Nikola Novak

I’m generally not flexible, but I’ve begun to do some flexibility exercises. One of them is doing the split. I’ve actually come up with a rather inventive (in terms of making do with scarce resources) solution of how to measure my progress. I’ve made a pile of books and put on top of it a small cushion. Now, every time I do a split, I do it so that I “sit” on top of the pile. Since my “split” isn’t a split yet, but rather more something like spreading legs (and even when put thus it sounds too wide), this alleviates stress on my knees, AND makes it possible to measure my progress. Once I can easily “sit” on a pile (when it becomes more or less comfortable), I simply remove one book off the top and try to “sit” on the so reduced pile. I’ve already removed two books since the time I started the practice, both pretty thick (all are pretty thick), about 1300 pages total, plus hard covers on both books, and now I’m getting ready to remove yet another. To be honest, though, there were a total of 10 books on the pile, plus the cushion. But hey, that means that I’m about 20% done. :) (I know, I know, the progress becomes slower as I get lower. Don’t spoil my enthusiasm!)

What used to be my seminar now grew into my final paper (forgive the terminology if something’s wrong here, we probably have a different educational system here). Of course, it grew in size too. I’ll be doing something different for my seminar instead.

Almost done, at least my part of it. All I need to do now is explain what I did and how I did it to other students so they can continue, and get graded finally (I accept no less than A, after all, it IS 4000 lines of pure C++ code, which is way more than a simple seminar usually has).