March is basically over and I haven't blogged. So I suppose I'd better do that, huh?
Guitar lessons are better now that we're actually doing things that are useful to me (i.e. speed studies with scales, arpeggios focusing on right hand technique, etc.), but they're still pretty slow.
Other school stuff is fine. Nothing too eventful. Comp Sci is the same as ever (finish one project, start the next), Psych is interesting but obvious, and Music and Politics is starting to wind down.
I've recently gotten back into Starcraft. I downloaded it from the Blizzard website and I'm halfway through the Zerg campaign (on the original, not the expansion). I'm aiming to finish it by summer so that I can get Starcraft 2 and know what the hell's going on. Don't know if that will happen though. I've also been playing Resident Evil 5. It's basically amazing. Graphics: amazing. Gameplay: amazing. Characters: amazing (Wesker's still the most badass villain of any game ever... ever). I'm a little over halfway through that.
So me and two friends are gonna try to room in the college leased appartments next semester. We shouldn't have a hard time getting a room, cuz they usually don't fill up until around the end of the sophomore time period of housing selection, and one of the guys has a time slot in the middle. If we get it, it would be awesome. We'd have a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. Far better than a dorm.
My laptop has a connection problem to the monitor, so it's really difficult to get it to display a picture. The LCD screen stays on fine, but the picture itself flickers out every now and then. I would take a look at it myself, but I don't really know what I'm doing with monitors, so I could accidentally void the warranty. I can't send it in yet though because I need it for school. So I ordered a DVI to HDMI cable to output the display to my TV, but they sent me the wrong cable, and now I have to wait for them to ship the right one. It's rather frustrating cuz the problem gets worse every day. I can hardly get it to display anything at all anymore.
Guess that's it. 'Til next month.
3.31.2009
2.21.2009
Long Ass Post
Here's the February post, as (sort of) promised.
Minor news: Classes are going fine. Nothing great, nothing terrible. I have my first calc test next week, so we'll see how that goes. I think I'll do okay, but I'm really bad at making myself study. Hopefully I can get together with some other calc kids. Just finished the first Comp Sci project, which was hella easy. We basically filled in an interface for an array list class. None of the methods were much longer than like, 5 lines, and plenty of them were fewer. I'm partering up with a guy this semester for the projects. So far I've done all the coding. Usually I'm typing, but when I'm not at the keyboard, I basically have to tell him what to write. He understands the concepts and stuff, but only after I remind him of them. So that's probably gonna get annoying by the end of the semester. But at least he'll probably help motivate me to actually work on projects instead of waiting until the day before. Music & Politics is whatever. Our discussions are usually pretty good. I just gone done with an uber-bibliography assignment for our end of semester research paper. We had to find 10 sources, 5 of which were scholarly, 1 of which was from the library and unavailable online, then we had to "annotate" (in quotes because it's not actually annotation, my professor just thinks it is) them all in 150-300 words. So my bibliography assignment ended up with a greater word count than my final paper will have (it'll be 3000 words, and my "bibliography" was around 3,200). Psych is going pretty well. My professor had hip surgery, so we've had 3 guest lectures and 1 day off. The material is really interesting. I'm a bit worried about the exams though. There are only three, and I've heard my professor's exams are usually less than easy. We'll see how things go. Guitar lessons are finally going somewhere. I'm learning right hand technique, which is what I need to work on most. It's really hard to make myself play in the proper classical position because my muscle memory tells me to do it how I've always done it. But that's less conducive to efficient playing, so I guess I should re-train myself. Speaking of which, I haven't practiced all week...
