t3h LOLzorz

Last night, for a friend's birthday, I attended the first ever Internet Cat Video Film Festival at the Walker Art Center. Yes, internet cat videos are apparently an established enough art form to draw thousands of people to watch them outdoors for almost the length of a feature film. As I am a firmly established cat hater, a part of my soul died last night. A few of them were pretty funny.

When I got there around 7, it was already pretty surreal. At least a thousand people were already sitting on blankets all over the hill next to the Walker. Some people were wearing cat ears; some had brought their cats. There were stands selling food, T-shirts, and souvenirs by the building; also one calling itself the "Death Metal Drawing Club". (I saw nothing at the stand that made that name make any sense) A local band (also in cat headgear) was playing music on the stage. It was a pretty nice amphitheater, all for watching crazy cat videos.

People kept coming to the hill and I sat and talked with friends as they arrived until about 8:30, by which time they had put up a screen where the band was and an announcer gave a brief introduction. After a few quick ads from the main sponsor, Animal Planet, we were off.

The videos were organized into categories: the obvious "Comedy", but also ones like "Drama", "Musical", "Foreign", and "Documentary". It was basically like a YouTube cat video binge only you got to enjoy it with thousands of other people, which more than made up for the smallness of the screen from our distance. I probably laughed and "Aww"ed less than anyone there, but some of them were legitimately pretty good, particularly the peoples' choice winner, the melancholy faux-French "Henri 2 Paw de Deux", and a nightmarish/brilliant animated video, "Kitty City".

So, there you have it. Life imitates internet memes.

Travel Guide's Perspective on America

I really enjoyed this article summarizing advice from travel guides about visiting America. It's really illuminating to get an outsider's perspective on our culture, and good to know that they also find us ridiculous at times.

Cold and True Minnesotans

It's pretty cold in the Twin Cities today. Like really cold. Like high-of-minus-17 cold. When I set out this morning it was -24 with a wind chill of -36. It's hard to believe that just a few weeks ago we couldn't keep any snow on the ground. If we just had some snow, this would be a pretty good winter. Anyway, in preparation for the extreme cold I went all-out on bundling up this morning: a scarf over my mouth and nose, ski goggles, a hat, three layers of shirts, and long underwear under jeans. I had a pretty warm walk to class, but the wind stung on any exposed skin. At these temperatures you have to start seriously worrying about getting frostbite on the way to class. (Note: I am quite happy about this weather; consider this a mirror image to my post on heat)

And then on my way I see people with exposed faces, even exposed heads with no hats. Are these people crazy? It's not just silly and painful, not bundling up on a day like today is potentially hazardous. Then I realized the true difference between native Minnesotans and lesser beings. We aren't naturally any more resistant to cold, but we're familiar with it. Someone from a warmer climate where negative temperatures are rare and below -10 are almost unheard of might see 'cold' as a monolithic entity; in winter, it's cold, so you wear your "cold gear" consisting of gloves, a coat, maybe a hat. Minnesotans see different kinds of cold. 5 is autumn-jacket cool, -5 is wear-a-jacket-and-gloves cold, -15 is hat-and-multiple-layers cold, -25 is no-exposed-skin cold. It's just a theory, but I have no idea how else to explain it.

Gifts

I've enjoyed getting into the Christmas spirit this December and have gotten presents for my friends and family. It's really fun to think of gifts people will enjoy (mostly books), and then get them for them. Creative wrapping jobs are also fun. (At a "manly" wedding shower I was at I saw a gift card given in a box that I think had previously held a cabinet) The joy of Christmas as you grow up is that instead of eagerly waiting for Santa Claus to give you stuff, you get to be Santa Claus. (Sort of)

I've noticed that a common reaction in my friends upon me giving them the present is to apologize for not planning to get me anything, and resolving to do so. While I appreciate the sentiment, this seems like missing the point. The whole point of a gift is it's a one-way transaction, not an exchange. I am giving you this gift because I appreciate you and want to, not because I secretly want you to get me something to "pay me back".

Greedily is one way not to accept gifts, but beware also of unconsciously turning gifting into bartering. What is it in human nature that makes it so hard for us to just accept grace?

Journal Lines

I enjoy trying to graph my life in any way I can think of. Maybe quantizing all the fuzziness and confusion of real life helps me to sort through it. Maybe I'm just a hopeless nerd. Two of the best charts I'm come up with are the size of my music library over time (maybe I'll share that another day) and the number of lines I've journaled every day for the last 3 years. It's a surprisingly good measure of how quickly God has been working in my life. If you know me, you might be able to figure out what some of the peaks/plateaus are. ...and yes, it has been a fairly exciting summer.

