Hello everyone! I got a little behind on blog posts, but I kept up a log and I'm putting it all up here. I apologize for the missing days and skeleton entries--things have been getting hectic 'round here.
Daily
Update Wednesday Oct. 15
a. Went
to physics; discussed angular velocity/moment of inertia/momentum, which is
really pretty interesting. Our professor rolled a bicycle wheel with copper
strips attached to the tire to make the edge really heavy, down an incline by
its axle. The axle had a small radius, so for the wheel to move a small amount
down the incline, the entire wheel had to rotate. This caused the wheel to roll
down the incline very slowly and pick up rotational momentum instead of linear
momentum. It was cool to watch, this wheel just drifting down a reasonable
incline very slowly while building up rotational momentum.
b. Went
back to dorm, read physics lab, came back and did physics lab. We measured
forces with a force sensor and did simple experiments. After chem labs at WCC,
physics labs are easy!
c. Talked
to John a little bit after lab; discussed weird physics and math.
d. Ran
into Jasdeep from WCC at the HUB. Ate lunch with him. We talked about stuff in
my education class. Jasdeep describes himself as once having hung out with the
wrong crowd in middleS/HS and only slowly being motivated to educate himself,
so his perspective on what might work was interesting.
e. While
we were talking, a student came by our table and asked surreptitiously if we
would be interested in buying a particular drug whose name I don’t remember. I
was a little shocked and so didn’t take a picture or anything. I feel bad for
not being able to respond appropriately—next time I’ll be ready.
f. Went
to CS class and talked about using Sets and Maps.
g. Returned
to dorm and sent emails, etc. Did physics postlab. Did some chores—dishes,
filing away notes, etc.
h. Ate
dinner in the 8, then went to play Ultimate. Not our team’s finest hour, but
fun anyway. I’m learning.
i. Tossed
the Frisbee a little bit waiting for a game of Mini-Ultimate that never
happened, then went back to the dorm. Did laundry, education homework, checked
over and turned in CS homework. Xin came in to chat. I couldn’t tell if he was
joking or not when he complained about Honors classes getting in the way of his
plan to get a degree and get rich, his ultimate goal. Then Chris came in to
print some stuff.
j. More
email, wrote log, read, hit the hay.
2. Daily
Update Thursday Oct. 17
a. Physics
tutorial, discussed different definitions of net work vs. k-work.
b. Ate
lunch with Joseph, Noah, Julie at Chipotle.
c. Went
back to dorm, read articles for education class.
d. Went
to CS section.
e. Went
back to dorm, did more work for ed class.
f. Played
Frisbee with Xin.
g. Went
back to dorm, then to Graphic Novel Club where we did Crazy Plotlines group
story-building.
h. Went
to Film Club and watched crazy first screenplay by Tarantino called True
Romance. Very intense, gory, yet somehow unreal.
i. Ate
gyro on Ave at Aladdin Gyrocery.
j. Returned,
did a little more work for ed class, emails, log. Hit the hay.
3. Daily
Update Friday Oct. 18
a. Bike
mishap
b. Physics;
learned about thermal energy. Garcia did experiment showing different specific
heat capacities of different metals.
c. Studied
and chatted with Eleanor and John.
d. Walked
back to dorm; made omelette
e. Skyped
with Grace
f. Went
to CS; Stuart explained assignment
g. Went
back to dorm, did ed hw
h. Went
to role-playing game panel; met Chase there
i. Played
game of Cyberpunk lasting until 9:30.
j. Ate
dinner at Gyrocery on Ave. Had delicious Aladdin fries.
k. Went
to buy peanut butter at the District Market in Lander, but the price was outrageous
($5 for a single 1 lb jar of PB??) and resolved to purchase elsewhere.
l. Went
back to dorm. Met Chase and Nick from the role-playing panel and chatted before
going up to write log.
4. Update
Saturday Oct. 18
a. Slept
in.
b. Did
a little ed hw.
c. Skyped
with Mom.
d. Went
to Ave for lunch at Jewel of India; read phys
e. Talked
briefly w/ Dad.
f. Wrote
ed post. Talked to Jamie about Lavin event.
g. Tried
to do phys tutorial hw and got stuck on prob (two masses, spring)
h. Met
with Dad. Received awesome care food! Chatted as we walked to Alder.
i. Watched
horrible UW-Oregon game. Ate provided burger (yay!) at halftime.
j. Walked
back to dorm.
k. Shot
hoops with Dad in court under McMahon for an hour! It was great.
l. Alex
had made incredible key lime pie. Ate some.
m. Floormates
decided to watch Silence of the Lambs. Joined despite mounting hw
n. Then
watched standup comedy to clear horrific images from mind.
o. Wrote
log and went to bed.
