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No, this is not an elevator pitch for anything, quite the opposite. I just made an app, and it's called Pitcher! And by that, I don't mean I really wrote any code, it's all written by deepseek and...

A while ago I wrote about my values at work, and that if I had a choice, what would I choose. It is not often that I have that choice, but it is good to aim idealistic and expect realistic. So, in...

When I moved to the US, I tried BBQ sauce and decided I didn't like it. Too sweet. Later I learned there are two families: sugar-based and vinegar-based. The vinegar kind, I loved.

با صدای احسان طبری (شاعر)

When gpt3 came out, I half-jokingly wrote:

I'm often interested in understanding why people believe the things they believe and why they behave the way they behave. Usually the former is a reason for the latter. Pondering these, I've realized...

Last night Ehssan sent me a post from a math professor that has been making the rounds. The professor loves research and hates grading. Who doesn't? But lately, he wrote, his research has started to...

I sat through a talk by Clair Sullivan about making a tech career layoff-proof by going solopreneur. I am still deciding how much of it I actually believe. This is my notes from that talk.

Every once in a while I have to revisit this question and this time I took a bit longer to answer it, trying to inform it based on multiple blog posts by Chip Huyen and Eugene Yan. As Maleknaz says I...

✓ = present / defining = partial / possible = absent / not required

It has become very common for companies, entities, institutes and so on to signal that they care about other cultures and languages. For most of them it simply means more customers, more business,...

I keep finishing books and forgetting the things they teach. I've had the same issue with math and had looooooooooong discussions with Ehssan about what does it even mean to "learn"/"know" something?...

Hamid said something that stuck with me: how come nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, has my point of view? Why does no one say the things that are in my head, while when I'm talking to you guys...

There are a few people in my life (mostly in the role of an advisor/mentor) that have given me a feeling that I haven't experienced anywhere else. These are people who are well accomplished and well...

I don't normally read the news. But with the current situation in Iran I've been reading a lot more. Something like 7-8 hours on some days. Reading that much bad news with that high of an impact...

Iran has had no internet for four weeks. Not slow, not restricted. Gone. The only app that works is Bale, made by the Iranian government. Everyone knows what it is. Everyone knows what it's for....

I asked Hadi, half-jokingly, whether Bach was the Justin Bieber of his time. Are we just listening to the most "popular" artists of the 1700s and calling it high culture? And the flip side: will...

بی‌پی‌آ (بیسفنول آ) و بی‌پی‌اس (بیسفنول اس) موادی شیمیایی هستند که در پلاستیک‌ها، پوشش قوطی‌ها، و کاغذهای حرارتی رسید استفاده می‌شوند. این مواد اختلال‌گر هورمونی هستند که می‌توانند استروژن را تقلید...

BPA (Bisphenol A) and BPS (Bisphenol S) are chemicals in plastics, can linings, and thermal receipt paper. They are endocrine disruptors: they can mimic estrogen and interfere with the body's...

When a company talks about "end-to-end encryption" (E2EE) they could mean several things in practical terms. The fact that data is encrypted "on sender's device" and then decrypted "on receiver's...

You're at the lake with your 3-year-old. You want to fish. He wants to play with you. You brought toys, snacks, a little chair for him. He should be able to entertain himself for a bit. You set him...

Imagine you own a company. One day, you ask a senior manager how they decided to spend a million dollars of the company's budget. They look you in the eye and say: "I'm not going to tell you. If you...

Hossein used to be my source of good movies. He knew my taste, he had his own taste, but also he used to watch a shit ton of movies, good and bad, and then he'd know what they're about and could...

I recently got introduced to this game called Can't Stop and it got me thinking about probabilities. You know how it is - you start playing a dice game and suddenly you're knee-deep in combinatorics...

I put together an interactive training plan for an Olympic-distance triathlon (1500m swim, 40km bike, 10km run). It's a 16-week progressive plan with 6 workouts per week (2 swims, 2 bikes, 2 runs)...

I've been writing a series of thoughts recently in order to clarify a point of view of mine. These are the original posts:

There's a mathematical insight that explains why some people consistently end up with better outcomes than others, and it has nothing to do with talent, luck, or even the quality of their choices.

