BREAKING NEWS!

Now that I have your attention, I will display the happy tidings.

+ I have decided to start working on Project Cold Witness again (!!!!!).

+ No, I really have.

+ This isn't a Halloween joke.

Basically, it's that time of year once more. I went for a walk through Rendlesham Forest yesterday, and despite the garish new "UFO TRAIL" signs that the Forestry Commission have plastered all over the place, it brought back memories of the original research I did for the project, hunting for the supposed landing sites, mapping out the exits for the USAF base, and watching the Orfordness lighthouse blinking on the horizon on a cold winter's night.

I've had enough of worldbuilding for novels I will never write. I've had enough of my jeering conscience and the knowledge that I haven't written anything "serious" for over a year. In my view, despite its imperfections in the current draft, Cold Witness is the finest thing I have ever worked on and it deserves to be completed.

So, despite the increasing workload from coursework, I am making myself a promise to do some work to PCW every week, no matter how little I manage to get done.

There are many problems with the current iteration of PCW (number 5), mostly consisting of inconsistencies or jarring subplots. The plan is to completely rebuild the book from the ground up, and that means departing somewhat from "true events". Although a big portion of PCW's strength is its close affinity to historical fact, I have accepted that to create a good story I have to make more compromises than I already have.

The thing I'm most excited about is some of the prewriting I did for Project Silent Falcon about ten months ago. Recently it occurred to me that, instead of spreading all my great ideas over two or even three projects, why not put all my best efforts into PCW? That includes the Cold Lightning project team, CLARS armed response squad, and the expanded universe relating to psychotronysis, entity manipulation, and psytron R&D in Britain. All this will enable me to build up a far richer backstory for PCW than I was capable of before.

I'm brimming with enthusiasm again, justified enthusiasm this time, and that's a feeling I've missed. As soon as I've finished my homework for tonight, I shall begin! Wish me luck!

Why I'm addicted to the Lake District

At the suggestion of Joel, here is an extract of an email I sent him the other day. I think it helps to explain the real reasons why I love escaping to the hills so much.

The way I see it, living in Norwich for the past month has dulled
something in me.  That's why I need to escape home for the weekends,
to remember what it's like to be under the trees or walking along the
wide empty coast.  And that's why returning to the mountains was such
a relief.  The transition from safe city existence to the wild beauty
of Langdale was a profoundly exhiliarating one.  Back in the place
where I consider myself to be truly free, I felt I could relax and
breathe out.  There is a tremendous feeling of freedom and simplicity
in the Lakes.  With everything I needed in my pack, I felt I could go
wherever I wanted to, climb to my favourite summits, try out new
routes.

At the back of my mind, there was the desire not to go back.  I wanted
to stay for at least a week.  Going back was so depressing because I
was leaving my freedom behind, and returning to the place where
everything is ordinary, where nothing stirs the imagination.  I was
going back to lectures, coursework, deadlines, and the dreary
flatlands of Norfolk.

I have adjusted as much as I'm able to adjust, but already I'm missing
the freedom of the hills.  To me, the Lake District has come to
represent an escape:  it doesn't matter what you're escaping from,
it's a place where you can go to forget about things and just enjoy
life.  A.Wainwright, legendary guidebook writer, once said:  "For a
man trying to get a persistent worry out of his mind, the summit of
Haystacks is a wonderful cure."  I've found that to be true of the
entire area.

For me, it isn't so much that there are particular worries ... it's
just that living in the city puts a constant, almost undetectable
stress on me, which is only really noticed when that stress is
relieved.  Arriving in Langdale put a big smile back on my face.

And it wasn't just the mountains.  It was the little things, like
noticing that they still haven't replaced the bridge over Mickleden
Beck.  Or walking past the cornershop in Elterwater where we bought
postcards six years ago.  Or seeing a bloke bouldering just behind his
house in Chapel Stile (now that's freedom for you!)  Every twist and
turn in the road brings back good memories.

Sorry for the soliloquy, but that lot had to find an outlet somewhere ... :-)

Things are going better than I thought!

The programming module is becoming more challenging as the weeks go past. Last week I was unable to complete one section, and I'm fairly sure I had information missing from one of the other questions. This week's assignment is about five pages long--for the questions alone!--and is even more difficult, but difficult in a good way. Programming is something I inherently understand due to years of dabbling; all I'm finding hard is the new concepts and syntax that come with Java.