5. Update
Sunday Oct. 19
a. Slept
in.
b. Did
physics tutorial homework. Interesting questions on “work”, a useful
abstraction relating changes in potential and kinetic energy. These changes can
be far less intuitive than you’d expect.
c. Saw
disastrous end to Seahawks game where a very controversial unreviewed call
caused, in my opinion, an unfair loss for the Hawks.
d. Went
to Which Wich? On the Ave. They had a unique, efficient ordering system where
you grabbed a bag corresponding to your general type of sandwich (Italian,
Club, etc.) and filled out a form on the bag specifying type (Italian >>
Grinder) and desired toppings. The pricing scale was very reasonable, and I was
not penalized for ordering a “Small” 7” sandwich like I would have been at
Subway. This was good because the “Small” was loaded and made a quite
substantial (and delicious!) meal. Read physics and Ian Dennis’s blog about
writing, http://dragonswithtypewriters.com/
e. Went
back to dorm and wrote up thoughts on group project proposal for ed class. Did
physics hw, laundry, and dishes.
f. At
4:30 met with Jessica and Christian from ed class. Discussed group project
proposal and nailed down many details.
i. We’re
going to produce a planning document for an education coalition targeting
low-income working adults and their children and pushing a growth mindset and
self-improvement ethos by collaborating with local business to ensure that
workers know which skills and degrees are most required and that the genuine
acquisition of needed skills is rewarded by a better career.
g. Typed
up our proposal with Jessica.
h. Ate
dinner with Jamie at the 8. Realized while eating my meal that while it is
definitely the best deal available at the 8, the ironies of mandatory on-campus
dining plans mean that I will need to spend $10 a day for the rest of the
quarter on on-campus food just to barely drain my minimum dining plan. This is
unfortunate as it damps my inclination to eat on the Ave and to eat
peanut-butter bananas and other dorm-cooked delicacies, which I love doing.
I’ll just have to find the right balance.
i. Went
back to dorm and finished group project proposal and our facilitator report
sheet over Google Docs. Took a Rick’s Café break, eating the most enormous
ice-cream sandwich ever. Wrote short log and called it a day.
6. Update
Monday Oct. 20
a. Went
to physics; did thermal energy problems.
b. Studied
with Eleanor and John.
c. Went
to Lunchbox Seminar.
i. This
one was short and the physics involved was chock-full of obscure terminology
and hard-to-visualize math, so most of the questions ended up being about the
South Pole environment where this professor studied.
ii. Basically,
his team is trying to find background radiation (not nuclear bomb radiation,
but electromagnetic radiation like light, radio waves, and microwaves) from the
time just after the big bang (the universe is 0-400,000 years old) before all
the matter had cooled sufficiently to condense from plasma into molecules.
Presumably this cooling occurred by the emission of electromagnetic radiation.
To find this radiation, researchers need to put themselves in a dry (not humid)
environment such as the South Pole (water vapor in the air messes with
microwave detection.
iii. The
problem is that this radiation is also emitted by entities in our galaxy. To
differentiate big bang radiation from noise radiation, they used the
theoretical finding that big bang radiation will be polarized. Why? Here he
lost me. It had something to do with the orientation of the flow of charge in
the plasma from dense areas of plasma to sparse areas of plasma and that the
radiation emitted would be polarized perpendicular to this excitation. Man, I
need to learn quantum mechanics.
iv. Anyway,
they found the polarization to exist and were able to deduce things about the
composition of the plasma.
v. The
experimental result is still controversial, since noise radiation could be
significant enough and polarized enough so that the results of the experiment
are a false positive based on noise. To test the experiment would require a
telescope in space (for higher sensitivity) focusing on a small-angular region
in the sky and measuring polarizations at different wavelengths. Then they
could compare the graphs at different wavelengths, and since noise factors in
more strongly to certain wavelengths, the analysts would essentially be able to
subtract the noise from the noise + radiation, yielding just the big bang
radiation, if there is any. The current South Pole telescope is only sensitive
enough to measure radiation at one peak wavelength.
vi. After
this, the talk devolved into a lot of questions about South Pole life at the
military base there where the research is conducted. Most interesting thing was
that some people are required to “winter over” for nine months in the eerie
dark of the Pole to watch the telescope, and that those who do require certain
personality traits J
vii. After
the seminar, worked on physics hw then went to CS class. Discussed recursion.
