Tim's blog - School

A couple updates

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:58:40 -0500

So when they say winter quarter at Rose is hectic? They're not kidding. I just found my first solid chunk of downtime since I came back to school two weeks ago. What have I been up to, you ask?

For starters, the Festivus, Christmas, and New Year's celebrations that occurred over my last break were all most excellent. This year was the fifth consecutive Festivus celebrated within the group, and it was by far the smoothest a Festivus has ever gone. The Airing of Grievances was trouble-free, the introduction of a white elephant gift exchange went smoothly, and our Feats of Strength involved that classic game Set. For Christmas a few days later, hordes of relatives (from both sides of the family) descended on the house for almost an entire week all told. (Most hilarious was our cousin Keith, who's two and just being ridiculous all over the place. He got an iPod Touch for Christmas. He's two.) Lastly, New Year's went well overall, despite some illnesses on part of a couple of the partygoers. Mario Kart is never so hilarious as when played sleep-deprived at 4am.
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I've been told I'm insane.

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:22:39 -0400

Walking back to the dorm from a Learning Center shift the other day, I was chatting with one of the office staff who lived nearby about our respective majors. He was a double (CS/SE); I was a triple (CS/SE/MA). The difference between us, I discovered, was that he filed a plan of study and I had not.

Actually, the difference was that he knew that a plan of study had to be filed in order to have more than one major, and I did not. He also knew that this plan had to be filed by the end of your junior year. I was aware of none of this, and subsequently had a slight panic moment.
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This just happened

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:10:30 -0400

Funniest 8am EVER.

I show up, and the first thing I see is the giant vat of coffee sitting on the end of one of the tables. This is not new; our prof is nice enough to buy us all coffee on various days, especially on Fridays. I'm actually like ten minutes early at this point, so I grab some coffee and sit down.

That's when I notice the other thing: nobody from my group is in class with me. I was only expecting one out of three in the first place: one of my group members had an appendectomy the other day, and another is at his sister's wedding, but there was supposed to be at least one other person there.

So I'm sitting there sipping my coffee when the prof finally decides to start class (five minutes late - we had about 50% attendance when the bell rang, so he held off a bit until a few more latecomers straggled in). He begins with announcements, and the following conversation took place:

Prof: "OK, so one of the feedbacks I got from you guys was to keep announcing when the homework was due. The next homework is due Sunday-"
Student (in the back): "Wait. Why is it due Sunday?"
Prof: "Do you ever pay attention?"
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Back to school

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:58:04 -0400

I celebrated a triumphant return to college a couple weeks ago, moving in the 30th and finding it very easy to get back into the swing of things. First thing I did? Help run a laptop orientation session for the freshman.

The way it works is as follows: every freshman is required to buy the same laptop. This makes support a lot easier for our tech department, and also means that the school can standardize on a set of software that everyone gets access to (and gets pretty deep discounts on at the same time, because of the volume of purchases made). However, the network services here are pretty intense - we run everything from an online learning management system (ANGEL, for those wondering, but it may shift to Blackboard in the not-so-distant future) to a couple different network file systems (AFS and DFS) to integrated Kerberos/LDAP authentication.

Technobabble over.

Anyway, the complete orientation takes about four hours, and includes just about everything a new student could possibly want to do with their laptop. I do mean everything - the session starts with a ten-slide PowerPoint presentation before it even gets to "plug in your laptop," and progresses through another ten slides before it gets to "press the power button to turn on your laptop." I did get to deal with some pretty interesting questions - one kid didn't receive exactly half his power cord, and another got two mice in his package. And I got paid for four hours' work. Not a bad deal.
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Lake photography!

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 17:22:43 -0500

This entry has been rumbling around in my head for a long time, and I'm glad I finally got to sit down and write it.

About three weeks ago, Rose-Hulman Public Safety finally declared it was safe to go out on the frozen lake and do stuff, like ice skating or Subway runs or, in my case, panoramic photographs of half of campus from the center of the lake. So I hiked out there with my spotter (thanks again for making sure I didn't die, Jarek) and a tripod and my camera to get some photos.

As it turns out, getting a decent panoramic with a non-wide-angle-lens is pretty hard. I still had only the stock lens on my camera, seeing that I'm a poor college student and can't afford a nicer lens, so my plan was to get a bunch of pictures in a circle and use Photoshop's photomerge feature to stitch them all together. I was also planning on getting a really nice, high-resolution picture, so I zoomed way in and wound up taking like fifty shots in two "rows" (top and bottom). This is what came out:

First panorama - zoomed in all the way, full manual camera settings, "daylight" white balance. Click for larger image.

