This week was a really good week. Yuliia and I got Richy (our dog) on Sunday and we've been enjoying him all week. It was funny that the first thing he did home was pee, but since then he has been a good boy. He is already house trained so that first incident was because he didn't know this was his home yet. Richy is a mix of Newfoundland and Labrador, he is a big black dog (91 pounds), he is very calm and gentle. It is fun to play with him, I ran around with him and we play ball and Yuliia is extremely happy. It is great to have a dog home.

This week I've also worked hard on my math. I wrote a clean version of my Burgess result and I am looking at other sources to look for problems to solve in this area. There are a lot of really cool papers around. Very exciting stuff.

I've also been playing sports. On Tuesday on our soccer match we were outnumbered and were losing 6-0 at halftime. We forfeited to play the next half with split teams. Once the number was fair, the game was more fun and we won 2-1. On Wednesday, we lost 6-2. It was frustrating, but the other team played great. I could have played better at goalie (I got in late so only 4 goals were on me), but they were a good team and they had many chances against me. On Friday I played racquetball with Greg. I've lost games to Greg, but never two in one session. This time he won 15-11, then I won 15-6, then we won 16-14. I was up 11-3 the first game and 14-8 the third game yet I still lost. I completely choked on that first game. On the third game I think Greg just played great. I played well and I couldn't finish him. There was a very memorable point when up 14-13 where I prevented him from tying me by hitting a diving shot, jumping up and sprinting in the other direction then sliding to hit the floor inches from the ground into the back wall to bounce all the way to the front wall. A great point, however in my match point I missed an easy volley where I tried to destroy Greg with a low shot but my shot missed by almost a foot. He got serve and I couldn't stop him again. When he was up 15-14 I won back serve and had a chance to tie but I missed again. It was a great game.

Besides that I've been reading a lot and watching Babylon 5. There is a long list of reviews I am planning to write soon. It is so long that I might get lazy about it, but hopefully I'll do it this week.

Life is good.

On Sunday Carl, Anne (his wife) and I hiked Mt. Cardigan. Carl told me that he liked hiking so I invited him to go hike the beautiful Cardigan. Yuliia was supposed to join, but she didn't feel well. The hike was fun. It was very windy at the top, so Carl decided to sit down at a nice view while Anne and I did the last part to get to the top. I had a really nice time.

On Monday I did some errands getting ready for my trip to Georgia. Tuesday we got up early to get to Boston. I was shocked to see the trees and the grass being white so soon (October 13) on the ride to Boston. There was a lot of traffic so we barely got to the airport in time. The flight was uneventful. When we got to Atlanta we left our baggage in storage while we went downtown to tour a bit. We walked around Peachtree street and around the Centennial Olympic Park (amazing!) and then we went to eat dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse. I loved it. There were all kinds of delicious meats brought to our table. Yuliia ate a lot and enjoyed it too. After the dinner we walked some more and then headed back to the airport where we would meet up with Paul, Mits and Lola. After some confusion with the rental car, we got a nice big car, Grand Marquis, and then drove to Carrollton, the home of the University of West Georgia.

Wednesday was the first day of the conference and there were lots of really cool talks. I enjoyed a talk about 5-regular partitions (partitions without multiples of 5), I was very excited about seeing Hendrik Lenstra giving a talk and I enjoyed the talk by Paul about perfect numbers. He gave a great talk.
At night we went to have dinner to a Hawaian restuarant to celebrate Mel and Carl's birthdays (the conference was in honor of their 65th birthday). I ordered the Mahi-Mahi and it was delicious. I had a great time talking with all of our crew (which in this dinner included also Dominic, Carl and Jean Marc).

On Thursday I had a great time listening to Kevin Ford talk about some really cool results in primality theory among other talks I enjoyed that morning. At lunch break, we went to a Southern sandwich cafe which had very tasty food. Everybody was very nice. After the lunch break I got to see other cool talks, among them Florian's proof that there are no multiply perfect Fibonacci numbers and Mits' talk about finding the fourth digit on the density of abundant numbers (.2476...).
At night, Yuliia and I went to have dinner at a Japanese Steakhouse. It was our anniversary, but we will probably celebrate with a nicer dinner sometime this week in New Hampshire. I am very happy to get to the first anniversary in my marriage. The year has been wonderful.

After dinner, I worked on rewriting my talk. I wanted to make my introduction better and add a slide on giving more steps on the proof. I finished editing my talk at 4am, which was very good.