Reges explained it very well.
viii.
Finished physics hw, worked on planning out a
tentative schedule for the next couple years on MyPlan for Honors 100, then
went to chess club.
ix. Played
a few games then ate dinner with Jamie at the 8. Returned to the dorm, worked
on MyPlan, then went to Ultimate.
x. Got
destroyed, but played okay.
xi. Returned
to dorm in drenching rain. Finished MyPlan, wrote log, and went to bed.
7. Daily
Update Tuesday 0ct. 21
a. Slept
in.
b. Went
to CS section where we did straightforward recursion problems.
c. Worked
on programming assignment in physics lab and basically finished it (or so I
thought! See next update).
d. Went
to HUB and ate Motosurf Kalua Pig for lunch.
e. Went
to Honors CS class. We solved puzzles in groups, which was a lot of fun. We had
to figure out reasonable assumptions to make about problem parameters so that
we could figure out solutions. Our awesome professor Adam Blank (this is his
real, not-a-placeholder last name) had us try to communicate solutions to other
groups by having each group member say five words, passing to the next person,
until the problem was explained.
f. We
also had to explain our solution to the final puzzle with a diagram and less
than 30 words. It was fun.
g. Went
to Honors 100 section. This was the “goof-off” day, so we took a bus to Capitol
Hill and ate ice cream. Interesting urban setting.
h. …
8. UW
Update Saturday Oct. 25
a. Jamie
woke me up at 11:30 to tell me that there was an ultimate game.
b. Played
ultimate
c. Came
back, showered, watched end of Sounders game
d. Went
to lunch at Which Wich with Jamie. Read physics.
e. Used
Chase ATM for the first time. Got 20s since it didn’t allow me to ask for a
smaller denomination.
f. Did
physics postlab, difficult but interesting.
g. Hung
out in the lounge for a few minutes and played with Jenga blocks as if they
were the dominoes I’d built countless structures from when I was younger.
h. Did
CS assignment.
i. Went
to dinner at 8 with floormates.
j. Went
to football game with floormates. Half of them left in the middle of the game
due to disappointing offensive showing and freezing wind, but Jamie, Chris, and
I stayed until the end. We had several chances to go into overtime, but botched
them.
k. Came
back, ate snack and read physics.
l. Did
CS assignment.
m. Read
and hit the hay.
9. UW
Update Sunday Oct. 26
a. Slept
in—again. Woke up at 10:30 and decided to sleep for another hour J
b. Watched
the end of the Seahawks game with Jamie. This went better than last week—the
Seahawks put together a nice drive to finish ahead.
c. Wrote
a post for ed class.
d. Went
to Jewel of India for lunch. It was fabulous. The unlimited hot chai was
especially nice, since the day was cold and drizzly.
i. Talked
with Mom on the way there.
ii. Talked
with Dad on the way back.
iii. We
talked about me coming home for the Halloween party this Friday and staying for
the weekend, and about how things have been going here and in Bellingham.
e. Came
back and did physics with Eleanor.
f. Went
to play basketball at Denny Field and played with two nice Asian students, just
out of the preparatory English program and beginning their careers as freshmen.
They live off campus about a 15 minute bus ride away, which is interesting.
g. One
of them, Mark, was really good in all the best ways—not just a great shooter,
but his dribbling was incredible and his defense was terrific. He would always
take up all the space in front of you so that there was no way forward, and if
you tried to hang out close to the danger zone to get around him, he’d reach
out and steal the ball. We played some one-on-one and I held my own for a
while, but he eventually defeated me. I played one-on-one with the other,
Jackie, and summarily destroyed him. Then we played some 2-on-2 with another
guy that showed up. When he left, we played 21. Oddly enough, Jackie had the
right skill sets for 21, while Mark lagged. Jackie’s defense wasn’t that great,
but that wasn’t required in 21 with two defenders, and Jackie was a good
outside shooter. Mark’s game relied on getting in close and exhausting the
defender with fakes and quick cuts, two things very difficult to do with two
defenders. So Jackie won two of the three games of 21. (Mark won the third L )
h. Returned
to the dorm. It turned out it was board game night. I missed out on Settlers,
but I crushed everyone at Bananagrams several times.