As you can see, the panoramic shows some serious problems with border stitching. I realized after Photoshop spit out this horrendous image that full manual might not have been quite right for optimal photomerge - the color of each photo along the edge would have been sufficiently different to cause Photoshop some headaches in trying to blend everything together. So I went back out on the lake the next day and shot four more panoramas, each with different camera settings. Two of them just flat-out didn't merge, and the third run spat this out:

Fourth panorama - normal zoom, aperture priority, no UV filter, "auto" white balance. Click for larger image.

Apparently I accidentally overran the invisible line I set myself for the edge of the panorama, so Photoshop picked the wrong point to split the panorama at. This caused some more troubles with photo alignment, and even if it were to get the edge right, the blending still didn't take quite right. So, without much hope, I started the merge on the fifth and final panorama. To my surprise, it was half-decent:

Fifth panorama - zoomed out, aperture priority, no UV filter, "auto" white balance. Click for larger image.

There's a little bit of blending difficulties, and a small white line where the photos got aligned about a pixel off, but all-in-all, it's not half-bad. Moral of the story: to get a good Photoshop photomerge, allow your camera to do a lot of the work for you, and make sure to zoom out - too much detail messes it up.

Hindsight is 20/20

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:06:04 -0500

Last Saturday I, along with Jarek and Catherine, competed in a poker tournament sponsored by the Residence Hall Association (RHA). The tournament was no-limit Texas Hold'em, no buy-in, and it drew 74 players from across campus, most of whom had competed before and many of whom were pretty good.

The structure of the tournament was such that there were eight players to a table, each of whom started with $100 in chips, so that the total chip count floating around was $7400. I started at a table where the only person I (vaguely) knew was the RA from Speed 1, Mark. Blinds started at $1/$2, and we had two empty (but bought-in) seats at our table to feed us.

Mark had competed in this tournament his past three years on campus, so he was feeling pretty confident, and I pretty scared. But surprise! He left pretty early in the second round, having gone all-in to another player at the table and losing on the river. The blinds, at this point, had doubled to $2/$4. After Mark left, we had seven players and five people (the two empty seats stayed).
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Mmmm... hot chocolate

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:56:34 -0500

I'm drinking a delicious mug of hot chocolate (from Mom's homemade mix, no less - yummy) right now, and do you know why? Because I'm done with my Logic Design project, that's why.

The final project in this class is different every quarter, but it always involves implementing some kind of digital system at a level that's just barely above the hardware. What you wind up doing is allocating individual registers for memory, connecting them, writing a finite state machine, that kind of thing. It's a pain and you have to be very analytical about it and it always winds up taking way longer than you expect.

This quarter's project was to design and create a system that would track the finishing positions and times of four racecars down a pinewood derby track. In pinewood derby, the cars are powered by nothing more than gravity - their time depends entirely on how the car's shaped. The final project is hooked up to sensors at the gate at the top of the track and sensors at the bottom of the track in the finishing position for each of the four lanes, and we have to figure out how to take those inputs and turn them into a scrolling display of lane numbers, positions, and times. It was a kind of cool project - but then the prof made it a bunch more interesting.
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Bear Science

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:56:23 -0400

I know, I know, I've been quite remiss in blogging. My excuse: College is epic. This entry will be one of the longest, most overdone entries in a long time. Just warning you.

Move-in
The family and I got up early the morning of August 29th and drove down to Terre Haute, arriving approximately 12:30pm local time (EST). Move-in hours didn't officially start until two, though, so we were considering not going down to campus just yet and finding somewhere to eat instead. Am I ever glad we didn't make that mistake.

We showed up on campus around 12:45pm, and our car was effectively mobbed by about six or seven residence hall staff members. They told us the move-in hours were mostly a suggestion, and we could get stuff into the room anytime we wanted. What's better was that the staff was there to help haul things up and down stairs - quite useful considering I was in the middle of the top (third) floor in Speed Hall.

It only took us two trips to get everything up to the room - not really surprising, considering that at this time "us" consisted of my entire nuclear family and six residence hall staffers. By 1pm, my entire life was laying in a pile in the middle of my dorm room. The staff didn't go so far as to help me unpack, but that's OK. They had other people to attend to.