On Alcohol

I've been 21 for a little over nine months now. Apparently in America it's a tradition to go out drinking for your 21st birthday--can't wait any longer, right? Well, I was on summer project for my 21st birthday, where we weren't allowed to drink, so I just had some blazin' wings instead. After getting back I tried some beer and wine at home--disgusting! They pretty much tasted like something you'd clean a drain with. I swore off alcohol and couldn't imagine why anyone would drink the stuff. Since then, my friends (particularly my good friend Evan, who has become something of a beer connoisseur since turning 21) have been working on me to "see the light". All kinds of rhetoric about it being an "acquired taste".

Finally, after the Good Friday service at Hope Community Church we decided to go to Pizza Luce. Being in the company of good and trusted friends, I decided to give it another chance and let them pick an alcoholic beverage they thought I'd enjoy (the same challenge I'd extended to my dad before). Nathan settled on some English Strongbow cider and I went to town. Unlike the other stuff I'd tried, the noxious taste of the alcohol didn't drown out everything else and I could taste the apples, which was nice for a change. I ended up finishing mine before anyone else, mostly because I drank it like I would drink any other beverage. Apparently that's a mistake.

The results were...interesting. Basically I got chronically dizzy. I also found everything a bit funnier, but it's hard to tell if that wasn't just the fun night with good friends I was having. It wasn't really enjoyable and I still don't get the whole hype about getting "buzzed". What's so fun about being dizzy? Either way, I definitely wouldn't have trusted myself to operate a motor vehicle that night. So, you shouldn't drink and drive. I was still able to figure out the tip easily, so maybe drinking and deriving is okay after all.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

Rules of Double Monopoly

• Play with two complete Monopoly sets. Two boards, two sets of properties, two sets of cards, etc. Place the boards next to each other.
• When a player would advance to the 'GO' space on the board their piece is currently on, they move to the other board's 'GO' space instead. Similarly, if a player would move to a space that is behind them on their current board, they move to that space on the other board. i.e. if a player is on Free Parking and gets a card saying to advance to St. Charles Place, they advance to the St. Charles Place on the other board instead. (They pass GO on the new board and collect $200 as usual)
• Keep property and Chance/Community Chest cards separated by the board they came from.
• If a player gets a card saying to pay money, they place the money in the middle of the board they are currently on (to be collected by the player who lands on the Free Parking space of that board).
• A player is said to have a 'monopoly' on a color if they have at least half the properties of that color. i.e. any three of the six orange properties between the two boards or any two of the four dark blue properties count as a monopoly.
• If a player had developed a monopoly on a color and gets another property of that color, they cannot build up any of the already-developed properties of that color until the new one 'catches up'.
• If a player has two undeveloped non-railroad, non-utility properties of the same name that aren't part of a monopoly, the rent on them is doubled.
• What to do if a player has at least three utilities or five railroads is up to you.

100th Post!!1!1!!!

Woo, 100 posts of randomness! We made it happen, interlunk! I'm feeling some pressure to post on something awesome. Too much pressure, in fact. Instead, here is a quick comic of some philosophical Goombas I drew on my Wacom tablet. Enjoy.

This Semester

Well, I guess I haven't posted anything on my blog in almost two months. What a crazy semester it's been! It's about time I posted an update.

So, this semester I decided to take 19 credits. Since I took 20 pretty easily next semester, I figured I should be able to handle this along with my job and being vice president of Middlebrook Hall. What I failed to realize was that, whereas I only took one class in my major last semester, I decided to get caught up this semester by taking four. Three of which turned out to be incredibly difficult. Big mistake.

So the upshot was that about a week ago, I was involved in two major group projects and a complicated programming assignment, and falling behind on them all. This semester has been humbling. School has been challenging in the past, but it wasn't until this semester that I actually discovered the limits of how much I could do. I've been used to always having enough time to get A's in all my classes and have plenty of time for fun stuff and a social life. This semester I literally haven't had time to do everything and have had to make sacrifices. At once point I think I barely had a free moment for an entire week. This is extremely mentally taxing.

The biggest single factor of this, I realized, was my algorithms class, which is taught by a professor who seems to think that failing (at the current rate) over half his class is a good teaching method. Apparently he could get investigated for that, especially since it's a required course. One can only hope. Every programming assignment for this class took over 30 hours of solid work and consumed multiple entire weekends. With so much other scheduled stuff with 19 credits and two group projects, my schedule filled up alarmingly quickly.

Long story short, I dropped that class and have been much happier and less stressed ever since. Without that massive time drain, even my two group projects seem less intimidating and with some effort I'm getting back on track. (With my classes, at least; my social life is still struggling...but hey, I always get plenty of sleep, so two out of three, right?) All this leads me to an important lesson this semester taught me: Know and respect your limits. Even if you don't think you have limits, you do, and I don't envy the time that shows them to you.

The other thing that has made this semester so crazy is the realization that, despite my major being in computer science, my passion lies elsewhere. Namely in technical theater, a subject I discovered almost by accident more than halfway through high school. Let me explain what I mean by passion: increasingly through my career as a CSci major at the U of Minnesota, I've felt somehow different than other CSci majors, like I'm behind them in terms of my knowledge and skills. I readily learned what they taught us in class, but I could never figure out how to apply anything to practical programs. I was kind of embarrassed that my roommate this year, who is a mechanical engineering major, knows a good deal more about Unix and general programming than I do!

