Boring info on my life, with interspersed tidbits on computers, math, and other such topics.

Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts

Oct 1, 2007

Victories of sorts

Kevin and I teamed up once again for an Epic bout of Two Headed Giant. We had the same record as we did last time, but paradoxically won fewer packs. It was still a good time.

UMTYMP test today. It went alright, I was actually prepared for a change.

And I attended the UMTYMP college night AND the Yale Information session. For a liberal arts college it's surprisingly attractive to me. Yale has the benefit of having really good speakers as admission officers. It's a lot more convincing than Stanford, for example.

Sep 28, 2007

Campaigning is over, thank goodness

So, today was the last day of campaigning for us student government. And tomorrow is the Lorwyn prerelease. I'm too tired to say more.

Sep 24, 2007

Hmph

Here is some wondrous Apple technology, just working. I gotta say, I really miss my "hi-quality earbuds." It's a shame they could not withstand the undoubtedly earth shattering strain of me removing it from my ear. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!
Also, I beat Cave Story. And I'm now extremely busy and I need to get it all done before Saturday, so I can attend the Lorwyn prerelease tournament. On a different note, I watched the movie Brick, which is awesome just because it is noir, but was also awesome because Nora Zohetner replaced Keira Knightley as coolest actress ever.

Apr 30, 2007

POTD 122

POTD

I really love this sort of environment, where you've got the bridges spanning large expanses and stuff. I need to see if I can find this one really cool old painting I found once.

Anyways I'm finally back, and finished licking my wounds. For those of you who didn't know I did worse than I had expected on a few key tests, which didn't really put me in the mood of blogging. Those scores were 4 on the AIME, and 78 on the second UMTYMP test. Actually my UMTYMP score was pretty in comparison to my classmates' scores, many of whom received something like 48. Anyhow it is pretty good to be back after my four week (exactly!) absence.

The past couple days news in brief is:
*UMTYMP test in little more than a week.
*I'm a student in training for the Minnesota American Regions Math League, again. I was hoping to get promoted, but oh well.
*I'm taking five APs. Comparative Government, US Government, Calculus BC, US History, and Physics B
*I've turned in lots of assignments as usual
*Got two new computers from a friend

With one of those new computers I made a foray into the world of Linux computing. I installed Ubuntu (really easily) and had a load of fun. Screenshot below. Screenshot2.png However, that computer is currently broken, since I installed an nVidia driver incorrectly. Silly nVidia is just another one of Microsoft's goons. I think I might just install Fedora when Core 7 comes out, so that will fix my problem.

Also I wasted some time two weekends ago, and went to the Future Sight pre-release with Kevin. Despite being a complete waste of time it was a lot of fun. The best part is that Kevin and I did really well as a team, so we got prizes. :)

And that's about all for today. Enjoy more onslaught tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, the next chapter meeting (in three weeks) is at a pizza place, food on the chapter.

And one last thing, A Realm Divided has been permanently suspended while we work on a new more snazzy game. Read: one that is actually within my ability as a programmer.

Jan 22, 2007

POTD 82

POTD

For those of you who enjoyed bodyworks. I have to say I admire the amount of work that undoubtedly went into that piece.

Argh, haircut and braces getting tightened. Could any combination of two events be worse?

I finished my ten page history assignment, huzzah! Actually that wasn't huzzah worthy, because I actually had to work my butt of in order to do it. Any sign of effort on my part is de facto not cool.

Some quacky British professor said today (Jan 22) is the most depressing day of the year, for various reasons I didn't care about. However it didn't sound like he was depressed, since he was happily using NPR to market whatever crap he is selling. And you know what? I'm inclined to agree with him. Guess why. It's because math league was today. Man, I had such a good time talking to myself, you know I really hate people. It was great, just me sitting alone, without even a measly book to read. Really, it was awesome, you shouldn't have been there. What the crap, seriously I give up. Next year I'm joining a team. Some team like Wayzata, Edina, or Eden Prairie. Imagine that, I could actually be on a team that held practices, and actually had a competitive shot at doing something. And actually had enthusiasm. And actually tried to improve itself through practice. And actually showed some motivation. Man, that would be the day.

