First day of conference - d'oh!

Someone seems to have already done all of the things that I was planning to do for my thesis. On learning this, I felt a strong urge to lock myself away somewhere and listen to heavy metal at very high volume, but lacking heavy metal I had to grit my teeth and sit through more lectures until the feeling passed. It is of course possible that I've misunderstood what he did, or he misunderstood what I was asking, or he's made a mistake: at least one of these has happened on all of the other occasions when some swine has stolen my thesis and travelled back in time to publish it first. On the other hand, I've made basically no progress on this problem in the last year and a half, so maybe it's a good thing that someone else has done the hard bits for me. But still, aaaaargh!

Nova Scotia is very rural and foggy. We're at a posh hotel by the beach with lovely rib-sticking food and many tame rabbits. The food's included in the price, but the drink isn't, and it's rather expensive - $7 Canadian (about 3.50ukp) for a beer! One of the locals has got a bootlegging operation going, shipping in beer from Liverpool 10km away.

Before I forget, Lily's wedding on Saturday was great. The bride looked even more gorgeous than usual, and the groom cut a pretty fine figure too. And it was generally great to see some of the friends from that circle who I don't see much these days - notably weaselspoon, hard to recognise with his Cavalier moustache. stronglight was there, to my surprise: I'd forgotten that she was now attached to another of Lily's friends. wormwood_pearl (who was looking pretty damn fine herself) and I sat on a table with the "Lily's friends from Oxford" group, and had a great time. Someone should post some of the "Faking It" pun competition... Also, Freestyle Scissors/Paper/Stone is a drama game that should be remembered. Oh yes, and everyone must hassle Gill until she agrees to include, verbatim, the text from All Your Base Are Belong To Us in Paradox. You know it makes sense.

Um, that's it for now. Sorry, but I'm really tired - I spent the best part of 13 hours travelling yesterday, after very little sleep, and I spent most of today in lectures, and you all know how tiring they can be. Sleeeeeeep......

[Actually, one final thing. On Friday, wormwood_pearl, Elizabeth and I went to the British Museum, where we saw the coolest thing: a Babylonian mathematical text from 1900BC, a bit fragmented but still legible (if you read Old Babylonian cuneiform, that is). I shall be posting the photo I took on my return, and probably making an icon out of it.]