See Stew. See Stew link. Link, Stew, link!
eBay Listings: School Yearbooks
I jokingly suggested to Kevin that I might try to sell my yearbooks on eBay, only to discover (with a bit of horror) that not only does eBay have a separate category for "School Yearbooks," and not only are a lot of people trying to sell yearbooks on eBay, but some of them actually have bids on them. I have no idea what to make of this, honestly.
Yesterday in Linguistics, Lakoff said this about the guy he wrote More Than Cool Reason with:
Man, I want to be one of those guys.
(And for the record, if you track down Mark Turner's website, he said "My BA and MA in mathematics are from Berkeley, as are my BA, MA, and PhD in English language and literature." I'd trust him more than Lakoff on this one.)
Check it out: It's 12:30 am, and I just got home after leaving my apartment at 9:30 this morning. Accordingly, here's another quote from my 172 instructor. AKA, lazy content.
"Do you think the class of context free languages is the same as the class of context free languages?" my instructor asked.
"Uh, did you mean you the class of regular languages?" a student queried uncertainly.
"What did I say?" my instructor asked, his brow furrowed. There were some murmurs in response from the class.
"Oh... well, I was starting out with an easy question, and of course the answer to that one is yes. So do you think the class of context free languages is the same as the class of Regular languages?" he said, saving the situation fairly well. There were more murmurs from the class.
"No, they're not the same, because otherwise they'd have the same name." he concluded.
And if you were wondering, I still don't know his name.
Incidentally, during class today, I got to thinking that The Class would be an amusing name for a backup band. You know, like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Huey Lewis and The News. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. You know, something like... Brian Harvey and The Class.
But I digress. A little while later in the lecture, we were treated to this ironic follow-up quote:
No comment.
Today in CS 172, the instructor kinda botched one of his examples. But it turned out alright in the end, because his segue managed to distract everyone.
In other news, I just realized that I don't remember the name of my 172 instructor. I'll look it up later. Maybe.
This was another idea that came out of my last final, but don't worry, I didn't write it all during the test.
It's an established fact that Linkstew is well indexed by google, and it averages about 200 google hits a day. These hits result in all kinds of irritating things like this (incomprehensible) slashdot comment (I just cite this one because it's the most recent) or linkage of the mockups I did comparing the size of the G4 cube and the gamecube in forums.
I just noticed that my google search hits have gone up by about 30 hits a day in the last couple of days. When I looked at my database, I saw that the increase in hits was due to queries like graduation+speech+ideas (7th) or graduation+speech+topics (1st!) that took the unwitting googlers to my graduation speech of yore.
In the last three days, I've gotten more than 50 hits for some variation of "graduation speech." Of course, my unconventional little speech probably isn't going to do them an ounce of good, so nyah nyah!
Here's Kevin's suggestion for what to do with them:
Kevin (23:21:32 PM): you should replace the target page with "You're fucked. Now go write your own speech and watch out for flying tomatoes."
So in the fall, I'm thinking about taking Philosophy of Language with John Searle (TTh 2-330), followed immediately by Metaphor with George Lakoff (TTh 330-5). For those of you who aren't in the know, Searle and Lakoff are both hugely egotistical. And while each of them has bigger fish to fry, their paths intersect often enough for there to be some irony in taking that pair of classes. Basically, I think this might be simultaneously one of the worst and best ideas I've ever had. Here's a couple of random comments that people have shared with me on the prospect:
I'm not actually sure if I'll actually end up taking Searle, but I'm definitely taking Lakoff. Mmm, Metonymy.
So a totally random question just occurred to me, and I don't know the answer:
What keeps a college student from collecting unemployment?
I suppose, if I had to guess right now, I'd guess that it's that a college student isn't actively seeking employment, but it seems like that'd be simple enough for a clever college student to work around... But I know nothing about unemployment laws, so that was just a totally random guess.
Does anyone have the real answer?
So I was sitting there half paying attention to Palmer's Vision lecture about shape recognition today, when he accidently, but very effectively, got my complete and undivided attention. This is probably one of the funniest things I've heard in lecture, like, ever.
But then, of course, he started discussing the possibilities of using "generalized cylinders" for describing shapes, and I just didn't stand a chance at keeping a straight face.
Tonight, while doing my Astronomy homework, I was also watching Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. One of Space Ghost's guests was Moby (who Space Ghost kind of ate later in the episode... but anyway), who asked Space Ghost if there was anything interesting going on in space. When Space Ghost ignored the question, Moby brought up the recent (at the time... silly reruns) impact of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter (Which Space Ghost of course also ignored)...
Anyway, I mention this, because in Astronomy this week, we heard about SL9, and one of my homework questions asked what the Roche Limit is and how it explains why SL9 broke up into smaller pieces when it approached Jupiter.
And it turns out that I'm actually enjoying my Astronomy class a lot more than I expected I would. It's still very basic, and the homework is just ridiculously easy, but it's a nice high-level sketch... For an introductory course, it's doing a good job of presenting lots of information and making me curious for more.
On Friday in my (Visual) Perception lecture, I was playing with my glob of yellow Office: mac silly putty that I'd gotten at MacWorld SF. Stretching it and rolling it and making balls and breaking it and making sheets and so on.
Also on Friday in my (Visual) Perception lecture, Professor Palmer was talking about photons, and how they're emitted by light sources and bounce around and about and sometimes into our eye... And then he made eye contact with me, and said "so you can think of a photon bouncing around the room kind of like a bouncing ball of silly putty."
So I quietly put away my silly putty and managed to pay attention for about 5 minutes before getting distracted by a particularly uninteresting light fixture.
So Super Smash Brothers Melee comes out for the Gamecube on Monday. This is the game I've been anticipating for the last two and a half years. When I pre-ordered it a month and a half ago from EBGames, I paid extra for overnight shipping. Nothing was going to get between me and this game.
Or so I thought. The game comes out Monday. I'll get it Tuesday. On Wednesday, I have my final 188 assignment due. On Thursday, I have my final 170 assignment due. On Friday, the Folklore assignment of doom is due.
On Saturday, I'll get to Super Smash Brothers Melee for five minutes before I start studying for my finals.
Never mind that Pikmin also comes out on Monday, and my roommate already pre-ordered that.
I suppose this is my reward for laughing at him after his anguished cry of "Oh no!!! I have a test tomorrow, I can't play it!" when we got our Gamecubes earlier than expected.
::cries::