September 2004 Archives

I just got back from the high five team filming downtown where we played Lincoln in a hotly contested match. Despite the fact that I have a rough draft of a 3-page essay on archetypal uses of "barn," "forest," and "town" in the awful play The Crucible due tomorrow, and that I have to study for a midterm exam on which a good score seems to be considered a 75%, I'm writing this important entry. Although there were some minor bitter and sarcastic feelings between the two teams, and excluding the fact that all of the other teams in the room were rooting for us, things were neck and neck the whole time. Accordingly, the score came out Wilson: 2340 to Lincoln: 2340. A tie! We'll just have to beat them in something else, like Science Bowl which we're going to start this year since Constitution Team was nixed, or there's speech and debate where we routinely double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, and exceed their score by even higher multiples. With the multitudes of new young people and the fact that 80% of the returning team is juniors we should be a juggernaut of reckoning. I'll be happy as long as we get 1st in the state this year or next, and 2nd or 3rd the for other. With a trend like ≈20th, 5th, and 4th in the state since our founding 3 years ago, it's looking promising. And we have an assistant coach now! He seems interesting and knowledgable enough. Apparently he made up an entire ADS piece off of the top of his head and won the tournament. Good things indeed.

I hate these idiotic, moronic over-unity "visionaries" more than you can possibly believe! I went to this "New Energy" conference, which was essentially this springboard for people trying to be convincing about things like bending spoons with the mind. Apparently the "new physics" which is being suppressed by "them" is really actually saying that there is an infinite "plenum" of energy of which we are a part that abounds everywhere. AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! Why do people have to think this nonsense??

Go to:
http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=9336493

I acquiesce. I'm once again on the cusp of getting DSL service, but I can't order it online for some reason, and their support is only open during business hours, so I can't call them personally. Recent developments give me renewed hope.

I've decided that I'm going to attempt getting a free iPod from freeipods.com. It may seem like a scam, but Jon did it and had no problems. Basically, you just need to complete one of their "offers" (things like free trials to various internet services), and get 5 other people to do so. So if you want to help, let me know. The best offer available is one for InFone, in which you sign up to get 5 free calls to their service. You are charged on a per call basis, so if you never use the service, you never get charged. But the best part is that you receive a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com for doing it. So if you want to help me out and get a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com, then let me know. The business model of the site essentially requires that they make more money on kickbacks from the services that people sign up for and decide to continue with, than the iPod itself actually costs. I don't have much faith in that, so I'd better hurry up and get my 5 people.

I've become so incensed with the speed of my computer (it's too slow to run iTunes, which will be a problem if and when I get an iPod), that I'm going to build a new one. The new version of Windows Media Player consumes so much CPU that when I listen to music, the typing response speed drops by a factor of 5 or so. I don't need that much performance, so I reckon I can do it for about $200-$300 if I cannibalize some parts from my current computer (CD drive, sound card...). AMD is replacing most of their AthlonXP line with the new Sempron line of processors (the Sempron uses virtually the same architecture as the AthlonXP, from what I can tell), so AthlonXPs are now pretty cheap. Pricewatch lists an Athlon 2400 (1.93 GHz) motherboard-CPU combo for $87. The bus speeds seem a bit slow; something on the order of 500 MHz would be nice, but I'm willing to compromise. I've got to do a little bit more research too. My monitor is dying too, so I'll need to get another one of those. A 19-inch LCD should do the trick. I figure that it's worth getting a nice one, so I can use it with a laptop when I go to college. If anyone has any parts to donate to my cause of building the absolute cheapest acceptable computer, let me know also.

These are the general specs of what I'd like to build:
Processor: 1.8-2.4 GHz (preferably having a motherboard with a bus > 500 MHz)
Hard Drive: 80.0 GB (preferably > 7200 RPM), plus my current 40.0 GB and 6 GB drives
RAM: 512 MB
Video Card: I definately need to learn more abou video cards
Sound Card: cannibalize
Optical Drive: DVD-ROM plus my current CD-RW, or a DVD-RW

All and all, it's a pretty middle of the road machine that should come in somewhere between $200-$300. I'll probably dual boot linux and windows. Windows can go on the 80 GB drive, Linux on the 40 GB one, and the 6 GB one can be for windows backups. Once I get DSL hooked up, my email will be liberated from windows, allowing me to make more use of linux. Probably I'll just go with Fedora Core 3 when it comes out, as lame as that is.

So that's the plan. I'm sick of being bogged down in molassas, so it's a general roadmap for the acceleration of all aspects of my computing experience.

I've been optimistic lately. My classes are extremely good, and they are with excellent company. However, this year's instatement of a biweekly mandatory "study hall," which was designed as a loophole to fulfill the last few hours of student seat-time while not violating the teachers' contract, has caused me to lose all faith in the future of humanity. It essentially a thirty minute period where I sit in room doing homework that I could do at home, and listen to barbaric people engage in senseless banter designed to attract attention. Case in point:

Moron 1: "Hehe, teacher, he's abusing me. Stop him. Give him a referral." [both people are actually just sitting in desks]

Moron 2: "Whatchyo thinkin' yo doin' now? Ah ain't."