After writing about how companies get distracted by competitive dynamics, I got some great feedback that helped me work through some deeper thoughts.

There's this pattern that keeps showing up in tech and beyond: companies get so caught up in matching what their competitors are doing that they lose sight of actually solving the underlying problem....

There are people who view everyone around them through a single lens of accomplishment. In professional circles, it's salary or publication count. In religious communities, it might be how many...

- on a bad day, get up and read the instruction manual, the section on bad days. - on a bad day, set the alarm for 6:30am, but don't worry if you don't feel like getting out of the bed then, stay as...

یکی از جذابیت‌های زندگی برام پیدا کردن بازخوانی‌های آهنگهاست، هرچند برنامه‌ای براش ندارم، ولی هروقت که یکی به گوشم میخوره جذب میشم برم بیشتر گوش بدم و بخونم و ببینم جریان چی بوده و اینکه آهنگ چقدر...

In a world flooded with information and competing claims, we like to think we evaluate ideas based on evidence and reasoned analysis. But beneath our conscious reasoning lie powerful psychological...

در ادامه مبحث خیانت‌هایی که زبان و ادبیات فارسی به تفکر جمعیمون کرده (و اینکه ادبیاتمون تصویری از طرز‌ فکرمونه)‌ این رو بگم که یه ضرب‌المثل داریم که:‌ «دیگ به دیگ میگه روت سیاه». ینی اگه خودت یه...

So, I've been looking for a house for almost a year now. It's been way longer than I expected and the market has been weird, to say the least. But just for the context, there are a lot of houses that...

I've had two monitors on my desk for my work for the past few years which I combine with my laptop for a 3-screen workstation. It works fine, except one of the monitors has started flickering for a...

The other day Marjan recommended the movie Memoir of a Snail and as I was going to find an watch it, the website recommended another movie called Diary of a Nymphomaniac. Everything about it seemed...

Someone was talking about this that these came up: - The Culture Map - Navigating ‘Ask’ and ‘Guess’ Cultures in a modern world

So I've been looking for a house for quite a while now, and one of the minimum requirements that I have for it is the ability to do as much woodworking as I want, and an added plus if I can do it...

And that's partly because Ubuntu has become such a disaster. If only I could find reliable drivers for my GPU on any other linux distribution, I'd never go back to it.

One of the most enlightening conversations I've had recently started with my friend sharing how his colorblindness influenced his life choices—even leading him away from a potential career as a...

For years, I’ve been particular about the cellphones I use. It’s not just about having a phone—it’s about finding one that genuinely solves my problems without forcing me into unnecessary ecosystems...

نمیدونم گنجشکها باهوش‌تر شدن، یا پنجره‌ها رو بهتر میسازن، یا صرفا از روی شانسه، ولی بچه که بودم هر از گاهی یه گنجشک از در یا پنجره بازی وارد خونه میشد و یهو متوجه میشد وارد جای اشتباهی شده. بعد چون...

پرده بگردان و بزن ساز نو

ادبیات فارسی خیلی غنیه اما مزخرفات هم بی‌اندازه داره. به هر حال هیچ چیزی نمیتونه هزاران سال دوام بیاره و فقط چیزای خوب توش باشه. یه سری از مزخرفاتش به فرهنگ رضایت یا همون consent برمیگرده. بخشی از...

خاله خرسه‌ای که لالایی بلده ها... نصف لالایی‌های مادربزرگ رو حفظه و برای همه دوستاش که میخوان زیر درخت یه چرتی بزنن میخونه و سریع خوابشون میبره. همه بجز خودش که تا پشه‌ها رو میبینه مگسی میشه و سنگه...

امروز ۱۵ ساله شدم. ۱۵ روز از آخرین روز‌ی که پام تو زادگاهم بود میگذره. از آغاز سفری که به قصد رسیدن به زندگی بهتر بوده. احتمالا باید ۱۵ سالگی رو جشن گرفت، اما حس تولد نداشتم، بیشتر حس از دست دادگی،...

