technical difficulties and detours.

occasionally someone asks me if i can read and write in chinese, and then i would respond with, "no, sorry: i happen to be illiterate."

this makes for very strange timing, to anyone who hears no more than that one sentence. it startles them to no end, and i think it's because they thought i meant english.

today, however, i felt computer-illiterate.

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despite google-searching various keywords and combinations, i tried unsuccessfully to install several LaTeX packages onto my old laptop arielle, who is running Ubuntu Linux these days.

no luck.

so much for finishing the second section [1] of the first draft of that research article, today. i was planning to do my typing in the office; because it's not as comfortable as the apartment, there was the slim chance that i could be more productive.

well, that's a lesson for another day.

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on the other hand, i spent the day reminding myself of the mathematical arguments that i would have needed to write in LaTeX.

fortune of fate, that: i'd have typed and saved and deleted and re-typed, maybe even opened up a new document in frustration and start from scratch. that is one fault of mine: it's too easy for me to "re-invent the wheel" and not make use of things that i or smarter people have thought about and polished already.

it's also painfully comforting: i think my younger self was smarter than me, my current self.


[1] don't let that impress you. i haven't written much of the first section yet, because i don't quite know how to introduce the rest of the paper (which isn't written yet, either). likely i'll write it last.