Archive for September, 2009
Winning the bet dollar
Posted by duncan in college life on September 29, 2009
About a year ago, I was playing a word video game on facebook, which involved shooting electronic birds and then obtaining a letter. It was like hangman, except you weren’t allowed to run out of bullets. At one point, I decided that the game was too taxing on my fragile brain to attempt it by myself, so enlisted the help of the rest of the Blandfill. At one point, there was a word that had me completely stumped; Tom assured me that it was in fact a word that is so ridiculous that I wiped it from my memory. I said to Tom, “I will bet you a dollar that you are wrong.” It turns out that he was right, and despite it just being a dollar, I felt obligated to make good on my bet, so he received the dollar.
Now, a year later, I received the dollar for being the first to perform a mildly creepy task for Charles (I won’t repeat it here or anywhere, in case you’re wondering. And no, it was not sexual). As the owner of the dollar, it was necessary for me to make another bet so that someone else could receive it. This time, I offered the dollar to the first one of us who posted a new blog. It’s been 3 days since anyone’s posted, so I’m going to think of a new bet.
I used to think I didn’t need mail goggles.
Posted by duncan in Uncategorized on September 27, 2009
Last night, at around 4:36 A.M., after drinking more than I’d care to remember, I got back, and decided what I needed more than anything else was a copy of Windows 7. Tom told me the best thing to do was to e-mail sysadmin@cs50.net and ask whoever was on the other line to send me a username and password. Here is how I went about doing that.
From: Duncan Watts <dwatts@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 11:30 AM
Subject: Re: CS50 software
To: *********
Sorry, I meant to type MSDN Academic Alliance, on the page http://www.cs50.net/software/.
I would like a username and password for 5h3
Decrypt please.
This is my favorite manifestation of this meme
Posted by tom in the Internet on September 26, 2009
Charles found this on the interwebs, bless his heart.
I guess they’re making a computer on a spaceship…
Posted by duncan in Music, college life on September 25, 2009
Tonight marks the first time that I’ve finished a problem set well before the deadline (read: more than 12 hours) and having not crammed it all into one sitting. Not to be a nerd, but I actually enjoyed solving the problems. This makes me feel like I would really enjoy my schoolwork if I executed it sensibly, which I never do. Maybe I will start this semester.
I spoke with Professor Dave Charbonneau on Tuesday, between a section and a dinner with the HSS to talk about why I should or shouldn’t concentrate in astrophysics. Read the rest of this entry »
The pursuit of career
Posted by tom in college life, computers, science, video games on September 23, 2009
Hmm, I’ll write a blog to warm up for my essay.
So, life is interesting and complicated. One of the things people sometimes do in life is enter careers that involve doing jobs. A question arises: What kind of career would I like to do?
I like science a lot. I think that, at a philosophical level, improving the level of mankind’s understanding of the natural world in which we all find ourselves is one of the greatest pursuits there is — here we are, some mammals sitting around wearing clothes sometimes, and we spend years figuring out what the heck everything is and how it got there. Almost as amazing as the fact that anything got there in the first place. (I think Stephen Hawking is a well-known proponent of essentially this idea.) And my favorite branch of the sciences is the science that deals with most of the universe: physics (and astronomy). Understanding the whole universe seems like an extremely ambitious goal, but people have made such big achievements already in figuring out what exactly is out there, beyond the Earth. Space is cool! And the mathematical relations (i.e. laws of physics) that most “stuff” on and near Earth follows seem to hold true throughout the visible universe, as far as we can tell. For me, the idea of being a part of this process of figuring out how the universe works is both extremely appealing and intellectually engaging. This is why I’d like to be a scientist.
Learning how to understand the awesome stuff that we see in the universe is really satisfying
But, hmm, sometimes becoming a scientist is hard, and maybe in real life it’s not as cool or satisfying as it’s cracked up to be. When I come to it, maybe the actual experience of being a scientist is tedious, unrewarding, and takes too much grant-applying & dealing with bureaucracy, and not enough exploring & appreciating the wonders of the universe. If I were to choose a career that I enjoyed, even if it didn’t have the philosophical benefits of being a ‘man of science’, what would I do with my life? Read the rest of this entry »
Dr. Beardface
Posted by duncan in Uncategorized on September 20, 2009
Hey internet. Today I was looking at my beard, and it was looking extra frizzy, mostly because I hadn’t showered for about 36 hours and had been doing things like being in a sweaty room and playing powerball. So I decided the best thing to do would be to trim my beard with a beard trimmer. It was electric, and it was looking good until I hit the skin around my left jaw, and I quickly realized there was no way I would be able to salvage it. So now I am shorn. I’ll provide some before and after shots for funzies. Incidentally, I think a haircut is now necessary, since my hair just looks ridiculous now.