However, I am definitely doing well. I got the marks back for the Week 3 coursework (two weeks ago) ... and I got 100%! That's the first time I've got 100% for anything in years. Probably since the early days of my GCSEs.

The good thing is that a certain number of my best pieces of coursework contribute towards my final semester grade, and the less good ones are discarded. So, even if I didn't do as well last week, I still have one *perfect* assignment under my belt.

100%! Suddenly the course as a whole doesn't seem quite so unrealistic anymore. I can do this!

Taking stock

Things have been moving quickly in my life recently, and every so often I think it's important to slow down and look at where I am and where I'm going. Sometimes it seems like five minutes since I was at school, wondering what I wanted to do when I left ... and now I'm here, in Norwich, studying Computing Science. Where did the time go? :-)

1. I am studying towards a Computing Science degree. Although I still have no specific desire to work in IT, I've at least come around to the idea that a degree would be a useful thing to have, and at the moment this is the best bet. Plus I know a good deal of the material already from my A-level course. The only bitter point is the maths ... which is onerous, but tolerable. So: I have officially decided not to change courses just yet, but will wait until after I finish my first-year exams, next June, to see how I'm doing.

2. Going home for the weekends all but eliminates the feeling of home-sickness I had for the first few days, and it helps to generate a sense of continuity and real-time. This, however, means I am unable to participate in many activities for the two clubs I belong to, the Fell Club and GameSoc.

3. My recent trip to the hills has convinced me more than ever that mountaineering is what I want to do with my life. I am now experienced enough to register for the Mountain Leader award, and I'm planning to attend a training course next summer. This will give me a qualification that makes me employable as a mountain guide or group leader.

4. I have accepted the fact that I'm not always going to live in East Anglia. A big reason for this is that it is incompatible with my career plans, being farthest away from any mountains in Britain. The other reason is that, although I love the beautiful coastline of Suffolk, I find much of the rest of the region inexpressibly depressing. Nobody who hasn't encountered the Fens before can appreciate their drabness.

5. I really need to learn to drive as soon as I leave uni.

6. If possible, I would like to continue writing, even if it stays as a hobby.

So there you have it ... a quick six-point outline of where I'm at now and what my plans are.

(If you want to see some pictures from my recent trip, take a look at October 2005. The link has been added to my sidebar, along with the Bowfell summit video.)

Home crap home

I never truly realised what a boring and depressingly safe place Norwich is. After only one day on the freezing, windswept mountains of the Lake District, I return here to find people strolling along wearing jeans and T-shirts, birds tweeting in the dusk after a gentle sunset, and folk just generally getting on with their lives.

That might sound appealing, but it's not for me. I love the feeling of danger you get clinging to a wet rock face ten feet above the ground, when a galeforce wind with some serious chill behind it is trying to pull you off, when you can't see things twenty feet away because you're a thousand feet above the cloud base. That's the sort of thing I live for.

Anyway, the weather was truly awful and would have been life-threatening were it not for the new gear I've invested in. In particular, a leaking waterproof coat would have dropped me in serious trouble (such as hypothermia). I measured wind speeds of 40mph at Ore Gap giving windchill of -10, it was raining constantly most of the time, and the cloud base was down at 450m at the start of the day (although it later rose to 700m). I got lost on the bewildering summit of Bowfell trying to find the North Ridge ... and my compass wasn't much good, because there's a lot of magnetic rock in the area. My GPS saved the day once more. And I also got lost at Esk Hause again, just like last time.

Generally, though, I had a lot of fun. Despite the weather, I managed to climb Bowfell (my third favourite), Esk Pike, and Rossett Pike. The last two were new ascents for me, which brings my list of mountains climbed to 27 ... 28 if you include the second ascent of Bowfell. And although my tent is wringing wet, my clothes are dry!

The journey home was awful ... nine hours long, including both bus journeys, and very slow. I had some coursework to complete the moment I got back. It was stuff I'd been having problems with, and typically I had "left it until later". The tactic worked this time, however, because I found I could figure out the problem quite easily after a break.

I have a few lectures tomorrow, then it's home for the weekend again!

Here is a video clip I took at the summit, showing myself battling the effects of altitude (only joking--Bowfell's a shade under 3,000 feet). This is the link. The file is an MPG movie, approx. 9.6MB, and requires QuickTime to play. I can't figure out how to get it to stream, so you have to right-click on the link, select "Download link to disk" or "Save link to disk" (depending on your system), then play it from your hard drive.

IT'S ON!

I just checked the weather forecast. Although a depression is coming in from the Atlantic, it won't begin to be a problem until Wednesday, by which time it will be in the English Channel. It is then predicted to move up the country, gaining strength as it does so. But it won't hit the North until Thursday for certain--so I'm almost guaranteed good weather for Wednesday, bar the usual rain showers.

The idea is that I get the train to the Lake District at 12:52 tomorrow, arriving at the campsite at about 9 PM. I then have an entire day for fellwalking or scrambling in Great Langdale, which is one of my favourite valleys (ranking just under Wasdale Head in terms of the number of quality mountains in easy reach). I will probably climb Bowfell via the Climber's Traverse and River of Boulders--a classic route that I've done before--then progress to the lower peak of Esk Pike before making the descent to Mickleden via the pass of Rossett Gill. If I have any spare time at the end of the day I'm keen to do some Grade 2 scrambling on Side Pike, a small lump of rock just up the hill from the camp.

Whatever I end up doing, this is a rare chance to enjoy the mountains before I become too entangled in my course. I have two other trips planned before the end of the year: one with the Fell Club to Snowdonia on November the 18th, and a long expedition over the New Year to Great Langdale with my brother. I also have a chance to go on a winter mountaineering course in Aviemore in February.

So as you can see, I'm slowly but surely building up a collection of "quality mountain days" which I'll eventually use as experience points for my Mountain Leader training.

I'll post back on Thursday or Friday, hopefully with pics. See you then!

Maths woes

Big Brother is watching ME! As part of our assessment routine for the Maths unit in our course, we have to use an online system called AiM for tests. The tests are monitored by the head of department. This means that he gets to see who's doing well, who's doing badly, and who isn't doing very much at all.

Last week it was suggested that we take a look at the first test on AiM, although we weren't told we "had to" do it. Rather it was meant to be an introduction to the trials and perils that lie ahead. I admit that I hadn't looked at it for several days: I had my first piece of coursework to do, and it got put to one side.

And yet when I checked my email this morning, I saw a message from the department head warning that certain people hadn't been doing enough Maths on AiM! I wasn't aware that it was even compulsory yet--or did I miss something?

Anyway, it's clear that everything we do online is monitored, so in future I think I'll try to keep more up to date. But I just had a look at the assignment ... it's horrible. More algebraic fractions. And apparently we will be doing quadratic equations in the not too distant future.

Three years ago I vowed I would never look at another quadratic equation again. Most of this course is fine ... but I can't stand Maths. This is a necessary evil that I will endure but not enjoy or even fully understand.

I ... HATE ... MATHS!

(Feeling much better now I've let that rant out!)

I HATE October weather

It's done nothing but rain for one and a half days now. Not particularly heavy rain; just constant, mindless, depressing drizzle pouring out of a grey sky. I went shopping this morning and after forty minutes outside (walking to and from the shop, which is a mile away) I was soaking wet, even wearing a waterproof coat. I decided yesterday that my existing waterproof had gone past the end of its useful life in terms of a mountain jacket: I've only had it for four months, but there's a lot of wear on the lightweight fabric and it's not easy to revive HyVent garments. Water still beads in light rain, but the fabric is overwhelmed by anything heavier. In winter, that's a major safety hazard.

So I bought myself a new jacket yesterday, a Gore-Tex one by Mountain Equipment. It was expensive at £140, but I see this as an investment. If I buy a good-quality jacket now, it will last years with proper care. Far more economical than buying a new lightweight HyVent one every four or five months. I am now far happier about the prospect of foul weather next time I hit the hills, which will hopefully be next week.

The plan is that, straight after my class on Tuesday morning, I will catch a bus to the station and begin the long train journey to Windermere. The direct link from Manchester to Windermere won't be running next week, so I will have to change at Preston and Oxenholme Lake District. This puts the total journey time at over seven hours ... meaning I won't reach Windermere until after eight. I will then get a taxi for the remaining ten miles or so to the OldDG campsite in Great Langdale. I've never put up my tent in the dark before ... should be fun!

