Wheee! Cheaper books!
I am still waiting to see if Thierry Aubin's Some Nonlinear Problems in Riemannian Geometry will ever be on the yellow sale (151 dollars is way more than I want to pay for that book. The three books today only cost me 132.55).
So as usual, the UStore does not have the full selection of Springer books available as claimed in the catalog. And I don't like to buy math books without reading a bit of it first (so no mail ordering for me). That means there are a few books that I wanted to get but didn't.
On the other hand, some books that I crave (and need) were on sale this year, and I am quite happy to purchase them. New additions to my library include
This morning I spent some time with Andy. He gave a 1.5-hour-long presentation on representation theory of finite groups. I should really go dig out my notes from Conway's class and reread them. We'll get together again sometime this or next week, and he will tell me all about representation theory of semi-simple Lie algebras (his generals topic; the other one is algebraic number theory, which, unfortunately, will bore me dearly).
Igor talked a bit more about the Fourier transform today, and then began on interpolation theory with the "three lines lemma".
Two of my number theorist/algebraic geometer friends showed me their websites today. Sucharit's page and Bhargav's page. On the first one is an extremely funny and enlightening song about the Riemann Zeta function. Bhargav also showed us a wonderfully delightful flash animation about the Riemann Hypothesis--too bad I can't remember where it was from. It featured minds of high caliber speaking in AOLese, referenced the "proving RH by Mathematica joke", and had the hilarious moment when a student asked "What about the Circle Method?" and G.H. Hardy responding "Don't bother, I've already tried."
It is the fourth day that I have not seen the sun. Though it didn't rain, it was very damp outside and misty in the morning and evening. The weather is unpleasant. As a result, I didn't feel like cooking. So I went to a nearby restaurant 天廚 and had some deliciously spicy pineapple fried rice. Spicy food is the way to go for wet weather like this (lunch was mushroom bisque [also spicy], a chicken salad sandwich, and some grapefruit juice for my vitamins). The cloudy and wet weather is why Sichuan 四川 food is so hot and spicy.
I think I need to kick back and relax a bit. I've been too busy the last few days.