i. Wrote
another post for my ed class.
j. Went
down to Rick’s, where Xin was volunteering. Read what-if.xkcd while eating and
happened upon this hilarious cartoon: http://xkcd.com/356/
k. Helped
Xin with tutorial hw.
l. Wrote
log, read, and went to bed.
10. UW Update
Monday Oct. 27
a. Woke
up, ate instant oatmeal with peanut butter (I’ve been doing this for several
mornings now), and biked to physics.
b. Learned
about angular momentum in more detail. Really weird stuff happens with rotating
gyroscopes and tops.
c. Did
hw with John.
d. Went
to Lunchbox Seminar!
i. This
week’s seminar was by a “biophysicist”. Super engaging guy. Apparently there is
a lot of low-hanging fruit in biophysics, a domain that brings careful,
mechanical, micro-micro-level analysis to the chemistry that goes on in living
organisms. Chemists can model cells to some extent as chemical reactors where
everything diffuses around and reacts at different rates. But, this professor
argued, cells are more like carefully organized, almost mechanical
factories—yet somehow this organization exists within a crazy diffusing
biochemical mess. He gave the example of a wavelike protein oscillation on the
cell membrane used to find the midpoint of a bacterial cell so that it can be split
in half evenly as a physics-like process in biochemistry.
ii. But
what he was working on was DNA replication in bacterial cells. He said that the
common biological assumption is that replication goes smoothly without
interruption, since it’s such an important process. But recently genes have
been discovered that code for “restart proteins” that abort and restart
replication when something goes wrong. So he and a colleague set out to
discover how often these restart proteins are invoked. He did this using green
fluorescing protein (GFP) tags attached to proteins involved in DNA
replication; when DNA replication was messed up, these proteins would become
unbound and diffuse away from the site of replication almost instantly, which
could be observed as a lessening in the intensity of the fluorescent light
coming from the GFP tags. He found lots of cool things, but his most important
finding was that replication was busted and restart proteins needed to be
invoked almost half of all the times DNA replication occurred in the cells.
Apparently it was cheaper for the bacteria to have to do this than to prevent
RNA from trying to transcribe the DNA while it was undergoing replication,
which was what typically interrupted the replication.
iii. I
forgot how crazy interesting biology is! The research one could do in
biophysics sounded really neat. I’ll have to look into it.
e. Went
back to the dorm and did physics hw with Eleanor. Starting today, Eleanor’s
hired me as a tutor, so I’m going to have to step up my physics game—I can’t
just mumble suggestions while scribbling stuff on my own homework J
f. Went
to Go club. Played with a guy, Ben, who knew a little more Go than I did. Very
nice fellow. But he kept analyzing things as they were ongoing and going off on
analytical tangents and offering to show me certain accepted strategies. Since
I don’t know much Go, I just wanted proof by outcome and wanted to play out the
game. It was an interesting experience for me, since I’m usually the one doing
the analysis, and I don’t usually think that I’d be annoying to people who
didn’t have the intuition yet to follow the analysis, and just wanted to take
their best shot.
g. Talked
with Ben afterward. Turns out he’s an unemployed physics graduate teaching
himself programming. Makes my current major choice of computer science look
good J.
Now I’ve encountered two bright unemployed physics graduates!
h. Went
back to the dorm, then played Ultimate with Jamie. Tough game—our captain
actually got steamed with how poorly we were playing compared to how well we
could be doing. But it was still fun.
i. Did
physics prelab, then went out to the Ave with Jamie and ate at EJ’s Burgers.
The burger I ordered, loaded with fresh jalapenos, hit the spot.
j. Went
back to the dorm, did more hw and some laundry, wrote log, and went to bed.
