Feeling

Feeling...

Tired.

Apathetic.

Slightly depressed.

Done writing this post. More some other time.

One more day

One!

Day!

Mooooore!

[End Les Miserables reference.]

Indeed! I'm now three-quarters of the way done with finals, with only a chemistry final tomorrow morning. Pretty excited. Though, really, finals have been almost laughably easy so far. I had a sociology and biology exam last night, both of which I finished in just over half the time allotted, without having studied for them. I had a presentation in my intro to the Bible class today, for which my group did my one of my favorite books/movies of all time, Watchmen, and that went rather smoothly. The only final I'm actually taking somewhat seriously is tomorrow's chemistry exam, and I've barely studied even for that. I suppose they were right about IB really preparing you for college.

I've also been packing and getting ready to move out of the dorms. As of now, about two-thirds of my stuff is already moved, and the rest is mostly packed up and ready to go tomorrow. The number of containers required to hold all my stuff has gone up a bit since the beginning of the years, which is somewhat heartening (though it'll also be a hassle to move). It's interesting to look at my part of the room and actually ponder how it looks a bit blank without the miscellaneous comics and things I'd tacked up on the walls, as well as the now-empty bookshelf. Guess you do get attached to your space.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm planning to finish packing up before my exam, practice some piano if I have time, then take the exam and get ready to go. Huzzah.

oh no finals oh no

Nah, just kidding.

Finals week is next week and... quite honestly? I couldn't care less. I was told a few times before starting college that it'd be a huge transition, I wouldn't be able to continue my usual study habits (or, more appropriate, lack thereof), I'd meet people much much smarter than me, etcetera etcetera. Let's see.

There wasn't really any transition to speak of. Just school again, in a different setting, with a slightly different routine. The one thing I will note is that interaction with other people has changed quite a bit for me. I've never been very good at meeting people to begin with (though I'm okay at getting along with them once I'm past that initial bit), so it's incredibly difficult to meet new people when I don't see many people more than once a day, and there are so damned many people besides. A friend from high school, who I had lunch with over fall break, pointed out that IB did an excellent job of forcing us to meet people: It basically threw all of us into a room, said "These are the people you will be having class with for the next four years. Meet them.", and walked away. That's not to say that I don't like the people from high school - I believe that having a few good friends that you can really trust is preferable to having a huge network of people whom you are only somewhat acquainted with. Seems like a lot of people are really fixated on the latter. Insecurity? I don't know.

Study habits? Haven't changed a bit. When I've got a test coming up, I'll look over the things that I need to work on briefly, then not worry about it. And I'm doing fine. Actually, in MCDB (Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology), I did the best on the test that I didn't even bother studying for, because I'd gotten an average of a 90ish on the first two and they drop the lowest of the three. I also did quite well on a chemistry test which I walked into sick, with no preparation, and confused about what day it was due to a nap just previously. The results of that test were rather amusing.

Finally... smart people. While I know some very smart people from high school that are at college with me, I haven't met anyone new that blows me out of the water, so to speak. There are other smart students, to be sure, but no one on the scale that I was told to expect. Certainly people talk about having "genius roommates" and suchlike, but judging from the types of people that I hear having these conversations, well, I'm not convinced. (Of note: I really do try not to come across as arrogant. Sometimes it's difficult.)

Onwards towards finals week, then. And all that.

Minecraftventures, Part Something (and also some other stuff)

I've been on fall break this week. 'S been nice, having time to relax and do whatever instead of the usual routine of school. I also got the opportunity to see a couple friends from high school, which was fantastic. Had lunch with one on Friday, and today another came over for some fun times on Halo: Reach. I'll admit that I'm not very excited to be going back to school tomorrow, but it'll only be two weeks and then finals before winter break. I think I can handle it.

Anyways, I've also been playing quite a bit of Minecraft this week. The multiplayer mode was recently updated so monsters spawn at night, but we've currently got them disabled since they're a tad bit buggy. My major project this week was a tower based off of the Seattle Space Needle, and I just finished it earlier today. Here's some screenshots of it (Click for pretty large versions!):

A nighttime shot. The clouds actually pass right below the top area.

And a requisite sunrise shot.

According to Minecraft's dimensions of each block being 1 cubic meter, the tower stands just over 50 meters tall (the actual Space Needle is 184m tall) and is just 3 blocks below the vertical limit for building (hence why I wasn't able to add the top antenna-needle bit). A few modifications were also made to make it more suitable for building: the number of "legs" was increased from three to four (since I have no idea how to make an equilateral triangle in Minecraft) and the color scheme was modified quite a bit, since the only white blocks that I'm aware of are sand and cloth - sand being difficult to use since it won't stay up in the air if it isn't supported underneath by another block, and cloth being frustratingly difficult to obtain. Alternatively I could have used natural stone blocks, but you have to stick cobblestone in a furnace for a while to get those and it would have been rather time-consuming.

Overall I'm quite satisfied with the final result, though a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to properly build the top antenna and that the color scheme is a tad bit... patchy? I've already begun to plan my next construction project, which will either be a castle of some type or some sort of circular, gothic-esque tower.

Cue a Thanksgiving-related pun

So, it's that time of year again. The time of year that we get together "to express thankfulness, gratitude, and appreciation to God, family and friends for which all have been blessed of material possessions and relationships" (Source: Wikipedia) by eating a whole bunch of food. And then the next day, express thankfulness, gratitude, and appreciation by injuring and killing each other over dubious "savings".

