The BBC has a cool photo of a really big fish today. It's really, really big.
Meanwhile, on campus, it looks like Stephen Hawking might not be able to give a guest lecture in town after all due to his health problems, which would be most unfortunate. However, I was looking at the archives of previous lecturers and we've had some pretty impressive people speak here. Amongst them: Roger Penrose (of Penrose tiling fame), Leonard Mlodinow (physicist and author of The Drunkard's Walk and Feynman's Rainbow), and Jay Ingram (my idol).
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Renovating, Please Stand By
*We interrupt this post to bring you an informational update about the website.*
I've been ignoring my main domain (majugi.com) to write this blog for some time, but it will soon be coming back online to host more permanent pages. A new homepage design is already up to test the layout and links to this blog.
I've been ignoring my main domain (majugi.com) to write this blog for some time, but it will soon be coming back online to host more permanent pages. A new homepage design is already up to test the layout and links to this blog.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
I Love Libraries
It's the long weekend! Yay!
It's also rainy, most people have gone home for the weekend, and the jazz band canceled practice. In short, it's the perfect time to finally get a library card. This is process is a bit annoying for students who move every four months, but digging up the sublet agreement and filling out a form is a small price to pay for a free bookstore, music store, and movie rental place within walking distance.
So what did I get on my first visit to the library? I decided to get one item from each of the three main media types the library carried (books, cds, and dvds) and ended up with:
It's also rainy, most people have gone home for the weekend, and the jazz band canceled practice. In short, it's the perfect time to finally get a library card. This is process is a bit annoying for students who move every four months, but digging up the sublet agreement and filling out a form is a small price to pay for a free bookstore, music store, and movie rental place within walking distance.
So what did I get on my first visit to the library? I decided to get one item from each of the three main media types the library carried (books, cds, and dvds) and ended up with:
- Anna Russel -- Again? (CD) (They also had an album by the Arrogant Worms)
- Man, Beast, And Zombie: What Science Can and Cannot Tell Us About Human Nature (Book)
- Farscape: The Best of Season One (!) (DVD)
Friday, May 15, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Mysteries of the Long Lost Folders - Episode 1
Hey, look what I just found in my drawing folder (see above)! It's all weird and artsy! I get the feeling Freud would have a lot to say about this picture.In other news, I visited my sister over the weekend and she introduced me to Wasted Talent, a webcomic drawn by an engineering graduate who for some reason wants to go and indulge her weird artsy side. It is most unnatural. Having said that, it's also awesome. [Sample joke: a prof says 'Ignoring the air resistance..." causing two students to snicker at the thought of deadly rain that never hits terminal velocity. No seriously, it's funny.]
Ninjas and Health
If you aren't healthy enough to withstand a ninja attack, then you're not really healthy. Which is why I've finally caved to parental and doctoral advice and am going to go get some physio.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
A Day in the Life
This post is a bit belated, but I was going too crazy on the day it actually happened to write about it then. The day in question was the 20th of April; the day of my last exam.
I woke up that morning to find a probability exam written into my schedule. It had been scheduled in the night before in the large, desperate, pen-scratch font that is customary for scheduling morning exams. "Heed me," the font screamed from the sticky note on the wall, "or suffer the consequences as you sleep through your exam and fail miserably out of life."
And heed the note I did, as I sprinted out of the house and onto the bus towards campus. True, I came closer to missing the bus than I should have due to a poorly laced boot that threatened to fall off in the final sprint, but I caught the bus nonetheless and all was good. Yes, all was good, for not only had I caught the bus, but I had studied well for that exam and felt prepared to do battle with it. I felt, as I rode onto campus, like a probabilistic cruise missile, ready (nineteen times out of twenty) to deliver a deadly payload of ninety-nine point nine percent accuracy onto the questions that defied me.
That was until I realized I had left my wallet on the bus.
You see, earlier, upon boarding the bus, I put my wallet on the ground to tie the laces of my boot which, as you will recall, had come undone in the sprint to the bus. This literal undoing of shoe laces threatened to initiate a larger, more catastrophically metaphorical undoing of my mind right before the exam as I freaked out about my wallet. But I digress.
I should clarify that at the time of this incident, my wallet also contained almost every piece of ID that I own, plus the student card required to write my probability exam.
