lambda calculus

Just read a interesting thesis on using lambda calculus to do some multidimensional mathematics... About four hours ago actually.

The problem is I can't seem to be able to figure out how to do the whole lambda calculus thing in the first place. It's beginning to get a little irksome. I was good at it before, good enough to do the whole algebra II exam using only lambda calculus when I was in middle school. That was when I was a little kid! And now I can't recall even the simplest abstraction method to pull the trick off. I know I have the notes that can bring back my memory stashed somewhere in the closet (which is as big as half my room), but I don't feel like opening it up and shuffling through ten years old papers right now since I'm tired from the work/study that went on today. It feels like sand is flowing in my veins.

I really hate it when things I knew before, and things I could do before slip out of my reach like this. It makes me feel so vulnerable, that in my twenty and so years of life I've never managed to get past some inherent level of wisdom and ability despite years of experiences and rigorous academic training. It makes me feel naked in this world, against the very questions I sought to solve throughout most of my life.

Lambda calculus lambda calculus... Ugh I still can't remember. Maybe I'll be able to recall something by tomorrow, once I get some proper rest and food into my brain.

I'm still doing that crazy 3000~5000 words freewrite per day thing. It's only that many of them are increasingly becoming sensitive/insane to post in public spaces, so I'm dumping them all into my offline text cache. The surge of creative acts on my part doesn't seem to be easing up, something I'm quite happy about. It makes me feel live to do those things, despite the fact that doing all sorts of activities (mathematics, physics research, synthetic biology, etc etc) exhaust the hell out of me. I feel like I'm running through a marathon a day, which might not be too far from the truth (I think I'm actually beginning to lose weight, by THINKING).

I've been reading up a lot about mathematics these days, nothing too difficult. Mostly on group theories and their applications, and a bit of topology here and there, sometimes combined with little odds and ends most people don't learn in standard college classes. It reminds me of why I like mathematics in the first place (I want to make it perfectly clear though, that while I like mathematics I mostly despise mathematics classes). Forget PSP and nintendo DS. I have lifetime of gaming right inside of my own head, as long as I don't forget about them like I did with the lambda calculus.

Speaking of mathematics, Charles Stross writes a lot of stories that are part 007, part Lovecraft, part Dilbert, and a whole lot of satire on the bureaucracy of the world. It's like a geek's wet dream come true. In that world the unspeakable horrors from beyond the veil/depth/whatever permeate every space, and running some strange equations and recursions off your computer ('interesting fractals' they say) can punch a hole through the universe from where the dark things of the world can emerge from. Jennifer Morgue, Concrete Jungle, and the Atrocity Archives come to mind (those are the names of his books set in the world I just talked about). I've been reading them all in ebook format (perfectly suited for my on-the-go lifestyle these days) along with like ten other books/papers/journals on topics rich enough fill a small encyclopedia series and they're a real keeper. Very fun time-wasters if you ask me. 

Whenever I read stories like these I can't help but to ask what the act of writing and creating worlds for writing in really means for the author. Not necessarily just writing, all the art forms in general. I feel as if the creators of those works secretly want their creations to become real, that they are not just content on creating but somehow wants to influence the world around them using their creations. It's a trait of art that I've been following up on for quite a while now, and one of the reasons why I think artifical life would be the most ideal form of art.