Uh, yeah, in case you hadn't gathered, I'm not really a huge fan of a.) large groups of people; b.) rampant consumerism; c.) a. and b. compounded together in a single awful day. Just doesn't make sense to me.

Aaand that's about it for now.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

So I'm taking a sociology class this semester, and we just had an assignment to explore deviance in a TV show or movie. I chose Watchmen, as it's one of my favorite graphic novels/movies to date. I watched it last night (The extended version is freakin' long - something like 225 minutes), and just finished up the essay. Thought I'd put the essay up here for amusement.

_____

Despite traditional portrayals of deviance and violence as unacceptable, modern media does much to glorify these behaviors. Often times this deviant behavior is portrayed as being a ‘necessary evil’ to overcome deviance of a greater and more pressing type, as is the case in portrayals of vigilante justice. The 2009 film Watchmen is an excellent example of this, depicting the struggles of a group of vigilante masked heroes who take it upon themselves to accomplish what traditional justice cannot. Despite the fact that the film – and the graphic novel upon which it is based – challenge the traditional view of superhero fantasy with a more cold and nihilistic outlook, it also glorifies the deviant vigilante modus operandi to a certain degree.

Deviance, from a sociological perspective, is defined as any behavior that violates cultural norms and evokes a negative reaction from others, regardless of whether said behavior is illegal or not. As such, there is a considerable amount of variance in the severity of any deviance as seen by society. The deviance portrayed in Watchmen is most often of the illegal variety, encompassing violence and murder, various types of property crime, rape, etc. As such it was often quite easy to determine when an act was deviant and an extremely selective definition of deviance was not necessary.

As previously mentioned, the types of deviance featured in Watchmen varied widely, though most fell under the umbrella of criminal deviance. Easily the most recognizable and prominent type of deviance is violence: in order to combat the rampant crime in New York, the titular Watchmen resort to extralegal vigilantism, whose modus operandi is violence. The most extreme of the Watchmen, Rorschach, clearly subscribes to a radically conservative view of crime: he mocks a psychologist for having “what you call compassion… wanting to protect and understand the guilty, this rotting society, what it calls rehabilitation… nothing short of compromise”. Hence he believes that criminals are inherently evil people and the only way to deal with them is to punish them. This belief is taken to a deviant level by the means through which he punishes crime: In one particular scene he chooses to brutally kill a kidnapper turned murderer, declaring that “Men get arrested. Dogs get put down”. Though the other vigilantes do not express as radical a belief as Rorschach, they all believe to one degree or another that the only appropriate treatment for criminals is punishment. Rorschach’s deviance is further compounded by the fact that, in the film’s alternate United States, masked vigilantes have been declared illegal by the so-called Keene Act. He alone refuses to reveal his identity and retire.

Rape is also portrayed in Watchmen when one member of the Watchmen, the Comedian, attempts to rape another, the Silk Spectre. The Comedian appears to have an extremely nihilistic perspective on life, choosing (as Rorschach puts it) to become “a parody” of what the world truly is. As such, it is perhaps unsurprising that he has no qualms about attempting to rape one of his colleagues or any of the other extreme deviance which he engages in, such as beating civilians to ‘maintain order’ and gunning down a pregnant woman in Vietnam.

Easily the most extreme case of deviance, however, occurs at the film’s climax, when Ozymandias – a previous member of the Watchmen and, arguably, the film’s antagonist – launches attacks on major population centers, under the guise of the godlike Dr. Manhattan. By doing so, he distracts humanity’s attention from warring with itself, making mutual protection against an alien force the priority. Ozymandias takes a radical functionalist approach, stating that he has killed millions “to save billions”. Though his dream of a utopia appears to be realized, the means by which he reaches his ends are indisputably deviant, a severe case of a consensus crime (i.e., directly killing millions of people would be widely recognized as unacceptable).

One of the central tenets of vigilantism is that in order to truly battle evil, it is necessary to do evil – most often in the form of extralegal violence against criminals. As such, the depictions of deviance in Watchmen depend greatly upon who it is that is engaging in the deviant behavior. The Watchmen, unsurprisingly, respond quite negatively – that is to say, violently – to the deviance of their traditional ‘enemies’: criminals, supervillains, etc. Said reaction is also evoked in the audience, with emotional and jarring scenes such as the death of the first and now elderly Nite Owl, beaten to death with a trophy celebrating his work as a superhero. On the other hand, the deviant behavior of the Watchmen is, for the most part, portrayed as heroic and ‘necessary’. Although vigilantism is frowned upon by the fictional American government, it is made easy to sympathize even with Rorschach, who resorts to murder multiple times throughout the course of the film. Other members of the Watchmen seem to celebrate his hard-line approach as well, even being amused at a story where he dropped an otherwise innocent civilian posing as a supervillain in order to get attention (and, possibly, satisfy masochistic desires) down an elevator shaft. The vigilante modus operandi is celebrated as a ‘necessary evil’, and, to a degree, romanticized. To male members of the audience, it is also a chest-pounding celebration of that which is considered masculine: physical strength, justice, extreme rationality, and refusal to back down in the face of adversity.