On Friday, I was very focused on thinking about my talk so it was very hard to follow the talks before my talk. It was unfortunate, because Ron Graham was giving a very cool talk about juggling sequences. I wish I could have been there 100% in the talk to get more out of it. Then I gave my talk, listing my results on Burgess. I finished 5 minutes early, so I could've added stuff, but I think overall the talk went okay. I did a better job at the Number Theory seminar at Dartmouth, but it was better than my talk at Maine/Quebec.

In the afternoon, I was very happy to see András Sárkozy give a talk. Sárkozy is the mathematician with the most Erdos joint papers. He gave a cool talk about the Erdos-Fuchs theorem. Another talk I enjoyed was Dominic's. In fact, I took some mental notes to be sure to incorporate some of his techniques, as I think he is a very good speaker.

At night, we drove to Alabama so we could say we have been in Alabama. Then after standing there for 10 minutes we drove back to stop at a Waffle House. The food was fantastic and very cheap. I enjoyed very tasty hashbrowns. After dinner, we hung out talking. It was a really good time.

Another thing I did a lot while in Georgia was jump in the bed. I jumped from the TV desk, I freefell from the couch, I used the elasticity of the bed to flip, I did all sorts of jumps. It was so much fun. Yuliia took hundreds of pictures and I had hours of fun.

Saturday was another really cool day. There were some cool talks in the morning. Lola gave the last talk of the conference and when she finished, we started our journey. After picking up Yuliia from the hotel, we drove to Atlanta to eat a Rias diner, which had some very tasty vegetarian options (Lola is vegan). After eating, we drove to Stone Mountain. Stone Mountain has a relief of three confederate heroes. Our plan was to see that and then drive back to Atlanta to the Coca Cola museum. When we arrived at the park, we saw some signs and started walking. We figured maybe there was a hike needed to see the monument. Once we were getting close to the top I was skeptical that we would see any monument as I recalled Carl telling me he hiked the mountain with Erdos and that from the top of the mountain you can't see the monument (as it is sculpted on the side of the mountain). The top had really spectacular views of Atlanta but no view of the monument. The views of Atlanta made it worth it even with the cold wind slapping our faces. The hike was a mile, so it took us over an hour to go up and down which ruined our plans for the Coca Cola museum. At the top of the mountain we had figured how we would get to the monument. Once we got there, I was very unimpressed. It was cool, but not super cool.

From there, we were a little nervous about making it to the airport in time, but we did make it in time (barely). The flight back was uneventful. Now I am at home relaxing with Yuliia and Richy (our new dog). Life is good.

Since I've been back from all this travelling. I have been working on writing a paper on Burgess, got some math meetings out of the way and played lots of soccer. The math is going well.

The soccer went as follows: On Tuesday my team won 4-2, I played well and had an amazing diving save. I also played a friendly game afterwards where we won 9-3 and I out first two goals (while being the goalkeeper). On Wednesday we tied 3-3, which felt like a loss, as we were up 3-0. I played well, but if I had played great we would have won. Those 3 goals they scored on me were savable. Hard or very hard to save, but savable. On Friday, I played poorly as a forward, mainly because I don't have cleats and this tournament is outdoors, hence cleats are necessary to run well. We lost 2-1 in a close match.

The other important event this week was adopting a dog. Yuliia and I have been wanting a dog for some time and after discussing it with our landlord we filled a form to apply for adoption of a dog of the Humane Society. Surprisingly, the next day we get a phone call that some dogs are up for adoption (they had told us that there weren't any available when we filled the form) and invited us to see them. We saw six dogs. We considered three dogs and the next day we saw all of them again (first day we spent two hours at the shelter, second day we spent three hours). We walked them and played with them and decided on getting a young Newfoundland (mixed with Labrador). The dog is smaller than normal Newfoundlands because of the mix breed, he is between 2 and 5 years old. He weighs 91 pounds. The dog is very sweet. He is house trained, doesn't bark, and he is very gentle when walking. Yuliia and I loved him and we adopted him. Since we are going out of town next week, the humane society will keep the dog one more week, so while he is adopted, he hasn't been to our house yet. Yuliia and I are looking forward to having him home.

After leaving Cd. Juárez, I was one day in New Hampshire, a day I spent with Yuliia. The next day it was time to go to Orono, Maine.

Michael, Mark and I left New Hampshire at about 2pm. During the long drive, we saw the beautiful white mountains and enjoyed the foliage season. Mark and I talked about many things (mostly politics and math) and before we knew it, we were in Orono, Maine. That night we went to have dinner at the only restaurant that looked decent. The food was good.

