Posts tagged with "university"

Graphics Assignment, Frozen Throne

I’ve been work­ing most of the week­end on my graph­ics assign­ment. I have the arm ani­ma­tion work­ing now, togeth­er with most of the tim­ing, but the object motion is killing me. Somehow I have to get an object to move with the claw of an arm, get the object dropped, and then move along a con­vey­or belt. The prof gave us anoth­er week exten­sion (on top of one we already had) so it’s due next mon­day. I would pre­fer to get it done for tomor­row though, since the delays in projects would just add up, and I have my hon­ours project and cryp­tog­ra­phy project to think of. I might be hit­ting the bot­tle a bit ear­ly today.

I’ve been read­ing some Frozen Throne info, and the new units look pret­ty cool. The prob­lem is that the expan­sion is com­plete­ly chang­ing and re-bal­anc­ing all of the pre­vi­ous units and build­ings. Essentially, it’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent game. For exam­ple, all the build­ings have their costs reduced by about 15%. Or the fact that units can now ethe­re­al, and that there’s a new type of dam­age. Basically every­thing I learned has become use­less. The only thing that I’ve kept is what I learned from micro­man­age­ment. Shit.

Tired Thoughts, Game Of Life, Etc.

I’m fuck­ing exhaust­ed. I haven’t been this tired since my trip to Tremblant, pos­si­bly. I feel drugged. I almost had a 10 hour day, and I slept hor­ri­bly last night. I decid­ed to attempt an entry at five in the morn­ing, but I did­n’t get very far. I knew that if I did­n’t write tonight, I would­n’t sleep very well again.

I find so much rea­son to write nowa­days. I seem to be get­ting affect­ed by so much. All my emo­tion is com­ing back to me like the open­ing of a vac­u­um.

Working on my graph­ics assign­ment has made me real­ize how large the project is. I have most of the cam­era move­ments fig­ured out, so that I can enter co-ordi­nates into an array and the cam­era will move between them. I can get the oth­er motions done, like cam­era angle and cen­ter of focus rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly. I just need to fig­ure out a way to ani­mate four arm objects at once, keep­ing track of all the motions. I’ll have about two days to work on it, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get it done.

An inter­est­ing math­e­mat­i­cal idea I’ve learned more about is the Game of Life. I’ve nev­er real­ly found math phe­nom­e­na fas­ci­nat­ing, but the Game of Life offers an infi­nite num­ber of pos­si­bilites in cre­at­ing some­thing amaz­ing. With a sim­ple drag of the mouse, one can see if a group of cells will be able to sur­vive, reach sta­sis, or die off, based on Conway’s rules. I could spend hours try­ing out new pat­terns, watch­ing the cells dance in tiny flour­ish­es of log­ic.

I got all three of my mid-terms back, and I was able to pass two out of three. However, the two I man­aged to pass are still with­in five marks of fail­ing. I find that this term is the ulti­mate test of my abil­i­ty to pull things off. It’s the term with the most dire con­se­quences if I fail, and the term that requires the most of my gal­va­niz­ing strength.

I’ve asked Pat to attend my grad­u­a­tion. He’s the per­son who’s helped me out the most in the last four years, no mat­ter what my prob­lem was. Out of all the peo­ple I know, I think that he would be the proud­est.

Tonight was anoth­er scary movie night. Nick, Aaron, and Pita came over. This time it was The Shining. I almost watched it one time, but I was in the com­pa­ny of peo­ple who were mock­ing oth­er peo­ple, so I opt­ed to fall asleep instead. Although I did­n’t walk away from this movie with as much fear as Ringu, it was able to actu­al­ly send chills up my spine and down my arms. I’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced any sort of chills relat­ing to hor­ror before, pos­si­bly because I usu­al­ly don’t like the genre. I was…amazed at what Kubrick did. The angles and score seemed to be the most dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture. My favorite scene is when the wife is exhaust­ed­ly try­ing to open the freez­er door, jam­ming the han­dle over and over, while the cam­era is set near the door, and the audi­ence can see the sweat in her hair, the fatigue in her face, the fran­tic­ness of the sit­u­a­tion.

