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Recent stuff:
* Winter break: Full of traveling alternated with sloth-like days of reading mixed with internet and stubbornly offset sleep cycles. Average non-travel day: Awake at 4am one way or another, most active part of day is walking up or down stairs. To offset this, make vague attempt to go rock climbing over break, manage twice. All in all, fairly relaxing.
* Travel over winter break: New Year's in Chicago, complete with Mona Lisa (no, this story doesn't make sense. I'd explain, but the odds of this helping are slim.) Iowa, to see grandmother again and visit with other family there. Lots of being in the car, but good to see folks there. Boston at the end for Mystery Hunt.
* Speaking of Mystery Hunt: I had lots and lots of fun, saw numbers of wonderful folk, had good conversations and spent time hanging out with nifty people I see far too infrequently. Also, Boston is a great town (based on previous trips, saw only a bit of it this time), with weather that doesn't drive me mad (I saw nearly as much snow there as all of break in MN. This is *not* OK.). If anyone runs across interesting jobs for the short term (around a year) in Boston, let me know. There are some nifty grad programs out that general direction, and it'd be nice to see in advance how living on that coast is. (I didn't realize before Mudd that geography and climate mattered much to me, but it turns out I have a profound need for trees that the LA area does not manage to provide. That and glorious snow, but I sort of knew that one already.)
* As for Mudd: It is nice to be back. Classes look very good overall, though things haven't really geared up yet. I'm currently facing mild boredom as homework hasn't really set in, and I'm simply not used to having spare time here. Fortunately, there are folk around, and a lounge to poke at. Hurray for impromptu parties and random discussions of politics.
* As for classes, I may need a sub-list:
** Tropical ecology looks fun and easy. I sort of wish I were going to Costa Rica on the spring break trip, but I also like having that time available. The material looks interesting, but a little more basic than I'd like. This class is entirely extra, and looks like it will teach me some new stuff without adding too much to my last semester workload. (Yes, I did drop a class, so I'm no longer at 18+2i units, It really couldn't last. Fortunately, Adolescent Development looked not that exciting.)
** I'm also taking Public Speaking for Science and Citizenship, which looks really interesting. We get to read Tufte, and hopefully go beyond the good example, bad example structure I didn't like much in the Visual Display of Quantitative Information. The class is going to focus on explaining technical and scientific information to a non-scientific audience, and on conveying values and ideals. The idea is to practice giving effective talks and speeches, with a sort of focus on science policy in government, since that's the prof's expertise. I'm really hoping we go through and look a bit at technique and some of the basic tools of speech-giving. (The analogy that comes to mind is the parallel to writing. The instruction on talk-giving I've most often gotten has been on the "don't say um and er a lot" level, which is really more equivalent to spelling and punctuation rather than use of metaphor or parallelism. I really like learning things semi-formally, rather than simply going on intuition and practice. I can use a tool much better when I'm aware of it.)
** The other Hum I'm taking is Islamic History (or Society, I forget) from Muhammad to the Mongols. This class also looks really good. The books are thick and there are 5 of them, but the reading assignments are reasonable, and they look like good ones. The prof here sounds interesting, and the historical context will fill in well with what I've studied of the religion and the philosophers. Its a sort of odd interest. I wasn't exactly expecting to have a concentration in religious studies (or in practice, history of the "Islamic world"), but it is a culture I don't know much about, and the academic study of religion and the like is interesting, and much easier to process mentally when it isn't directly my religion.
** I'm also taking Scientific Computing, which I'm not entirely sure of yet. The material seems useful, but the class is being taught semi-Moore Method, and the prof's pace seems to be the opposite of mine. (Fast when I'm confused, slow when going through easy things.) If nothing else, I'll get more practice programming in Matlab.
** Thesis proceeds along. This semester I'll actually be doing things, rather than just collecting background material. Now I get to start actually poking at a model.
** I've got a few zero-unit classes floating around: SCUBA should be interesting, and I'll be amused if it actually turns out to be useful. (A surprising number of my random certifications have been.) Math colloquium will be nicer for my having gone to extra talks last semester, letting me pick out the more interesting ones this time.
* Other stuff: Rock climbing is lots of fun, but I am foolish. I have this terrible habit of trying to climb everything![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iluvsheep tries to climb. This isn't usually too terrible, since usually when he climbs things the hard way, I try to climb them the tricky way, but he does have rather a good bit more arm strength than I do. This means that overhangs and roof climbs where you more or less pull yourself up by the arms not so good for my ability to later carry anything heavier than a pen. I haven't strained my arms this badly from climbing in a long while. Fortunately, the easy stuff later and the 5.11 I like (which I've just today decided to name the White Whale, for my obsession with it) were routes where I don't use my arms to support me as much.
Thats about it for the big update. Overall things are well.
