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Notes

These notes are a growing collection. Some of the notes are thoroughly developed pieces of writing (e.g. Alan Lakein’s Life Goals Exercise). Others are just stubs (e.g. juggling). Despite their length and level of polish, they’re all things that I thought were worth noting.

The best way to navigate them is to use the Notes menu, and search. Alternatively, you might find the Tags helpful to find notes around a similar topic. There are tags which group posts according to how polished or sketchy they are.

These notes were inspired by:


What I Know About Academic Job Searches

General advice about applying for to a lot of academic jobs using a spreadsheet. In particular, an outline the tools that I used to successfully get a job during the 2020 job season, at the height of the third wave of the Pandemic, with a newborn child at home.

Puzzles

A small collection of my favourite math-y puzzles.

The Meta Question

As a teacher, I think a lot about questions and getting students to participate in class by asking questions. I call the infamous phrase “Do you have any questions?” the meta-question.

The Kruskal-Dynkin Count

A mathematical magic trick based on Markov chains.

Bible Reading

Weekly Checklist

This is a checklist of things that I need to do on a weekly basis for work. It was inspired by Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.

Advice for Students

Advice that I offer to all students everywhere.

Course Preparation To-Do List

A list of things to prepare for a generic course.

Hodgkin Preparation for Worship

Some personal reflections on reading, writing, and worship.

Trust the Process

A couple AI generated images of an emblem that says: Trust the Process. It’s all Connected.

Office Plants

These are some notes about and care tips for the plants that I have in my office.

Physical Fitness

A collection of resources about exercise. Why it is important, how to do it with minimal equipment, etc.

Topics of Interest

A list of recurring topics of interest.

Three Loop Braids

Some pictures of samples of three loop braids.

Meta Blogging

This note collects various references related to blogging. Why people blog, how to blog, etc.

Photographing Braids

A visual comparison of various low-tech ways of photographing a braid.

Video Recording Lectures

Recordings are great, until they are not.

Common LaTeX Errors

A list of common $\LaTeX$ errors that beginners make and their solutions. Helpful reading for people writing their first documents in $\LaTeX$.

LaTeX Best Practices

Personal best practices for writing documents in $
aTeX{}$. Helpful reading for people writing their first documents in $
aTeX{}$.

Noweb

Language independent literate programming with noweb.

Writing Ritual

A bit about my writing ritual.

It Is Okay to Not Grok Vim

Against vim mastery.

Latex Manuscript Mode

How to add line spacing and line numbering to a $\LaTeX$ document.

Probationary Review Dossier

Thoughts on how to prepare a probationary review dossier as a teaching stream faculty at UTSC.

Recommended Reading

This is a list of texts that I often recommend to people together with comments about those books. It is especially heavy on mathematics books, speculative fiction, and writing advice. Links to the Toronto Public Library and UToronto Library are provided.

Pack Lists

What I pack when I travel.

Mass Download From Lillio

This is a quick tutorial on how to use Simple Mass Downloader by George Prec for Firefox to download all the pictures of your kid from Lillio.

docfill: An Inverse of docstrip

Thoughts about how to undo the effect of docstrip.

PTR Document Management

At the University of Toronto, we receive annual merit-based pay raises through a process called “Progress Through the Ranks”. This note is to intended to describe a setup for keeping track of information and documents relevant to PTR. For an overview of the process, see the Academic Administrative Procedures Manual. At the end of each year, your department will send you a batch of forms to fill out which will then be used by a committee to assess your performance. These forms are:

Reading RSS with newsboat and sfeed

How I use newsboat and sfeed to generate a static page of RSS feeds that I follow.

Course Evaluation Data Formatting

How to get your course evaluation data and format it in $\LaTeX$.

Student Websites

If you’re a student doing things, please make a website.

Advice for New Teachers

Things I wish that I’d known when I started teaching.

The Sine X Button

What does the $\sin(x)$ button on a calculator really do?

The Loop Manipulation Group

A write-up of a question about loop manipulation and braid groups.

Infinite Limits in Python

This talk introduces infinite limits by playing with a mysterious function in Python. It was originally given at Lester B. Pearson Collegiate in Scarborough on 2024-02-12.

Sustainable Assessment Design

Thoughts on how to design assessments which are valuable to students beyond completion, and which can be re-used over multiple years.

Juggling

Links to juggling resources.

TTY Setup

How I’ve set up my ttys on Linux to be more user friendly. Switching fonts, keys, and backlights.

Screen Free Writing With the Alphasmart

How I use a twenty year old word processor to write code and upload it to the cloud.

Alan Lakein Life Goals Exercise

I’m a fan of an old book on time management: How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life (1973) by Alan Lakein. The language and examples are a bit dated, but the content and ideas are timeless. Every year or so, I dip into it and learn some new insight about managing my time and priorities.

Writing for Large Classes With Docstrip

Last year, I did all of my course document preparation using docstrip, a standard component of LaTeX. It was revolutionary; docstrip allowed me to prepare all of my course documents in one large LaTeX project while maintaining a consistency of style across many formats including slides, quizzes, tests, and even posts to our learning management system.

Math Opportunities Around UToronto

MathPrograms.org has tonnes of undergraduate research experience opportunities, but primarily focussed on the US. If you’re interested in mathematics, and based in Toronto or Canada, then there are a number of opportunities worth investigating.

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