I was procrastinating at night, not writing my talk, but at some point I checked the schedule and realized my talk wasn't the next day (Saturday) but two days from it (Sunday). I went to bed with great joy.

The next day, I enjoyed the conference. In the breaks I worked out some stuff about my research which made it much easier to plan the talk.
After the talks ended at around 5:30pm, we went to a pizza place for the "banquet". There I mainly spent time talking to Andrew Pollington, a number theorist who worked at BYU many years, but now works for the NSF. It was fun talking to him and his wife. I got to learn about what working at the NSF entails, how they liked Utah and hear fun cricket stories.
I had a really good time at the pizza place (even though the pizza was horrendous).

After I got to the hotel room and procrastinated a bit, I worked on my talk, which I finished at about 6:30am, thereby eliminating my sleep time.
The talk itself didn't go that great, mainly because I was tired and drank coffee (something I never do) which made me talk faster and not be in a good condition to give jokes and other things. I gave this talk again a week later in the Number Theory Seminar and did a much better job.

The ride back with Mark was also very nice. The conference was a very good experience.

When I left Querétaro on Sept. 27, I went back to Mexico. I arrived at the airport a little before 8pm and my mom drove us to a plaza where an African singer was playing as part of the Fifth Chihuahua Festival of Art. The music was great and I was very excited that Juárez organizes such a cool festival, a festival that offers free music every night for over a week, bringing artists from all over the world. I only got to see Habid Koite (the African singer), but it was nice to know that this was offered.

A couple of days later I went to a play called "Ni el Sol ni la muerte pueden mirarse de frente" ("Neither the Sun or Death can look each other face to face"), a play by Wajdi Mouawad, a French-Libanese playwright. I didn't like the play at all. While the play used cool tricks like using projectors, playing with shadows and other things, the play had an incomprehensible story, a story which also seemed lifeless. The actors couldn't instill any life to that dialogue. I was confused for a lot of it and wished it ended sooner. However, some critics liked it and it seems that with more knowledge of mythology (like knowing who Cadmo is), it would be more interesting.

In my time in Juárez between the Ibero and coming back to New England I had a good time with my family (visiting also my uncle and father).

This year Mexico got to be the host of the IberoAmerican Mathematical Olympiad which would be held in Querétaro. As a coordinator, I would have to be in San Miguel de Allende the first days of the competition, since I had knowledge of the exam we had to be isolated from Querétaro.

Yuliia and I got to San Miguel de Allende on the 18th. The next day, we walked around. The town is very beautiful. We had a really good time. The hotel ("El Atascadero") was wonderful, a beautiful room, a beautiful building, a nice swimming pool, great service and fantastic food. I enjoyed all the meals there.
After realizing they didn't require me on the 20th, I took Yuliia to Guanajuato, my favorite city. I have always dreamed of taking a girl to Guanajuato with me and now it came true. I had a great time walking in the town, walking up to the Pipila. I also saw something I hadn't seen before, which was the Quijote museum, a really cool museum with art relating to Quijote.
In San Miguel, Yuliia and I had a good time swimming and relaxing in the beautiful town. I had little to do as my only job was to create a grading scheme for the problem I would grade (problem 2), which was a day's worth of work.

Yuliia left on the 22, I went with her to the airport (in Mexico City), then I went to Querétaro. Because of accompanying Yuliia to the airport, I didn't get to sleep (we left at 2am for the airport, got there at 8pm and I got to the hotel in Querétaro at 1pm).

That night in Querétaro I started grading. The next day it was time to coordinate (this is where you discuss the grades with the country leaders). The whole day was full of work. In a span of 24 hours I worked 22. It was very fun. I was happy to see many solutions to the problem. A translation to English of the exam can be found here. A sad thing about the test is that problem 5 had been posted in mathlinks a month before, hence the question wasn't quite original.

The winner of the Olympiad was Perú, beating Brazil by 1 point. Spain was third, followed by Argentina and Mexico. While I am not that happy with Mexico getting fifth place, I am happy that Memo (a student from Chihuahua) got a gold medal. It is the first time that a student I helped prepare gets a gold medal in the Ibero.

In Querétaro I had a very good time talking with David, Joshua, Bernardo and others. I also had a good time beating everybody in Ping Pong.
I walked downtown with David and enjoyed it. Querétaro seems to be a very lively town. There was a plaza with a mini-orchestra playing tango, a plaza with people dancing capoeira and other plazas with other things. Very pleasant night.