Then my algorithms professor (the very same one) made a comment after our first programming assignment that made everything clear. He basically said that we were expected to have taught ourselves the programming skills necessary to do the assignment--presumably for no reason other than curiosity and our interest in the subject. I realized that this was also probably how my peers had gained so much more practical knowledge than I had--while I was spending my free time reading or playing games, they were hacking.

I had mistaken being good at computer science (or just being a diligent learner and logical thinker) for having a passion for it. I easily comprehended what I was learning in my classes, but I had no motivation to go beyond what I was being taught. I didn't notice this in my introductory-type classes, but by junior year it's become undeniable.

By a weird coincidence, the morning I was starting to write this, I saw an article on the Magic: The Gathering website (which I still frequent, despite no longer playing) about "the power of passion." In it, lead designer Mark Rosewater said this:

If You Want to Be Happy, then Make What You Do Something that Makes You Happy.

While this might sound simplistic, I believe one of the greatest causes of unhappiness is a lack of understanding of this life lesson. Many people are unhappy simply because they do not prioritize doing things that make them happy. They chase things they think can bring them happiness (money, fame, etc.) rather than focus on the actual things that make them happy.

The truth of Mark's words speaks for itself. Given a lucrative job as a software developer or a position as an electrician in a local theater that pays half as much, I know which one I'd pick. Money can't buy happiness. So my second lesson is sort of a rehashing of Mark's lesson: Do what you love, not what you're good at. (If you love what you're good at, lucky you.) This applies especially to high school students preparing to enter college, a period in which I made many decisions that I'm not seeing the effects of. Unfortunately, it's too late for me to change majors, so I have to force myself to stick to it until I graduate.

So that's my big update post about how this semester is going. Starting next time, back to the random musings on God and which brand of detergent is best and such.

On Heat

That's right, it's a Fractal blog double header night! Since my last post was one of the deepest and most intense things I've written thus far, it's time to balance it off with randomness. The Twin Cities are currently going through a heat wave and it's hard to think about anything else. This week has been consistent highs in the 30s (Celsius), with high humidity. The kind of weather that makes you sweat even if you're just sitting inside doing nothing. I was hoping to escape this kind of weather when I left Milwaukee, so I'm kind of annoyed. So, I will now write about how bad heat is and how cold weather is better than warm weather. WITHOUT DIVIDING INTO PARAGRAPHS BECAUSE IT'S A RANT!!! So, hot weather is basically the worst. It's not like cold weather where if you're cold you can just put on more layers or a coat or light a fire or anything. If it's too hot and you are out of layers, there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO. If you happen to be indoors with a fan or AC, good for you. But woe unto you if you have to do anything! Especially anything outside! You will be helpless as you feel increasingly disgusting and uncomfortable! The sun feels like a radioactive death ray zapping your strength and searing your flesh! Oh, if only you were in winter, when you could just run back inside and put on a coat and hat and then feel pleasantly toasty! I've noticed that having temperature gradients in my body feels good; wearing a winter coat and then my hands and feet being cold, for instance. But when it's hot you just get hot everywhere and it feels nasty. Just to prove that this isn't just a me thing, even the universe is against you in hot weather! It's the curse of the second law of thermodynamics that doing pretty much anything produces heat. When it's cold you can bundle up to preserve this heat and stay warm, but when it's hot it all builds up everywhere and everything is horrible forever!!! And you can't get rid of the heat, you can only move it elsewhere, which in itself makes more heat! And thanks to global warming, it's all getting worse! Okay, done now.

On Drink Temperatures

Time for a more offbeat post. This morning I happened upon this comic strip:

Oh, Hagar the Horrible. You never change. Anyway, after reading it, I thought how there is a cultural consensus that beer should be consumed at a very cold temperature. In fact, after a bit of thought, I realized there is a culturally mandated temperature for just about every beverage. For social situations where it would be uncouth to consult Wikipedia, I've created a quick reference chart of culturally mandated drink temperatures.

Tea was the only beverage I can think of that's often served hot or cold (though I've heard of iced coffee). Wine was literally the only beverage I could think of that's normally served at room temperature. From my findings, I concluded that there is but one explanation: there is some kind of beverage cabal that controls the social regulation of drink temperatures! Presumably they have hidden thermometers in our beverage containers, so if you want to drink hot beer, be sure to do it in a coffee mug. Nothing near room temperature should ever be consumed out of a teacup.

Anyway, I hope that this guide on our secret beverage temperature overlords has been most enlightening, blagoblags. Tune in next week as I tell the story of how I invented water skis for sheep!

On How the Giant Pliers in the Sky will Come to Kill Us All

Google has foreseen it. I recommend running to the nearest cave as soon as possible. Or Middlebrook Hall; as vice president, I will protect us from the giant transdimensional pliers!