I'm lazy.
I've realized that I have the attention span and comittment of a small goldfish. I have a horrible tendency to start something, like a blog, with the intention of cosntantly updating it and then letting all that ambition and drive just slip away into more and more sporadic updates. So, just so you know I know: I know. Those ski pictures will probably never get put up here as the thought of coding an entire gallery is quite daunting to me, even though it would be pretty easy considering some of the tools I have at my disposal. I suppose I'll just brief you on what I have been up to, I guess, despite how uninteresting it may be.
Uhh..ski trip. That was fun.
Then, after a hellish week of tests and papers, Paz, Em, and my mum came up for a ring ceremony that I slept through, partially because of a LAN party until 4 in the morning, partially because my alarm didn't go off. I think this was a good decision on the part of my unconscious as I thereby avoided wearing a suit and sitting in an auditorium for over an hour. We went to watch some frisbee and hit up Chili's. Then it was Front Street where, for once, I bought nothing from the Book Merchant as I am currently marching my way through Cryptonomicon at an alarming pace. The book is so bloody good. Neal Stephenson deserves awards, mountains of them, for writing such good books. Then we went to see Michael Sundell's double-plus good movie Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) which was just so mind-blowing that I could think of nothing else for at least an hour. I think it, along with Seven Samurai, is one of the two black and white movies that I've actually enjoyed. Sadly, everyone left on Sunday after a quick lunch at Magee's.
But this week, although easy, was not as wonderful as I was expecting, as I had some pretty dull stuff to do. The Calculus test I'd started Friday was one of those wonderful two-parters that I'm sure we all love so well. I also had a Chemistry test and some American History homework that, as usual, popped up out of nowhere. The good side was, though, that I had finished pretty much all my homework for Tuesday to Thursday by Monday. With all this free time, I was able to indulge in large swaths of Cryptonomicon and I started a file on the acclaimed adventure game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. So far, I am not a fan. The premise of Dreamfall seems to be to make me walk as far as possible to accomplish as little as possible. Most of the game is spent walking, and I don't know how much I'll be playing as the story is not that engaging.
Apart from that, I also began thinking about a distinction project in Computer Science. I haven't heard anything about distinction from anyone, but I figured I'd just start doing proof-of-concept stuff now. What I'm working on his a basic student organizer sort of thing that, when done should function as a:
-class schedule/schedule in general
-homework list
-grade tracker
-notes taker
We'll see how that goes, as I'm pretty sure I need to learn some GUI stuff before I would even dare show it in public.
I've also been thinking about making my laptop a dual-boot machine which will run both Ubuntu Linux and XP. I'm going to wait until April for the release of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and then try out an install. I don't really play games on my laptop anymore, and that's about all that I wouldn't eventually be able to do on Linux that I do now. Besides, if I encountered a roadblock, the option would always be there.
On Friday my art teacher gave us the assignment of visiting the student exhibit at the local university. The gallery was really quiet and cool and I've decided that I'll probably spend some time there with a book eventually. I have a thing for quiet, almost seemingly abandoned places, like the third floor of the student union, which has intrigued me, as it is almost unknown. In thw words of one of my friends:"There's a third floor?!"
It always feels like there are so many things I could be doing up here, but I'm limited by the very reason I am up here: school. Once I heard about the few days we have after classes end, I started looking forward to the end of the year even more than usual. But, sadly, it's still not the end. I feel as though I'm almost required to take Cal II over the summer. I think that if I don't take at least one class here that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to take at home, it would'be been a waste.
I saw 300 last night, and someone had the DVD of The Departed running in the lobby today, so I watched that as well. Both were excellent movies: 300 for its special effects and super cool main characters, The Departed for its ending. Sometime soon, as I have been writing this entry over a period of a couple hours, I'm going to go watch a French movie for enjoyment and extra credit. Michael describes "With a Friend like Harry" as right up my alley and chock-full of cynicism. Dark comedies, I think, are generally winners.
The SAT was this morning, so I had to wake up at 7 on a Saturday only to find that the test location had been moved without any signs being placed anywhere. There were about ten of us just standing around for a while before someone decided to come tell us that it had been moved to the aforementioned third floor. After the SAT I changed and went out to support the Colors of Friendship, our Ultimate team, in the big tournament for all the marbles today. I got there in time for the last of three games and I even got to play a point, the last one, in which I threw an interception that lost us the game. In my defense, we would've lost anyway.
