Erickson > Recent Status Updates

Starting regular language chapter 1. This write-up is very nice to read, the author is a good writer.

Bought this for the long plane flight. With the exception of the speculative aspects of history, this book is very well written. I like the part where we learn to follow professional 9x9 board and "go along" with it. Also the bits of philosophical aspects of Go.

I don't know which level this book is aimed at, but Chapter 0 is written wonderfully.

I am surprised how much is known about BKL singularity (reading this for literacy, not technical competence).

Finished Chapter 1-3. My goal was to get a basic idea of CFT, primary operators, and all the basic definitions without going through the Yellow Book (so for now I might skip Chapter 4 and 6). I am really impressed, even though I don't fully get everything (mainly because I am not trained in particle physics), as the author is quite direct when they arrived at an important concept.

Finished Chapter 1. Caught off guard by dominated convergence since I only learnt it once in undergrad, and I'm essentially a physicist. I'm sold. His humor and clarity and honesty are amazing, especially his footnotes, like "There is no point carefully climbing a molehill when Himalayas are waiting for us".

Starting Chapter 7 (Hamiltonian formalism) which is the main goal.

Finished Chapter 1; quite instructive, presenting known facts in a new form.

Selectively reading, focusing on symplectic parts. But also casually reading the rest. It is always something I am a bit intimidated of but maybe a good time to try.

Rereading for better understanding now that I'm a postdoc 7 years after the first time.