changing, but usually they only change just a teensy weensy bit. In the end though, anything with three stars or below isn't something I'd recommend. Books with two stars or lower are highly recommended as implements of torture to be used upon your enemies.

Phase 1b of my LibraryThing insanity is tagging. Here is the straight dope on that schiznit for all my LT homies.

rated (unrated): I have read (not read) the particular book.
wishlist: I wants it... I've seen (or read) and I wants!
once owned: Represents a book I once owned but have since donated(inflicted) back to(on) society.
limited edition: The actual copy I have is a limited edition of some type. I like these because they make me feel special.
textbook: A hardcover reference book with exercises pertaining to the subject matter.
monograph: A reference book without any exercises for that lighter mental workout.
lecture notes: A rougher version of a monograph where the lecture-note format is still evident. That is a rough edit of a monograph. It's kind of like the 'bad boy' of references. Think of it as an academic fetish thing: something one does to satiate a particular desire for some naughty bit of information.
banned: It's like the corporations man... they like... try to censor all this stuff man... and I'm like 'Dude not cool'... so I like read this stuff to take down the corporations... man
ar: This means I've changed the rating from the overly-elaborate system I stated above. That is, there was an aspect of the book I liked so much that I threw a tantrum against my own draconian rule on myself and altered my base rating by upping its value. Someday I will pay for my insubordination against myself, and it will be a high price to pay...
for the apocalypse: These are the books that I will keep when the forthcoming apocalypse arrives. As the Earth is ravaged by the horde of bunnies driven by a lust of darker mathematics, I will be hording these books in a little knapsack as I set out to roam the razed landscape for the rest of my days. With these books I would have simple necessitates like pen, paper, PB&J sandwich(es), Geiger counter and plenty of bunny repellent.

A final review!
Phase 1a: Rating
Phase 1b: Tagging
Phase 2: ????
Phase 3: Profit!

So I will be expecting my oodles of money any day now: the fruits of my evil tagging and rating scheme! Hahahaha!

Finally, to prove that I am really just talking to myself, I have decided to included the ubiquitous visitors' map to actually PROVE I am the only one visiting my own profile. I admit, I am getting sick of my own company; but what can you do?

Homepagehttp://pdehunter.blogspot.com/

Also onFlickr, Last.fm

LocationAustralia

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/PDExperiment626 (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/PDExperiment626 (library)

Common KnowledgeSeries (52), Awards (124), Characters (1703), Places (288)

Member sinceSep 1, 2007