Back!

Hello all! It's been quite some time since I blogged last. But I am happy to inform you that I can start blogging again on a regular basis.

A little bit about my summer internship in Los Alamos ... I'll start with my work in Los Alamos. I worked mostly on the complexity aspect of Sequential Dynamical Systems (SDS). Briefly, SDSs are a formal model of computer simulation (somewhat like cellular automata) proposed by Los Alamos researchers. I won't tell you more about it (if you are curious as to what they are, read this survey). Anyway, in retrospect Los Alamos was a nice place to visit. The scenery was awesome, the people were friendly, and you can do some cool research there. [Fortunately, what Jon said didn't happen to me or any of my friends.] The down side, however, is that there is pretty much nothing else in Los Alamos. The town is practically dead after 6 --- there is virtually nobody walking on the street. And ... to my surprise, there was no shopping mall whatsoever in Los Alamos. One has to go to Santa Fe, which is the closest biggest city to Los Alamos, to find the nearest shopping mall. Anyway, I will put some pictures from my stay in Los Alamos when I finish developing the pictures.

It is a nice feeling to know that I will be doing logic on a regular basis from this time onwards. I arrived in Toronto last Saturday to start my graduate studies. I haven't completely settled yet, but I couldn't help myself blogging again after the internet connection was set up in my apartment here. Incidentally, this week is Toronto's Computer Science Department's orientation week. I am so happy to meet many logicians here, including some of the most well-known ones. For instance, Moshe Vardi (Rice University) came to visit this Tuesday and gave a talk outlining the development of logic and how computer science was born. I, and I believe most people in the audience (including the non-logicians), found the talk extremely entertaining and insightful. As my advisor, Leonid Libkin, put it this morning, Vardi has the rare gift to be both a top-notch researcher and an excellent speaker. [As you and I know, most researchers who do great research are poor at explaining their research to others.]

Anyhow, that is all I have for now. As a final remark, I haven't forgotten about my favourite logic of the month and will write on it some time next week after I have completely settled.