Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Spring Semester

Hello, I finished my last semester of community college 2 weeks ago. I just got my grades back..

English 101 READING AND COMPOSITION : A
English 205 CRITICL THINKNG/INTRMD COMPSTN : A
PHYE 149 SOCCER : A
MUSI 115A CLASS PIANO I : A
MATH 245 DISCRETE MATHEMATICS : A
MATH 254 INTRO TO LINEAR ALGEBRA : B

Woot! This gives me a 3.6 gpa for my lower division work, let's see if I can keep it up for the next two years ;]

I am going to be visiting friends and family over the next couple weeks, and then I'll be heading up to santa cruz for classes starting June 22. More to write later! Ciao!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Tecolate adventures

Hiya friends, I haven't updated in a while, but things have been pretty routine lately. I've been biking about 10 miles through tecolate canyon, 3-4 days a week. Sometimes I take roads if I'm in a rush. I found a way through the golf course that was previously impeding my path, removing a hill and some roads from my commute. It's a nice and challenging ride, there are many streams to cross surrounded with patches of baby heads (tons of smooth round rocks of varying sizes from golf balls to footballs that often slip and create traction hell) and steep slopes, some features I have only been able to bike through after weeks of attempts.

I've put a new back tire on, my previous was a 1.95" kenda nevagal which had a hole in the side and worn down treads. My 2.3" nevagal up front is still sittin pretty, joined by a maxxis high roller 2.1" in a reversed tread pattern for extra traction. Seems fine so far! I've also put on the SRAM pc-991 chain that I bought for grenadine like 2 years ago, but I didn't change the rear casette, which has created some gear skipping, but only in the highest rear gears. So now I ride with the rear in the center gear and mostly go up and down using the front 3 gears, dropping the back when the front is low for granny gear and raising the back when the front is high for top speed. This seems a better way to run the gears overall, so I'm glad I ran into the gear skipping issue.

All this biking up hills (along with 2 hours of soccer every friday) has been creating new visible muscle groups in my legs. I had heard about pro cyclists having enormous legs, and now I'm starting to see it. Mostly, I'm enjoying the ease and speed with which I climb hills now. I spend much more time in high gear lately so I'm going faster overall. I've been tracking my routes and stats with my google phone gps.

Four weeks of class left in this semester eeee! I am going nuts. I have already registered for cmps 101 at UCSC, class begins June 22.

English 205 has been interesting, our curriculum for this 8 week class includes dawn of the dead (2004), fear and loathing in las vegas (the book and the movie), and fight club. The theme is: the american dream. I'll post some essays out of that sometime. I had fun with the dawn of the dead essay.

Linear algebra and discrete math have both been very theoretical and difficult to use. There are no formula sheets or calculators, just lots of proofs and operations that don't connect with anything real. It helps to think of them as puzzles. Otherwise the lack of application makes it hard to keep motivated, but I know linear algebra has many great applications to come, and discrete math is forming a strong theoretical basis for applications of logic. They have had about the same test schedule throughout the semester, which is nice after the tests to be able to relax, but it kinda doubles the stress before the tests. Last week was a test week, and I believe that I did very well, which is a big relief because I was a bit worried about passing Linear Algebra for a couple weeks.

Today I ate 9 homemade vegan tacos! And that was my adventure of the day

Oh, last weekend was Ludum Dare 14, the theme was 'advancing wall of doom' and I completed another game. The game is called 'advancing wall of math' (math on the brain much?). I've been posting my games to my new site: http://www.originowl.com

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Update

Hiya everyone =] Things have been going well, been busy busy with school, I've got less than two weeks left in this fall semester and so it's even busier now.

Well, my big news is that I've been accepted into the Computer Science: Computer Game Design program at UC Santa Cruz in Fall 2009! This is a selective major and it's taken a long time to get here, I'm up to 8 years of community college. (most of those years spent working) I've already looked at the curriculum and courses at UCSC, and I'll be in classes like: Game AI (artificial intelligence), interactive storytelling, game theory, many graphics/animation programming courses, and 3d/digital media art courses. My last three quarters will have game studios where the team based game development projects will happen. I should be finishing at the end of spring (June) of 2011 and will have my first graduation evar! (I accidentally dropped out of high school) After that I'll be considering graduate programs in computer science.

So yeah, fun stuff, as for what I'm up to currently:

Calculus 2 has proven to be my most difficult class evar. On ther other hand,

Physics: Mechanics has been the most fun class evar! We've had labs with ball shooters and fan cars and the stuff is all really interesting and useful for game programming. It helps to have a great physics teacher, she's really into it and gets us to exploring concepts in depth.

