York, Sheffield, and questions of scale.

As you all know, I'm leaving Edinburgh soon to move to Sheffield. I will cease to be a lecturer and I'll become a postdoctoral fellow. This takes longer to say, pays slightly less, and also needs explaining to anybody who doesn't work in academia. Still, I'm looking forward to it: no teaching, and the country's biggest collection of topologists, and -- most importantly -- no boss! I'll be free to research whatever I like.

Over the last few days I've been staying in York and visited Sheffield on Monday to sort out accommodation. I'll be moving in to a house with an old friend from York. This will be very slightly weird, and mostly a great arrangement. I'll just have to learn to tolerate Holby City and ceaseless tutting.

While in York I took this photo of the Windmill. As you can see, it's no longer in a state of disrepair, and in fact they're actually doing some work on it.
Anyhow, the brief trip went well and I got to read lots of interesting maths on the train. Really! I learnt all about stacks and classical Chern-Simons theory.

Finally, my last message has led to much controversy over questions of scale. To be precise, it seems that people were unhappy with my use of a smurf to describe the size of a physics book. I'd like to clear things up so that life can return to normal. As you can see here, a smurf is roughly the same height as a tetrahedron, and approximately ninety minutes tall.