اگه تو یه روز آفتابی دراز کشیده باشی تو یه ساحل شنی جایی که موج میخوره بهت، یه جایی هست که آب میاد میخوره بهت، خاک و جونورهای ریز میریزه روت و میشوره و میبردشون. اما همیشه یه کمی خاک و جونور میمونن....

آیا انجام دادن «هر کاری» بهتر از هیچ کاری نکردن هست؟ هرچه بیشتر به این موضوع فکر میکنم به این نتیجه میرسم که به تعریف ما از «هیچ کاری نکردن» برمیگرده. ولی چیز غیر قابل تعریفی نیست. هیچ کاری رو میشه...

یه سری آدما فکر میکنن فقط خانما پریود میشن. خانما احتمالا بهشون بر میخوره که ینی چی که هرچیزی رو از ما مصادره میکنین به نفع خودتون. آقایون هم احتمالا فکر میکنن سبیلشون کلفت‌تر از این حرفاست که بشه...

با دوستان تصمیم گرفته بودیم که بریم یه راه‌پیمایی‌ای بکنیم. یکی از دوستان یه مسیر رفت و برگشت ۲۶ کیلومتری کنار اقیانوس رو پیشنهاد داد که من گفتم چون بدنم آماده نیست نمیتونم برم‌. پیشنهاد دادم که دو...

تو لنگفورد به بُته‌جِقه میگن خیارشور ایرانی. تو لنگرود نشان یه سرو خمیده‌ از فروتنیه.

دستم رو گرفته و به زور میکشدم که ببره سمت زورخونه. میگم: لوتی ما خودمون پا گود بزرگ شدیم. اصرار میکنه که: بیا میخوام یه چیزی نشونت بدم. با اکراه دنبالش راه میفتم. از کوچه‌‌های بازار رد میشیم و از دو...

- اواسط سال ۲۰۱۸ یه تعداد از ایرانیها (حدود ۱۳۰ نفر) از چهار تا از ارگان‌های دولت کانادا (وزارت مهاجرت و شهروندی، وزارت امنیت عمومی، سازمان امور مرزداری، و سازمان امور اطلاعات امنیت) به کمسیون حقوق...

اول سر صبی دارم کرکره رو میدم بالا که اومده قلکش رو زده کف زمین و سکه‌هاش رو نشونم میده که امروز دیگه میرم میخرمش. نگاهی بهش میکنم و سرد و خشک و کوتاه بهش میگم: پولت نمیرسه. با یه ژست متمدنانه‌ و لحن...

ریچارد گای یکی از ریاضیدانهای معروف دنیا بود که چند‌ سال پیش در سن ۱۰۳ سالگی از دنیا رفت و تا آخرین روزهای عمرش مرتب به دفترش میرفت و تا جایی که میتونست سعی میکرد از مغزش استفاده کنه. چند سال پیشتر...

سال ۷۳، یه شب تابستونی، لنگرود و خونه‌ای که توش به دنیا اومدم، اتاق پذیرایی که معمولا درش بسته‌ست و زمستونها سردتر از بقیه اتاقهاست و تابستونها فرقی نمیکنه، چون هنوز کولرهای گازی رایج نشدن. پرده‌های...

Well, that depends on how much income you have. Here is a chart of the 2023 tax brackets in 8 of the provinces (I was just too lazy to get them all!) source:...

بعضی آهنگها بلا‌استثنا من رو میبرن به دوران بچگی و در صدرشون آلبوم یاد ایام هست. تو ماشین نشستیم، از لنگرود میریم به سمت رودسر، بابام میرونه، مامان جلو نشسته و ما سه تا پشت. پاییزه و مثل همیشه بارون...

«مگه خودت خواهر و مادر نداری؟»

I left Iran to pursue the American dream. Not really, I just wanted to study and hopefully get a decent job. Soon after my arrival, I faced the harsh reality that life is not what is shown in the...

تو لنگفورد یه همسایه دارم رزمنده جنگ بوده. رزمنده‌های اینجا تا اونجایی که من خبر دارم دو دسته‌ن، اونایی که یه پول کلفتی نصیبشون شده و حسابی خوش میگذرونن و کار نمیکنن و خیلی هم ادعاشون میشه و طلبکارن،...