Major news: I got a PS3. Which the "major news" category will be devoted to (because, obviously, PS3s are more important than education). It is, quite frankly, badass. Better than an Xbox because of its exclusives, its Blu-Ray, its free online service, its quietness, and its reliability. The only thing I like more about the Xbox is the controller. And I grew up with PS1 and PS2, so I'm definitely okay with the DualShock. First off: graphics. Fucking. Amazing. Somehow, my PS3 upscales my 19" 720p LCD TV output to 1080p. I assume it's not true 1080p, cuz that wouldn't make sense, but I don't know the intricacies of how HD works, so I don't know if it's actually 1080p or not. Either way, it looks better than the Xbox (though only slightly). With it I got Call of Duty: World at War, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and LittleBig Planet. The first two I'm quite enthusiastic about, the last not so much. I heard such good things about it, and it got such good reviews, but I really don't feel much desire at all to play it... Maybe I haven't given it a fair chance. Anyway, COD is great, as usual. I prefer COD4 because it seems like going back to WWII technology is a step in the wrong direction. It's still loads of fun though. Easily the best WWII COD game. The COD4 multiplayer pretty much pwns WaW's, but WaW's is still a lot of fun. Metal Gear Solid 4 is basically one of the most badass games of all time, mostly due to the awesomeness of the Metal Gear series in general. I haven't played through a lot of it (just recently completed Act 1), but so far it's pretty kick ass. I've heard there is like, over 24 hours of cutscene time throughout the game. Which is fucking ridiculous. But it adds a lot to the story (most of the time), so I guess it's okay. Just yesterday I got Uncharted: Drake's Fortune from Amazon. I was skeptical about this game when I saw the previews for it. It looked a little too lighthearted for the type of game it is. But the demo pretty much removed all doubt as to whether it was gonna be good or not. The graphics are incredible. There are so many colors and the textures are incredibly realistic. The biggest downside: It's short as hell. I've beaten it twice now. I got it yesterday. First time through probably took around 6 hours. The story is such that it would have been difficult for them to drag it out much longer. But 6 hours is still excessively short for a purely single player game. Second time took around 4 and a half, maybe 5. COD got some flak for its short campaign, but it was at least 10 hours long, and there's practically infinite replay value because of the kick ass multiplayer. I still think it's an awesome game, though. I'm going through it on Crushing difficulty now. It's a Naughty Dog game (they always put out hyper-playable, fluid games), and like the Jak and Daxter series there are unlockables. You do stuff, gain points, and once you reach a certain point level, you unlock stuff. Stuff like concept art and making-of videos, but also in-game stuff like new "outfits" (either the main character wears different clothes, or you become another character entirely) and the ability to choose whatever weapon you want. That feature gives it a decent amount of replay value, especially for a single player game. Anyway, enough ranting about video games.
tl;dr - Classes are okay, PS3 kicks ass.
That's it for February. Time to go practice guitar.
P.S. Zach, are you still interested in buying my Xbox?
Minor news: Classes are going fine. Nothing great, nothing terrible. I have my first calc test next week, so we'll see how that goes. I think I'll do okay, but I'm really bad at making myself study. Hopefully I can get together with some other calc kids. Just finished the first Comp Sci project, which was hella easy. We basically filled in an interface for an array list class. None of the methods were much longer than like, 5 lines, and plenty of them were fewer. I'm partering up with a guy this semester for the projects. So far I've done all the coding. Usually I'm typing, but when I'm not at the keyboard, I basically have to tell him what to write. He understands the concepts and stuff, but only after I remind him of them. So that's probably gonna get annoying by the end of the semester. But at least he'll probably help motivate me to actually work on projects instead of waiting until the day before. Music & Politics is whatever. Our discussions are usually pretty good. I just gone done with an uber-bibliography assignment for our end of semester research paper. We had to find 10 sources, 5 of which were scholarly, 1 of which was from the library and unavailable online, then we had to "annotate" (in quotes because it's not actually annotation, my professor just thinks it is) them all in 150-300 words. So my bibliography assignment ended up with a greater word count than my final paper will have (it'll be 3000 words, and my "bibliography" was around 3,200). Psych is going pretty well. My professor had hip surgery, so we've had 3 guest lectures and 1 day off. The material is really interesting. I'm a bit worried about the exams though. There are only three, and I've heard my professor's exams are usually less than easy. We'll see how things go. Guitar lessons are finally going somewhere. I'm learning right hand technique, which is what I need to work on most. It's really hard to make myself play in the proper classical position because my muscle memory tells me to do it how I've always done it. But that's less conducive to efficient playing, so I guess I should re-train myself. Speaking of which, I haven't practiced all week...