* Winter break: Full of traveling alternated with sloth-like days of reading mixed with internet and stubbornly offset sleep cycles. Average non-travel day: Awake at 4am one way or another, most active part of day is walking up or down stairs. To offset this, make vague attempt to go rock climbing over break, manage twice. All in all, fairly relaxing.
* Travel over winter break: New Year's in Chicago, complete with Mona Lisa (no, this story doesn't make sense. I'd explain, but the odds of this helping are slim.) Iowa, to see grandmother again and visit with other family there. Lots of being in the car, but good to see folks there. Boston at the end for Mystery Hunt.
* Speaking of Mystery Hunt: I had lots and lots of fun, saw numbers of wonderful folk, had good conversations and spent time hanging out with nifty people I see far too infrequently. Also, Boston is a great town (based on previous trips, saw only a bit of it this time), with weather that doesn't drive me mad (I saw nearly as much snow there as all of break in MN. This is *not* OK.). If anyone runs across interesting jobs for the short term (around a year) in Boston, let me know. There are some nifty grad programs out that general direction, and it'd be nice to see in advance how living on that coast is. (I didn't realize before Mudd that geography and climate mattered much to me, but it turns out I have a profound need for trees that the LA area does not manage to provide. That and glorious snow, but I sort of knew that one already.)
* As for Mudd: It is nice to be back. Classes look very good overall, though things haven't really geared up yet. I'm currently facing mild boredom as homework hasn't really set in, and I'm simply not used to having spare time here. Fortunately, there are folk around, and a lounge to poke at. Hurray for impromptu parties and random discussions of politics.
* As for classes, I may need a sub-list:
** Tropical ecology looks fun and easy. I sort of wish I were going to Costa Rica on the spring break trip, but I also like having that time available. The material looks interesting, but a little more basic than I'd like. This class is entirely extra, and looks like it will teach me some new stuff without adding too much to my last semester workload. (Yes, I did drop a class, so I'm no longer at 18+2i units, It really couldn't last. Fortunately, Adolescent Development looked not that exciting.)
** I'm also taking Public Speaking for Science and Citizenship, which looks really interesting. We get to read Tufte, and hopefully go beyond the good example, bad example structure I didn't like much in the Visual Display of Quantitative Information. The class is going to focus on explaining technical and scientific information to a non-scientific audience, and on conveying values and ideals. The idea is to practice giving effective talks and speeches, with a sort of focus on science policy in government, since that's the prof's expertise. I'm really hoping we go through and look a bit at technique and some of the basic tools of speech-giving. (The analogy that comes to mind is the parallel to writing. The instruction on talk-giving I've most often gotten has been on the "don't say um and er a lot" level, which is really more equivalent to spelling and punctuation rather than use of metaphor or parallelism. I really like learning things semi-formally, rather than simply going on intuition and practice. I can use a tool much better when I'm aware of it.)
** The other Hum I'm taking is Islamic History (or Society, I forget) from Muhammad to the Mongols. This class also looks really good. The books are thick and there are 5 of them, but the reading assignments are reasonable, and they look like good ones. The prof here sounds interesting, and the historical context will fill in well with what I've studied of the religion and the philosophers. Its a sort of odd interest. I wasn't exactly expecting to have a concentration in religious studies (or in practice, history of the "Islamic world"), but it is a culture I don't know much about, and the academic study of religion and the like is interesting, and much easier to process mentally when it isn't directly my religion.
** I'm also taking Scientific Computing, which I'm not entirely sure of yet. The material seems useful, but the class is being taught semi-Moore Method, and the prof's pace seems to be the opposite of mine. (Fast when I'm confused, slow when going through easy things.) If nothing else, I'll get more practice programming in Matlab.
** Thesis proceeds along. This semester I'll actually be doing things, rather than just collecting background material. Now I get to start actually poking at a model.
** I've got a few zero-unit classes floating around: SCUBA should be interesting, and I'll be amused if it actually turns out to be useful. (A surprising number of my random certifications have been.) Math colloquium will be nicer for my having gone to extra talks last semester, letting me pick out the more interesting ones this time.
* Other stuff: Rock climbing is lots of fun, but I am foolish. I have this terrible habit of trying to climb everything
iluvsheep tries to climb. This isn't usually too terrible, since usually when he climbs things the hard way, I try to climb them the tricky way, but he does have rather a good bit more arm strength than I do. This means that overhangs and roof climbs where you more or less pull yourself up by the arms not so good for my ability to later carry anything heavier than a pen. I haven't strained my arms this badly from climbing in a long while. Fortunately, the easy stuff later and the 5.11 I like (which I've just today decided to name the White Whale, for my obsession with it) were routes where I don't use my arms to support me as much.Thats about it for the big update. Overall things are well.
