Happy Christmas to you all (Bah Humbug)

Not having a family or partner I shall be spending Christmas on my own however whilst those of you forced to entertain the in laws, spend a vast fortune on presents for your kids which will be discarded within a couple of days, and eating tasteless turkey/ I shall be watching Wagner's Ring cycle a rough time table is as follows

Tonight from 7 : pm - 9:30

Das Rheingold

10:30 to midnight approx

Act 1: Das Valkyrie

Christmas Day

10:00 am to 12:30 pm Act II Das Valkyrie (the Crucial act in my opinion)

2:00 - 3:30 Act III Das Valkyrie (Means I wont be watching the queen';s speech oh dear  what a pity ;))

Cook my special dinner

6:00 - 7:30 Act I Siegfried

9:00 - 10:30 Act II Siegfried

Boxing Day

10: 11:30 Act III Siegfried

1:00 - 3:30 Act I Gotterdammerung

5:00 - 6:30 Act II Gotterdammerung

8:00 - 9:30 Act III Gotterdammerung

So I've stocked up on food and booze and if I get through that timetable I shall be as high as a kite and pissed as a newt and sufficiently energised to get back to some maths after that. I'll give a post on what I think the ring cycle means

Anyway whatever you are doing over the festive season have a good one

Best wishes to you all Chris

Test of Dropbox

Thanks to Nilo he pointed me to a way in which files can be shared called dropbox. As a test of whether or not it works I enclose a link to my simplified big bang calculation

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16049029/Bigbang_simp.pdf

As stated in an earlier post, it is quite surprising just how a simple calculation like this can get close to the results for the real calculation. I know that there is speculation that the extrapolation from the 1st 100th second backwards breaks down, however this bit is I would claim robust physics, in that it is the only convincing explanation of the relative abundances of Hydrogen and Helium in the early universe. A large piece of the jigsaw. Given the relative simplicity of the calculation it should be accessible to any one with a mathematical knowledge equivalent to MS121 and physics at the level of S207 or anyone with A level/higher physics and A level/higher mathematics. As such I believe it should be more widely known. If the dropbox link works I'll post a whole lot of other files here. At the minute this is a pdf of a word document I hope over the next year or so to migrate to LaTEX.

Best wishes Chris.

Results In

Hi I'll post more later but my results for Both A211 Philosophy and the Human Condition and MST221 are both in. I managed to get 85% for both exams so just scraped a distinction for both courses. I was really surprised for A211 as my essays only averaged 78% well within grade 2 territory. They must have applied some discretion. Anyway needless to say I'm chuffed to bits. I apologise for not posting much before a combination of a severe cold and the bad weather. I'm currently looking at solving differential equations by series solution of which more later
I'll also post my thoughts on A211 in the next few days