Blogging from the basement

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)

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: (more…)