Daemonic Dispatches

18th generation tagging

This means that I'm supposed to share five things about myself that relatively few people know:

1. I did my first serious work in the field of algorithms at age 15, when I found an improved algorithm for computing the Greatest Common Divisors of polynomials over algebraic number fields; I understand that this algorithm is now being used in the Maple computer algebra system. Unfortunately, while my algorithm is (as far as I know) still unsurpassed when handling algebraic number fields formed by multiple low degree extensions, it operates very slowly over algebraic number fields involving a single high degree extension. I decided not to publish this work after proving that any generalization of my algorithm to handling high degree algebraic extensions would provide a polynomial time integer factorization algorithm.
2. I discovered a novel subexponential integer factorization algorithm a few years ago; but since its running time was cubic in the cost of GNFS, I decided that it wasn't worth publishing.
3. When I was 13, I sang soprano in the Rutter Requiem at a music camp. I have no plans to ever sing again, but I enjoy playing in choral and opera orchestras.
4. In the 2001 British Columbia general election, I voted for the Marijuana Party, in protest over the plans of the BC Liberal Party (which, as expected, swept to power with 77 out of 79 seats) to provide targetted funding to double the number of university degrees granted in computer science and computer/electrical engineering. Given that no institution in British Columbia has ever come close to recruiting enough students to meet their "DTO" targets, I think the past five years have proved my opposition to be quite correct.
5. I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about becoming a cyborg, but I can't really justify the cost. Maybe someday I'll have enough money that I don't need justification for spending $8k.

And having done that, I'm now supposed to tag five more people:

• Ian
• Victoria
• Simon
• Remko
• Florent