Here are some quick and dirty steps to include an animation in a pdf file. Note that not all pdf readers will support rendering the animation and many of them will show just a static image (likely...

گوشم فرودگاه صداهای بی‌صداست

در لنگرود و لنگفورد هر سال به طور متوسط ۱۳۰ روز بارون میاد!

(اخطار: از آدمهایی که روضه خوب میخونن دوری کنین، حتی اگه روضه برای شماست)

مسیر لنگرود-لنگفورد از لارامی‌ میگذرد.

یکی از مهمترین شباهت‌هایی که مردم لنگرود و لنگفورد دارن طرز رانندگی کردنشونه.

Here's a fun paper to read: Real numbers, data science and chaos: How to fit any dataset with a single parameter. The premise of the paper is that "all the samples of any arbitrary data set can be...

On my keyboard I have two annoying keys right next to the arrow keys that go to previous/next page and I've always used them accidentally and have lost my drafts. Here is how I'm going to remap them...

A frequentist vs Bayesian case

James Tanton is full of seemingly innocent and amusing questions. One of the questions that kept me busy one night is this one:

Since first time I that have encountered a statistical "paradox" I have this feeling that my explanations for what is the "right" answer might not be correct and it might be the case that I'm just...

Disclaimer: I'm not a statistician, and no, correlation does not mean causation. Also, I'm not a seismologist. And none of the followings are necessarily true. I'm just stretching my thoughts here!

What is the minimum number of links that you need to connect 4 computers in a wired network? 3.

Let's say we have a graph (i.e. network), and we want to cluster the vertices (nodes).  Here, think of the nodes as people, agents, oscillators, some dynamic being, and the edges... the edges tell...

It always excites me when I see a combinatorial matrix theory problem, and this is no exception, though it is so basic that it shows up in all forms and shapes. Let me start with a combinatorial...

After meeting with Susan Parker, the vice provost of the student experience at the University of Calgary, and Brianna (Bree) Huene from International Student Services, the university announced a...

You call a company to book an appointment for their service,

If you believe you have been discriminated against by a federal organization in Canada, you can file a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC). Here is a step-by-step guide to the...

One of the things I'm always told by my colleagues who visit my classes is that I'm dry, serious, and even scary, and that's not how they know me outside classroom. So, I've been working on different...

In the neuroscience community there's a divide on whether there are functional connectivity networks in the brain. This is a very vaguely defined concept, although, one can think of it this way:

My friend asked me this: Put balls into $n$ buckets uniformly at random and count $h$ the number of buckets with at least one ball in them. What is the expected value of number of balls $k$?

This past summer I was given a course in introductory linear algebra to teach. The topics of the course, as usual, start from solving systems of linear equations, and then matrices, determinant and...

Andrew Ng in his Corsera course for machine learning provides the following links for resources for Matlab. I have had a terrible time remembering all the syntaxes in matlab (because they are so...

For the past couple of years my colleagues and I organize a session at the JMM (Joint Mathematics Meeting). For the past couple of years that I've been in Canada I traveled back to US several times...

- I've moved to US from Iran several years ago. One of the topics that always intrigued me is the history of white vs. native people. At the beginning I was interested in learning more about history....

So, bored in a math talk Ulam starts writing integers in a spiral and circling primes. He soon notices something weird:

I recently participated at the Fields Medal Symposium held at the Fields Institute in Toronto, in honour of Martin Hairer, one of the recipients of the medal in 2014. His work revolves around...

I've been a math postdoc at University of Calgary for two years now, and I'll be here for at least one more year. The teaching environment is very pleasant, and the resources are abundant....

So I have this bunch of music on my external hard drive that is connected to my PC at home and I need to get over there to play it while I'm at home, but that's usually a hassle, well, to some...

این کوزه‌گر دهر چنین جام لطیف می‌سازد و باز بر زمین می‌زندش

I've recently moved to Canada and applied for permanent residency through the Express Entry system. If your situation is similar to me (you have a higher education degree, a few years of part time --...

In a huge graph, it is hard to determine a bottleneck by just looking at it, or doing any type of search. And by a bottleneck, I mean part of graph that is not very much connected to the other part....