Fortunately, it turns out that people don't really care about that whole "show the student card" rule during exams. I subsequently aced that exam more thoroughly than I had any right to expect.
So the exam was over and things were going swimmingly, but I still didn't have my wallet or, by extension, any way to get into my house (yes, my wallet also had my keys in it). At this point, I called up my sister, a seasoned pro in losing stuff on buses, and a short while later we found that my wallet was being held by the local transit authorities.
Success! Exaltation! Oh, happy, happy day! I didn't even care that I had yet to retrieve my wallet from the bus terminal across town; it was found and everything would be okay. I was feeling so good about this turn of events, that I decided to just trek out and pick up my wallet. Of course, I knew it was a long walk and that it was raining, and that I probably could have just borrowed some change from someone to pay the bus fare before I got my wallet back, but that didn't matter to me just then.
It started to matter to me a lot more over the course of the next hour. Eventually, I was wet enough and lost enough to use the old 'phone a friend' tactic.
"Help," I pleaded, "I am cold and wet and have no idea where I am."
"Bahahahahaha" he replied, but, fundamentally non-evil person that he is, he then googled my location and joyfully informed me that I had been walking in the wrong direction for an hour.
*Sigh.
Well that was pretty much the interesting part of the day. After that, I walked back, met up with the guy I had called, borrowed a bus fare from him, retrieved my wallet, and then went to a restaurant and had a grand old time celebrating the end of the term.
The End.
No Sequel. Ever.
I woke up that morning to find a probability exam written into my schedule. It had been scheduled in the night before in the large, desperate, pen-scratch font that is customary for scheduling morning exams. "Heed me," the font screamed from the sticky note on the wall, "or suffer the consequences as you sleep through your exam and fail miserably out of life."
And heed the note I did, as I sprinted out of the house and onto the bus towards campus. True, I came closer to missing the bus than I should have due to a poorly laced boot that threatened to fall off in the final sprint, but I caught the bus nonetheless and all was good. Yes, all was good, for not only had I caught the bus, but I had studied well for that exam and felt prepared to do battle with it. I felt, as I rode onto campus, like a probabilistic cruise missile, ready (nineteen times out of twenty) to deliver a deadly payload of ninety-nine point nine percent accuracy onto the questions that defied me.
That was until I realized I had left my wallet on the bus.
You see, earlier, upon boarding the bus, I put my wallet on the ground to tie the laces of my boot which, as you will recall, had come undone in the sprint to the bus. This literal undoing of shoe laces threatened to initiate a larger, more catastrophically metaphorical undoing of my mind right before the exam as I freaked out about my wallet. But I digress.
I should clarify that at the time of this incident, my wallet also contained almost every piece of ID that I own, plus the student card required to write my probability exam.
Fortunately, it turns out that people don't really care about that whole "show the student card" rule during exams. I subsequently aced that exam more thoroughly than I had any right to expect.
So the exam was over and things were going swimmingly, but I still didn't have my wallet or, by extension, any way to get into my house (yes, my wallet also had my keys in it). At this point, I called up my sister, a seasoned pro in losing stuff on buses, and a short while later we found that my wallet was being held by the local transit authorities.
Success! Exaltation! Oh, happy, happy day! I didn't even care that I had yet to retrieve my wallet from the bus terminal across town; it was found and everything would be okay. I was feeling so good about this turn of events, that I decided to just trek out and pick up my wallet. Of course, I knew it was a long walk and that it was raining, and that I probably could have just borrowed some change from someone to pay the bus fare before I got my wallet back, but that didn't matter to me just then.
It started to matter to me a lot more over the course of the next hour. Eventually, I was wet enough and lost enough to use the old 'phone a friend' tactic.
"Help," I pleaded, "I am cold and wet and have no idea where I am."
"Bahahahahaha" he replied, but, fundamentally non-evil person that he is, he then googled my location and joyfully informed me that I had been walking in the wrong direction for an hour.
*Sigh.
Well that was pretty much the interesting part of the day. After that, I walked back, met up with the guy I had called, borrowed a bus fare from him, retrieved my wallet, and then went to a restaurant and had a grand old time celebrating the end of the term.
The End.
No Sequel. Ever.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