The line between criminal and vigilante deviance is blurred when the plans of Ozymandias are discovered – although the initial reaction is negative and violent, second thoughts are had when he reveals that the plans worked. With the United States and Soviet Union pledging to work together to move forward, united, the Watchmen realize that in order to preserve the peace, they must remain silent about the true nature of the attacks. The lone exception to this is Rorschach, who declares that he will “never surrender. Not even in the face of Armageddon”. This confusion about the nature and acceptability of the deviance may be due to the changing depiction of Ozymandias: although his actions are unquestionably criminal, the ends to which he aspires are laudable. Hence he is portrayed as an extreme functionalist, willing to sacrifice the lives of millions in order to save the human race as a whole. Although the audience may understand Ozymandias’ plans from a logical perspective, they are still depicted as cold and calculating, and it is difficult to sympathize with his deviance as with the other Watchmen.

This confusion over “killing millions to save billions” serves to challenge the traditional depiction of superheroes and vigilantism. The viewer is initially led to sympathize with and trust the judgment of the Watchmen: although their actions are deviant and, in many cases, illegal, they are portrayed as accomplishing that which traditional justice and norms cannot. This trust is then brought into question when Ozymandias executes his plans. The viewer is left to ponder the unquestioning trust placed in the Watchmen and, ultimately, in almost any authority figure.

Hence the changing depiction of deviance in Watchmen leads viewers to question the norm of placing almost blind trust in authority figures and public heroes. Viewers are led to respect and trust the vigilantes’ role of extralegal justice, but this trust is overturned and replaced with doubt as Ozymandias demonstrates the extreme measures that a trusted individual might take in order to make “progress”. As graffiti throughout the film demands to know, “Who watches the watchmen?”

Rumors of my activity are greatly exaggerated

Aaaaand as promised, here's the Real Life Update post. RLU. Acronyms.

Well, let's see. The latest round of college exams is here and, uh, mostly over. I've got an MCDB exam tomorrow evening, but as a friend pointed out, they drop your lowest score. And since I've gotten 90s on the first two... well, motivation is a tad bit low. I took a chemistry exam last Thursday. The exam was supposed to take about an hour and a half. I finished in half an hour. I'm reminded of the time in freshman math when I finished a quiz before the teacher had finished handing them out to the rest of the class. The score comes back tomorrow. I hate to sound cocky, but I'm not too worried. I've never really had an issue with taking exams.

On a less exam-y note, I recently found out that I need to spend about $200 of "Munch Money" that came with my meal plan on food by the end of the semester, or else it will expire. So, I've been buying beverages and gelato like a madman. I think I went out for gelato with friends twice last week. We're planning to go again after the exam tomorrow night. And I've still got $180 left. Gah. Diabetes, here we come? (We actually calculated it, and I could have purchased 40 scoops of gelato with $200)

The last big thing that's happened is that I got a job working as a lab assistant for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has a lab just by campus (I may have mentioned this previously. I do not recall.). Mostly I'm doing data crunching, though some calibration-stuff with the instrument will happen eventually. It can be a bit boring - I think if I had been involved with actually taking the data, even to a small degree, it would be a bit more engaging and, eh, relevant. Nonetheless, it's fairly interesting and I'll stick with it for now. I'm interested in getting a spot at my chemistry professor's lab - he's a Nobel Laureate, Thomas Cech, and his research is very interesting to me.

I've got next week off for fall break and I'm rather excited. Not to be home - I've been heading home most every weekend (because I'm borderline antisocial, alright?) - but to see friends that I haven't seen in a long time. I'm also thinking about visiting my high school when I get back home Friday. Plans, plans.

The Craft of Mining

Hooray! Time for another Minecraft post. So, there was actually a big ol' Halloween update pretty recently, but I haven't played around much with the new stuff. In any case, my brother and I have been doing a multiplayer server with just the two of us and slowly expanding our settlements in anticipation of when monsters are added to multiplayer. I figured I'd do a screenshot-tour of my two main projects thus far, a cliff-home and a prison island. Onwards!

(Click any of the images for a larger version! The thumbnails don't really do some of the shots justice. In my opinion.)

Here's my cliff-house from the outside (along with its boathouse). The cliff/mountain itself is actually a large, hollow dome-type affair. I built scaffolding up to the roof of the dome and laid a floor out, then added walls, etc.

The view from one of the two balconies in the cliff-house.

Sunset (or rise? I don't recall) from the second balcony - which is actually a fair bit larger than the picture suggests. You can also see my reed and cactus farms down at the bottom.

My pool, built right underneath the main floor of the house. I've taken the liberty of naming it "Sweet-ass Pool Hell Yeah". There's a decent view from the large windows, which I neglected to take a picture of.

That concludes the tour of the cliff-house. I decided not to take screenshots of the other rooms (and hidden vault) because they're not that exciting. Haven't finished furnishing the place. Now, on to the prison island! We had decided to do a bit of exploring and I found a nice X-shaped island (it's kind of shaped like a chromosome, in my opinion...). I'll toss up a Cartograph map of just the island sometime.

Here's the island on approach to the main bay/dock. I do intend to raise the height of the walls by a good deal, but it takes a hell of a lot of cobblestone just to raise the entire length of wall by one block, and I believe in mining all my materials. The large building just right of (and behind) my reticule isn't the prison building itself. Explanation forthcoming.

The island looks incredibly prison-y by night, in my opinion. Also, the lighthouse (that tall tower on the left) looks much better in the dark.