I did a bit of unpacking, then we took a family trip out to Wal-Mart and Red Lobster at around 2:30pm (a half hour after the time move-in officially started). At this point, my roommate - Matt Devonish - had not yet shown up, but it wasn't really a concern to us. We bought several things that we didn't want to haul down in the van, like food and a microwave, then ate a huge shrimp meal and headed back to campus.
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AP scores

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:29:56 -0400

No, I'm not one of those crazy kids who absolutely has to know his AP scores the second they're available. Rose requested that I send along AP info so they can see what classes I am and am not likely to take this upcoming semester by July 7, so the only real way to get the scores was by phone, and I figured I might as well get it done.

OK, so I was a little excited. But then again, wouldn't you be? Here are the tests I took this year, along with my score and the credit-hours I get at Rose-Hulman, according to their posted AP credit policy.

AP Computer Science AB: 5 (8 hours)
AP German: 4 (8 hours)
AP U.S. Government & Politics: 4 (4 hours)
AP Calculus BC: 5 (10 hours)
AP Physics - Mechanics: 5 (4 hours)
AP Physics - Electricity & Magnetism: 4 (4 hours)
AP Statistics: 5 (4 hours)

I wasn't really surprised by anything here, other than maybe the Government score (I thought I'd get a 2 or similar) and the Calculus score (c'mon, a 5 on the Calc BC test without taking the class? Give me a little credit). I was slightly disappointed by the Physics E & M score, but that test was hard.
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What senioritis?

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:31:16 -0400

I'm sorry. I was under the impression that school was supposed to get easier for fourth-quarter seniors, not harder.

As the time of this entry clearly indicates, there's far too much homework to be done. And it's not straightforward, simple homework either. It's that kind of tricksy stuff that lets you believe that it'll take you ten minutes, then it's two hours later and you're just barely finishing up. Writing personal notes to 21 people is not as easy as it sounds. And this is all the day before finals, after a late night (which was itself the second late night in a row), after multiple finals-targeted projects.

At least I'm exempt from all of my finals, with the sole exception of Journalism. For some unknowable reason, Wagner is granting no exemptions whatsoever. That's been policy for years, but I haven't understood until now how much it sucks. I'm exempt from every single other class I'm in, including Stats, which was a miracle and a half. But no - I have to get up in five hours to go to Journalism and deliver my notes in person, so that we can all spend the rest of the period not reading them until we get to be by ourselves. Then I come home at 9:30, fully awakened and ready for the day, with nothing to do. It's a little aggravating.

Oh well. This time next week, I'll be getting ready to graduate, and three weeks from now I'll be in sunny Canada.

And then there was one

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:19:12 -0400

Today marked my last day of AP testing with the four-hour, two-part Physics C exam. It did not go well by any standards.

First I took fifth hour off to have lunch - the test took up my lunch period, as well as my open, so I had some food and hung out in the J-lab. I trusted the bell to let me know when I needed to go down for the test.

That trust was definitely misplaced. I completely forgot that today was a Late Start Monday, so the bell wouldn't ring until 12:11. The test started promptly at 12. I got a text message at 12:05 asking me, very succinctly, "AP test?" I panicked, dropped what I was doing (quite literally dropped, as in books on the floor of the lab) and sprinted for the library. I showed up to face a very displeased Mr. Hamilton giving me a glare and telling me to just fill out my answer form when I had time. P.S. - Thank you to whoever texted me. I don't know the number, and I don't know who you are, but you saved me a lot of inconvenience.

It only went downhill from there. The Mechanics half was merely impossible - the Electricity and Magnetism was downright sadistic. There was one problem where Elliot, Anthony, and I all had completely different methods and solutions to solving, and I'm tempted to believe that none of us were completely right. I can't wait to see what Kett makes of it when he gets the problem sets in 48 hours. Brad actually expressed a desire to purchase GTA IV just to shoot someone, then never play it again. It was that frustrating.

Security guards

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:17:35 -0400

I'm collating various senior surveys for the newspaper, and of the 43 entries I've received so far, 30 of them have mentioned security in general or Bonnie in particular as the worst part of senior year.

I just thought that was funny.

Anaheim, Day 4

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:44:36 -0400

And so our sojourn to California comes to an end. We landed today at around 7pm Chicago time, on a flight that was only delayed about a half hour.