11. UW Update
Tuesday Oct. 28
a. Slept
in.
b. Did
dishes and folded laundry. Ate oatmeal for breakfast.
c. Went
to CS section; we practiced inheritance, which should be an interesting topic
when learned and not practiced. But instead of learning about inheritance, we
practiced a silly algorithm to help us with the inheritance question on the
test. On the midterm on Monday, there will be an inheritance question where you
have a completely random, confusingly named class hierarchy, some variables declared
usually with different (superclass) types than their actual (subclass) types,
and some method calls on those variables and method calls on those variables
after they’ve been cast to other types. We have to figure out if the code
raises a compiler or runtime error, or if it executes, what the result will be.
To do this, we build a table of method results, then use the table to predict
results. Why do we go through all this rigmarole instead of learning
inheritance conceptually? I don’t know—so that the CS department can weed out
people with the midterm?
d. Ate
lunch at the HUB.
e. Went
to CS Honors section. Discussed Bitcoin and Net Neutrality, along with
Facebook’s new free-but-facebookized internet in developing countries
initiative internet.org.
f. Read
physics between classes, then went to Honors 100, where we talked about
different possible experiential learning opportunities.
g. Helped
Eleanor with physics.
h. Went
to Salsa club, where we actually did bachata instead of salsa. Bachata is
similar to salsa, but more of it is typically danced in close position, and the
basic step is side-to-side rather than back-and-forth.
i. Got
dinner on the Ave at Aladdin’s Falafel Corner. It was tasty.
j. Walked
back to dorm and skyped with family. (Actually, we switched to FaceTime because
it worked much better.)
k. Checked
physics homework.
l. Got
a milkshake at Rick’s,
m. And
went to bed.
12. UW Update
Thursday 10/30/14
a. Went
to physics tutorial. Got into intense debate about whether rotational energy
was just another way of looking at the sum of the kinetic energies of particles
in a rotating object, or whether it was a separate quantity that depended on a
choice of axis of rotation but was conserved once this axis was picked. Physics
has a lot of these abstractions that seem simple but have very complex
contextual dependencies; work fits this category along with rotational
energy.
b. Realized
I was late for CS section (for some reason I thought it was a lecture day). Did
practice problems for midterm.
c. Ate
kalua pig at the HUB. Talked with Gavin, who I see in physics class, in
lunchbox seminars, and at Salsa club, so we better become friends at some
point. He’s an interesting guy who says he has no aptitude for physics but
wants to major in it anyway since it’s so interesting.
d. Went
back to dorm and studied for CS midterm. Did problems on Practice-It website.
e. Took
a 15-minute break in the basketball courts under McMahon.
f. Took
a shower.
g. Explored
the What Works Clearinghouse for ed class.
h. Walked
over to U Village and helped Eleanor with physics.
i. Walked
back, did a little more CS, then walked to Hutchingson Hall on Denny Field
(where the outdoor basketball courts are). Watched a play called N3RD by the
Undergraduate Drama Society, which my floormate Megan had recommended. It was
very well done and I enjoyed it greatly, but since I didn’t plan ahead enough
to go with anyone, there was a weird contextual gap at the end when I couldn’t
discuss it with anyone J
j. Back
to dorm. Studied CS. Xin visited and chatted with Jamie and me. Went down to
Rick’s. Some people in the lounge were watching Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,
so I came down for the end of that.
k. Did
a little more CS, wrote log, went to bed.
13. UW
Highlight Outline Friday Oct. 31 through Monday Nov. 3
a. Friday:
i. Went
to physics; afterwards, went to the SPS with John planning to study. Instead, tried—and
eventually succeeded, after John had given up—to prove that an object moving in
a straight line has constant rotational kinetic energy about any given point,
given the definition of rotational kinetic energy. So the idea that a
non-rotating object can have “rotational energy” might work.
ii. Studied
in the SPS.
iii. Ate
lunch at the HUB.
iv. Realized
that I had to pack up my stuff before visiting Bham. Hustled back to the dorm,
grabbed stuff. Met John outside Thompson Hall and retrieved my textbook, which
I’d left in the SPS.
v. Got
to class just in time, went over midterm.
vi. Dad
picked me up and we drove to Bham.
vii. Mom
and Dad put face paint on and we all dressed up as “mimes”, although without
the face paint I supposedly looked more like a carnival barker.
viii.
Went to the Halloween party at the Coopers.