Economics online consists of three tests and two essays over 16 weeks, there's no discussion, no incremental progress, and no incentive for me to read the book, I just pop open the book for the tests and hardly learn anything from it. It's pretty boring stuff anyway. The final economics research paper is going to take up some good time soon.

Computer Science: Data Structures is a class I took in high school, and it's just 10 programs to write, no tests, so it's nice and easy. The final project coming up is to convert the midterm project into binary tree storage. The midterm is a contact book. Simple stuff.

Next semester I've got English 101 and 205 in 8 week sessions, and Discrete Math (for when you don't want people to know you're doing math i guess), and compsci: assembly programming, which will be new to me. I also need to take Linear Algebra in either Spring or Summer, it seems like it might be too much to add on to my spring schedule, but it'd be nice to have all my community college work done this spring. I've considered going to UCSC for a class in the summer, would help my schedule along, although it's costly. hmm.

This weekend (Dec 5-7) I've got a Ludum Dare 48 hour game development competition. Always a blast.

The garden is growing, many broccoli and cauliflower and swiss chard and peas and some nice looking winter squash have been vining up a tomato cage very quickly. There's other stuff too, will post about the winter crop soon.

Will write more later, ciao!

Friday, September 5, 2008

Burner back

Hiya =]

So, Maia and I made it to Burning Man and back again. We left friday evening, camped two nights on the way up, arrived in the line of cars at midnight as the event started, spent 6 hours waiting/sleeping before getting in, 6 days on the playa, left before dawn after the burn, and camped out one night on the way back.

We went straight up the 395. First night camped in Mojave. Next day, stopped by Lake Mono and dabbed our feet in this alkaline lake, it's a strange place, at lake's edge there is this carpet of flies, which range from buzzing near water, to corpses a couple feet inland. Seagulls would just walk along with their mouths open, taking in swarms of flies. Pillars of rock formation rise up to where the lake level was before the water that feeds the lake had been diverted for human use. Very strange place.

That night we detoured through monitor pass towards Lake Tahoe, we camped out at Grover hot springs. The next morning we went to the spring filled pools, but the hot pool was empty. They had found a dead bird in the water and had to sanitize the pool. We swam in the cold pool surrounded by mountains and pine trees, very nice. We drove to Lake Tahoe and walked in the lake for a while. Continuing to Reno for supplies, and finally arriving in sight of Black Rock City (our great city, built and burned in one week each year) at midnight when the gates opened.

We camped at burning man with some of Maia's fellow chemists from ucsd at Mad Flava. We were located right behind the pancake playhouse (sister camp) in the 9 o'clock plaza, a nice central location. The playa floor was very sandy this year, little rain through the year means no hard packed ground, which means very difficult to bike on. The city was laid out much larger this year too, so getting around was a trek. With almost no moon all week it was almost like some sort of Star Trek.

This was Maia's first burn, and my fourth. On the first day we arrived, Monday, there was a gnarly dust storm. Intense wind blowing dust so fast it seems to penetrate your skin. Everyone goggled and dust masked up like the apocalypse was upon us, which it was. I got a bad headache that day. Tuesday through Friday were all beautiful days, no dust, not too hot at day or cold at night. We explored the art projects, climbed the 4 story tower that held the Man and the 8 story steel tower of babylon farther out. The temple was a steampunk paradise of recycled scrap. We did yoga 4 afternoons, including a faux man chu'd kung fu yoga class before the burn. Each night someone from camp made dinner for everyone, Tuesday was our night, and we had Taco Tuesday, with glasses of our Ombrew organic pale ale for our campmates. It was superb. The burn was not the best part as it has been in years past for me. We were planning to leave pre-dawn so I wasn't going all out as usual. There was the marching band that I usually followed in circles around the man for the hours after the burn, but it seemed somehow more crowded and we weren't marching. The procession of music and fire spiraling ever closer to a shrinking flame has been the most purifying aspect to mark the end of another year. It was still fun though, I enjoyed myself all week (except the headache), so I've gotta say, best burningman ever!

Departing at 4am, the sun just beginning to cast hope over the horizon, we exodized without the usual line, a boon I would not exchange for a better burn in future years. We travelled to Lake June for some showers, and camped free at a nearby rest stop. Drove all the next day through the eastern sierra valley, sighting Mt Whitney, and finally arriving back in San Diego.

I wish I could share pictures now, as we took many pictures and videos, but it seems that we lost the camera. =[ It may yet turn up somewhere in the van, or on the lost & found forums. We'll just have to use our imagination!

