This blog is monochromatic and so boring without the pictures. Here’s a nice colorful box to change things up:

I was reading the Hoofprint and I saw that Elliot wrote1 about the appeal of summer freedom. You know, I had high expectations for this one, kind of like the feeling you get, when it’s the first ten minutes of a movie and someone’s busting out ps and grep2. I was expecting the whole paradox where you realize that summer is boring and absolutely sucks because you’ve no school work to occupy your time. Instead, he writes about using your two-thousand hours to prepare for SAT or get a job, almost as if the administration jumped in, halfway through the article, and made some suggestions. Where’s the opinion in this? All year long, I never felt tired, uninspired. But now, I’m figuratively trying to light the last few crumbs of what’s still left. World Lit 2, perhaps a summer project:… more →

I don’t teach very well. When I’m explaining logic, my mind skips a couple of steps, and I expect the listener to make the same mental jumps as I do. In a chain of logic, I’ll only explain the linchpin leap of logic and expect that the rest is common knowledge1. Then, my sentences just come out in short phrases that, out of context, don’t really make any sense. I supposed that some people are better teachers than others. I used to think that mental ability was an overall measure of competency in everything. It made sense that, if you were smart in school, you could do leadership and counseling and everything just by applying logic and inductive reasoning to whatever situation. But then there are things like compassion and empathy that apparently require a great deal more reasoning than just… more →

That’s what Nick calls them1. This must be my imagination, but watching movies in Jeng is just agonizing. Typically, it’s common courtesy to shut up in a theater, but in class, the scenario is apparently different. For some reason, you feel obligated to let the world know your reactions—your awww’s and guffaws—as if your feelings were a second show playing simultaneously. It’s almost like a competition to see who is most emotionally vested in the wonders of modern cinematography. If mushy emotion isn’t your thing, you can just turn around and explain the plot to one of your friends. Then, you can amaze us with your accurate plot predictions and show off the comprehensive collection of movies you’ve seen2. If post-testing films are more of a opportunistic social exhibition than an idle pastime, your outbursts sound forced and contrived. It always… more →

Today in Sandoval, when we were jumping around among the lecture circles, I noticed an analogy to the US economy. See, at any given moment, a person can be dissatisfied because nobody is discussing essay outlines for a topic that he wants to study. To remedy this, he jumps around from group to group, surveying which group provides the best discussion, considering both the topic and the speakers involved, and makes a choice among them, even if he is not satisfied with any. Meanwhile, he contributes no input of his own1. Maybe we need to stop focusing on finance and advertising, and start thinking productivity. When I mention a person, this must be hypocritical. ↩︎

Hey, China likes to point out that the US system of debate and decision making is slow compared to a centralized system in which fewer people hold more power1. But what if we had a form of legislation that wasn’t as serious as the law, but effective for quick solutions? Like a measure of contempt. Say the FCC is pissed at Sony for their neglect for security. They would declare, on some .gov site, that the FCC holds Sony in contempt. Underneath, there are 2 descriptors that must be filled out. First, the FCC explains the reasons for which it holds Sony in contempt, including any evidence they have. It’s assumed that if these violations were all corrected, Sony would not be in contempt. Second, they propose a solution. This may be a simple “fix everything”, or may not be.… more →

Whenever you make a permanent change to the database in Rails, you’re supposed to make what they call a migration. It’s like versions for your database, so that whenever you screw up, you can always just backtrack to a version that still works. Until recently, these migrations would be numbered sequentially, like zero, then 1, then 2. But now they’ve decided to use the date and time as your migration number, so they end up looking like 201105071935261. So what happens now? When somebody looks at your code, they’ll notice all you do on Friday nights is work on your programming projects, and considering the common self-conscious, socially-inept programmer stereotype, this could be a problem. What’s the deal here? These timestamps bring a personal touch to Rails projects. Instead of imaging some invisible omniscient entity that writes code from his watchtower in the clouds,… more →