Thoughts After A Bad Phonecall

Leave it to a sin­gle phone call to fill me with wor­ry. Now I’m anx­ious about my marks, my mid-terms, my projects, my grad­u­a­tion, my life. Pat gave me a pep-talk yes­ter­day, and it helped. Graduation seems uncom­fort­ably close. I’m dying to know how the sto­ry ends.

Patrick was nice enough to come up to me and start a con­ver­sa­tion the oth­er day. I asked him how his work was going, and he told that he’s real­ly enjoy­ing it. He let me know that the Montage project in becom­ing real­ly big, and they might be look­ing for more work­ers, and that if I send Chau my resumé and let him know that I can work full-time dur­ing the sum­mer, I might be able to get a job in devel­op­ment, instead of infor­mat­ics.

God, my sen­tences are becom­ing more and more struc­tured like some­thing Henry James would have writ­ten, although I’m sure I’m not able to be as descrip­tive, or as bril­liant, since he’s a well renowned author infa­mous for being gar­ru­lous, where­as I’m sim­ply a com­put­er sci­ence stu­dent, only able to write when nec­es­sary.

There seem to be a few Five Alive flavours on the mar­ket, such as “Tropical”, “Citrus”, or “Peach Passion”, but none taste as good as “Berry”. Aaron, Trolley, and I all agree that it tastes like Skittles. The juice from con­cen­trate has a slight­ly vary­ing taste from the one in the bot­tle; I find the lat­ter to be a lit­tle more tart and a lit­tle sweet­er.

I’m get­ting a new Intellimouse Explorer sent to me via snail mail, thanks to Trolley. I called up Microsoft, told them that my mouse but­ton was dou­ble-click­ing when it should have sin­gle-clicked (as instruct­ed by Trolley), and they told me that they would send a new one, free of charge. I don’t even need to send my cur­rent one back. I got my cur­rent one four years ago, and I remem­ber spend­ing $100 on it. The pads of it have been worn out uneven­ly, caus­ing a notice­able wob­ble. The lat­est design of the Intellimouse Explorer has a low­er, sleek­er pro­file, and more eas­i­ly acces­si­ble thumb but­tons. Yay.

After talk­ing with my geol­o­gy pro­fes­sor I feel dumb as fuck. I almost failed my mid-term; my mark was the sec­ond low­est in the class, even with a gen­er­ous grade curve. I think I did con­sid­er­ably well, con­sid­er­ing the fact that I had three mid-terms that day, and the fact that I find my mind to be dead when I have my Tuesday lec­tures after a 7:30am lab. Apparently, I have very lit­tle com­mon sense. Although I know that zinc is the main ingre­di­ent is sun­screen, or that soft-drinks con­tain car­bon, I don’t know that nitro­gen is an impor­tant ele­ment in fer­til­iz­er or that graphite is a pop­u­lar indus­tri­al lubri­cant. The list of what I don’t know goes on and on. I had no fuck­ing clue that bak­ing soda is sodi­um bicar­bon­ate. To my prof, all of this is gen­er­al knowl­edge, so it’s assumed when deal­ing with the course. I was nev­er good at chem­istry, and my pro­gramme of stud­ies isn’t even close to relat­ed. I also took the pre­req­ui­site at the begin­ning of uni­ver­si­ty, which is four years ago. Fuck.

Emotional Rollercoaster, More Mid-Terms, Etc.

This week has been such an emo­tion­al roller coast­er. I can’t describe the odd moods I’ve been in, the twists and turns my mind has been going in. I feel lost.