The major concern I had with the flight was the seating. Originally, I was in a seat by myself, six rows from anyone else I knew. This was obviously not a maintainable state of affairs, so we tracked down a ticketing agent and I got myself switched next to Joe, Hayleigh, Linda, and Wagner.

Speaking of Hayleigh, she and her disreputable friends got ahold of my laptop when I graciously let them watch an episode of The Office that we had missed on Thursday. They, in the most rude of actions, went through my Trash and found some old blog entries, which led them here (you can see Hayleigh's comment on the previous entry). However, I've forgiven them for the sole reason that I now have some more readers. And the episode of The Office was excellent, so I'm in a good mood.

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Anaheim, Day 3

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:12:51 -0400

People are funny when they're panicked to finish ten sessions.

I got up early and did the 8am session, followed closely by four more at 9, 11, 12, and 1. On my way out of the 1pm session, I ran into no fewer than four staffers who had gone out to lunch (I suspect more were involved) and were now desperate to get back for the 2:30 sessions and anything in the way of notes they could scrape from the 1 sessions (which were still going on). One asked me, a tinge of desperation in her voice, "Do you know where Wagner is this session?" so as to avoid any accidental contact.

In any event, I have a leisurely afternoon ahead of me before we meet as a staff at 3:30 to discuss the evening. I've done some souvenir shopping already, and I intend to do some more soon, once I've had a chance to relax a bit.

Today's sessions weren't as exciting as yesterday's, but there were a few good tidbits I picked up. Turns out Photoshop has some cool batch/automated editing procedures built in, so you can (for example) scan multiple printed photos in one go, then have Photoshop detect the individual images, separate them, straighten them to the closest 90-degree increment, then save them in separate files. It's pretty neat.

There's also these things called Actions, which are basically macros in Photoshop form. What you do is record a sequence of events on a photo (rotate, adjust colors, crop, apply filters, change levels/channels, whatever you want) and save it as an Action, which you can then apply to any other photo or series of photos automatically. Photoshop even comes with some of these built in, like "Water Reflection," which is supposed to create that cool effect at the bottom of your photo where it looks like it's being reflected in a calm body of water. I burned a massive chunk of battery trying to make it work on a photo I had, but apparently it wasn't the right format or I was doing it wrong or something, because it would choke and die every time. I eventually stopped trying because I was in session and needed some battery left for note-taking.
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Anaheim, Day 2 1/2

nospam@example.com (Tim) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:38:00 -0400

I should really be making these entries in parts (e.g. Anaheim, Part III) rather than days. It'd make more sense and be less weird. But I've started it this way, so I'll finish it this way.

This is my first actual post that I'm writing directly into the administration window of my blog online rather than into a TextEdit window. I paid for the Internet access, and have now gotten caught up on my email, the technology world, and everything else important in life.

Speaking of which, there was an earthquake in southern Illinois today, reportedly a 5.2 in magnitude, that some people near the high school reported feeling. It took place at about 4:40 this morning Chicago time. How ironic is that, that I'm in California and an earthquake hits Illinois?

I'm growing more and more attached to my MacBook by the hour. My last session today was one about InDesign and crazy stuff you can do with it, and I had InDesign on my laptop. Moreover, the presenter was also using a MacBook Pro, so I was able to mirror a lot of his movements and keystrokes and so on, while taking notes simultaneously.

The session itself was phenomenal. Most of the "learn about InDesign" sessions are something on the order of "yay, let's apply text wrap to this box." I almost didn't go to this one, just because my past experience has been truly terrible with these kinds of sessions, but something made me check it out. It was right after lunch, and we were done early, so I showed up for the session (which was at 2:30pm Anaheim time) about a half hour early.

Was I right to do so. I got the last available seat, right next to a guy with a regular MacBook who also had his copy of Word popped and was taking notes. He didn't have InDesign, though, so I felt special. After that, the floor started filling up, and I think we hit fire-department capacity almost twenty minutes before the session was even supposed to begin. The doors closed and the presenter started way early, and for the next two hours we designed crazy, maniacal things. Among them: the word "LOREM" in Rockwell Ultra Bold with an image of a lime placed into it, and a box with multiple curvy sides that at various times contained text, a four-swatch radial gradient, and a massive photo of a palm tree. This may not sound like much, but it's a big deal to InDesign wizards.
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