talk neuroses: more matter, with less art.

.. since brevity is the soul of wit ..

i'm still thinking through the first talk that i'll give this week. i'm weighing how to say what i want to say without writing technical details at top speed for 2 x 45min.

in case it isn't already clear, this is the first time i'll be giving this particular talk. it makes situation slightly loaded, i guess.

until recently i've been obsessed with writing up the associated preprint, which is almost done. (i might even submit it this week.)

the abstract i wrote is rather vague, though, which means that there's no need to keep my word and i can essentially talk about what i want. as for the title, i guess i have to stick to certain subjects, like GMT and metric geometry ..

.. which is slightly scary.

.. but this above all, to thine own self be true,
and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man ..

i still feel like i don't know any GMT, which in most cases is fine. speaking with a colleague last week, though, she seemed rather interested in the talk .. which means that she might attend and bring her colleagues who do study GMT along ..!

/sighs/
so now i have to know some GMT .. and explain why my non-standard version of a standard construction makes sense in this one setting.

there is one more thing, though, that worries me.

.. to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them ..

i'm going to announce the solution to a few open problems, two of which have been around since 1999 and another one, maybe older.

these problems have shaped the way i've done things since as long as i can remember. they are the obsessions that have kept me awake at night, caused me grief when i'd think of a new idea for a proof .. and subsequently found an ugly, technical problem without any possible fix.

so it's something serious when i say that ..

this time, i'm right;
i really do have a solution,
and this is what it looks like.

so i want to be sure that i'm right, that when i discuss the ideas, that they are clear and correct.