I finished reading George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows a while ago (beginning of July). The fourth book in the series out of the four books published so far. After finishing I have been reading online forums to look at cool discussions regarding the book from where I discovered things I hadn't noticed on my first read (Loras + Renly, Rhaegar + Lyanna = Jon, among other things). The books are fantastic. The best so far for me is Storm of Words (the third one). The fourth is great even though it restricts to half the world (as the book Martin wrote was so big they had to divide it in two: North and South). It has a multitude of great moments. I loved reading about Pyke, about Oldtown, Bravos and Dorne. It was fun to follow characters like Brienne around and it was interesting to read about Cersei. It is incredible how much worse a person she is than I thought. I always knew she was horrible, but reading in her point of view made me dislike her much more. She is incredibly bad. The ending has quite a bit of cliffhangers, but cliffhangers that made me happy (except for Brienne, although before reading online forums I thought it was no cliffhanger, I figured she was dead). Great book, great series, I want to keep reading.

COMICS:
Amazing Spider-Man #598 Part Four of American Son was a good issue. We find out what happened to Spider-Man and we see the introduction of the American Son. I am hyped about the next issue. It came out yesterday but Marvel hasn't sent it to me yet (argh!).

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #36 A good issue showing a new villain (Raptor?) and showing us a bit of Spider-man's past to understand what was changed with Brand New Day and what wasn't. Not an issue I would recommend. Last year's annual was much more interesting.

Chew #2 The second issue of the series is solid. Not great like the first issue, but I'll definitely give the series a shot for at least five issues. It should be a fun ride. The story is about a dude that when eating something he gets visions of all that has happened to that food before (where it was, how it was killed, or how it was grown, etc.). It is very funny, very strange and quite fun.

Irredeemable #4 The series is getting back on track after a weak third issue. This issue has some cool stuff like seeing how the world leaders cope with this with a scene in the UN, but it also shows us the extent of Plutonian's villainy. He is as cruel as they come.

Buffy #26 The issue was quite cool, I liked the dialogue and it had plenty of funny moments. I am interested in seeing what will happen next, we finally are gearing to more serious storylines that need more than one issue to tell.

Gotham Central The series went for nearly 30 issues and it is finally being published in collections. This collection has the first ten issues. It consists of a two part story by Brubaker + Rucka, a three part story by Brubaker and a five part story by Rucka. I like both authors a lot. The first story was weak but it was good to get us started. It established the feel of the series in terms of artwork (kind of noir from great penciler Michael Lark) and the role of Batman in the story as a background character. The second storyline was a really good detective story, while the third storyline was a really cool story that deals with homosexuality, hispanic hate towards homosexuality (to their own children), a villain framing a cop and other cool things. The third storyline was the best of the three.

Incognegro A really great (albeit short) graphic novel about a black person born with white skin who infiltrates ku kux klan to write stories of the cruelty of it in newspapers. Stories that list people's names etcetera. This has some inspiration in real life events (the idea of incognegro does), however the story is fiction. It follows Incognegro to try to rescue his brother from murder charges (of murdering a white woman). People don't know they are brothers even though they are twins because of one of them has light skin (white) while the other doesn't. Really good book dealing with race, showing a great story about the past in the US, while also being an interesting mystery. The ending was fantastic. Highly recommend it.

Invincible Ultimate Collection #1-#4 and Invincible #48 I recently bought the fourth collection and while reading it, I decided to go back and look at the other three as I didn't remember much besides the main plot of the first collection. I was surprised to see how awesome it was. The comic is fantastic and it gets better with subsequent readings. Anything can happen in this comic and the story takes you to all sorts of wonderful adventures while revealing more and more about Mark Grayson and his friends. I love this comics. I read all of them last weekend and today I read issue #48 after realizing Book 4 ends in issue 47 and Book 5 (comes out in September) starts at issue #49. #48 was cool, but I want to know more as there are so many plot threads. I love how Kirkman (the author) puts in little pieces here and there until a story explodes many issues later and then all of a sudden the other plot develops. It is great how he manages to put in so much in each issue and still manage to make it feel smooth, natural and fun. If you like superheroes at all, you MUST read this book. If you don't like superheroes than it might still be worth the read. They claim to be the Best Super Hero Comic and it might actually be true (at least it is true for me).
I must also comment on the artwork as it is very different from anything I see anywhere. Ryan Ottley does a great job of making beautiful drawings that are very smooth. He manages to make it look great without resorting to too much realism (it is fantasy after all, I don't want it to look real, I want it to look awesome). The drawings are very dynamic and best of all the color palette is just unique. Bill Crabtree might be my favorite colorist, this book looks like no other and at the same time it looks better. Can't praise this book enough.