I have three mid-terms tomor­row, one of which I feel con­fi­dent about. I tried des­per­ate­ly to study dur­ing the three days I had off, and only one of them (today) had any progress what­so­ev­er. I think it’s just my study envi­ron­ment, com­bined with my cur­rent emo­tion­al fluc­tu­a­tions. I tried to study in the SITE build­ing today, watched the sun go from east to west, and felt my mela­tonin lev­els drop. I feel burned out already. I def­i­nite­ly need this read­ing week.

Speaking of which, I most like­ly won’t be going home for the week. I’ll prob­a­bly try to hang out with Trolley or Thom. I don’t have time to change the dates on my train tick­ets, or even get a new ISIC. I’m not even sure if I’m elli­gi­ble, since I’m a part-time stu­dent when not con­sid­er­ing my hon­ours project as a course.

My progress through Moby Dick has been non-exis­tent late­ly.

I’ll have to catch the Married with Children reunion spe­cial on Sunday. I always found the show to be amus­ing when I was a kid, though I nev­er laughed out loud as I would if watch­ing a fun­ny show nowa­days, like Family Guy. I think I was just mys­ti­fied by the open­ness with which the sex­u­al­i­ty was dealt with, some­thing that I nev­er grew up around. I’m sure the spe­cial will remind me of the sum­mers I spent at home long ago, some­thing I’d rather remem­ber for my inno­cence than my igno­rance.

I’m down­load­ing Full Metal Jacket. I still can’t get over how bril­liant the entire film was, pos­si­bly the best dis­play of genius on film I’ve seen so far. I still haven’t decid­ed whether I should buy it though, since it’s not quite a movie I can relate to, which is gen­er­al­ly the cri­te­ria I use to build my col­lec­tion.

Spoiled Food, Chinese Accents, Etc.

I for­got to plug in my freez­er after dis­con­nect­ing it to free up a spot on the pow­er sock­et on Saturday, so basi­cal­ly all my food has gone bad. I still have some break­fast and lunch food in the refrig­er­a­tor, but that’s about it. I won’t be able to do much gro­cery shop­ping this week due to all the shit I have to get done, and the most con­ve­nient store for me to get to is closed until the fall, so I’m pret­ty much fucked, food-wise, for a few days.

I can’t stand what peo­ple believe are Chinese accents. Every time I hear one from a North American source, the accent can’t be fur­ther from real­ism. Every time a Chinese per­son is on the Simpson’s, or a Crank Yankers prank call from a Chinese guy, or even the fuck­ing Chinese peo­ple speak in C&C: Generals, I get pissed off. Why don’t they just get an actu­al Chinese per­son to do the accent? The accents are not even close to what a nasty Chinese per­son sounds like. It’s like they have to tone down the accent so that peo­ple can rec­og­nize it (let alone under­stand what the per­son is say­ing), and so that it can be accept­ed by the gen­er­al pub­lic.

Speaking of C&C: Generals, I was able to get my hands on a copy of it today, a few days before it’s due out in Canada. It looks amaz­ing, but pos­si­bly a lit­tle too clut­tered for actu­al game­play pur­pos­es. I’m not sure if I’ll buy it yet. I’ll prob­a­bly wait and see if my friends are inter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing it for online play, and if I get addict­ed enough to war­rant sup­port of EA Games, although I’m sure they have enough mon­ey as a pub­lish­er of main­stream games already.

I got a com­pli­ment on my black nail pol­ish today. I was pleased, I guess, but I sup­pose that it’s rare that one would make a bad com­ment on some­thing like that; I think that most peo­ple, if not find­ing it atrac­tive, would sim­ply remain silent.

Somehow I got an 80% on my cryp­tog­ra­phy assign­ment. I imag­ine that the class aver­age was around there. The ques­tions were so dif­fi­cult that the TA had to be extreme­ly gen­er­ous with the marks. Pat end­ed up get­ting 88%, which I feel is unfair, since he spent so much more time on his assign­ment than I did. It seems to be such a plight of uni­ver­si­ty, that pro­fes­sors don’t real­ize that stu­dents’ capa­bil­i­ties are much low­er than theirs.