I recently went to a couple of screening which made me really happy.

My first solo paper "Existence of a Not Necessarily Symmetric Matrix with Given Distinct Eigenvalues and Graph" got published in Journal of Linear Algebra and its Applications, yesterday. It took it...

Yesterday I got several emails from various people at charge at the university stating that they are concerned about the people who are directly affected by the US ban on people from muslim-majority...

Without much ado here is a book that is changing my life:

I remembered that I can use pidgin! I don't know what I haven't been using it for a while. But now that I've installed it again, I went and downloaded yahoo smilies (from here) and the according to...

Today I started my linear algebra class by motivating the determinant using a little bit of history and applications. In particular I talked about determinant appearing in the change of variables in...

One of the recent workshops I've attended here at the Taylor Institute was about developing a teaching philosophy offered by Carol Berenson.The goals of the workshop were

One of the things that I always tell my students is to check their solutions when they are done solving a problem. That by itself can mean several things, depending on what the problems is. Of course...

I've been using sage for a while now. I've also been teaching linear algebra for a few years. One of the problems in teaching linear algebra is coming up with a handful of examples of matrices that...

Gershgorin circle theorem roughly states that the eigenvalues of an $n \times n$ matrix lie inside $n$ circles where $i$-th circle is centred at $A{i,i}$ and its radius is the sum of the absolute...

I recently took an IELTS exam at the University of Calgary branch. During the test dates several issues bothered me. The issues concerned the physical situation of the test room, unclear instructions...

For a given function $f(x)$ around a point $a$, if you zoom in close enough on the graph of the function, you can't tell the difference between the curve and the tangent line to the graph of the...

Try the good ghostscript:

I mean a list in SAGE. The answer is to

We started the project in Graduate Research Workshop in Combinatorics (Rocky Mountain Great Plains GRWC) in summer 2014, hosted by University of Denver and University of Colorado Denver. Two weeks of...

In Theorem 3.1 of "The combinatorial inverse eigenvalue problems: complete graphs and small graphs with strict inequality, W. Barrett, A. Lazenby, N. Malloy, C. Nelson, W. Sexton, Electronic Journal...

If you know about my work, you know that for the past several years I've been working on a special type of problems called structured inverse eigenvalue problems (or SIEP's for short). Well, I mainly...

If you have a prime number $p$ (other than two and five) then the last digit of $p$ is 1, 3, 7, or 9. If for some reason we believe that prime numbers are randomly distributed (after all, the last...

I went to several talks and meetings in the past few days, and I am going to talk about some of them, but first let me start with some predicting game:

Officially, I first learned about randomized algorithms and derandomizing them in a course called Randomness in Computations, offered by John Hitchcock at University of Wyoming. It wasn't until then...

I don't think anyone who's learned anything can deny the fact that they have learned from their errors. Well, they might not know this quite clearly but they would eventually agree that it is the...

A long while is passed since the last time that I let the tea completely brew before I pour it and start drinking it while it is still close to 100°C. I did it today again. I was thinking about...

Ehssan Khanmohammadi and I just submitted a paper on inverse eigenvalue problems for infinite graphs. Essentially we proved that for a given bounded set $\Lambda$ and an infinite graph $G$ on...

Let's say you want to watch a lecture on youtube and you need to also visit some of the links mentioned in the description or read some of the references, but you can't do them all online. Of course...

I was watching this random video on youtube (which by the way is not the best video) that I thought maybe I can do the same thing. So, I started coding in Sage. Here is a what I want to do:

Today I read a lot of random mathematics and many of them led to places outside math, and among them is this one: Parkinson's Law. One of them that at this last hour of work day is still related to...

When I was at WIU I had this website on their server that I had to maintain through their sftp server. It's been a while I have forgotten how to connect to do it. So, I am rediscovering it step by...

I've received an email a few days ago to review a paper: > [...] > We have received the following manuscript to be considered for publication in Mathematics (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/mathematics/)...

I have used several geogebra applets in my calculus class, but there's always things that you wanna do that there's no applet out there for, or you can't modify them etc. So, I decided to write my...

