trisweb.com

at least.

Back into the routine… but the first week is always generally easy. Math is easy so far, but it’s just a review of solving linear systems at the moment. It will get harder. Everything else is nothing so far. CS is cool, Java is very much like C in syntax and control structures… shouldn’t be too hard to learn. I also downloaded Visual Studio .NET from the very diverse collection of Microsoft software to which I now have access as a student in a CS class. Also available: Windows XP Pro, Tablet PC Editions, Server (2003), and 2000, plus about 15 other versions of Windows and ~30 other applications. Some genius got the school an online academic licence distributor so they could give the stuff to the students. Yay.

Band has been more time consuming than school so far, but only because I don’t have any real work to do yet. I stress ‘yet’. I should go get my books tomorrow though….

Damn, I’m tired. Goodnight. And good riddance to the freezer. ::

Six hours of class is more than one should be allowed to attend in a single day when the temperature is over 80 degrees and 85% humidity and it’s Berkeley.

Or, at least, they could install air conditioning.

But it is interesting, this heat. The last two days have set records for the entire bay area, the city especially, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be cooling down anytime soon. I guess that’s what happens when you retract pollution control measures on coal-burning power plants nationwide. Heck, they’re making even more because of all the air conditioners running.

Well, Berkeley doesn’t have air conditioners. A standard 18” fan is usually enough for an entire house, usually even an entire lecture hall; so, where the heat would be normal for me in So Cal, I would have A/C; but here, it’s cooler than it is in So Cal, but no A/C. I think I’ll go hang out in the freezer for a few minutes. Yeah walk-in freezer.

Oh, classes… right. I started off with an ES lecture, which looks pretty cool. It’s basically an introduction to the environment and environmental scientific procedure, which I’ve never formally done right. So that should be fun. I have the discussion (which, I found, is mostly a lab held outdoors including hiking, ecology, experiments, and Strawberry Creek, and my GSI is cool) right after lecture, and that was just 2 hours of name-games and the human knot (at which we failed miserably) to try to get to know each other slightly. It wasn’t… not… fun. Oh, and when I introduced myself, of course, I had to say something about Patagonia; and the GSI totally did a little speech on what Patagonia did and how cool they were. Yay.

The other classes were just math and CS. Two good things about CS: Dan Garcia (professor) is as—enthusiastic—as ever; and there’s only one midterm and one final. Hooray for not very many tests. Math was decent as well. Chinese professor, heavy accent, but anyone who’s been in a math class here is used to it by now (I’ll have to switch modes from Russian though). Seems nice, the grading is well done, and the discussions this week are cancelled—so no class until noon tomorrow. Don’t worry, I’m going to bed right now. After the freezer. Yeah—freezer, then bed. Okay, goodnight. ::

I guess I should post something before I start school…

My classes should be somewhat interesting this semester. ESPM 10, Math 54M (a.k.a. ‘with computer-aided labs’) and CS 61B. I’m also taking one self-paced class on UNIX for one unit. That should be valuable and interesting. Oh, and then there’s band. Should be fun.

It is hot in our room tonight… all the windows are open, and it’s just not cooling down. Maybe I should turn off my computer….

Three more days until Mars’ peak brightness (that’s Thursday folks)! Woohoo! I hope they have something atop Campbell hall (building with telescopes) to celebrate. I’d go.

TH has been the best place in the world for the last three days. Cal had this thing this year called “caltopia,” with fun stuff and concerts and such… it sucked, Cal Band scoped it out when we played for it. But TH had TH-opia, which was much better. We played Mafia and Psychiatrist the first night, then went to the city the next morning, played Capture the Flag on campus (which didn’t work out too well—I’m writing an official rulebook for next time—but was, nonetheless, fun), played more mafia that night, played volleyball and basketball all today and more mafia and other fun games tonight. The newmen are great; everyone’s excited and active and generally cool. It should be a fun year.

I’m waiting on my love life. No further questions, please.

And now it’s a half-hour past my bed time, so goodnight! And Go Bears! ::

If you haven’t seen Mars recently, look outside on a clear night at 10pm or later.

Which one is Mars, you ask? It’s the really friggin bright one. And definately catch it at its brightest closest point in 20,000 years: this coming Thursday, the 28th.

I went outside just now, looked up, and was blown away. It’s amazing how much brighter it got in the last week. Couldn’t take my eyes off it for ten minutes…. ::

I wasn’t very complete last time, so here’s a little in-depth report on the last week or so.