Here's the interior of the main prison building. It's got something like 5 cells on the first floor and 8 on the second, plus 12 solitary confinement cells underground.

The guard's clubhouse. I accidentally burned it down at about the halfway point of construction while I was trying to murder an errant chicken.

And, of course, the clubhouse has an underground pool. Nowhere near as nice as Sweet-ass Pool Hell Yeah, though, because that one has glass walls.

Here's the guard barracks and one of the guard towers, which is connected to the roof by a walkway. I need to put up fences around the perimeter of the roof.

And here's the large building that I pointed out in the first screenshot: The warden's house! It's pretty nice, with a large entrance area, patio around back on both the first and second floor (visible from that first screenshot, I believe), large dining room (bereft of furnishings at the moment, of course), bedroom, and office.

Finally, a sunset image of some of the island.

So yeah, that's that for Minecraft, at the moment. If I make significant progress, I'll do another update on the island. We also built a cliffside hotel building, but it's not nearly as interesting as the prison island. Which I need to name.

Lost it

Thought I'd post my latest sketch (click on it to go to the larger DeviantArt image!). Reference image here - apparently this actually happened, and one lady got killed. Scary.

Oh, and the stuff I mentioned in my last post (Minecraft, real life-y stuff) will go up sometime soon. Maybe today.

Nallout: Vew Fegas

Well, it's about time for an update again. It's actually been quite a while since my last post - been playing a lot of Fallout: New Vegas recently, so I figure I'll start off with my impressions of that.

Which are, namely, that it's obscenely fun. To anyone who hasn't played any of the Fallout games (my experience is limited to Fallout 3 - been considering playing some of the older ones sometime), here's a quick rundown of the backstory (For more, see the Fallout wiki). The Fallout universe is set in an alternative timeline in which the world has been devastated by a massive nuclear war between the United States and China. Fortunately for some people in the United States, they are relocated to underground Vaults in time to survive, and the various Fallout games take place sometime after this (about 100 years, I believe). With that extremely brief rundown out of the way, on to the game. It's been blasted in several reviews as rather buggy for a big release - and to a certain degree, that's true - but for me, the sheer scope and opportunity for adventure makes up for it. An example:

I was wandering about in Freeside, a small town just outside New Vegas - which, by the way, survived the brunt of the war and has been rebuilt in - sort of - its former image. The casinos are still there, anyways. I noticed an NPC (that is, non-player character) waving at me from a side street and opted to follow him. Once he'd led me to the end of an alley, he pointed out a body and declared that it belonged to the "last person stupid enough to follow me". After this he and a few other thugs attempted to mug me, but were quickly dispatched. Being irked that they had attempted this, I then dumped their bodies in a dumpster (You're able to move around most small-to-medium sized objects), tossed a grenade in, and walked away. Note that nothing of this but the original waving and mugging sequence were scripted by the game - I just decided that it'd be fun to do that last part. This, to me, is what makes the Fallout games so much fun. Although a lot of the game is definitely pre-scripted, with a relatively defined path, a lot of it is composed of situations that are presented to you, and you're left to decide how to deal with them. I've read that it's possible to complete the game either killing a. nobody, or b. everybody.

Anyways, I'm nowhere near completing the game (though, to be fair, I never truly completed Fallout 3, either). The developers say that New Vegas and the surrounding Mojave Wasteland are much larger than Fallout 3's Capitol Wasteland (i.e. it took place in the ruins of Washington D.C.), and that was a damned big area to wander around in, as well. Moreover, the game presents all sorts of opportunity for replay. I'm currently playing as a morally good kleptomaniac and long-distance sniper (though I've cut down on the indiscriminate stealing now that I've got plenty of wealth). I think next I'll play as either an evil sociopath in heavy armor and weapons, or a morally ambiguous melee character. In addition to character "archetypes", so to speak - although your skills and stats are entirely self-defined, the huge number of factions in the game present plenty of opportunity for replay. I'm currently with the New California Republic (NCR), which is attempting to set up a new government, but think I might align with their opponents, Caesar's Legion, a huge slaving band organized and modeled off of the Roman army, next playthrough. Who knows?

Well, that's probably plenty for this post. I've also been playing a good deal of Minecraft multiplayer with my brother, and I'll write about that soon - I think screenshots would be much more beneficial for that than my Fallout adventures. I'll also write some about what's going on off in the "real world" soon. Right now, I think I should sleep.

Hurfblargh

So, I guess it's probably a good time to update on what's been going on. Lessee...

I've been continuing to do sketches and suchlike. Apart from those five, I've also got a few ideas queued up for later - that is, whenever I've got some time to sketch.

School's been continuing as usual, though I just got sick the other day, and it's irritating as hell. Runny nose, sore throat, a headache, the works. I took a two-hour nap after my last class today, woke up feeling only slightly better and unsure of what day it was (I hate how that always seems to happen), went to eat dinner, where I decided to drink some red Gatorade because it looked like cough syrup and I was wondering if it'd work as a placebo (It didn't), and then went to a chemistry test which I had decided not to study for. Actually, I just got back from said test, and it went fine, though it took me a bit longer than expected due to the whole "head-felt-like-a-compressed-balloon" thing.

