Dr. Beardface

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.

Nothing to see here, move along.

A night in the life of Danny Zhu

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

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…)