First of all, I just had this crazy deja-vu. It was freaky.

Okay, really first of all, Avalon (Catalina Island) was a really great vacation. The boat was a hassle, but thanks to an uncommonly nice man named Randy, everything was just fine. Having a boat of our own was a great advantage… boats cost $40 an hour to rent, and since we were there 3 days… well, you do the math. We could go around to all the cool snorkeling places, and I even saw the camp I went to in 6th grade. A very weird nostalgic moment, that.

We got home from that just fine, the ferry was bumpy, and I read the whole way, but never got even a hint of nausea. Yeah, I’m cool like that. We left that very night for Berkeley.

In Berkeley, I moved in as best I could in one day, and checked in to Cal Band FTP (Fall Training Program). It was really great to see everyone again (and it’s still great every day) and especially the newmen, who are numerous and spirited.

The next morning, we left for the beautiful city of Davis for 3 strenuous and hot and awesome days of FTP. I found that I (or at least my muscles) actually remembered how to march, and I found that one small year can mean a world of change in a person.

I slept in 5 beds in 5 nights in a row over those days. The first one was the sofa-bed in our hotel room in Avalon; the second was a real bed in our hotel room in Avalon (we switched rooms… the 2nd one had air conditioning and a real bed). The next night, I stayed in San Jose, at Grandma’s house, before going to Berkeley the next morning. The next night I slept in my room at TH, and the next night I slept on a horrid matress in the Tercero dorms at Davis.

I found that I am quite comfortable wandering, meeting new people, socializing, thinking, studying, and being alone. I am comfortable where I am right now.

I also find that I’m getting an excess of excercise, eating great, and I’m struggling to stay awake after midnight.

Life, my friends, is good. ::

... Coming next week: “And then classes started, and life was no longer good… etc, etc.” 

This will be a very quick update:

The past week and 2 days has been fast and generally lacking in internet. But now that I’m settled in my room, I can continue writing, hopefully somewhat often.

So, the past week and 2 days has gone like this:

1. Avalon… beautiful, peaceful, fun, lots of great photos to share. Maybe I’ll post one later.
2. Berkeley… wonderful. Got a great room, great roomates, and lots of good food.
3. FTP Davis… much better than last year. I find I like to take an “unofficial leader” position in many areas… I don’t like responsibility, but I like helping and leadership in general. I must fix this.
4. FTP Berkeley… just started. We’re learning pregame; so far, easiest pregame ever, but also fairly cool. Bad sunburn. Underestimated the fact that the sun still shines in Berkeley.

I’ll describe more later, right now I’d just like to say that I’m doing great, having a great time, and look forward to everything all year. ::

Today has been among the most hectic of the summer. We’re leaving for Catalina tomorrow, fairly early, so I really have to get to sleep, but I just thought I’d say that.

Quote of the day: “So, who wants to go to dinner?”—*CRASH*—as a huge branch off our oak tree breaks and falls into our neighbor’s yard. That was after devastating vaction planning troubles, and preceding even worse vacation planning troubles.

After you’ve spent more time planning for your vacation than the time you’ll actually be on vacation, you know your family must love you for everything you do for them. Then you have to stop planning and just relax. Thanks Dad. ::

Here’s one I haven’t seen before. Of course it makes no sense to a computer, it looks like this to the computer: ____________________R___V_______U____P____E___I___A___N____R____A___A___T
_R__I____L___G_______E____C________R_______A____E________A_______L____S__

which is absolutely nonsensical. But it looks like this to us, who can read any letters in sequence…

______________________
<i>R</i>_V_______U____P__
<i>E</i>_I___A___N____R__
<i>A</i>_A___T___R____I__
<i>L</i>_G_______E____C__
<i></i>__R_______A____E__
<i></i>__A_______L____S__

Which is readable, of course.

How do we combat this? A simple program could parse for the text:

1) Find the character most used (spacer) in the block. In this case, "_"
2) Find out the width (number of spacers) between each character on each line. Example: on the first line, the space-array could be (2, 3, 7, 4 , 2)
3) Go through each line and find this array. Example: in the 2nd line of text, we find a new word starts.
4) Take the nth+1 character of each line, where n is the 1st index in the space-array. Remove n+1 characters from each line after the process is succesful.
5) The result is a new array, where each index is a word, and the words are in order, from left to right.

Simple. I could write it if I wanted… but I have to pack. Blah. ::