a backdoor, but not quite home yet.

odd.

at chicago o'hare their airport wifi has a paywall if i try to log into facebook or my university email .. but not when i log into a google-affiliated site like blogger .. which explains why you can this post [1].

it makes for a very odd web surfing experience:

for instance, i might be able to read a g+ blurb from a L's matt bοelkιns's blog post on textbook inflation, but boingo wireless starts asking me for money once i try to open the full post in a new tab.

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at any rate, i'm on my way back to helsinki and perhaps to normal life again .. but not right away.  this week is a conference in paris, where i'll listen to experts talk about gmt, one of my favorite topics.

i'm quite excited, as the scope of this world is expanding noticeably for me:

last fall i commuted to uni helsinki a few times per week and sat in one of perttι mattιla's courses.  the lectures were really cool, a good balance of details and intuition.  i dare say that it even inspired some new ideas i've had in metric geometry, recently.

who knows?  maybe i'll learn something about flat chains this fall and try my hand at the same field.  i've been meaning to try something different, and this subject has always piqued my interest ..



[1] probably the airport allowed some sort of google search option on their welcome website, which left a backdoor open for google users.