Outside of school, we've been working quite a bit on my apartment for next semester, and it's coming along nicely. I've got some pictures on my phone, but I'm too lazy to put them up now. Suffice to say, the walls are pretty much all painted, the bathroom's getting close to completion, and we're starting to work on installing the new cabinets in the kitchen. I should probably start thinking about furniture and layout soon.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure I got a job today as a lab assistant at the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) labs just off campus. Duties will involve lots of data processing and some work with their instruments. I'm excited.

On a completely irrelevant note, I purchased my Halloween costume today, though it has to ship and such. Unfortunately they only had it in small size, but I'm desperately hoping it'll fit. I won't say what it is now, so I can do a big dramatic unveiling or something.

That's all for now!

Happy birthday

... to me. We spent six hours today shopping for stuff for my new apartment (namely for remodeling - flooring, cabinets, shower, etc.) and I'm rather tired.

So, that's all for the moment.

A (Hopefully) Short and (Hopefully) Reasonable Discussion on Art

People often ask if I'm taking an art course when they see my sketchbook, and more often than not they're surprised that the answer is no. Truth be told, I actually haven't taken an art course since elementary school (No, that graphic arts class I took freshman year of high school doesn't count - it hardly even counted as a class at all), and it's actually for a relatively specific (In my opinion, anyways [What's with all the parenthesis in this post?]) reason: I don't believe that art courses, as they are usually taught, are able to teach people art.

Now, before you get all uppity (I'm looking at you, reader!) with me, allow me to elaborate. I think a structured art course can teach certain aspects of art, namely the technical ones: Perspective, shading techniques, etc. What art courses fail and are unable to teach, however, is an artistic way of viewing things. You're perfectly fine showing someone the technique of drawing what they see, but it's an entirely different matter to teach them what is worth capturing and in what way.

Take, for example, a still life - a pretty common assignment in art courses. Assuming a reasonably competent teacher, you can be pretty sure that most people in the class will be able to draw the objects as they are presented. But Art - with a capital A - is more than that. Art is being able to look at the presentation of the objects and decide upon a good angle to view them from, optimum lighting, the style in which one captures the objects, etc. It takes a special perspective on the world to be able to do this, and in my opinion, this is something that you can't teach someone. It's akin to telling someone who is colorblind to look at one of those generic "numbers hidden in the dots" images and say to them, "No, no, you just need to view the green dots as a single object" (I realize this analogy may not be completely appropriate to the situation, but it's the best I can come up with for the moment). You're telling the person to view the image using a means that they simply do not have, and trying to teach someone to view the world through a figurative artistic lens presents a similar challenge.

Now, I'll admit that I too am guilty of sometimes just drawing what I see, but I like to think that I have a certain talent for rearranging or creating scenes in a reasonably creative manner in my other pieces. One thing that would appeal to me is a more loosely-run art class, wherein students are given minimal (if any) direction as to their work and simply told to create a certain number of pieces by the end of the course. I've heard that these types of classes do exist, but they tend to have structured classes as a prerequisite. So maybe it is reasonable to have people got through an introductory, structured class, to identify those who can think creatively, before allowing them into a loosely-run class. Moreover, I think structured art courses are a definite necessity for someone who actually intends to go into the art world, because it's assumed that these people already possess the "artistic lenses" and simply need to refine their technique. But for someone who possesses no artistic sense whatsoever, I would argue that it's nigh impossible to teach them to look at the world artistically.

Personally, though, I think I'll just stick with casual sketching for now. Maybe sometime in the future...

Moleskine! Also some other stuff.

(click for a larger version)

Yeah! Pictured there is the first drawing I've done in my new Moleskine sketchbook (From Amazon, for $12).

It really just started out as the central "body" sphere, from which I just started adding details and components and whatnot until I got bored of doing so. I have no idea how to draw water tanks, so improvised.

Now, on to other stuff.

I recently got a free pair of Skullcandy Icon headphones from the "grand reopening" of CU's bookstore. I'm using them now and they're decent - I prefer headphones over earbuds just for comfort reasons.

I also picked up some TUL mechanical pencils and Paper Mate Black Pearl erasers this past weekend while I was at home. I've used one of the TUL pencils before and really like the way it feels when you're writing with it. Haven't been disappointed thus far. The Black Pearls have been recommended to me and they were $1.99 for a pair of two, so I figured I might as well.

Speaking of being at home, I played some Halo: Reach as well (Amazon's currently got a promotional offer going - order Reach and you get $20 in credit towards your next video game purchase). The campaign storyline was fantastic - I think it's true that the previous iterations have been very Halo fan-oriented, with a lot of terminology, etc. Reach, on the other hand, went for a much more human story, and it really comes through. The customization system (You earn credits for doing things, which can be spent on new armor permutations, etc.) and daily challenges are very well-implemented and I was actually motivated to play multiplayer by some of the challenges (Of note - I very rarely play a game seriously. I'm much more likely to screw around.). All in all, an excellent conclusion to Bungie's Halo arc of games.

How to get around on campus

So thus far, I've seen people getting around campus by car, bicycle, tiny bicycle (I don't even know if there's a real name for those but they look so silly with a grown teenager riding one and the knees flailing about and such), skateboard, tiny skateboard, longboard, roller blades, a scooter, and on foot.

UPDATE: I've now also seen someone on a unicycle and someone on an electric scooter.

UP-UPDATE: I just saw some people on one of those two-person bicycles. Those are called tandem bicycles, I think.