The time in San Miguel/Querétaro was wonderful. I had a very relaxing time where I could talk to good friends, share beautiful places with Yuliia, get inspired mathematically and eat magnificently. I am very happy to be a part of the Ibero.

A very late post, but since the celebration was memorable for me I want to write it down, as the phrase goes in Spanish "más vale tarde que nunca". On the night of the 15th we went to the university to celebrate "El Grito". I actually missed "El Grito" as I wasn't expecting it to be at 11pm (since 11pm is midnight in Mexico City), I was expecting it at midnight. The main motivator for me to go was to show the celebration to Yuliia.

On the 16th, my mom had a big party at home. It was very fun. We played several games, we danced and at the end we sang karaoke. There was a lot of really tasty Mexican food.
It was a really fun night.

Sunday and Monday had a lot of good NFL games, I got to watch a bit of some of them. I am very happy the NFL is back. The highlight for me was the Denver touchdown out of a tipped pass. I was happy the Colts won.

In the morning, Yuliia and I cooked pancakes. It was great. At night, five of us played Nerds. It was probably the longest Nerds ever to 150 points. It took 17 games of which I had the most Nerds (6) but still ended up second place to Maribel. It was really fun. While playing I got to see Clijsters win the US Open which made me happy.

Today, after watching some Babylon 5, Yuliia and I went to get haircuts. She had a problem with how her bang was cut, but my hair looks cool. After that we went to eat some Noodles and then go greet my uncle. I love talking to my uncle and my aunt. It is always very fun and usually intellectually motivating too.

After that I went to play basketball with Flayz, Sepis and Ernie. I think I played well. Flayz and I won 11-4 and then 6-4 in the rematch. Then Flayz and I played 21, I won. I was happy to play some sports.

Life is good.

Slept an hour on Friday morning to make it to the 5am bus to Logan airport. Yuliia forgot her passport and we were nervous but the passport was mailed and everything is fine now (she needs it for our flight to Mexico City next week). We flew to El Paso and got home.

Once home, I had a meeting with the Olympiad Committee to write the exam. I was just trying out the problems invented, not being a good problem inventor myself. However at the end we had 6 problems one of which I didn't like and we needed 6 problems, so I tried to invent one (also, the last 5 Chihuahua Math Olympiad exams have had a problem by me, so I want to continue the tradition). I came up with one I loved and it made it into the exam. The problem is the following:
Given the numbers 1 to 12 written around a circle the following operation takes place: Each number looks at his adjacent neighbors and if both of them are smaller than him, he kills them. In how many ways can the numbers be arranged in such a way that after one operation only four remain alive.

We finished writing the exam earlier than usual, we even got to sleep a full four hours. The next day, we went to my dad's office to print the exam, then to a pharmacy to get copies. The exam wasn't perfectly written so in the hour where students can ask questions we got many similar questions. I had a lot of answering to do in the question hour.

In the middle of the exam, four of us went to eat gorditas. They were delicious. On our way back, David hit his car. A woman driving in front of us, turn right seemingly to park but it turned out it was a move to make a U-turn which she decided to do regardless of us driving right behind her. So we hit her door. It was a bit funny, things seemed to be okay, the woman will pay for the damages (defense and light).

After the exam, I ate home (chicken with apples), took a one hour nap and then greeted the Committee to grade. We started at around 6pm and ended at 4:45am. Obviously there were many distractions such as the Kim Clijsters-Serena Williams match, many procrastinating conversations, food, etc. My problem turned out to be the hardest, no one got more than 3 points (7 is the score for a correct solution). I think my problem should have been submitted to the Mexican Math Olympiad instead with a few tweaks. I love the problem.

After deciding the winners of the exam (this was a very successful exam, having a good spread on the scores and having enough people scoring highly), because of trash talk four of us decided to compete trying out a math problem and see who would solve it the fastest. We started at 5:15am and finished at 6:30am when I finished my solution and decided to check the others. Hector solved it correctly 10 minutes before me, David had it wrong and Perrito also had it wrong, so Hector won and I had second place. I was very happy because I loved my solution, I thought it was very creative and that the problem was quite hard. Hector's solution was also pretty cool, I liked seeing two different solutions. I was so happy to not give up because of being too late or being too tired. The problem was to find all pairs of integers a,b such that 3^a + 7^b is a perfect square.

I woke up early today to watch NFL games and tennis and hang around with my family. Life is good.

TV

Babylon 5 I have watched 12 episodes of season 2 lately. The show is fantastic. Episode 9 on the second season "Coming of the Shadows" ranks as one of my favorite episodes of television (easily top 10). Episode 10 was kind of a let down, but the season has been quite strong so far. I am very excited with this series.