So, Danny pointed out this website and asked if one can write a script to do this on a computer. Here is what I came up with:

Here I'm going to collect my attempts at installing and using spotify client on fedora 22.

Dmitry Ryabogin from Kent State University gave two talks today here at UCalgray. The first talk was about convex bodies with congruent projections. You can read about it here: PDF. And their recent...

There are several times that I just want to jot down something and I don't have time to open a note, or I don't want it to get lost somewhere, or I don't want to decide where to save the file and...

There are times that I feel lazy to open a new tab in my firefox to search for something or a youtube video, even though I have tags for every important thing that I use commonly. For example if my...

- I use my tablet to write with its pen quite a lot, whether for taking notes, annotating a pdf file, or teaching. Here is a nice little script that I've made to get the screen to rotate and disable...

So, this is too long, I'm gonna just make a new post for it. When I connect the tablet to a projector, due to change of resolution the pen is not calibrated any more. I've tried xinputcalibrator to...

And while I'm at it, let me get this post started. A lot of times it happens that I have to work on a windows machine for a period of time. While I'm still trying to figure out how to get rid of the...

There are several things that I need to do on a monthly or yearly basis on my laptop in order to fix some problems. So far, I googled the problem and tried the solutions one by one, until I reached...

www.npr.org/event/music/415506185/strand-of-oaks-tiny-desk-concert

Last year was hard. I was looking for jobs and it was stressful. I finally got an offer from a computer gaming company. I think they mostly produce gambling games. The job is alright. The pay is not...

حتما تو هم از این شبا داشتی که مشغول کارت هستی و یهو سرت رو میگیری بالا میبینی ساعت از ۱۲ گذشته. و نه‌تنها این باعث نمیشه که خوابت بگیره که خواب یکسره از سرت میپره. به‌نظرم یکی از آزادی‌هایی که باید...

یکی از چیزایی که تو ضرب‌المثل‌هامون معمولا در نظر گرفته نمیشه، یا حداقل ماهایی که ازشون استفاده میکنیم در نظر نمیگیریم قابلیت تعمیم دادنشونه. مثلا اینکه میگن خشت اول چون نهد معمار کج… میتونه تاکیدش...

همیشه برای خودم زندگی رو مثل رودخونه‌ای تصور کردم که من در حال شنا کردن توش هستم، و زنده بودن، مرتبط بودن و خیلی چیزای دیگه به معنی ادامه دادن به شنا کردن بوده. خیلی وقتا با خودم فکر میکردم که خب چرا...

For the past several months my Saturdays consist of two meetings, each of which about 4 hours long, with two of my colleagues working on various problems. Clearly we've hit a lot of dead ends, and...

So, here are a few things I tend to view from the perspective of my profession.

We (Sudipta Mallik and I) just submitted our paper on the "Spectral characterization of matchings in graphs". It is based on our previous work on "Construction of real skew-symmetric matrices from...

Visit http://ncase.me/polygons for an incredible presentation of mathematical sociology using simple fun games.

Incredible minimalist music for multiple pianos, by Simeon Ten Holt.

> There is an undoubted relationship between teaching effectiveness and popularity. Certainly, an instructor, who cannot engage in person to person relationships or who would be disliked as an...

تنها چیزی که یادم میاد در مورد داروین تو کتاب‎های درسیمون نوشته شده بود یه جمله بود تو این مایه‎ها که: «نظریه‎ای هم وجود دارد به نام نظریه انتخاب طبیعی که به وضوح غلط است». این یکی دو سال اخیر زندگیم...

> This is the hand the student of anxiety is dealt. But he can pick only one card. The existentialist’s anxiety, the psychoanalyst’s anxiety, and the anxieties of theologians, sociologists, and...

Astounding music by Nasser Shamma. From post:

Well, I'm planning on taking my Statistics students to a computer lab and introduce SQL to them through Khan Academy's Hour of Code program. What would you do?

-- Listen to the whole album here.

I want to become a good mathematician, and on top of that, to have enough money to support good students to come and work with me. It's a pity that some great mathematicians can't support their...

