Essays!

Blogger is being particularly annoying today, but I'm too lazy to rearrange the images so you'll just have to look at them out of order! I was at the store earlier this week and I came across some dragon fruit. I bought one (and looked up how to eat it), and discovered that they are basically like giant, kind of boring tasting kiwis. They look very pretty though!

And the above is my "standing desk." I was having a lot of trouble focusing on writing my essays, particularly the geography essay, so I made myself a desk that forced me to stand up. It worked well -- after a few days it basically forced me into going to the library to work on my papers where I got on quite well!

If anyone is interested in reading an 18 page masterpiece on GIS's influence on archaeology's future or a 3000 word paper on comparing digital and analog versions of a music performance, let me know and I can send them to you, haha. It was a long week...

I started new classes!

Computer Music: I originally was not intending to take this module, but on a whim I emailed the lecturer to see if he would tell me what the class was going to be about, and he was so enthusiastic that I couldn't help but show up to the first day. He is a computer scientist by trade (something about systems . . . analysis? . . I didn't listen), but a computer musician by hobby, and this is the first time the class has been offered. There are only a couple people taking the class, so it looks like we are going to be moving pretty fast. In two days we've already covered all types of kHz, wavelength stuff plus the building blocks of one computer language we are going to be constructing things with. Our suggested assignment for next week is to create a synthesizer!

XML: This class is not my favorite, but it's required. It will probably be good for me. XML, basically, is a "markup" language meaning that you tag parts of a text and that makes it easy for computers to rearrange them later. It is about as much fun as it sounds...but probably the most useful for me, besides databases. UGhhhh.

Databases: Well. This one is going to be a pretty pickle. We have to design a web-facing database, similar to blackboard or something. I sure don't know how to do that right now, so I guess I'm going to figure it out in the next nine weeks or else! We're in groups of three and it looks like my group is doing okay so far, so I have high hopes for the future!

I haven't really been doing a lot lately because I was cooped up in my room, but last night we went to a Mexican bar to get £1 tacos! They were like, legit Mexican tacos, too. I had one that was made of poblanos and creme and another of papas y chorizo that reminded me of Spain!

Good news! Brad's program finally paid him, so now he knows he can stay until the end of his program! That means that I will go visit him over reading week! Yayyy.

I think I am going to get going now. I didn't make plans for Friday since I didn't know if I would be still writing my essay or not (they're due at midnight), but I'm sure if I look around the dorm long enough I'll find something to do!

Have a good week!