UPDATE VOL. 3: Saw someone in a velomobile earlier. I don't like the name "velomobile". I'm going to start calling them "Bike-Pods". I think I should just make a page to list the vehicle types that I've seen around campus.

Modes of transportation that I have not but would very much like to see (Along with helpful reference images!):

• Piggyback ride
• Horse-drawn carriage
• Chariot
• Bear
• Sherman crab tank (Actually, any tank would be fine, but one with a mine flail would be hilarious)
• Zeppelin
• Roman testudo
• Siege tower

Just my two cents.

P.S. On an irrelevant note, I just ordered a 22x17" House of Doolittle Refillable Doodle Pad from Amazon, for my desk. Hopefully it'll prove useful for my spur-of-the-moment doodling, calculations and whatnot, notes to myself, etc.

Röyksopp - Senior

Röyksopp's new album, Senior, is currently streaming on the Hype Machine. Listening to it now, it's pretty fantastic.

Listen to it here.

The Troubles of a Bored College Student

Oh, woe is me.

Week One: Complete!

Made it through a week of classes! Yeah! Checkpoint reached! And it's... well, not very stimulating or challenging thus far.

I'm currently enrolled in Intro to Molecular/Cellular/Developmental Biology (From here on out, I will refer to it as MCDB), General Chemistry for Majors, Intro to Sociology, and Intro to the Bible. My MCDB class is seriously just a review of last year's class, according to the syllabus. However, it also doesn't cover as much stuff, so maybe they go into more detail. Maybe. Chemistry might actually prove to be an interesting class, as it is taught by Thomas Cech, a Nobel Laureate. Thus far, however, it's just been a review of basic stuff - significant figures, units, dimensional analysis, etc. More on that in a moment. Intro to Sociology also seems like it might have promise - the material seems relatively interesting (bordering on IB Theory of Knowledge-esque). However, I'm not certain that the other people in the class are capable of discussing it at an engaging level. Yes, yes, that's me being egotistic. I don't care. As far as Intro to the Bible goes, I'm actually amused since my teacher seems more liable to laugh at the Bible than I am. Hmh. Could be a fun class. Intro to the Bible is also my smallest class (as it is an honors class), with about 20 people. The rest of my lectures are all at least 100.

I've also come to the realization (Er, re-realization?) that I'm really really bad at meeting new people. I was okay in IB because generally people were pretty motivated and intellectually interesting to speak to, but it's nigh impossible to judge that sort of thing in a college environment, with thousands of people walking around. As such, I'm finding myself making pre-judgments of people before I meet them, which might not necessarily be a good thing. The problem is, I'm somewhat incapable of having an extended conversation with someone that I don't already respect to some degree. And it's proving to be somewhat difficult to respect these people. For example, in my first chemistry lab section, we were (again) going over basic things: significant figures, units, and the like. Here's the gist of one of the problems that they gave us:

You have a 5.0 cubic centimeter sample of a substance. It has a density of 1.5 g/cm^3. If you were to double the volume to 10.0 cubic centimeters, what would the density be? DO NOT CALCULATE THIS - JUST GIVE AN ANSWER AND EXPLAIN WHY.

See the part where it explicitly says "do not calculate"? Well, at least three people (Possibly more - these three were sitting right in my vicinity) attempted to calculate it. I tried to explain why that wasn't necessary. One person sort of figured it out after a moment (Or, at least, pretended to). One person couldn't be convinced. One person stared blankly at me for a moment before just writing down 1.5 g/cm^3. At this point, I decided that interacting wasn't really worthwhile and decided instead to draw a picture of the most interesting thing in the room: A faucet. See below.

So... yeah. As I suspected, the intellectual transition to college wasn't a transition at all. More of a fall down a hill. The social transition, however, may prove to be a bit more problematic. I will say that I have met some people who I am okay with interacting with for an extended period of time. Some are Lakewood IB kids who came to CU. Another couple are IB people from other schools. One is my roommate, who is pretty alright. And finally, I met a senior over breakfast one day, after convincing the coffee shop to sell me a cup of milk (I am not a coffee drinker at all). So, I guess there's hope.

Onwards, then.

On a different note, I may have found a potential way to make some money over the course of my college life. A friend of mine who was in debate (Now going to Stanford) is starting up a business, selling debate research to high school coaches, and offered to pay me to design a logo for him. I, of course, accepted, and it seems to be going well (Progress shots to be uploaded at some point). I guess I could do some graphic design/consulting as a small part-time affair, though it might be tricky to establish myself. Something to consider.

Insert college-related title here

Well, I'm all moved in and classes start tomorrow. Not actually that concerned about the classes themselves - the most classes I have in a day is 3 (although some are a tad bit longer than others - my chem lab is almost 4 hours long). The main thing I'll need to work on, I think, is meeting people. As I mentioned in the last post, I'm a pretty solitary person by nature. I'll need to force myself to get out and meet new people in this first year, since we've already purchased a one-bedroom apartment for next year. Hopefully I can get together the resolve to talk to people in my classes, etc.

I've actually been at home for the last two days. Came home the night of the 20th, after a meeting with my 'flock' (a group of 20-30 people from my dorm). Haven't really been up to much - went out and purchased an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier/fax machine the other day, got some candy and snacks for next year, grabbed some dress clothes and suchlike, etc. Mostly it's just been seeing the family a bit before I head off - though I do plan to be home every couple of weeks. It's nice, going to a college that's just a 40-minute drive from home. I'm far enough away to feel independent, but close enough that I can get home easily if I should want to.

