Andrew Walkingshaw

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Hi. I'm a second-year PhD student in the [ext] Earth Sciences department of the [ext] University of Cambridge. My work relates to "first-principles" quantum-mechanical[1] computer models of mineral systems - specifically the problem of aluminium/silicon ordering in crustal and mantle minerals.

I learnt to play in October 2001 (it's mostly Charles Matthews's fault, thanks to the introductory lectures he gives at the start of every academic year to the assembled new players of [ext] CUGOS), and I'm currently around 3 kyu (UK) strengthwise. I seem to have stalled there, rather: partly disillusionment, and partially lack of time. My major weaknesses appear to be a degree of shallowness in reading, and particularly lack of accuracy in the assessment of full-board positions; I try for too much, thinking my position is worse than it actually is.

My favourite go books thus far are "Attack and Defence" by James Davies and Ishida Akira, and Davies/Iwamoto's "The 1971 Honinbo Tournament".

As for Go haunts, apart from the aformentioned CUGOS, I'm occasionally to be found on [ext] KGS, as adw. I'm also a volunteer at the [ext] Cambridge Junior Chess and Go Club, where we're trying to raise a new generation of games-players.

I used to play chess fairly seriously, to about 2000 ELO standard; I've also dabbled in Bridge, and have some very basic idea of how to play a couple of other games.

Aside from games, I'm very into (guitar-based) music; I play guitar, though not as well as I would like, and I bore people on the minutiae of certain bands' careers and recorded output for Britain (mostly through presenting a show on local student radio). I've also been known to play [ext] Ultimate, a very fast paced disc sport - one of the few things I'm even worse at than playing the guitar.

My homepage is [ext] here.

Charles You're getting something of a reputation for disordered media, then?

Andrew Seems like it. Given you've provided a feedline, I'm now (im)morally obliged to plug the station I'm a member of (I'm on at 11pm UK time on Wednesday evenings): [ext] CUR1350. The show's called Random Walk: yes, that is a truly terrible pun.

(now on at 10pm Friday nights).




[1] Or "quantum mechanical", which someone calling himself ~ian~ prefers [2]. I'm really not sure which is grammatically correct, but the version with the hyphen looks right to me. (However, it's definitely Density Functional Theory, not Density-Functional Theory...)


[2] Well I am not that dogmatic really. I'm more accepting of that hyphen than the preceeding one. A quick good search reveals roughly equal usage, although I was rather surprised to find the word qunatum frequently appearing in several academic documents.
~ian~


This is a copy of the living page "Andrew Walkingshaw" at Sensei's Library.
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