a forecast of an AMS meeting; (future) thoughts about writing

i just checked the schedules for the AM$ Se¢tional Meeting at Midd1et0wn, CT for october. indeed, i was told before that pekk@ k0ske1a will be giving an invited address, but apparently there are 2, even 3, special sessions that will be of particular interest to me.

"analysis on metric measure spaces and on fractals" - it seems that there is much excitement about analysis on laaks0 spaces and on $ierpinski ¢arpets, at least in the research centers of c0rnell and uc0nn. i know these spaces, but nothing about their analysis, so it will be good to learn some.

i wonder if they will be disappointed if i tell them of we@ver's example: there exist no nontrivial derivati0ns on the standard $ierpinski ¢arpet. \:

"geometric function theory and geometry" - this seems to be a mi¢higan hyperbolic geometry sub-conference in disguise. i recognise at least half the names of the speakers: some whom i've met, and some from hearsay, including the m@th j0bs wik!.

L: if you're reading this, i'm counting "qua$iregu1ar" as a hyperb01ic word. q:

"geometric group theory and topology" - i'm less familiar with this kind of thing. however, ome talks will discuss this "1amp1ighter gr0up" that i've heard about, in the work of na0r and collaborators. maybe i'll go just to learn more about it ..

.. then again, i remember once attending a talk because the title included the term "kahler manifold" and i wanted to know what such a manifold was. i went to the talk and listened, and the speaker never defined what it was.

so perhaps, in light of 20-minute presentations, i shouldn't hope for too much. maybe it's better that i stick to what i think i know.

at any rate, there will be many interesting talks.

the last time this happened, very few people attended my talk. maybe the same will happen again, but that could be good. if i give a bad talk, at least nobody would be there to listen to it.

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as for other matters, my students have an exam on wednesday, and i think my lectures have scared them enough that they are worried. this, of course, means more emails than i'd rather deal with.

speaking of which, i have a review class to prepare for tomorrow. i hate review classes: either nobody has any questions or there are floods of questions because the students are panicking. besides, as long as the student goes over notes and the textbook and the homework and the department sanctioned practice problems, what is there to worry about?

it's not like this is a qual or a prelim or something, least of all a thesis defense. q:

on top of that, part 2 of my expository talk is thursday. it's going to be the fun, picture-drawing part, but it will take its own share of preparation.

on the plus side, i finished most the introduction to a draft of a paper today; what remains is the part about "notation and terminology" and the last section. i've begun to plan for the future already: what the next paper will contain ..

.. assuming, of course, that the details work out.

i've been running into the problem, lately, that i don't have anything interesting enough to make more papers. i mean: it would be nice if i could prove this or that, which would round out the discussion nicely, but can i prove those things?

most of the time: no. that leaves this little auxiliary, good-for-nothing lemmas -- the very results i could prove because i avoid the hard bits. you can't (or rather, shouldn't) make papers of those things.

then again, publish or perish. we'll see how long my principles last. \: