Why hello there, life!

Today, at the tender age of 26 and some odd change, I came to the realization that I am me, and that all I want is to be me for the rest of my life. Conveniently, that is what I'm sort of stuck with anyway.

So, watch out life, here I come, with all my strengths and weaknesses, all my quirks and imperfections, all my craziness and my sanity. I'm grabbing on this time, and I'm not letting go.

Appropriate for this change in attitude, when I turned on Radio Paradise (which is an excellent internet radio) this morning, instead of the solemn and sad sounds that it's been playing to me for the past week, out came a stream of happy songs, and quirky songs, and a smile on my face.

Certain only in uncertainty, and expecting all that is unexpected, here I come.

A poem

I had a nice surprise this morning (I had another interesting surprise when I was looking up the correct way to spell surprise - see http://www.uib.no/isf/surprise.htm). The nice surprise is that for the first time ever, when I typed in "Random Axis" in Google, my website came up on the very first page of results! On the bottom of it, but first page none the less.

See, usually, my "Random Axis" lingers on page 3, 4, or 5. If you just type in "Stjepan", I'm always on the first page, sometimes on the very top. I'm usually rivaled by a page on "Stjepan Radic", who was a prominent Croatian politician about a century ago, and sometimes by a page on "Stjepan Mesic", who is the current Croatian president. Sometimes Stjepan Mesic is nowhere near the top because he usually goes by Stipe and not by Stjepan, which is a poor choice because then you have to compete with Michael Stipe of R.E.M. If you type in just "Rajko", I'm also near the top...

And did you know that if you type in "Stjepan Rajko", with quotes around it, pretty much all of the pages that come up are about me? Apparently, I'm the only Stjepan Rajko on the internet, and perhaps even in the world.

Last night I wrote a poem in my sleep. I think it goes something like this:

Hey there (Ms. poet,
Would you write me ...a lullaby

I want to feel sleepy'
And the "bed I laid in
Can't write any songs for me.

It's an experiment. How do you like it?

A heavy dose of neurotic laughter

Last night and this morning, I kept working on the paper I talked about in my previous post. I was working and working, and as the final obstacles sprung in front of me on the way to the finish line, I leapt over them with grace and elegance, watching the crystalline beauty of mathematics unfold itself as simplicity delivered the last few devastating blows to complexity...

And then, this morning, another obstacle came up. A conquerable one, of course, but tall... almost tall enough to make the finish line disappear. I started to panic, as the idea of skiing on Lake Tahoe in december began to fade and blow away in the winds of uncertainty... I kept chugging along, determined not to give up, despite the doubts, despite the lack of food, and despite the lingering headache that's been threatening to stop lingering and start pounding.

And then, an idea occured to me! A brilliant idea, a sure-fire way of getting the paper done on time. It is an old idea, and one that almost always works for me. I started checking, filled with suspense.... and yes!!!! The idea was going to work!!! There it was, on the conference website - "Extended Submission Deadline: June 30, 2005"!

Alright, I'm taking a break and getting some food.

The thrills of research!

I am currently in the process of finalizing a paper that I hope to submit to a visual computing conference. The deadline is Monday, and actually, I don't think I'm at the finalizing stage quite yet. Hence, the thrills!

Most of today and yesterday my brain has been following self-conversation patterns such as this one: "Hmm... wait is it this way or is it that way. OK, it looks like it is this way. Great, that's exactly the way I need it! ...hmm no, wait, it's not this way it's that way. Shit!!! But aha! It turns out that that is the way I need it, and not this way!! Alrig.. oh shit I was wrong it doesn't matter which way it is. WAIT!! It doesn't matter which way it is!!! It's not an issue at all!! What was I thinking!?!?"

So, it's been pretty exciting - running into last minute hurdles and effectively jumping over them. I'm pretty proud of myself, this being the first paper that is all of the below:

• on a problem I chose myself


• with a solution I researched and solved completely by myself (well, with the exception of all the previous research by other people that I used)


• for a conference I chose


• with me as the primary person pushing me to make the deadline

The reasons for the two of the last items have something to do with the conference being on Lake Tahoe in December, and me having not been skiing for the last 10 years or so, but still, I'm pretty proud of myself.

OK, back to work...