College has started to loom its ugly head and I'm excited about the prospects but not the process. On top of that comes the doubt about how good you really are. I used to have to tell myself that there was always someone better than me. Now it seems I have to convince myself that I'm really a pretty good student. On top of that, I don't really have an idea about where I should look besides the big high-profile tech schools. Ugh.
I find myself overreacting to things irrationally as of late. I have no idea why.
I'm going home this weekend, and I'm really excited, but my time is going to be eaten up by a programming tournament on Friday morning and the ACT on Saturday.
That reminds me of a problem I have with standardized testing: why so early in the morning?! I know that I'm nowhere near my maximum potential at 8 in the morning. I'm pretty sure there must be some scientific evidence somewhere that agrees, too.
To throw you for a loop and go out of chronological order, the LAN party was moderately fun. I played a couple games of DotA after just piddling around for most of the eight hours it was going on. There was also pizza, which is nice, even if it wasn't free.
I find that I'm pretty disgusted with most of the people at this school. They seem to have such low standards of acceptance here and it blows my mind that there can be so many unintelligent people at what is supposedly the state's premier school, its best and brightest. The prime example I can site is the school's newspaper. It's horrible. Utterly horrible. It seems as though it were edited and assembled by some sort of idiotic monkey with severe congenital defects. Some of the pictures used are either too big, too low quality, their ratio is skewed, or they just do not serve to illustrate the point. The main problem, I think, is that the paper lacks a photgrapher. This blows my mind as we have an entire photography class doing nothing but taking pictures of trees in mist or their best friends' faces. They could be put to work. Heck, I'm sure all that's necessary is that someone ask! I was talking to one of the guys in the journalism class who listened to most of my problems with the paper and he told me that the class voted unanimously to disbar me from reading the paper. I find this to be a great solution, avoidance of your own shortcomings! I think I may do what my brother always vowed to do to my old school's paper, go to town with a red pen and post it on a door somewhere. So many things are wrong with this school; it needs a Martin Luther.
It's a shame, really it is, that my name isn't Martin.
I'm switching roommates sometime soon. Or, if I lay low, I'm going to not have a roommate. It is obvious which I would prefer.
Bloody tired.
Uhh..ski trip. That was fun.
Then, after a hellish week of tests and papers, Paz, Em, and my mum came up for a ring ceremony that I slept through, partially because of a LAN party until 4 in the morning, partially because my alarm didn't go off. I think this was a good decision on the part of my unconscious as I thereby avoided wearing a suit and sitting in an auditorium for over an hour. We went to watch some frisbee and hit up Chili's. Then it was Front Street where, for once, I bought nothing from the Book Merchant as I am currently marching my way through Cryptonomicon at an alarming pace. The book is so bloody good. Neal Stephenson deserves awards, mountains of them, for writing such good books. Then we went to see Michael Sundell's double-plus good movie Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) which was just so mind-blowing that I could think of nothing else for at least an hour. I think it, along with Seven Samurai, is one of the two black and white movies that I've actually enjoyed. Sadly, everyone left on Sunday after a quick lunch at Magee's.
But this week, although easy, was not as wonderful as I was expecting, as I had some pretty dull stuff to do. The Calculus test I'd started Friday was one of those wonderful two-parters that I'm sure we all love so well. I also had a Chemistry test and some American History homework that, as usual, popped up out of nowhere. The good side was, though, that I had finished pretty much all my homework for Tuesday to Thursday by Monday. With all this free time, I was able to indulge in large swaths of Cryptonomicon and I started a file on the acclaimed adventure game Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. So far, I am not a fan. The premise of Dreamfall seems to be to make me walk as far as possible to accomplish as little as possible. Most of the game is spent walking, and I don't know how much I'll be playing as the story is not that engaging.
Apart from that, I also began thinking about a distinction project in Computer Science. I haven't heard anything about distinction from anyone, but I figured I'd just start doing proof-of-concept stuff now. What I'm working on his a basic student organizer sort of thing that, when done should function as a:
-class schedule/schedule in general
-homework list
-grade tracker
-notes taker
We'll see how that goes, as I'm pretty sure I need to learn some GUI stuff before I would even dare show it in public.