Urban Myths #1 This series didn't survive after one issue even though the issue was quite fun. The story lives in Greek Mythology world full of minotaurs and other crazy beasts. There are drugs that put you in a coma that permit you to go to Hades. The Sun comes up because Apollo brings it up (I really liked this scene). The main character is the son of Medusa how inherits her powers, so he puts on a mask and works as a detective. Pretty cool issue, I enjoyed it.

Captain America: The Man with no Face I absolutely love Brubaker's Captain America, but this trade is not that good. It is solid, it is a quick, fun read, but it is nowhere near the greatness of the first 42 issues. Hopefully the story will pick up, I guess the main thing I had been liking about Cap was how Brubaker developed this long story that needed 42 issues. Now that it ended I wonder how he will continue. His Daredevil has gone through slumps in my opinion, maybe it is time for Cap to go through slumps too. Maybe I am just getting tired of reading too many superhero comics.

The House of They I bought this not knowing it was a children's book. Nevertheless it was fun, although too quick a read. Essentially it is just 40 paragraphs and it cost $15, so not worth the price, but I guess 10-15 years from now when I have little kids at a reading age, I can show them this to help teach them to not follow authority blindly. The book has a great message and it was entertaining, but I definitely won't recommend it to people that don't have kids.

MOVIES:
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince The movie was great. I liked that the movie didn't try to follow the book piece by piece, adding a scene (for example a Muggle waitress hitting on Harry) and cutting out things (such as too much Ginny-Harry moments or too many Voldemort memories). The movie essentially focused on Harry, Hermione, Ron and Dumbledore. Any other character had almost no screen time. The Ron-Lavender scenes were great, the Slughorn scenes were also cool and Dumbledore just kicked butt. I really enjoyed the movie, I thought they made many good decisions. Books can cover way more characters than movies, and it was a wise decision to keep the narrative to as few characters as possible.

Borat I loved this movie when I first saw it, but it is not as good upon reviewing. I laughed a lot, but nearly as much as last time. Yuliia liked the movie even though she didn't laugh that much. She just found interesting the use of real people for the jokes and what Sacha Baron Cohen was capable of doing.

Bruno I loved this movie. I laughed so hard. Yuliia, who didn't laugh much at Borat, was hysterical in this movie, laughing all the time. The movie had many really funny scenes and it had some kind of narrative (although not a great one) to keep the story going. I've read about people complaining that the movie shows homophobes in a much better light than non-homophobes, but I think it casts a light on hidden hate people have for homosexuals, the wrestling scene being a great example of this. The main reason I liked this movie was that it made me laugh a lot.

Sin Nombre This movie was filmed in Mexico, being the directorial debut of Cary Fukunaga, an American director. The movie was very good. I think the characters were very real and the story was very interesting. It shows the desperation of many people and how a young boy can be bad because he was taught that way. I liked the movie and it was very thought provoking. It was engaging. Great movie.

Ice Age 3 The first half of this movie was not good at all, but it resuscitated in the second half with the introduction of Buck, a really funny dude. The second half was funny and it made it become not a waste of time. My mom and Yuliia liked it more than I did, my mom even liking the first half.

Public Enemies The latest movie by Michael Mann with performances by Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. The movie was quite good. Yuliia absolutely loved it and kept mentioning tidbits about it days later. I am happy that she loved it because this gives me a good excuse to show her Michael Mann movies like Heat and Manhunter. I liked the movie but I didn't love it. I think the story of John Dillinger is movie worthy, but somehow I think the movie could have been better.

Friday was great because of the qual passing, but other than that, the only thing worth writing about is watching the behind the scenes of the episode "Once more with Feeling" of Buffy. That episode is the musical episode and it is brilliant, it might be the climax of what TV can offer on series. It is magnificent, great songs, great singing (specially Amber Benson, "Tara"), Joss Whedon is just a TV genius. Now I have the songs on my Ipod and I have listened to them over and over again for 4 days.

On Saturday I was supposed to take a train to Amherst, but the taxi couldn't pick me up, so I just stayed home. I went to the comic book store in Lebanon, which is closing in 10 days, so I bought a few comics at half price. I also ate at a nice sandwich place and read a couple of essays on Superman (they were excellent essays) on a book that was on the sandwich place.

I also went to see I am Legend. The story about me going to the movie was pretty funny. I call a friend asking how far the movie theatre is, he says is a bit over a mile, so I bike there. When I get there, I find out I have no wallet, so I go back home. But I don't have my keys. So I knock on the door for over 5 minutes until my roommate finally hears me (house with two floors). I was very cold and couldn't feel my toes (weather was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit), I change my socks, put double socks on and head back out there to watch the movie. It took me thirty minutes to warm up once I was at the movie theatre, but I was there early, so it didn't distract from the movie.