Tom actually took this picture to capture the man behind me who looked like Skip Gates.
I'm too tired to think of something witty.
I have a request to our readers (wherever you are). If you could leave a comment on one of the posts if you read it, that’d be great, because it would make us feel loved, and you can never have too much love in your life.
Please disregard the post below.
Posted by danny in Uncategorized on September 20, 2009
Nothing to see here, move along.
A night in the life of Danny Zhu
Posted by charles in Uncategorized on September 20, 2009
Since the beginning of freshman year, Danny has frequently gone to MIT late at night on the weekends. When asked about it, he never gives a straight answer and mumbles something about hanging out with some people. I can only imagine what he is actually up to, and here is my attempt at guessing at what those nights are like.
Midnight – 1:30 a.m.
Danny leaves Harvard and arrives at MIT. He meets up with some friends who are currently playing DDR.
Perhaps "Butterfly" and "Boom Boom Dollar" provide a musical equivalent of Ballmer's Peak
After DDR has gotten them warmed up, it’s time to get down to work.
1:30 a.m. – 3:15 a.m.
Danny successfully infiltrates the NSA using only his iTouch and puts all Caltech and Yale students on its watchlist.
I touched your databases
3:15 a.m. – 5:00 a.m.
Danny programs a bot to win at online poker, but he is concerned about the legality of online gambling in the US, so his friends create a fake Canadian citizen to collect the winnings. He leaves the program running indefinitely.
5:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m.
8:00 a.m.
Danny wanders back to our room in a euphoric stupor, wondering why he didn’t go to MIT in the first place.
Blogging from the basement
Posted by duncan in college life on September 14, 2009
Laundry is now so close to my room that I may even consider doing it on a semi-regular basis. It literally takes less than a minute to walk to the machines, this is awesome.
This will be a brief post, mostly because I don’t know much to talk about. Last night we sang in the new members of the Glee Club, and that was a great time, partly because they seem like a cool group of guys, and partly because there was a small party afterwards, which was short, but definitely a lot of fun. Today was the first rehearsal with the newies, and it was also the first time it really hit me that freshman year was over. I spent the first fifteen minutes comparing how I felt the first rehearsal last year to how I felt today, and I suddenly realized that I was now one of the older members that I had looked up to for guidance, and that I currently don’t feel prepared to guide. I don’t feel like I know that much more than the freshman, or am more experienced or anything else that’s helpful. Of course, this could just be a sign that I need to actually shape up and start being more experienced and using what I know, and maybe get some kind of an education along the way.
As a side note, I love that I can do my CS50 homework on any computer that has internet.
My dear Watson, and: How to “upgrade” your notebooks for free! (DOUBLE FEATURE)
Posted by tom in college life, hacks on September 14, 2009
Hello world!
Last Wednesday, Dr. James Watson of DNA fame decided to visit our school. While he was around, he gave a lecture in a biology class or something. I am a physics student and don’t find myself in biology classes very often, but I heard of his impending appearance so I dragged Duncan and Danny down to go see him talk for an hour. It was pretty cool and I drew a picture of him while he was talking:
I drew it with a pen and made a couple of mistakes that I scribbled out
About science, he said “It’s better to have an idea that’s wrong than no idea”, and about which topics are best to do research on, he said “Go to the frontier. Try to get into a field where there are only a couple of people working.” It’s pretty sweet to go see old famous scientists talk, especially when they’re not completely senile (Dr. Watson is the same age as my grandpa and seems to be ageing well, mentally.)
Andddddd:
The other day I was thinking about my school notebooks (the kind with spiral rings and paper). My school bookstore sells two variations of spiral notebooks: one kind with the school’s insignia, and one without. The notebooks with the insignia cost over $4, while the plain ones are only $2.19.
$4 vs $2. A careful examination notes that the leftmost one has 20 more pages, but that is far from a $2 value.
The rational response here is: “Big deal, just get the cheaper one and save lots of money.” But observe: The expensive notebooks have one additional feature, an inside folder pocket:
Folder pocket vs no pocket. Pockets are soooo useful for collecting handouts, syllabi, graded assignments, etc.
I love this sort of folder pocket because it means I don’t have to lose class-related papers everywhere in my bag! But I don’t intend to spend $20+ instead of $10 every semester if I can avoid it. So I decided to make my own inside-pockets.
This isn’t all that epic, nor is it particularly worthy of a blog post, but I think I have a really cost-effective and simple solution that requires only one sheet of standard copy/printer paper and about three staples per notebook. Here’s my walkthrough: Read the rest of this entry »