I've also been thinking about making my laptop a dual-boot machine which will run both Ubuntu Linux and XP. I'm going to wait until April for the release of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and then try out an install. I don't really play games on my laptop anymore, and that's about all that I wouldn't eventually be able to do on Linux that I do now. Besides, if I encountered a roadblock, the option would always be there.
On Friday my art teacher gave us the assignment of visiting the student exhibit at the local university. The gallery was really quiet and cool and I've decided that I'll probably spend some time there with a book eventually. I have a thing for quiet, almost seemingly abandoned places, like the third floor of the student union, which has intrigued me, as it is almost unknown. In thw words of one of my friends:"There's a third floor?!"
It always feels like there are so many things I could be doing up here, but I'm limited by the very reason I am up here: school. Once I heard about the few days we have after classes end, I started looking forward to the end of the year even more than usual. But, sadly, it's still not the end. I feel as though I'm almost required to take Cal II over the summer. I think that if I don't take at least one class here that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to take at home, it would'be been a waste.
I saw 300 last night, and someone had the DVD of The Departed running in the lobby today, so I watched that as well. Both were excellent movies: 300 for its special effects and super cool main characters, The Departed for its ending. Sometime soon, as I have been writing this entry over a period of a couple hours, I'm going to go watch a French movie for enjoyment and extra credit. Michael describes "With a Friend like Harry" as right up my alley and chock-full of cynicism. Dark comedies, I think, are generally winners.
The SAT was this morning, so I had to wake up at 7 on a Saturday only to find that the test location had been moved without any signs being placed anywhere. There were about ten of us just standing around for a while before someone decided to come tell us that it had been moved to the aforementioned third floor. After the SAT I changed and went out to support the Colors of Friendship, our Ultimate team, in the big tournament for all the marbles today. I got there in time for the last of three games and I even got to play a point, the last one, in which I threw an interception that lost us the game. In my defense, we would've lost anyway.
College has started to loom its ugly head and I'm excited about the prospects but not the process. On top of that comes the doubt about how good you really are. I used to have to tell myself that there was always someone better than me. Now it seems I have to convince myself that I'm really a pretty good student. On top of that, I don't really have an idea about where I should look besides the big high-profile tech schools. Ugh.
I find myself overreacting to things irrationally as of late. I have no idea why.
I'm going home this weekend, and I'm really excited, but my time is going to be eaten up by a programming tournament on Friday morning and the ACT on Saturday.
That reminds me of a problem I have with standardized testing: why so early in the morning?! I know that I'm nowhere near my maximum potential at 8 in the morning. I'm pretty sure there must be some scientific evidence somewhere that agrees, too.
To throw you for a loop and go out of chronological order, the LAN party was moderately fun. I played a couple games of DotA after just piddling around for most of the eight hours it was going on. There was also pizza, which is nice, even if it wasn't free.
I find that I'm pretty disgusted with most of the people at this school. They seem to have such low standards of acceptance here and it blows my mind that there can be so many unintelligent people at what is supposedly the state's premier school, its best and brightest. The prime example I can site is the school's newspaper. It's horrible. Utterly horrible. It seems as though it were edited and assembled by some sort of idiotic monkey with severe congenital defects. Some of the pictures used are either too big, too low quality, their ratio is skewed, or they just do not serve to illustrate the point. The main problem, I think, is that the paper lacks a photgrapher. This blows my mind as we have an entire photography class doing nothing but taking pictures of trees in mist or their best friends' faces. They could be put to work. Heck, I'm sure all that's necessary is that someone ask! I was talking to one of the guys in the journalism class who listened to most of my problems with the paper and he told me that the class voted unanimously to disbar me from reading the paper. I find this to be a great solution, avoidance of your own shortcomings! I think I may do what my brother always vowed to do to my old school's paper, go to town with a red pen and post it on a door somewhere. So many things are wrong with this school; it needs a Martin Luther.
It's a shame, really it is, that my name isn't Martin.
I'm switching roommates sometime soon. Or, if I lay low, I'm going to not have a roommate. It is obvious which I would prefer.
Bloody tired.