COMICS

I have read a lot of single issues not having read that much lately in terms of books or trades because I've spent so much time on math or the internet. However I've read some cool stuff and here it goes:

Amazing Spider-man #50 by Stan Lee and John Romita, a classic from the 60s. This issue is very famous for the cover and also for a particular panel both of which have been homaged and referenced multiple times. The panel in particular was recreated in the second Spider-man movie and I also remember it from a panel in Alan Moore's Top Ten. The issue is about Peter Parker being fed up with how being Spider-man ruins his life, always late to things, not being able to go on dates, not being able to be there in the house with his aunt, not being able to work at the research lab he wants, etc. He decides to stop being Spider-man. The issue is great and it also has very funny moments with J. Jonah Jameson. Great read, great art. Must read for any Spider-man fan.

Marvel Adventures: Spider-man #54 by Paul Tobin. I have never tried out this title as it is supposed to be for kids. But I decided to give it a try at a bookstore while waiting and I loved it. It reminds me of the feel of the TV show Spectacular Spider-man (great show) and it is just a very enjoyable Spider-man comic. It is definitely more optimistic and fun. It is also fun to read stories out of the normal continuity, seeing Gwen Stacy, having Emma Frost in Peter's world, having a new character that likes Peter and has powers. It was just a fun read. It also reminded me a little of Ultimate Spider-man, another comic I enjoyed a lot and which I should probably keep reading (I read the first 50 or so issues and then stopped, but it was great). After reading this issue I was convinced I should subscribe to this series and did so, so now this series will be another monthly excursion into my favorite superhero's life.

Models Inc. by Paul Tobin. Given that the variant cover has Tim Gunn, the awesome man from Project Runway, I had to buy this comic book. The comic itself was not good, mainly showing five models talking to each other and walking around town, however it has an interesting cliffhanger ending which suggests it will get better. It will only be four issues long, so I'll keep at it till it ends. The back had an extra story by Marc Sumerak being a story where Tim Gunn makes an appearance as given a tour of superhero fashion in the museum of fashion in New York. Some terrorists attack trying to get some of the superhero costumes as they have impressive technology such as the Fantastic Four uniform and of course Iron Man's armor. Tim Gunn in all his catchphrase glory "Makes it Work" and by saving the people around permits us to "Carry On" with our lives. The comic was vapid, but it made me smile.

All-Star Superman #11 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. I read the first six issues and I've heard issue 12 is the best ever, so I am very interested in reading the complete series when it comes out at an affordable price. I had the opportunity to read this issue at a bookstore and gave it a go. The issue was very fun and very crazy. Morrison is definitely a writer I should read more, his ideas are very bizarre and interesting. Reading this issue made me want to read issue 12 for sure.

Light of Thy Countenance by Alan Moore. This is actually a short story that Avatar press decided to adapt into a short graphic novel. The story has no dialogue but it was cool to have the beautiful art of Felipe Massafera. The story is great, although it is hard to get into it. It made me think a lot about time spent on TV and my time on the internet. It is about how TV is the new God of mankind and how we worship it 4 hours a day. While I don't watch much TV, I do spend countless hours on the internet in an almost zombie fashion. I must use it less (although I am fine writing on LJ, it kind of doesn't count as internet time as it is more about writing). Interesting read.

Planerary Reader by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday. A small compilation of three issues from the acclaimed series "Planetary". This has issues 13,14 and 15. I liked 13 a lot, but 14 and 15 were very confusing, I assume I need to know more about the story to follow them (13 was self-contained). I loved the art and I enjoyed reading it, although I wouldn't recommend it as I didn't feel like I wanted to know more and I didn't feel like I was understanding what's going on. However issue 13 was fun and interesting.

Buffy Season 8 #28 by Jane Espenson and Georges Jeanty. The story was funny and cool. I don't like the Buffy comics as much as I used to, but it's been fun. The art is not very good however. Another good but not great issue.

Chew #4 by John Layman and Rob Guillory. The art in this comic is amazing, Guillory is just the perfect artist for this weirdly funny comic. I love how things are developing and the grotesque laughs that come out of this comic. I don't like this issue as much as the last one, but it is still very good. The next issue should be very good, wrapping up the current story arc.

Irredeemable #6 by Mark Waid and Peter Krause. This issue was very good. It made me interesting in knowing what will happen next. I like getting to know little by little more about Plutonian and I liked how the story is developing. The last four pages are great, I am really excited for next month's issue.