I have returned. 

The summer was a good one. I spent a good portion of it wandering. In particular I visited Sequoia National Park with my parents, enjoyed an epic trek across the Oregon Dunes with a friend, hung out in New Jersey with some bros and visited the trees and beaches of the California coast with my brother and cousin. I read books, played games and was twice thwarted by a Snowy Plover. Oh, also there was physics; I managed to survive preparing for and taking the Physics Preliminary Test given to all graduate students here after their first year. I'll find out if I passed in the next few days, though I'm not really worried.

Having time to read for pleasure was a strange situation to be in and one that I abused quite  thoroughly. Highlights from the summer include Snow Crash and Neuromancer from the cyber-punk genre,  George R.R. Martin's new tome, Shades of Grey, and the first handful of the Dresden Files.

I played a good amount of Starcraft 2 and more recently Civilization 5. Both involve intricate tactics and the latter is delightfully reminiscent of Settlers of Catan.

Behold the beauty (but only if you really want to)

Speaking of the Civilization series, perhaps the single coolest part of any of its iterations are the absolutely breathtaking wonder videos from the second game (there's too many great ones to link, sorry). The sense of accomplishment and power they instill has yet to be equalled.

Classes have started up here again, but I now find myself solely on the student end of the teacher-student spectrum. I work in the lab in the mornings and attend classes in the afternoons. It's a pleasant sort of situation, especially compared to the hectic madness that best describes my first year graduate student experience.

So yeah, the blog is back in business. You'll notice we have new pictures on the sidebar! I hope to update again before the weekend is over with some thoughts on geometric probability. Yeah. Get excited. For now though it's time to bring back The Blog of Many Thing's time-honored tradition of villainy. I watched the Phantom Tollbooth recently and it reminded me very quickly how much I loved this particular fellow. If you've ever had a professor who required you to agonize over the tiniest minutia or a boss who forced you to sink time into wasteful tasks then you already know the power of today's villain: the Terrible Trivium!

The Phantom Tollbooth is rife with metaphorical characters, but my favorite is the spiffy gentlemen pictured above. The Terrible Trivium is a demon who lives atop the Mountains of Ignorance. He attempts to befriend travelers in that harsh environment and wile them into completing pointless and time-consuming deeds for him. Sound innocent enough? Say that when you're stuck spending eternity factoring 20-digit integers or turning a boulder into sand using only a sewing needle! He has the tongue of Saruman and dresses like a gentlemen. The reason behind his mysterious lack of neck or wrists can only be guessed at; though I'd avoid doing so as it's probably the Trivium's plan to make you waste time in that manner. His parting cry, along with his hilarious annunciation, will always comes to mind when I abandon any particularly menial piece of labor: "Come back, come back! There are so many things to take away, and things to bring back! Come back, there are so many useless things yet to do!"

EDIT: There will be a special baseball edition tomorrow to detail what was the greatest and most unpredictable night in baseball wildcard history!