I will then have my day off, Wednesday, to do some hillwalking. There are so many possibilities for a memorable mountain day in Langdale that I haven't decided what to do yet. I am wavering between the Bowfell range and the Langdale Pikes. Bowfell has more of a "big mountain" feel about it, and is more suitable for bad weather; but I'm really keen to get into harder scrambling, and you can't beat the Pikes for hands-on-rock routes.

The following morning I have to get a taxi back to Windermere, and catch the 10:40 train to get back to Norwich by about 17:10. I only miss one seminar and one lecture--I know what I'm doing in both of them, and can easily catch up--and the whole trip will cost roughly £80. Assuming it's good weather, that's good value for money in my opinion.

And then, of course, it's back to the dull old world of Computer Science for another few weeks, until the next Fell Club expedition!

!*%£$*@ *!*$ !*&*%**£&*!!!!

Ahem, excuse my language. Guess what? Not content with having cancelled our seminar for yesterday, the room reference for the replacement seminar today turned out to be wrong. There is no such room as CH01.11! It doesn't exist, never has and never will!

Soon after stomping back to my room, I noticed a new email in my inbox. It was a "sincere apology" from the unit director, who said there had been a "misunderstanding" (the implication was that it was us students who had misunderstood). The seminar has been rescheduled again, this time for tomorrow morning. Tomorrow is--was--my day off. I am not amused.

To make things worse, the seminar I've just come back from (a Maths one) was totally pointless. They gave us a worksheet which I'd downloaded off Blackboard anyway and told us to get on with it. Students who had done some maths recently found it patronising, and I found it even more annoying because I knew I should be confident with this stuff, but my brain felt like cotton wool and I got stuck on the easiest questions (like "what's three-eights plus nine-sixteenths?"). The net result was that everyone in the room got annoyed.

Well. I have the damn algebra sheet now, so I know I can feasibly miss that seminar if I have to. It isn't as if we're actually being taught anything.

On the bright side, I have managed to locate a bottle of my native Adnams Bitter. Soooo much better than the mass-produced, cheap beer they sell in the pub! I couldn't get any Broadside, which is a shame, but the bitter is almost as good. Mmmmm ... a real taste of home.

Back again

Back at UEA after another weekend at home. Got the late train on Friday and was at Sax station within two hours, but there were engineering works on Sunday and I had to take a bus for half the journey (ie. all the way from Oulton Broad South to Norwich station). Didn't get back until about half six.

My classes are already over for the day. We had a two-hour lecture first thing this morning, which was a little heavy for so early on a Monday, but it was all fairly understandable stuff. I can go over the notes and Chapter 2 of the textbook later to mop up anything I didn't get first time around. After some confusion over the timetable, I also finally worked out what time I have my seminars for the second module. Unfortunately, this module is almost exactly the same as the one I took for ICT A-level a year ago, so most of it is going over ground I already know very well.

Besides, the teacher failed to show up for the seminar, which was meant to be a two-hour session. I am not impressed by the level of organisation for this module. They haven't got any of the material online yet--we're having to go over to the CMP office to check the boards ourselves--and quite a few people have been streamed for the wrong groups. Now teachers aren't showing up either. It just ain't good enough!

Still, the logistics of sorting out timetables for 200+ students must be quite challenging. And I'm not complaining. We were only missing out on material we knew already. We learned the 2517 module in ICT so well I can still recite most of it by rote. :-)

The weather is acting very strangely this week. In late September we went through a cold spell, with temperatures down to about five Celsius during the day. Yesterday I noticed snow on the summit of Ben Nevis (viewed through the webcam) for the first time since June. And yet today is absolutely baking: my fan is running on maximum speed, the window's open, I'm in my shirtsleeves, and it's still too hot.

Apparently N. Ireland and Scotland is being hammered by an enormous storm at the moment, with severe galeforce winds and torrential rain. Maybe it's screwing around the weather down here too.

*hickkup*

Defnitely too much Fell Club Punch this evening, I think. Just come back from a "meeting" (okya, more of a party) to introduce the new people to the UEA Fell Club. Most of them are the old mmembers from several years, back, but a few (like me) are new. After a brief speeech from the President someone mixed a whole b ucket fiull of vodka, wine, Martini, lemonade, pineabple juice and lumps of oranges. pparently this is the traditional Fell Club Punch with wihch new members are innaugurated into the society. I had about seven glasses and although it tastes a bit strange, its sort of addictivec.