The movie I am Legend was pretty good. It had suspense, it made me feel a little of the isolation of Will Smith (although not all of it) and I really liked the dog. The problem with the movie was that at the end it had "Deus Ex Machina" followed by another and another and another. It compacted too much stuff to make it more action packed. It was good. Worth watching if it is cheaper than $8.

Finished watching Buffy Season 7 (the last season) and Angel Season 4 yesterday. Buffy season 7 is much better than season 6, I thought the show got most of its quality back. Andrew was very funny, and several important characters were back at the end (Angel made a brief appearance and Faith was there for the last 4 episodes).

Angel season 4 was better than Buffy season 7, but that comes mainly from the fact that I like Angel's struggles much more than Buffy's. Nevertheless, I thought Buffy season 7 ended with a bang, interesting villains (Caleb was a great villain) and a nice ending. Angel had more interesting issues as they have to decide between world peace and free will. I find that an interesting subject, would you take security or freedom?

I have been watching a lot of Buffy/Angel this last week.

Here are some thoughts:

Angel: Season 3 Best season so far. We had a wonderful arc, with the introduction of the villain Holtz (best villain in the Buffyverse except for the Mayor), and the birth of the son of Angel (Connor). We get to see the dark side of Wesley, plus it develops the character of Fred (Winnifred) and the character of Lorne, and we get to see many episodes with Gru. Wonderful season, close in quality to seasons 2 and 3 of Buffy (the best seasons of Buffy).

Buffy: Season 6 Worst season so far. The season started okay (Buffy seasons have all started weakly except for season 5), and it had one of the best 3 episodes in episode 7 (the musical episode). That episode was magnificent, a wonderful musical and we get to hear the great voices of Giles and Tara. The season crumbled for about 10 episodes, when every episode seemed to be horrible. It then had a very strong ending with Willow going to the dark side, the death of an important character and some other interesting things (Spike's rape scene, Xander's non-wedding, Anya back as a demon).

Now, I have seen the first 8 episodes of Angel: Season 4 and the first 4 episodes of Buffy: Season 7 (last season of Buffy). Angel had a couple of bad ones in there, but it has some really good ones, specially episode 6 which was a very funny, well-written episode by the master himself (Joss Whedon). The difference between episodes written and directed by Joss Whedon with the other episodes is enormous.

I bought a bike today. I tried buying one on Monday, but after giving it a test run it was very bad. I tried again on Tuesday (this time at a bicycle store instead of Wal-Mart) and the store was closed. Finally I bought it today.

The ride was very steep, it was much harder than I thought it would be, however I am excited about the way from my house to the school, it is all downhill so I bet it will be fun. There were brief downhill moments on the ride from school to my house and they felt incredible.

In other recent stuff. Greg finally beat me in racquetball, it was a really good match. I think I am still better than him (having won 2 out of the last 3), but the games are much better.

I am liking the statistics course, I am learning how to program on R which looks pretty cool. The programming language seems sleek and very useful.

Made a nice amount of money on a poker investment that I did 2 weeks ago.

There was a latino association thing today at Dartmouth and I had a fun conversation about Argentina with a couple of girls that studied there in the Spring. It was fun.

I have seen 2 Angel episodes and 4 Buffy episodes since I came back. The episodes have been good so far, apparently Season 6 of Buffy is really bad, but it doesn't seem that way from the first 4 episodes. I am getting back on the Buffyverse thing.

I went to a number theory conference on the weekend, I will write a post about it later. I also plan on writing a long post about my trip to the Sierra Tarahumara (this trip was done two weeks ago and it was amazing, I have just been lazy about writing about it).

It feels good to live in a house.

Last day was pretty fun. Went to classes, ate out with a huge group of people to celebrate Annalies' qual taking and then Mits, Paul and I had a long session of working on number theory problems, it was pretty fun.

Paul and I had a deal of no more Buffy since I was leaving town for a long time, but we couldn't help it and watched one episode of Angel season 3. It was a fun episode, looking forward to continue the series in August.

I saw the end off Buffy season 5 and Angel season 2 on Wednesday night but forgot to comment about it. Buffy season 5 is very good except for the last quarter of it, it just broke down a little inferior to what it could have done. I love the villain (Glory) and I loved the funny interactions between Spike-Buffy.

Angel season 2 was impressively good. The last 3 episodes were funny and not very deep, but still the entertainment value of Angel is surpassing Buffy. Probably they have a lot more to work with considering Angel is a tortured soul and they have the streets of L.A to bring stories into the mix.

