Horehronie

Horehronie
Kamil Peteraj (lyr.) / Martin Kavulič (comp.) / Kristína Peláková

Keď sa slnko skloní na Horehroní chce sa mi spievať, zomrieť aj žiť
Keď sa slnko skloní na Horehroní túžim sa k nebu priblížiť
Na tráve ležím a snívam o čom sama neviem
V tom vánku, čo ma kolíše keď je slnko najnižšie

Najkrajšie stromy sú na Horehroní to tiché bratstvo vraví mi poď
Sem sa vždy vrátim keď ma niečo zroní, vravia to stromy: z pliec to zhoď
Na tráve ležím a snívam o čom sama neviem
V tom vánku, čo ma kolíše keď je slnko najnižšie

Keď sa slnko skloní na Horehroní tam niekde v ďiaľke náš zvon zvoní
Keď má ma to bolieť tak nech ma bolí raz sa to stratí do čiernej hory
Na tráve ležím a snívam oči tíško plačú
V tom vánku, čo ma kolíše keď je slnko najnižšie

Na tráve ležím a snívam oči tíško plačú
V tom vánku, čo ma kolíše keď je slnko najnižšie

Najkrajšie stromy sú na Horehroní

When the sun goes down in Horehronie, I want to sing, die and live
When the sun goes down in Horehronie, I wish I could get closer to the sky
I’m lying on the grass and dreaming, of what, I don’t even know myself
In the breeze that gently sways me, when the sun is at its lowest point

The most beautiful trees are in Horehronie, a silent brotherhood is telling me: come
I come back here when I feel sad, the trees are saying: shake it off
I’m lying on the grass and dreaming, of what, I don’t even know myself
In the breeze that gently sways me, when the sun is at its lowest point

When the sun goes down in Horehronie, out there somewhere far away our bell is ringing
When it hurts, let it hurt, one day it will vanish in the black mountain
I’m lying on the grass and dreaming, my eyes are crying softly
In the breeze that gently sways me, when the sun is at its lowest point

I’m lying on the grass and dreaming, my eyes are crying softly
In the breeze that gently sways me, when the sun is at its lowest point

The most beautiful trees are in Horehronie

Street Brawl Mathematics

A summary of MA1506 class notes, Chapter 1
Imagine that you are taking a stroll home after a long day spent doing Real Analysis and pitting proving skills against tea buddies. It is very late into the night and your wife is getting impatient, so you decide to take a shortcut home through the deep, meandering alleyways through the city's underbelly.

It is your first time here; you do not know yet that by entering the slums, you have thrown Real Analysis to the four winds and yourself into that desperate quagmire which is Differential Equations.

Before you know it, you have angered the denizens of the alley. You meet your first adversary.


This is a passing drunkard who just needed someone to blab at. Fortunately, you know that these drunkards can easily be subdued using Leibniz's notation of the derivative, dy/dx.


The poor fellow has scarcely put up a fight. He does not even try to get up again, so you roll him to his side, lest he choke on his own vomit.

As you advance, several more drunkards appear (have you been walking close to a club?). They do not look as soft as the first one, but you pwn them anyway by using simple substitutions and then invoking the power of Leibniz.


Photo by John Hutchinson
As you retreat further away from the hypothetical nightclub, your assailants become less and less benign. News seems to have leaked that a novice mathematics student has wandered into D.E. territory, and the first bandits move in to the plunder: the First Order Linear gang with the Bernoulli and Ricatti clans.

However, they have sorely underestimated your prowess; obsessed as you are with logical clarity and intuition, you are not above borrowing the ideas of the masters without questioning. The raiding party learns this the hard way.


The defeat of the Linear First Order sends shock-waves through the bandit community. Clearly, this guy knows a thing or two, even if all he knows is engineering math! Not admitting defeat, the bandits send out a second detachment.


Unfazed, you tackle the leader of the pack first: the homogeneous equation. You subdue him with a risky but deadly substitution


and reduced the pack leader to a shapeless heap of general solutions.

The rest of the pack are scared shiteless, because by the Superposition principle, they are already halfway into utter defeat. Working down the hierarchy with the Method of Undetermined Coefficients, you make sure that the gangsters with the polynomial, exponential and trigonometric forcing functions wish they had never been born. In that very order.


Source: Farlow et al. (2007)
This is an ancient and arcane martial art, the underlying wisdom to which you have very little idea of. But never mind, right now it is enough to know all the moves. Besides, you have to confront your next opponent, the real boss of this line-up, the all-encompassing Nonhomogeneous Second Order Monstrosity with Nonconstant Coefficients.


You are forced now to use a tactic which is so tedious, your trainers expect you to refer to the manual every time the need arises.


Source: Mid-Terms field manual.
Heaving a sigh of regret, you recall that you have accidentally left your prize weapon at home, or was it at the tea party? Where is your Laplace Transform when you most needed it?


In any case, you eventually bring down the boss with the Variation of Parameters, a method even more inscrutable than the last. In fact, it is so arcane that it is not even clear why it is called "Variation of Parameters".

The coast is clear, at least for now. You look wistfully at the Farlow et al. (2007) 2nd ed. which has guided you through this tough journey. Unfortunately, you are still very far away from home. Feeling absolutely worn out after many fights, you drift to sleep to wake up in the real world that you call your own.

Strings of Time

Before everything else,


STRINGS OF TIME: 30 YEARS OF GENUS
This concert is going to be so awesome. To understand why, please refer to the concert repertoire.

1. CASTEELS Robert: El Jardín de la Vida y la Muerte
_______ with the flamenco dancers from Los Tarantos
2. CASTEELS Robert after RAVEL Maurice: Bô Vélo
3. ISHIZUKA M.: Nagashino
4. ABISHEGANADEN Alex: Huanyin Vanakam
5. GOPAL Balraj: Satyagraha (To the Great Soul)
6. Gabrielee and Alvin: The Phunk Experiment
_______ with NUS Electronic Music Lab

Date: 3 April 2011, Sunday
Venue: Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall (close by UCC)
Tickets are priced sixteen and nineteen dollars.
The calluses on my left hand! May you never fail me

Absent Parade

Stuff from my 2008 diaries, a short dialog involving two soldiers on midnight prowling duty and the existence of ghosts.

a. It's cold tonight; let's get back.
b. Aren't we going through the parade square this time?
a. This time? No. We'll just fill the checkpoints in and be off.
b. Why?
a. Look across the parade square.
b. I see.
a. A little dark?
b. Ah, well?
a. Do you see people?
b. Yes... vaguely. They're not supposed to be there, are they?
a. They don't belong there at all. Maybe not some point in the past, but not now. They would be marching in formation near the guard house every twentieth night of the month, and have been doing so for as long as I am here, at least.
b. Do you mean they're ghosts? Now that is hard to grasp, because you aren't really spooked and I don't believe they exist.
a. You're right there, they don't. You just have to shine a light at them to know that they... aren't really there. They never do us real harm and we get used to them.
b. What would you see with the lights on?
a. You'd see an empty parade square.
b. Why don't we try it now, then?
a. I wouldn't do it so much; wouldn't want to annoy their CO.
b. Their CO?
a. Wouldn't like to get into trouble with an officer, even one who isn't really there. Ah well... I don't believe in ghosts either.
b. But you talk about them all the time!
a. Do you believe in women, since you talk about them all the time also?
b. But they exist, don't they? Hey, that's a different matter!
a. Still, it doesn't matter if it is there or not; I've gotten used to it.
b. So you have. Let's get back, we've been staring at nothing for ages.