I think I collidesd with someone on the way back from Constable Terrace, which was where the partything was held (didnt find it for ages). Took the wrong way back too, almost ended up at the union pub, whichch is definitey not where MI eneed to be right now .... too busy for one thing, and I think I may have had aenough to frink already. As youo can proably tell.

Met some jolly nice people including, one person from New Zealand who climbs mountaines there, says the lakes are very crystal clear and not at all like the ones in Wales. Hee was astononished when I told him how many people I saw on Scafell Pike. One of the Club Offficials told me not to buy the North Face gear, it is overpriced, and also the hoods are the wrong shapes except for helmets, which I kind of agree withj.

Actually, why the hell amd I writing on the BLog at hthis time of night?

Wha ... ??

Oh god ... the fire alarm went off at half past eight this morning, waking up everyone in Suffolk Terrace. Every room has an alarm bell, so we really, really knew the alarm was ringing. It jerked me from a comatose state to full alertness in less than a second, which can't be healthy. At first I had the stupid idea it was my alarm clock (if so, it's probably illegal), then I started searching through my bag, looking for whatever it was that was making that awful noise. After about a minute it dawned on me that it was the big alarm bell on the ceiling. I put on my dressing gown and stumbled out into the hall.

After running around for a bit trying to find a way of switching the damn thing off, it dawned on someone that this was a fire alarm, so we should probably be somewhere else, eg. not inside a potentially burning building. After evacuating and waiting around in the fog outside for a few minutes, some bloke came ambling along and said, "Don't worry, it's only a drill ... you can go back now."

Grrr. A drill! At half past bloody eight in the morning! Whoever scheduled that should be SHOT!

Still, it got me up early, which is more than can be said for most mornings. And I have an assignment to do today.

My day off

Ah, freedom. This week's timetable has been great: only eleven hours of work in total, and as far as I can see only one written assignment, and that short. Today is completely free of lectures and lab sessions. After enjoying a lie-in until eleven o'clock, I made my way into town. My mission was to find an insulated cover for my Sigg water bottle, which I'll need to stop the bottle freezing when we go to the Lakes in winter. I checked both outdoor stores, but no luck. I'll have to order one from Cotswold (I think they're only about £6).

I did, however, make two very good impulse purchases. The first was a pair of Gore-tex gaiters from Venturesport. They're made by OutdoorDesigns, a British company that offers high-performance gear for decent prices (like Regatta, but more so). With my British Mountaineering Council discount, the gaiters came to £27--an absolute bargain. I'd been worried for quite a while about not having gaiters, because my boots have a tendency to get wet inside from water running off my trousers. And gaiters are obviously pretty useful if you have to walk through deep snow.

The second thing I bought, at Millets, was a Peter Storm down jacket. At first I couldn't believe the price. A 90% white goose down jacket, with water-resistant outer, for only £40?? Crazy! But it was true. And, after trying it on and discovering the "Large" size to fit me perfectly, I bought it then and there. No BMC discount at Millets, unfortunately, but look at it this way: I could have ended up paying over a hundred quid for an expedition-grade down jacket from TNF or Berghaus. And that would have been overkill for British weather, because even at 3,000 feet it rarely gets colder than -20 Celsius (with windchill). The Peter Storm jacket may not have the super fill power of more expensive models, but why pay more for features you won't use?

My motto always used to be "If you buy cheap, you'll probably end up buying twice", but I think this case has to be an exception.

Second day's classes over already!

After only a single two hour lab session this morning, my classes are now over until Thursday afternoon! The reason for this is that we don't start one of our modules until Thursday, and Maths seminars won't begin until next week. I'll be looking at about ten extra hours next week ... which still isn't all that bad, actually.

I have my first assignment to complete, due in on Friday, based on the simple programming we did in today's session. After a little research in the textbook, I managed to create a program which drew a blocky picture of a house with a sun in the sky. Then, in what is my greatest programming achievement to date, I made the sun set! The assignment is basically a short write-up of how we got the thing to do what it did. I've already done most of it; should be easy.