I don't have much to write about since my life is math and Buffy.
Buffy season 5 has been very good so far. Actually, I don't see any dip in the quality yet.

In math, I had an idea to solve this month's Problem of the Month, and I couldn't get the details to work out, it involved a long computation of a second derivative. Today, I worked it out and sent the solution. I was very pleased with the solution.

In other news, I didn't give any opinion on the Film Society today except "I didn't like 'The New York Stories'" that was it.

24 today was excellent. Good to see Jack in action.

-Just finished watching Buffy Season 4. The season's arch was ridiculous. Very dumb. Everybody around me hates Riley (Buffy's boyfriend), but for some reason I like the character a lot, lately my conversations around the math department involve a discussion about why I like the character everyone hates.

-The last episode of Buffy Season 4 called Restless is by far the best episode of Season 4 (yes, above the acclaimed Hush). The episode is wonderful, it is my favorite Buffy episode so far (surprising considering Angel is not in it) and it ranks as one of my top 5 favorite episodes of TV. I can't state hard enough how good an episode it is. I even watched the commentary for it, Joss Whedon's commentary was fun to listen to.

-I woke up today at 6:30am and worked on my Calculus on Manifolds midterm. It was fun solving problems that feel so alien to me. After working yesterday for a couple of hours on a problem, I felt very proud of figuring it out today.

-I went to three lectures by Richard Stanley. Every year we have "Kemény Lectures" in the math department and this year the speaker was Stanley. The famous author of "Enumerative Combinatorics Volumes I and II" gave two amazing talks yesterday (specially one that was on plane tilings) and a good talk today (wasn't as enjoyable to me as the ones yesterday). A true legend in combinatorics, it was very nice to see him present a survey of several interesting topics in combinatorics. Being introduced to mathematics through the mathematical olympiad, my favorite topics in mathematics are combinatorics and number theory, I really enjoy talks on these topics.

-The Mavericks lost. Winning 67 games during the season, which is one of the ten (maybe five) best records in NBA history wasn't even good enough to pass to the second round, not even good enough to force a game 7. It is unfortunate that their marvelous season will be remembered by failure (if remembered at all). The most unfortunate thing is that Dirk Nowitzky will be (or is already, I am not sure) MVP and the trophy will be tainted by the memory of failure. This is great news for the Spurs and the Sun which won't have to worry about the Mavericks. I don't think Golden State will advance to any other round, and if they do, they won't pass by the Suns or the Spurs.

-The apartment I thought I would live in next year has been taken by somebody else. So I have to look for a new place. The next three weeks will be busy since I have to find a place, pass my analysis qual, present two papers in my number theory class, present two final exams (module theory and manifolds), all of it before I leave to San Antonio. Lots to do.

-At nights I have been doing mathematics recently, it feels pretty good. Too much Buffy had me miss out on the fun of mathematics.

-Nevertheless, I am still watching Buffy consistently. Season 4 is pretty good, it is not as good as season 2 or 3, but it is picking up and I like Riley (although every Buffy fan seems to hate him, I like his character). I just saw the Faith episode of season 4 and it was excellent.
The series Angel was strong the first 8 episodes, but the last 8 it has had one good one and the rest are bad. Hopefully it bounces backk soon, the turnaround has been the moment Wesley arrived. Wesley is a character I like, but the stories have been awful since he arrived.

-I also attended the Dartmouth Film Society to discuss the movies of the week. I was very happy because this time I was able to get in some good comments and discuss some things I thought about the movies. The highlight this week was High Noon which was an excellent movie.

-The episode of 24 this week was weak. As Greg pointed out, "they didn't deal with the Chinese thing", a crucial thing in the plot wasn't dealt with at all. At least we got to see Jack do some terrorist thing. The only difference between Jack and a terrorist is that the audience thinks Jack's ideas are right.

-I attended a thesis defense today. The talk was very good. The results aren't super impressive, but that is more due to the fact that the problem is so intractable. Viggo Brun proved that the sum of the reciprocals of twin primes converges to a number B. Twin primes up to 10^16 have been computed and it B > 1.83 (since their sum 1.83). The expected number for B is about 1.902.
In the book Prime Numbers: A Computational Perspective they show B < 2.34. The graduate student improved the technique to yield a tighter upper bound B < 2.22. He then went on to assume the Extended Riemann Hypothesis (ERH) and use techniques there to improve it to B < 2.17 (this bound is conditioned on ERH, whereas 2.22 is not conditional). It seems like there is still a long way for this. The talk was very well presented and it is fun number theory stuff, but at the same time it feels bad to see how far we are from proving stuff like twin-prime conjecture, Goldbach conjecture, abc conjecture, Riemann hypothesis, Brun's constant.