I think of late I have become overly fixated on the quest for elegance and the very art of problem-solving/design/converting thought to expression in general ("Between thought and expression, there lives a lifetime", eh?). This led to an embarssing (in retrospect) question about the ideas behind trying to prove things, which I'm sure must have amused my lecturer. I seem to try to and focus on these higher-level notions during my paltry attempts at teaching, and although I'd like to think that they provide the impressionable recepients of my sermons some appreciation for the "bigger picture" behind seemingly tedious calculations; however, at the same time, I find myself being unsatisfied with what I perceive to be my own oversimplifications of the whole process. Maybe it just has to do with the fact that I don't want to think of myself pigeon-holing something so mysterious and fascinating into a series of mechanical steps. But oddly enough, I feel as though I place too little importance to the implementation of said ideas; it's as though I treat them as mere tedium standing between us and our solution. Yet they deserve more respect, do they not?

(I sometimes wonder what on earth I am talking about. I can't say I reject some of the things I have brought up this past month, but in my present state of deprived slumber, I find it all a bit unreal)

I won't recount the details of yet another bout of analysis paralysis I suffered recently, for it goes mostly the same as my previous tale. The result was far worse, both in terms of the final solution I decided upon, as well as my intuitive notion of its overall worth. I am supposed to defend said solution tomorrow, but quite honestly it is quite an amoral thing, for the whole thing is an abomination created by a lack of sleep and a lack of any sort of ingenuity or insight on my part. I feel as though I ought to apologize to the very notion of software design for violating its tenets so. The experience has been enough of a disappointment to make me inevitable question whether it is my fate to gaze outward, searching forever for things beyond my grasp..but my response is simply "Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that. No more of that"

Update: Much like last semester, it seems that no defense was needed, for no questions were asked. This was not out of some brilliance in my design that I did not previously see; it was, I suspect, purely because of a lack of time on the marker's part. It seems that I have been unjustly lucky yet again, and yet again when it comes to a piece of software that I am rather embarassed about being associated with.

Funnily enough, I think that in the general time period of both marking sessions, I (quietly) invoked a spirit of defiance in some attempt to calm myself down. Perhaps I have stumbled upon the secret formula? Alas, perhaps I am running out of (poorly perceived) spirits to invoke - after Iggy, who remains?!