So the day after arriving back from the burn I was right back to busy. Tuesday began the second week of classes, I missed the first, after some changes, I'm now taking: Physics 195: Mechanics, Math 151: Calculus 2, and Economics 120. These are all key classes for my plan to get into the UC Santa Cruz Computer Science/Game Design program next year. Physics is going to be fun, yesterday we were using fan powered cars with motion sensors and laptops to make lots of pretty graphs. The teacher and students are all excited to be here. Calc 2 isn't quite as exciting so far, but finding new ways to work with numbers is always interesting.

Speaking of which, I've got lots of homework to catch up on this weekend, so I'll just be getting back to it. Seeya soon =]

Monday, June 2, 2008

Semester is ova!

Hola, I have been quite busy for the past 5 weeks. 5 weeks ago is when I scored a 32% on my 2nd precalculus test and suddenly realized the value of doing homework. I was making up past homework while doing the current. I was getting my biking in by going to and from college through Penasquitos canyon.

So I got my grades for the semester:
MATH 141 PRECALCULUS 5.00 C Miramar
PSYC 101 GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY 3.00 A Miramar
CISC 190 JAVA PROGRAMMING 4.00 A Miramar
whew! I was getting worried about passing precalc.

In 2 weeks I'll be back in college for 8 weeks of Calculus, Physical Geography, and an environmental biology class.

So I've got some time again, time to update the resume and work on some java programs of my own.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

long time no post

Hiya =]

I've got a big adventure coming up in a week, I'm going to be racing my mountain bike at the Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, Ca. I'll be racing Saturday morning at 7:55 in the mens 25-29 sport class cross country. The course is 19 miles and last year my class had about 60 people taking 1.5-2 hours. This will be my first official mountain bike race and Sea Otter is a huge event, so I'm excited.

I've been biking hard for 2-5 hours per day in training, I found a path that is 90% off road to get from home to Miramar college, going through Los Penasquitos canyon. An infinitely nicer ride than Miramar road with an air base on one side and auto shops/furniture stores on the other. Miramar road takes about 10 minutes by car, 30 minutes by bus, 40 minutes by bike, and going through canyons takes 90 minutes.

On Friday (4/4) I woke up at 7am and went straight for an ultimate adventure, breakfast at Sombreros! Mm, potatoes. With a burrito in tow, I went to Mission Trails Regional Park at the Clairemont Mesa Blvd trailhead. MTRP is home to the highest peak in the city of San Diego (Cowles Peak) and many miles of excellent trails. This was my first time biking at this side, I have previously biked around the visitors center area.

Biking around the West side of the park has a mixture of long slow fireroad climbs, fast rugged descents, and steep traction hell on hilly singletrack. The ground here, like most of San Diego, is hard pack with large loose sand and rock cover, which gives a running on marbles effect when trying to climb steep hills. I rode for about 5 great hours here, with cloud cover keeping me cool. I returned to the van to the burrito which is just the thing to have after a long ride.

[Link] Pictures from my ride at mission trails.
[Link] Mission Trails map.

Visited dad and gramps and family on Saturday, that night we watched Sunshine (ok scifi thriller), No Country For Old Men (excellent action thriller, surprisingly pertinent metaphors), I am Legend (good), and The Machinist (great, mind trip) .

Monday, I took the Penasquitos trail to and from school.

The San Diego Sea-to-sea Trail is a 140 mile trail stretching from the Pacific Ocean at Torrey Pines (La Jolla) to the Salton Sea. The trail includes Los Penasquitos Canyon and Sycamore Canyon, which I have ridden both and almost all of the trails between them. On Tuesday I decided to do the first part of the trail. I biked through UCSD and down to Torrey Pines Beach, it's quite nice to be biking among trees and then seeing waves crash in front of you. From there the trail runs along Carmel Valley road, detours for a burrito with Amanda, then continues under the 5 and along some boring horse road that follows the 56. I found a fun side trail that went over into Penasquitos Canyon, and had fun in there getting to school. Rode back home on Miramar road, after about 5 hours of biking I was pooped.

I'm planning to have a day that I'll start at the start of the sea-to-sea trail and ride it as far as I can in half a day, and then back. Probably not until after the race.

[Link] Map of San Diego sea-to-sea trail.

Today I got a new seatpost in the mail, a Thomson Elite Setback 31.6x410mm. Compare to my last seatpost (stock) it's longer, which is the crucial point because I had my last seatpost far above the max line, risking damage to the frame. The bit of setback expands the cockpit of the bike which is helpful for me because this bike is a size or two small for me. It's also one of the lightest and strongest seatposts on the market, and for $70 a great value. This is my forever seatpost.

Tonight I'll be taking Penasquitos to a school by black mountain to take a test. I'll be scoping out black mountain to possibly be riding miner's ridge tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, Ciao!