Major news: I got a PS3. Which the "major news" category will be devoted to (because, obviously, PS3s are more important than education). It is, quite frankly, badass. Better than an Xbox because of its exclusives, its Blu-Ray, its free online service, its quietness, and its reliability. The only thing I like more about the Xbox is the controller. And I grew up with PS1 and PS2, so I'm definitely okay with the DualShock. First off: graphics. Fucking. Amazing. Somehow, my PS3 upscales my 19" 720p LCD TV output to 1080p. I assume it's not true 1080p, cuz that wouldn't make sense, but I don't know the intricacies of how HD works, so I don't know if it's actually 1080p or not. Either way, it looks better than the Xbox (though only slightly). With it I got Call of Duty: World at War, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and LittleBig Planet. The first two I'm quite enthusiastic about, the last not so much. I heard such good things about it, and it got such good reviews, but I really don't feel much desire at all to play it... Maybe I haven't given it a fair chance. Anyway, COD is great, as usual. I prefer COD4 because it seems like going back to WWII technology is a step in the wrong direction. It's still loads of fun though. Easily the best WWII COD game. The COD4 multiplayer pretty much pwns WaW's, but WaW's is still a lot of fun. Metal Gear Solid 4 is basically one of the most badass games of all time, mostly due to the awesomeness of the Metal Gear series in general. I haven't played through a lot of it (just recently completed Act 1), but so far it's pretty kick ass. I've heard there is like, over 24 hours of cutscene time throughout the game. Which is fucking ridiculous. But it adds a lot to the story (most of the time), so I guess it's okay. Just yesterday I got Uncharted: Drake's Fortune from Amazon. I was skeptical about this game when I saw the previews for it. It looked a little too lighthearted for the type of game it is. But the demo pretty much removed all doubt as to whether it was gonna be good or not. The graphics are incredible. There are so many colors and the textures are incredibly realistic. The biggest downside: It's short as hell. I've beaten it twice now. I got it yesterday. First time through probably took around 6 hours. The story is such that it would have been difficult for them to drag it out much longer. But 6 hours is still excessively short for a purely single player game. Second time took around 4 and a half, maybe 5. COD got some flak for its short campaign, but it was at least 10 hours long, and there's practically infinite replay value because of the kick ass multiplayer. I still think it's an awesome game, though. I'm going through it on Crushing difficulty now. It's a Naughty Dog game (they always put out hyper-playable, fluid games), and like the Jak and Daxter series there are unlockables. You do stuff, gain points, and once you reach a certain point level, you unlock stuff. Stuff like concept art and making-of videos, but also in-game stuff like new "outfits" (either the main character wears different clothes, or you become another character entirely) and the ability to choose whatever weapon you want. That feature gives it a decent amount of replay value, especially for a single player game. Anyway, enough ranting about video games.
tl;dr - Classes are okay, PS3 kicks ass.
That's it for February. Time to go practice guitar.
P.S. Zach, are you still interested in buying my Xbox?
1.28.2009
Rambling
I should be reading for Psych. But I can do that later...
This will probably surprise most of you (though "most" in this case, if one is referring to the majority of my readers, is like 2 people). I hadn't planned to blog until next month. But I'm bored, and my Xbox is broken.
Soooo... Let's talk about classes. Here's what I'm taking:
Calculus II
Psychology as a Social Science
Data Structures in Java
Music and Politics
Guitar Lessons
I'm pretty happy with my schedule this semester. My classes start at 11 every day, so it's nice not to have to go to bed too early. Especially considering my roommate's sleeping habits. Calc has actually been fairly enjoyable so far. Homework isn't collected, and my professor is far better this semester than last. Plus I already went over most of the stuff in Calc II in high school, so it's basically a semester-long review.
Psych is cool too. There's a shit ton of reading to do, but my professor is pretty kick ass, and the material is interesting (so far). I have heard his tests are usually pretty rough though. So we'll see how that goes.
Data Structures is fun as well. The prof is awesome, unlike last semester. Noonan was a terrible teacher. But this guy actually teaches us how to understand stuff, not just how to write the code for it. So far we're just examining algorithm efficiency, and that's pretty easy to grasp. I guess I finally see how calculus relates to comp sci, but I still don't think it should be a requirement for a major to take so many math classes. Oh well.