یکی از چیزایی که شاید باعث شده باشه به نسبت معلم خوبی شده باشم (دانشجوهام اینطور فکر میکنن) یا حداقل تلاشم رو کرده باشم که معلم خوبی باشم تا اونجایی که در توانم هست، این بوده که معلم‌های بدی داشتم و...

Listen to the full album: YouTube

> Mathematics has a reputation for objectivity. But without real-world infinite objects upon which to base abstractions, mathematical truth becomes, to some extent, a matter of opinion. The choice...

Ara Dinkjian - oud Tamer Pinabasi - kanun Ismail Lumanovski - clarinet

One interesting movie. IMDB

This is one of those movies that doesn't tell you much, it lets you feel it yourself. IMDB

دارم وبسایت دانشگاهی رو بالا پایین میکنم دنبال کار که می‌بینم نوشته:‌ «بفهم. همه چیز از تو شروع میشه!». یاد چند سال پیش میافتم که همه چیز تاریک بود و کم‌کم داشت روشن میشد، اما نورِ پشت تپه همچنان...

By Vivaldi and Piazzolla!

> Oh, it's just an(other) excuse to dress up silly, get drunk, and not go to classes!

Yesterday I gave a colloquium talk at WIU and as a tradition the department head gave me a book. The book is called The Ph$\gamma$sics Book: From the Big Bang to Quantum Resurrection, 250 Milestones...

> If anything, a continuing over-production of Ph.D.s will only make the problem worse. It creates an ever-growing pool of cheap labor, which administrators are only too happy to employ in place of...

Ali suggested this song. It's amazing:

دانشجوی لیسانس که بودیم یه زمانی به سرمون زد که برای ادامه‌ تحصیل بریم خارج از ایران. دلیلش شاید بیشتر از همه‌چیز این بود که آینده‌ جالبی برای خودمون نه میدیدیم نه تصور میکردیم. در همین فکر‌ها بودیم...

I have students asking me why did we buy this book, and I've always had a hard time understanding that question, let alone answering it in a convincing way. Until I read the following. > "This is why...

یه زمانی فکر میکردم که زندگی تو کشوری امریکا باید خیلی بهتر از خیلی جاهای دیگه باشه، از خیلی جهات. الان اگه کسی بیاد و برام از «امریکن دریم» صحبت کنه خنده که نمیشه گفت، دلم براش میسوزه، سعی میکنم کمی...

یکی از کمترین فایده‌های داشتن دوستای خوب اینه که آدم ازشون چیز‌-میز یاد میگیره. اینکه این چیز‌-میزا رو بهت بگن با اینکه با رفاقت کردن باهاشون یاد بگیری دو چیز متفاوتیه، چون تا دلت بخواد حرف و حدیث و...

It's been very busy here in Illinois. But away from all the moving, getting used to new things and a lot of courses that I have to teach, I had more of a culture shock when I moved from WY to IL,...

خب گاهی هم آدم خوابش نمیبره اون موقع که باید خوابش ببره. داشتم به این فکر میکردم که داشتن دوستای خوب که بَرِت دارن ببرن اینور اونور کارای مختلف بکنی خیلی خوبه‌ها. مخصوصا اینکه وقتم پره و هی نمیخوام...

راحول اهل هنده. از همون روز‌های اولی که اومدم اینجا باهاش آشنا شدم. اونم هیات علمی جدیدیه که دانشگاه استخدام کرده و کارش «ارتباطات» هست. دو بار تا حالا با هم رفتیم پینگ‌پنگ بازی کردیم. بازیش خوبه ولی...

بالاخره نمردیم و ما هم مثل این آدمای باکلاس برای خودمون دکترِ خانوادگی‌دار شدیم. هرچند خانواده‌مون یه‌نفره‌ست! دکترم رو امروز برای اولین‌بار دیدم. تو نیویورک بزرگ شده و تو شیکاگو تحصیلاتش رو تموم...

همیشه همین‌طور بوده. روز اول دست و دل آدم به کار نمیره و ترجیح میده فقط بشینه و آهنگ گوش کنه. اما مثل اینکه گذر سال‌ها باعث شده که این تنبلی‌ِ روز اول تبدیل به یک رسم بشه که مهر دلت نخواد کار کنی. چه...

