UW Update Wednesday 5/13/15

1.     UW Update Wednesday 5/13/15

a.     Almost couldn’t get up, the pillows seemed so warm and comfortable. It’s interesting—on 8 hours of sleep, mornings are difficult, but I’m full of energy the rest of the day. On 9 hours, I wake up much more quickly, but after about an hour, I can’t tell the difference.

b.     Hustled to physics eating a sausage breakfast sandwich from the 8.

c.      Linear. Interesting introduction to all the properties of the determinant. We overextended our basic elimination algorithm once again to calculate the determinant, rather than using the complicated and messy recursive definition. It’s funny—I’m managing to keep things fairly straight, but we use one algorithm to do almost every computation or check we need to do in linear; we just interpret the results based on our vast network of theorems. I think if my physics textbook author, who is very clear about terms and definitions, was teaching linear, he’d come up with 5 different names for the different functions of the same algorithm, and I think that would be good for many students.

d.     Physics lab. It was pretty neat—we basically built the optical systems for telescopes, microscopes, and cameras out of component lenses.

e.     CSE 311. Did more induction, only this time on recursively defined sets. Hopefully we’ll get to new material soon.

f.      Lunch. Read an interesting Ribbonfarm article.

g.     Returned to Haggett. Did CSE homework, more email and all the annoying things one has to do when one’s mom is not scheduling and blunder-checking stuff for you (to an extent J).

h.     Went to the Free Agents’ first playoff game. We started off badly and were down 0-3 at the start of the second half. Then we really clicked; we scored four goals and ended completely dominating, but tying 4-4. Unfortunately, both our strikers wiffed their penalty kicks, and we lost on technicality. So this was to be the Free Agents’ last game—but after our awesome second half, everyone was excited to play again, so we’re thinking about forming an actual team next fall. (The “Not Free Agents Anymore”?). Then another team of girls showed up to our field, minus their adversaries. After 10 minutes of waiting, we offered to play. We mixed the teams and played another game. Really fun.

i.       Returned to Haggett, took a shower, grabbed dinner. Ate in the lounge and chatted with Eleanor, Chris, Mal.

j.       More homework. At 11, met Xin and Brandon in the Grey Lounge with ice cream and leftover birthday cake, then Xin went back to his room, and Brandon and I tossed the Frisbee. When I came back, I bought a ticket to Sarang’s acappella group’s concert, wrote this log, and flopped into oblivion.