Music and Politics is pretty cool. I have the same instructor as I had for Worlds of Music last semester, and I like him. We have a long ass research paper to do, but we basically start it at the beginning of the semester, so hopefully it won't be too bad. We're supposed to pick a piece of music and analyze it's relationship to "politics" (quotes cuz it doesn't mean conventional politics, it's more of a broader definition which includes basically all relationships between people and other people...). I think I'm gonna use "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" by Serj Tankian. That one should be easy.
Haven't had any guitar lessons yet, so nothing to talk about there.
My Xbox 360 suffered the fatal RRoD a few days ago. I'm really pissed about it. I haven't even had it for a year. 360s have a 30% failure rate. 30%! That's absurd. I'm very very seriously considering getting a PS3. Here's what I think I'll do: I'll send my Xbox in to Microsoft to be replaced, then when I get a new one from them I'll sell it and most/all of my games, controllers, and accesories. Then I should have enough to buy a console. That plus birthday money gives me enough for another controller and a couple of games without having to spend any of the money already in my bank account. I'm also contemplating trying this site and seeing how that goes. Now I know most people look at sites like that and immediately think "scam", but I did get a free Xbox 360 from one of these so-called "scam" sites. So I know they can be legitimate, I just don't know anything about this one in particular. We'll see how that goes.
Anyway, I don't have much else to talk about, so... until next month I suppose.
This will probably surprise most of you (though "most" in this case, if one is referring to the majority of my readers, is like 2 people). I hadn't planned to blog until next month. But I'm bored, and my Xbox is broken.
Soooo... Let's talk about classes. Here's what I'm taking:
Calculus II
Psychology as a Social Science
Data Structures in Java
Music and Politics
Guitar Lessons
I'm pretty happy with my schedule this semester. My classes start at 11 every day, so it's nice not to have to go to bed too early. Especially considering my roommate's sleeping habits. Calc has actually been fairly enjoyable so far. Homework isn't collected, and my professor is far better this semester than last. Plus I already went over most of the stuff in Calc II in high school, so it's basically a semester-long review.
Psych is cool too. There's a shit ton of reading to do, but my professor is pretty kick ass, and the material is interesting (so far). I have heard his tests are usually pretty rough though. So we'll see how that goes.
Data Structures is fun as well. The prof is awesome, unlike last semester. Noonan was a terrible teacher. But this guy actually teaches us how to understand stuff, not just how to write the code for it. So far we're just examining algorithm efficiency, and that's pretty easy to grasp. I guess I finally see how calculus relates to comp sci, but I still don't think it should be a requirement for a major to take so many math classes. Oh well.
Music and Politics is pretty cool. I have the same instructor as I had for Worlds of Music last semester, and I like him. We have a long ass research paper to do, but we basically start it at the beginning of the semester, so hopefully it won't be too bad. We're supposed to pick a piece of music and analyze it's relationship to "politics" (quotes cuz it doesn't mean conventional politics, it's more of a broader definition which includes basically all relationships between people and other people...). I think I'm gonna use "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" by Serj Tankian. That one should be easy.
Haven't had any guitar lessons yet, so nothing to talk about there.
My Xbox 360 suffered the fatal RRoD a few days ago. I'm really pissed about it. I haven't even had it for a year. 360s have a 30% failure rate. 30%! That's absurd. I'm very very seriously considering getting a PS3. Here's what I think I'll do: I'll send my Xbox in to Microsoft to be replaced, then when I get a new one from them I'll sell it and most/all of my games, controllers, and accesories. Then I should have enough to buy a console. That plus birthday money gives me enough for another controller and a couple of games without having to spend any of the money already in my bank account. I'm also contemplating trying this site and seeing how that goes. Now I know most people look at sites like that and immediately think "scam", but I did get a free Xbox 360 from one of these so-called "scam" sites. So I know they can be legitimate, I just don't know anything about this one in particular. We'll see how that goes.
Anyway, I don't have much else to talk about, so... until next month I suppose.
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