The Maths lectures I had yesterday turned out to be really funny. The lecturer had forgotten his notes, so began by quoting things in mysterious languages, occasionally saying things like "Maths is like a car crash ..." or "All this is pointing to the fact that you don't have to be scared of maths." The genius of the guy is that, although he was waffling about total rubbish for half an hour, he made it sound as if he was building up to some profound and relevant statement. But he wasn't.

He finished by saying "Um, believe it or not, the dog ate my lecture notes ... being a Maths teacher is sort of like being a politician. It means you can churn out utter tosh for hours on end while hoodwinking your audience into thinking they're learning something useful. But don't worry: for our next lecture in an hour, we'll begin studying our first course text, which is Eighty-five Ways of Tying Your Tie. Good afternoon."

So we didn't really learn anything in that lecture, but it was very funny. In the second one, we did indeed study the mathematics of tying a tie: apparently there really are eighty-five ways of tying one. And we tried to remember what Pythagoras said about triangles. That brought back memories from the bad old days. He ended by introducing the "Golden Ratio" to us in an attempt to show that "buried under all the bewildering flotsam and jetsam of mathematics, under the piles of dog-eared notes drenched in cold sweat, there is beauty." (it was something like that, anyway.)

It was a rather transparent attempt to ease us back into maths, but it worked to a certain extent. I'm no longer that worried about the module. It doesn't appear that we'll be jumping straight into algorithms and advanced calculus.

All in all, I am feeling a good deal more confident about my choice of course.

First lecture done and dusted

I got up early this morning to attend my first lecture, a two-hour introduction to the Java programming language. I actually understood most of the concepts and ideas, and I'm fairly sure I am at least capable of understanding anything I didn't pick up this time around. The language itself seems to be fairly basic--the examples given were regarding the manipulation of simple objects--and is in many ways similar to other systems I've used, such as BASIC and OPL. I had no trouble understanding basic principles such as the difference between an integer and a string, for example.

So I am encouraged. I think I will be able to complete this module at least. The one I'm starting this afternoon, though (Maths), is another story entirely. I have been dreading the maths side of the course for ages. Okay, so I passed at GCSE ... but I won't hide the fact that I was second lowest in the entire class, and I am still convinced my grade was a fluke. That was three years ago. I haven't touched any maths since then.

Well, I'll see how it goes. If I just can't get my head around it, it's still early enough to change course.

I bought my module textbook this morning, a hefty tome titled Objects First With Java: A Practical Introduction Using BlueJ. I goggled when I saw the price tag. I gibbered when I found out they didn't have any used copies in the second-hand bookshop. When forced to cough up the cash, I used both a £10 gift voucher AND my 10% student discount, and it still came to £25. Grrr. I've never spent so much on a single book in my entire life.

Footnote: I received a hilariously random voicemail this morning. It went something like this. "Good morning, Mr Humbert. Your two boats have arrived and are awaiting collection. If you need to contact me, please wait until Thursday because I'm currently on a business trip in Vietnam. Thanks."

Back at UEA

It's so nice to be able to jump on a bus, be on a train within twenty minutes, and home in under two hours. Going home was great in itself, but the important thing is that the idea has been firmly lodged in my head that it doesn't take long to get back, and I can do it every weekend if I need to. I won't be marooned in Norwich for weeks on end, thank God ...

Apparently the campus was pretty empty over the weekend anyway: quite a few people went home, some others have vanished altogether, and everyone else seems to have been in the city for most of the time. So I didn't miss much.

My course begins tomorrow. I've managed to decypher the bewildering timetables from the CMP intranet site, and have finally figured out exactly where and when I have to be ... for this week, anyway. I basically have three lectures tomorrow, so it's a fairly short day. Tuesday is pretty good with only one long lab session. I have the whole of Wednesday off, and Thursday and Friday are pretty sparse, just a couple of lectures really. I hasten to add that this is only the timetable for this first week: I don't start seminars until the week after. And the times and places of the seminars change frequently, as do the group listings, so I'm going to have to draw up a completely new timetable every week. It's complicated, but CMP has a pretty good online tool called Blackboard, tailored to your individual units, which makes things easier. I am getting the hang of it!

Things to do tomorrow:

A) Attend my lectures and try not to fall asleep;
B) Cash in that lovely bonus cheque that has inexplicably appeared from Wyevale;
C) Try and get a copy of my course textbook before the bookshop's shelves are stripped bare;
D) Brace myself for the one thing I fear above all else ... MATHS.