Moron 1: "Hey can I leave. I mean, I'll just be back in like 30 seconds. If you let me leave to go to the bathroom, I'll be back in like 30 seconds." [moron 1 leaves anyway, and returns 15 minutes later; I am impressed that he actually comes back, even if his math skills are off by a factor of 30. Meanwhile people talk loudly about absolutely NOTHING.]

And so it goes on. I have lost all faith in the future of humanity. Several years ago, I characterized stupidity into two predominant classes: decisional stupidity and intellectual stupidity. I am currently at a loss for how to classify this behavior. The obvious explanation would be that this is an instance of attention-getting, but that this goal should be achieved through stupidity and an utter lapse of reason is perplexing. I can only conclude that it is a result of total irrationality--temporary insanity--induced by confinement. The modern life is increasingly passive, while caloric and simple sugar intakes continue to rise. These two factors, coupled with quiet confinement at 2 o'clock in the afternoon induces temporary insanity. That is my hypothesis, and I'll have to observe more to come up with a more nuanced exploration of that thesis or abandon it and create a new one. I'm thinking I'll take the second route, that's a crappy theory.

My brain feels remarkably dead. Maybe it's just Friday, but feel like I've exhausted all of my capacity to think nonmathematically for the day. I'd better go do some physics.

Something occurred to me today. Over the summer I've been studying for the AP Physics C using Sears's and Zemansky's University Physics. I've been using a copy of the 11th edition from the library, and it is huge and weighs a ton. That's fine, because I always leave it at home. In any case, it's a massive 3550 cubic centimeters and weighs roughly (very roughly) 3 kg. So Mr. Lovelin's wife's father, who was an aerospace engineer, died recently, so he brought in loads and loads of these ancient and great engineering books. He was going to give them to teachers, but he let us take whatever we wanted. As I glanced through I came across none other than the 1st edition (4th printing) of Sears's and Zemansky's University Physics from the late 1940s. The original edition is 1880 cubic centimeters, covers most of the same material, and it weighs roughly 1 kg. So over a period of 10 editions and about 55 years they have managed to double the size of their text while adding nothing more than a little modern physics and some appendicies. That is the problem with textbooks these days. There's no sense of efficiency and economy anymore, only a sense of knowing how to create good picture books. Bloody publishing companies... Think of how much more cheaply texts could be produced if color pictures weren't added, and think of all the backs that could saved.

Maintaining a blog is a fairly geeky endeavor. Maintaining a blog that talks about geekiness is even more geeky of an endeavor. But it may get even geekier than that in the near future. It just so happens that a number of speech tournaments overlap with our physics/calculus study groups, so we have decided to cancel neither, but have our study groups at speech tournaments. Part of the ritual will be to compete and see who can be the geekiest on the team (or in the tournament). Of course, we will, hands down, win, but that's the whole point. If Ted joins the team, there may be some competition, but no matter what, we will have a sacred celebration of mathematics, physics, and enviable eccentricity. So break out your HP calculators, and give all 18 decimal places of accuracy for a change.

Expect a release of the final version of Mozilla's standalone browser "Firefox" this week. In other news, school is going even better than expected, and Leeor and I are planning our own metaphorical suicide. Calc is going to be a complete waste of time, so we're thinking about studying first semester multivariable topics so we can test out of MATH 211 at Reed next year. We also studied physics at Jon's house at 11 AM saturday for some totally incomprehensible reason. Hopefully Friday's events netted a good amount of money for leadership. And my pool skills really need some serious work. Time to sleep!

Vale!

"Throughout my life I have always been involved in minorities: I spent my first few years teaching Catholic African American girls in inner city Chicago, then five years teaching Navajos and rednecks on a reservation, and for the past twenty-two years (although things have become more diversified) I've taught rich WASPs and Jews."

--Ron Zaraza

Nearly finalized, here is my official schedule with teachers:

0. Leadership - Lovelin
1. AP Physics - Zaraza
2. AP Ecology - Zaraza
3. AP Calculus 1-2 (AB) - Fisher
4. AP Poli-Sci/Econ - Marchese
5. Spanish 5-6 - Flores
6. English 5-6-A - Boly

As of 10:09 this morning, 3rd period should have been changed to: AP Poli-Sci/Econ - Marchese, and 4th period should have been changed to: AP Calculus 3-4 (BC) - Culpepper.

In life, there is often a fine line between fulfillment of ambition and suicide.

If it's of any importance to you whatsoever, I'm back, I had a fabulous time, and I'm extremely tired. I've got a gross heap of work to do tomorrow. Time to sleep.