Everyone went out for trick-or-treating, and I caught up with as many friends
as I could manage.
ix. We
came back; I chatted with the parents, played some Loot and some Foot Ninja and
some Starlight Moonlight. Old standards. It was a lot of fun. Then we came up
with a bizarre game where we tried to toss the bowler hat that was part of my
costume onto each other’s heads. This devolved into a brawl between Noah, Izzy,
and I where Izzy was trying to jam the hat on Noah while I was still trying to
toss the hat on Monica’s head. In reality, it was more complicated, but those
were the basic objectives.
x. Went
back to the new house on McLeod and hit the hay.
b. Saturday
i. Slept
in a little.
ii. Did
some tutorial hw.
iii. Mom
and Dad showed me around the house they’re building adjacent to the one at
McLeod. The plan had lots of beautiful big windows.
iv. Went
to Bagels!
v. Went
to boffering. Joseph showed up. It was fun.
vi. Went
to Grandma’s house and watched the end of the UW vs. Colorado football game.
Finally, a satisfying win.
vii. Drove
back to McLeod and ate delicious homemade burgers.
viii.
Izzy showed me the structures she’d been
fiddling around with on the Game of Life cellular automaton. It was pretty neat.
ix. Studied
for CS midterm.
x. Watched
some fun videos with family.
xi. Went
to bed.
c. Sunday
i. Slept
in.
ii. Studied
for CS midterm.
iii. Ate
delicious breakfast of omelets and bacon.
iv. Took
a walk with family down the boardwalk at Boulevard park.
v. Met
Ian at the Public Market. Played some Spit and talked about the upcoming trip
he’s going to take across the country.
vi. Headed
for Seattle.
vii. Visited
a homeschooler friend in the Seattle Children’s Hospital.
viii.
Ate pizza afterwards with family.
ix. Returned
to dorm, studied for CS midterm, took a basketball break in the courts under
McMahon, studied some more, and went to bed.
d. Monday
i. Woke
up bright and early for physics midterm, but found I’d misplaced my bike
(again) and so got there with only a few minutes to spare. Wasted time filling
out my scantron sheet—last time we had time in class—and started test about 2
minutes late.
ii. The
test was an order of magnitude harder than the last test. I knew all the
material fairly well, but 50 (oops, 48) minutes was not enough time to do
everything. I think our professor is relatively inexperienced at teaching and
didn’t know what he could reasonably expect.
iii. Everyone
walked out of the test grumbling. Eleanor, John, Jia Wen, Emily, and I went to
the SPS to console ourselves. I psyched myself up for the CS midterm and
studied some more.
iv. After
I learned there was no lunchbox seminar L,
I went to the HUB for kalua pig and then back to the dorm for more studying.
Before CS class, I got some exercise shooting hoops under McMahon, then took a
shower. I was in the perfect frame of mind as I walked along the quad towards
Kane Hall for the midterm.
v. I
arrived to the classroom some 10 minutes early and found my assigned seat.
(Apparently, issues with cheating in 143 are rampant, and assigned seating
prevents collusion.) Unlike my physics test, this test was a paragon of order.
Reges had opened a tab to the official US government clock and put it on the
overhead, along with a Notepad doc reading “Clarifications and corrections will
go here:” At exactly 2:30, we started work. I skipped the second question,
finished all the other questions, came back around to the second question, and
finished with two minutes to spare. I turned in the test and walked out.
vi. I
got back to the dorm and was doing homework when I realized a mistake in one of
my solutions. This had a delayed but significant impact on my subsequent
well-being as the realization of the annoying bug seeped into my psyche like
glucose from low-glycemic-index oatmeal.
vii. I
went to Go club and played a fun game of Go. I’m starting to understand the
fundamentals and how different Go is from chess—chess feels very discrete, with
every piece playing its role, and everything on the board is tightly bound
together in a small, interwoven space. Go feels more continuous. Concepts that
are more abstract and reached at only higher levels of chess, like space, and
mental separation of different parts of the board and choosing where on the
board to focus one’s efforts, are the foundational concepts of Go, instead of
the concepts of piece mobility and capturing that come first in chess. This
isn’t to say Go is more interesting than chess—I love the dynamics of chess—but
only that Go is very different from chess.
viii.
Went back to the dorm, ate dinner with Jamie at
the 8.
ix. Played
some badminton.
x. Returned
to the dorm, did homework for Honors 100, then went to bed.