Anyways, I'm heading back up to campus in about an hour. Apparently there's a "dessert with the professors" thing tonight, which I suspect would be a good thing to attend. Though it's doubtful that any huge, meaningful bonds will be formed with the professors - the freshman class is (unsurprisingly) rather large. Oh well.

I've got only two classes Monday; biology and chemistry (science day?). Should be interesting.

Movin' In

Well, here we are. Just moved in to my dorm today, and classes start on the 23rd.

I wish I could say that I'm excited, but I'd be lying. More accurately, I'm just feeling drained. Not so much physically, but more emotionally.

They say it's a huge transition, switching to college. Huge amounts of freedom, no one checking up on you, etc. Me, I haven't noticed anything yet. Just a change of scenery and new people to meet. The latter of which I am not doing a very good job with. I've always been a pretty solitary person - something that probably won't help me out too much, here. I imagine I'll do alright once this lethargy wears off.

Guess I should probably go find something to do now. Sitting about in my room isn't getting me anywhere.

Updates and Business Cards

I just got bored and made a banner for the blog. I've been messing with the logo a bit lately - I like the simplicity, though I do feel like there's something missing. Once I've refined it, I'm thinking about designing a business card for myself.

Speaking of business cards, I'm working on designing one for a friend of mine. Here's the current preview:

Front

Back

In his own words, he was looking for a "subtly elegant" design, which I tried to accomplish with the simple color scheme and layout. The flourishes on the logo were my first tries at that sort of style, and I'm pretty pleased with the result. The stylized rose on the back was also my design - actually, it was something I did with my tablet quickly to illustrate the idea to him, but I liked it enough that I just went ahead and used it on the card itself. The text on the front (Connosieur of Fine Wine and Finer Women | Raconteur Extraordinaire | Courtier of the Highest Degree) was provided by him. The font used was "Champagne and Limousines", which I got here. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the design thus far and he seems to like it as well.

Minecraft

I've been playing a lot of Minecraft recently. In 7 words, it's a block-based building and survival game. That description, however, doesn't quite do it justice. Instead, I'll list some of the stuff I've done so far in the game.

• Blew up a mountain.
• Carved a fortress into a (different) mountain.
• Built a castle.
• Got lost in one of the game's randomly generated cave systems for several hours.
• Fought a forest fire.
• Rode on a pig.
• Fell down a giant natural hole.
• Punched a skeleton, chicken, cow and giant spider in the face.
• Tested making land mines.
• Built a bridge in the sky in order to reach an existing floating chunk of land.
• Built and managed a farm.

There's currently two major iterations of the game: Classic and Alpha. Classic is free and, being so, lacks many of the major features of Alpha. I believe it has a basic version of the survival mode as well. Alpha, the version that is being actively developed, requires you to purchase the game (I believe it's currently about $10 USD) but opens up all of the possibilities.

One thing that definitely deserves mention is the world generation. Upon creating a new game world in Alpha, you'll see a loading screen which will tell you that the world is being generated, after which you'll be dropped off in the world. As you start exploring (And you'll definitely want to start exploring), the game will continue to generate new landscape, which can result in some seriously amazing vistas. For example, here are a couple screenshots of the area that my friend and I are settling down in, as well as a map of my singleplayer game's world generated with the player-developed tool Cartograph (click for full-size):

Y'know how I mentioned a floating chunk and cliff earlier? This is a different floating chunk and cliff.

We're planning to build little houses along the walls of this hollow mountain that we found.

Map of my singleplayer world. If you zoom in a bunch on the center island, you can see the stone trail I built out from my fortress to the ocean. I'm not really sure what's up with the map chunks that aren't connected to anything.

You'll note from the screenshots that Minecraft has a pretty distinct visual style (For reference, that thing in the bottom right corner of the first screenshot is my sword). Most of the blocks that make up the world are cubes, and everything has a very pixellated look to it. It may be a little different at first, but once you get used to it, it's really got a charming feel to it.

Now, I mentioned survival earlier. The game's got a day/night cycle, and if your difficulty level isn't set to Peaceful, you're going to want to avoid being outside at night. When the sun goes down, monsters appear, so you'll want to work quickly to find and establish your hideout. As you progress, you'll be able to craft weapons and armor and possibly consider venturing out at night to battle the baddies, as well as move on to bigger and better bases.

The alpha version of the much-anticipated Survival Multiplayer (SMP) mode is currently out, though unfortunately it lacks the Survival aspect of the title at the moment. Even still, I've been having a lot of fun exploring with friends and also preemptively setting up our fortress for when monsters are added.

As I mentioned earlier, the game currently only costs about $10-15, and that gives you free access to all of the current features plus any updates in the future. If you're a fan of exploration/building games like I am, I'd definitely recommend it.

Project: Draw Everything

Had nothing to do at work for a bit. Drew my car keys. (Yes, the bunny has only one eye. It's an old bunny. Also, its ears are coming close to falling off.)

P.S. Picture taken with my (less-than-awesome) cell phone camera, so sorry for the poor quality.

P.P.S. I'm also going to try using Flattr out a bit. It probably won't go anywhere, but hey, let's try it anyways.