Anyways as a quick wrap up of today's meet:
Event A was easy so I picked up full points
Event C was graded by dumb buttfricking school teachers that don't know algebra, so they didn't know n(n+1) = n^2 + n, so they graded my paper wrong, so they screwed my score, so they screwed my chances of going to state, so they forced me to have to do well on the AMC 12 or I won't qualify for ARML. I can't believe people pay taxes to give such silly people jobs.

I guess I promised a debate post, so here goes:
The journey: Well the ride on the Retard Racer (R) was about as crazy as I thought it would be. Which was very. I divided my team between reading The Silmarillion, creating a debate fight club, and working on various debate related things.
Day 1: The novices weren't actually competing the first day, so I watched a lot of round. One of my teammates did a round in 7 minutes, and won. It was a silly round though, a top ranked debater against some noobsy Nebraska debater that couldn't flow. To quote my teammate "Extend my burden analysis, I meet the burden. You affirm here."
Day 2:
Round 1: I lost off some crappy solvency argue. "He doesn't show that holding corporations to moral standards that respect human beings decreases exploitation." Hmm, that's sort of what my case was doing.
Round 2: This girl sucked. She said "ZOMG CORPORATIONS BREAK LAWS THEIR IMMORAL OH NOES." I said "Law isn't moral, look at the Nazis." Win for me!
Round 3: This round was just mentally retarded. The judge basically constructed new arguments for my opponent, extended his offense, and did all kinds of things to help him out.
Round 4: This was a funny round. My opponent ran a case saying that we should define corporation using the slang definition, which calls it a fat stomach. Unfortunately that played right into my case, which argues that corporations and individuals make decisions in different manners. My entire argument was "Stomachs and People make decisions differently, so you can't hold them to the same moral standard." I loled.

And also I'll do a quick report on music.
Moby: Don't like this guy to much, not great tunes, don't like his vocals much
Stereolab: This band has to be French, because I can never understand a word they are singing, and they have song titles like "Le Demure" and "Cosmic Country Noir." Actually, some of their songs are in English. But whatever, I love them. They have such addicting melodies and stuff, and I don't actually mind the French either.
Daft Punk: These guys are freaking insane, and I like this. Nothing like weird synthesizer voices saying "I am the brainwasher."
The Gorillaz: Andy doesn't like them, but I don't think they are too bad. You really have to watch their music videos to appreciate them.
Hybrid: I like them. Except for when the guy sings, the vocals are annoying.

And I found a book worse than Eldest! Dragons: Lexicon Triumvate. The author likes to go around on forums trying to promote his book by saying "If you love Harry Potter you'll love..." on Mugglenet, and then saying "If you hate Harry Potter you'll love" on some anti-potter site. So anyways he stumbled onto Anti-Shurtugal and wrote "If you hate Eragon you'll love...", after going on Shurtugal.net and writing "If you love Eragon you'll love..." Funny things is the ASers pretty much took his entire terrible book apart. (It's about cyber-dragons fighting in a medieval setting. Yeah.) And then they proceeded to tear him apart. It turns out he is a sexist, and a racist against all that are not Asian.

And I also went to Alanaxh's house this weekend for supper. The food was excellent. However it would seem that I'm unable to make conversation, because there was _waay_ too much awkward silence. And we also watched a Marx Brothers film, which was funny as too be expected. And I did some trading of Magic cards; couldn't get Ben to give up his Umezawa's Jitte, unfortunately. And that will conclude our much too long post.

Sep 21, 2006

POTD 21

POTD

Ooh, creepy. Scene after a vampire visited.

I had my second debate practice today, I'll have to write my Negative and Affrimative case by Monday. Quite a daunting task.
That silly English paper that I gave my life blood to finish on time actually wasn't due yesterday. Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! It was actually due next Tuesday. I was thinking over and over "wtf, wtf, wtf, wtf. Why can't I read."
I also visited a math professor's office and got to take a bunch of his books. Including the teachers edition of UMTYMP's textbook for next semester. Booooyah.
I got beat by Kevin quite a few times in Workstation, bah. I'm much better in real life. :D

Sep 19, 2006

POTD 18

POTD

Hmm, messed up alien girl.

I went to the chapter meeting last night, Kevin showed up about 1 hour and 30 minutes late. But he did bring the promised Magic cards and I proceeded to whoop him a few times. My sister is really getting to be a nuaseance when I take her out with me; she almost destoryed my friend's homework assignment.