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.