14. UW Update Tuesday Nov. 4
a. Slept
in.
b. Did
some coding for my CS honors section. We were doing some basic password
cracking.
c. Went
to CS section, talked about decision-tree explorative recursion.
d. Did
more coding for CS honors section.
e. Ate
lunch. Read interesting article on password cracking for CS honors section.
f. Went
to CS honors section; learned card trick that used every bit of information in
the order of four random cards to transmit information to a partner.
g. Went
to Honors 100; learned tips and tricks for the cutthroat registration process.
h. Returned
to dorm. Jamie told me he was going to a screening of one of the Stanford
startup class videos. It was in the same direction as Salsa club, so I tagged
along. A large section of the building, Condon Hall, it was held in, had been
transformed into “Startup Hall”! There was a Bitcoin ATM in one corner.
i. The
startup video was really interesting.
j. Went
to Salsa club. Learned a few new moves.
k. Ate
delicious dinner at EJ Burger.
l. Returned
to dorm. Did physics hw, physics prelab, then hung out in the lounge and
chatted.
m. Wrote
log and went to bed. Tested new sleep app purporting to wake you up at the
correct time in the 30-minute interval before your latest desired wake-up time.
You put the phone facedown on your bed and it measures your motion. I’m
skeptical, but it got good reviews J
15. UW Update
Wednesday Nov. 5
a. Woke
up, ate oatmeal, went to physics. Went over exam—averages were horribly low.
Discussed correct use of force diagrams. Eleanor’s feeling pretty confident
about this section of the course, since she studied the material at Whatcom, so
that’s good.
b. Read
physics lab, then did physics lab. It went pretty well—measurements of carts
colliding in different ways along a track. The track does not stay level, which is really annoying, especially if you’re
trying to measure forces due to collisions and friction, not to gravity J
c. Talked
with John, then ate lunch with Jasdeep, who I happily ran into in the HUB.
d. Went
to CS class, where we discussed using recursion to brute-force search a
solution space or generate a decision tree. I’d done a little of this, most
notably in the programming competition where I wrote that recursive algorithm
to solve the rover problem that ended up being too slow. But I learned some
interesting heuristics and Reges did a fun example, the classic 8 Queens
problem where you have to fit 8 queens onto a chessboard so that no two queens
threaten each other.
e. In
class, I ended up sitting next to this guy from my CS honors section that I
should just mention as part of the sauce that keeps my experience interesting.
He’s been annoying me (and probably others) for a while now by very openly
bragging about his CS prowess. I don’t know if he intends to annoy people, or
whether he doesn’t know that he’s doing it and I should let him know. He talks
back to the professor in the honors section in unnecessary ways, pointing out
those little corrections that everyone implicitly already understands but sound
clever when voiced. Talking to him in honors section, I learned that he had
completed the CSE 143 midterm I had been studying all weekend for with 15
minutes to spare, and that he had done so using a pen. Note that I did not
bring up the midterm—he asked me how I thought I had done, then segued into the
tale of his accomplishments. At one point in one of our honors lectures, as
part of some joke, he turned his laptop around so we could all see his
homescreen. At first, I thought it might have been some celebrity or famous
computer scientist—then I realized it was his own grinning face. In class
today, he lamented the fact that there was no homework assigned this week,
since without the distraction of doing homework in class the lecture was too
boring :) I don’t mean to gripe—this is the only really frustrating interaction
I’ve had at the UW; just thought I ought to mention this, if for no other
reason than that if you deal with frustrating people, you will know I don’t
live in some magic place where these people don’t exist.
f. Went
back to the dorm and went through some of the CS section problems. Two were
very tricky, and I was psyched when I solved the last one.
g. I
started reading stuff for my ed class, then Jamie came in and told me a bunch
of people were going to get dinner. It was perfect timing and I finally
reemerged from the vague fog of frustration and mild anxiety surrounding Monday’s
midterms.
h. We
went down to the 8, ate dinner, chatted.
i. Returned
to find Xin in the room. Hung out for a bit, then went to the IMA with Xin and
found the racquetball courts, where we hit the ball around for a while.
j.
Walked back, read more stuff for ed class, went
to Rick’s, read physics. Went outside and talked to Mom for a relaxing 45
minutes, then wrote log and posted it. Went to bed.
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