My Laptop-y Escapades

Seems I just have bad luck with laptops. I ended up returning my Lenovo Y560 because of a. obscene overheating and b. a strange glitch wherein the cursor would randomly become 3 or 4 times larger than usual for a few minutes, every so often. I replaced it with an HP ENVY 15, which arrived a couple days ago, and was so excited that I decided to document the unboxing process with photos:

HP paid serious attention to detail with the packaging of the ENVY series. The box feels quite heavy duty and I'm definitely going to save it for something else. (On an irrelevant note, those are push-up bars in the background)

Open the box up, and there's the laptop, in a nice sleeve. Underneath the Getting Started pamphlet on the right is the laptop manual, stored on a 2GB SD card.

The laptop out of the box, still in sleeve. The sleeve is pretty soft and I'll probably continue to use it to protect the laptop from scratching and such.

Laptop, out-of-sleeve. There's a subtle floral-esque pattern of dots, which HP says was laser-etched onto the cover. The entire laptop is made of aluminum and magnesium (Fancy-sounding, I know) and feels well-built. It's also quite thin and light.

And here it is, opened. It has a 15.6" screen with a 1920x1080 resolution - for reference, my 21.5" monitor has the same resolution, meaning that text can be pretty small at the default zoom level. However, it's also extremely pretty. The laptop has a very Macbook Pro-esque aesthetic, which isn't necessarily bad - the usual glossy plastic starts to be annoying after a while. The island-style keyboard (similar to those on Macbook Pros) is quite nice to type on. It would have been nice if the laptop had a backlit keyboard, but I'm a touch-typist anyways. It has a large touchpad with integrated buttons, also similar to the Macbook, but it's not quite as nice to use. It'll probably take a bit of getting used to. One thing that does bother me is that the screen doesn't open more than about 100 degrees.

Now that that's done with, on to the problems. When I first started up the laptop, it told me that there was an error with the cooling fans, and proceeded to shut down. "Damn," I thought. After a few more tries, it finally started up successfully. However, it's been giving me the error message 90% of the time now, and I just noticed last night that the fan on the left side of the computer isn't working at all - Presumably, that's the source of the problem.

None of the 'solutions' on the HP website worked (They told me to "update" to the BIOS version already installed). So I finally gave up and contacted tech support for a repair. They're sending the shipping materials today and estimated a 7-9 day turnaround. Hopefully they can fulfill that estimate, since I'm going to need a computer come the beginning of school.

Ah, woe is me. Etcetera.

Thoughts: Project: MyWorld

So Realtime Worlds just announced a new project, Project: MyWorld. They're billing it as "if Nintendo built Google Earth", and thus far, it looks quite cool. Essentially, here's what it is (from what I saw, anyways):

• Take Google Earth and generate 3D models for every building, mountain, river, forest, lake, etc. Basically, generate the world in 3D.
• Give people the ability to edit said world in a Wikipedia-esque fashion. That is to say, let them modify or add buildings so that the virtual world is more accurate to the real world.
• Toss in minigames: Driving, flying, fishing (from what I saw in the demo, probably lots more to come).
• Add on top of that a Monopoly-like property system, allowing people to purchase specific buildings, etc.
• On top of this all, overlay social networking: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and so on and so forth.

And in a nutshell, that's what it looks like RTW's trying to accomplish. It's definitely an ambitious project.

The videos released thus far can be found here (I would just watch the walkthrough, as it has everything from the trailer plus explanation and much more in the way of features). [EDIT: It seems that the walkthrough video has disappeared for the time being.]

From the commentary thus far, it looks like people are pretty split between cynic- and optim-ism on Project: MyWorld. I'm a bit ambivalent as well: While there'll definitely be room for typical internet-immaturity, the "Wikipedia-style system" that is hinted at in the extended walkthrough video just might work, if this project does catch on like Wikipedia did, with a dedicated group of player moderators.

One thing that I am a bit concerned about is the "property system". Although the video doesn't fully flesh it out, I'm wondering how property ownership will work. Could someone in the first week or so of the game accrue huge amounts of money, then purchase any and all desirable property? Time has proven that people are very good at finding and exploiting ways to gain huge amounts of money, both in the virtual and real world, and it'll be interesting to see if and how RTW fights this.

That also brings up the questions of the monetary system. The walkthrough video hints that currency will be obtained by contributing. Will contributions have to be approved before they "earn" compensation (I seriously hope that this will be the case)? Will players be able to earn money through the minigames? Or purchase ingame currency a la Second Life (Actually - and I'm a bit embarrassed because I just thought of this - Project: MyWorld seems very evocative of Second Life)? In any case, I fully expect a fairly robust virtual economy to develop.

Finally, I'm curious about how (and if) players will be "split up". Traditionally, massively multiplayer games tend to have multiple 'servers', which are separate copies of the game world. Players are split up into these 'servers' (sometimes called shards) to avoid overpopulation and stress on the game. A few games, such as EVE Online, choose instead to put every player into a single game world. These games tend to feature much larger worlds (In the case of EVE, an entire universe), and for this reason I'm predicting that Project: MyWorld will opt to put all players on a single copy of the world (Hell, if the real world can support all of us, the virtual one should hopefully be able to support a much smaller community of people).

All that said, I'm interested in how this develops. Second Life, when it debuted, was also billed as game-changing, but from what I've seen, it hasn't majorly changed the face of the world - virtual or otherwise. Regardless, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that RTW can live up to its ambitions with this project.