Quote of the Year

Weisbart, on the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus:

"That's why this theorem is so nice - it takes something that really requires a lot of thought and reduces it to something that ... a 3A student could do."

Trashy

Sightings

1. In class Monday: Some littleish Indian guy wearing red shoes kept walking down the hall past our room and then walking back seconds later. He's what I imagine an Indian elf would look like (the kind from the North Pole, not from Rivendell.)
2. Walking to class Tuesday: Some girl had headphones on and was listening to loud Bluegrass music, complete with very audible violin glissandi. I suppose anything is a welcome departure from the stuff people usually listen to way too loudly!
3. Walking to dinner Tuesday night: We exited Rieber Vista just as a guy on a bike was arriving. He was pretty far from the building and wanted to make it inside before the door closed. So he pedaled as hard as he could right to the door, then slammed on his breaks just inches from the door to grab it. It was pretty hardcore if you ask me.
   

Floss

Flossing between the back two molars with a piece of floss that's too short is difficult. Torn between efficacy and frugality. I am profoundly frustrated.

Beefless

Starting this quarter, every Thursday the dining halls are beefless - which basically means all of the beef is replaced with turkey or chicken. I guess the die-hard beef fans are upset about this but I welcome anything that begets a little variety. Though I'm not entirely sure they're accomplishing much when it's only one day per week, and they're just substituting meats.

It's almost fourth week already - I think I've got midterms coming up but I don't know when. I haven't written about my classes yet so I guess I will:

Math 151A - Applied Numerical Methods - I love this class. If you've ever become disillusioned by your math classes then you ought to take some numerical analysis. For example, after elementary calculus you know how to integrate a few pretty functions in a few special cases - that's great, but real life rarely works out like the questions in your calc textbook do. In real life, you don't get functions, you get data. Or approximations of functions - and even if you have these there's a huge chance you won't be able to manipulate or analyze them by hand. Numerical analysis is all about how to cope with this sort of problem - in particular, with computers. I'm not the hugest fan of the professor, nor the TA, who spends most of his time advising us about programming in Python. Which would be nice and all if only this were a programming class - but it's not and I wish he'd discuss the actual numerical analysis a little more. The programming required is rudimentary at best, especially since we can use MATLAB.

PIC 10C - Advanced Programming - I find it funny that inheritance and other fundamental topics in object-oriented programming are taught in a class with the word "advanced" in its title. I suppose it's not that necessary in C++, but with Java these are always the first things you talk about. Fortunately this has permitted me to tune out a little, and made this class very relaxing so far. This week we switched to C# - I guess we are working towards making some nice little Windows applications, which should be handy. But of course we have to start with basic syntactical issues - and lucky for me C# is even more similar to Java than C++ is. It amuses me that writing one program in Java ever allows me to breeze through so much of this class.

Physics 1C - I hate this class. I come in every day and tell myself: "Self, this is the day you will stay awake through an entire lecture" - but it never happens and within five minutes I'm out cold. My notes are consequently a little disjointed - fragments of the second half of the past few weeks' lectures. Incidentally, I strangely recall saying most of this about 1B - physics classes must not be my thing. We'll see how the midterm goes...

Math 131A - Analysis - Another theoretical class in the same vein as 115A. This one starts with everything we've taken for granted since elementary school; for the first three weeks we have been building up from simple set theory into constructing number systems. Like defining what it means to add integers. Proving things that we have used without thinking for 75% of our lives. The professor insists that the actual analysis will start soon. I have grown to appreciate this type of material much more through 115A - it's nice to see where all of this came from.

Cell Phone Faces

Since fall, I've taken a few face photos with my cell phone when my camera wasn't handy. I should really start carrying it with me more frequently again. These will suffice for now.

On one of those self-checkout machines at Albertson's (another reason to love them!)

Kush's inadvertent fruit placement at dinner today:

On Joseph's cooler:
Oven mitt burns:

On the back of a shark-themed bottle opener: (don't ask me)On the side of Gayley Avenue:

My phone is also home to a bunch of pictures of other interesting things. But these will have to wait until I'm feeling a bit less lazy.

Winter Concert

Tonight was our winter concert, so I figured I'd write my thoughts on each piece as usual as a means to procrastinate on writing a real entry:

Copland - An Outdoor Overture
Such nostalgia from freshman year of high school, when this was the opener to our marching band field show. It doesn't have the greatest cello part - we don't even get to play at all during the gorgeous middle section. But I love this piece, its driving rhythms and subtle transitions.

Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364
This was probably the first time that I have actually enjoyed performing Mozart - thanks mostly to our phenomenal soloists. Virtuosic violinists are a dime a dozen, but rarely do we hear a good violist, especially when their solo repertoire is so small. But even the music itself stands out to me among Mozart's other work - the first movement in particular seems more passionate than your typical Mozart (aside from works like the Requiem).

Bizet - L'Arlésienne Suites 1 and 2
Bizet is gorgeous as usual - but I'm a little unimpressed that the work's transition of choice seems to be to stop and then resume again with completely different material. I can understand not wanting to drastically alter the original music in creating suites, but there have got to be some leitmotifs or something that could be used to bridge the gaps between sections a little.