Something else about me

Below are some more things about me, beyond my research in mathematics and physics.

Click the hyperlinks there for more details.

Running

I like long-distance running. As an undergraduate student at Peking university, I was a member of PURA (Peking university runners' association). I paused running for several years but rediscovered my passion during the pandemic in 2021. Despite of those enumerous annoying injuries, running brings me far more pleasure and confidence.

Due to some health issue, I took a break since September 2024. I hope to come back to competitional running in 2025.

Below are some of my previous results.

  1. 14/07/2024: Halbmarathon @ 14. Ermstal-Marathon, Metzingen, Germany. Finish in 1:35:46. Rank: 73/664.
  2. 16/06/2024: 15km @ 13e Yanmar Almere City Run, Almere, Netherlands. Finish in 1:06:47. Rank: 47/461.
  3. 12/05/2024: Halve Marathon @ 33e Leiden Marathon, Leiden, Netherlands. Finish in 1:35:33 (Personal Best). Rank: 249/5370.
  4. 10/03/2024: Halve Marathon @ 48e NN CPC Loop Den Haag, den Haag, Netherlands. Finish in 1:37:48. Rank: 2473/13564.
  5. 26/11/2023: Halve Marathon @ 18e Spijkenisse Marathon, Spijkenisse, Netherlands. Finish in 1:38:29. Rank: 142/589.

Languages and linguistics

Ich lerne Deutsch und Niederländisch. Ich interessiere mich auch für die Geschichte der germanischen Sprachen. Ich finde, dass es sehr hilfreich ist, deutsche Mathematikartikel zu lesen, um mein Deutsch zu lernen.

Linux, LaTeX and coding

I learnt about Linux in 2015 but soon returned to Windows. Since September 2024, I have switched back to Linux and have completely built my workflow around it. Currently, I run Xubuntu 24.04 on one laptop, and Fedora 41 on another. I do not (yet) have a strong preference over distros, as I see little differences other than their package managers. On both laptops I use i3 as my window manager, and almost the same list of softwares as well. That said, I do find that being forced to use Snap on (X)ubuntu is somewhat annoying.

There are several things that I appreciate about Linux compared with Windows (even including its built-in WSL). Some softwares that I use are exclusive to Linux, or perform best on it. Configuring softwares becomes much intuitive on Linux (as opposed to my struggles with setting up Vim on windows). Also, command-line applications are, in many cases, simpler to use and produce less noise.

I do not consider myself as a true programmer yet, though I do some codings. (Of course (La)TeX is excluded here, with which I work more than six hours a day.) I write some Python and Bash scripts to organise documents and do some computation. I have worked with C, C++ and Java long ago when I was a student, but have not found an opportunity to pick them up again.

Shall I count HTML as a programming language? Either way, I tend to avoid writing it. I even prefer writing markdown files and converting them to HTML using Pandoc. This is exactly how this page came out.