با رییس دانشکده صحبت میکردم. میگفت که معلوم نیست سال دیگه برام جا داشته باشن. گفت اگه که ویزیتینگ بخوان خوشحال میشه که منو نگه داره اینجا اما برای ویزام کاری نمیتونه بکنه. گفت که «رسم» نیست که...

نشستم تو خونه چایِ استخدوسی که علی بهم معرفی کرده و دوستش دارم رو میخورم و آهنگ گوش میدم. ماهی توی فر در حال پختنه و برنج هم رو گاز داره دم میکشه. خونه رو امروز مرتب کردم و پوسترهایی که خریده بودم رو...

پدر و مادرم چند ماهی هست که اقدام کردن برای اینکه ویزا بگیرن و بیان اینجا که منو بعد از پنج سال ببینن. هنوز وضعیتشون مشخص نیست. یه ایمیلی رسید هفته پیش که ویزاتون آمادست بیاین بگیرینش. اما شماره‌ش با...

اینجا بی سرو صداست. کسی کاری به کارم نداره. البته نه اینکه هیچیِ هیچی ها، اما کارِ خاصی باهام ندارن اکثر آدمای دور و برم. همسایه هام رو به زور می‌بینم. یکیشون کشیشه و اسمش هست دِریل. یکیشون هم...

The first week of the new semester is over, and it seems like I'm settling down. Time to get back on some life and math.

I got hired at Western Illinois University as a visiting assistant professor and I'll start my job mid August.

I just read a book called "Fermat's last theorem" by Simon Singh, and I think it was awesome. I actually listened to the audio version of it. The book does not assume any prior knowledge of...

I'm defending my PhD in 13 hours.

So, the last days of living in Laramie and here are a few things happening:

Today, I'm going to Snowbird, UT, to participate in an Mathematics Research Communities 2014 workshop, where I'll learn about algebraic and geometric approaches in neuroscience. Here is the link:...

Listening to Larry Adler's Reflections, while sipping on my tea and adding the last bits to my dissertation. A few more hours for today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfWRrPpva00

It's been almost three weeks (5 days a week, 75 minutes a day) that I am teaching elementary linear algebra, and I can already talk mathematics with my students. It's been very rewarding. I am...

30 pages for the new paper. Almost done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybd5rbQ5rU

These days I'm working hard to finish writing my dissertation. I put an average of 12 hours a day in. It's started looking nice. One more chapter to write, then doing final edits, putting codes in,...

Gilbert Strang talking about his favorite topic at the Joint Math Meeting 2014, Baltimore, MD.

A gift from a good friend :)

History of Mathematics

I took a selfie with Farhad Jafari, our department head, on the stage after he hooded me.

I have to attend a conference in Utah but all the roads are closed due to snow! May 11, 2014.

Listening Shostakovich all day is not a good sign I guess.

It is happened to me many times that I have a database and I need to build multiple files PDF based on that database. Say, you have a list of people and their addresses and you want to send a generic...

> سایه: ... بعضی از کارهای لطفی رو طاقت ندارم بشنوم اصلاً... > مثلاً کدوم کار؟ > یه بیات اصفهان داره که تو چاووش زده و تو یکی از نوارهای چاووش هم هست، ظاهراً چاووش ۸. یه شب جایی مهمان بودیم،‌ لطفی...

Another online $\LaTeX$ editor.

The case of the missing fractals

Zoe Keating's concert was amazing. Out of the big concerts that I have gone to during the past few years, hers exactly matched my (very high) expectations, not more, not less. She is constantly...

> Shagha — May 6, 2014 > > haha! oon daste kie? :P

Zoe Keating Concert in Boulder

> Permanent & Determinant: Non-identical Twins > Tuesday, May 20, 2014 > > The determinant is undoubtedly the most important polynomial function in mathematics. Its lesser known sibling, the...

> Google Now for Android will automatically remember where you parked link: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/google-now-for-android-will-automatically-remember-where-you-parked/

Shel Selverstein Where the sidewalk ends

Algebra, Combinatorics, and Number Theory Seminar Ross Hall 247 3:10pm, Tuesday, 29 April 2014