As of now, it is 7:00 pm on the night before my high school exams. A combination of senioritis and my understanding of the triviality of these exams has led me to distract myself with writing about the very things that I am distracting myself with. Which includes this.
Lately, I've been seeking some sort of creative outlet. Music doesn't really count, since the music that I play is all ensemble work, where creativity works more in favor of the conductor than the musician himself. I have dabbled in composing, however, and I've found the perfect song to arrange for a small ensemble. I really want to write that and perform it, and the thought of how cool it would be if I successfully completed such a piece is overwhelming my mind.
Also, I've been reexamining the partial mess I created back in November. In order to fill the post-marching band void in my life, I signed on to compete in National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). That didn't go so hot. I ended up abandoning the "novel" around 11,000 words, a grossly intimidating 39,000 short of the universal goal of the project. My thoughts of starting anew without the 30-day time constraint taxing the quality of my writing are also on my mind.
As far as writing goes, my friend (who I shall refer to as T-Rad, as I do in real life) and I have seriously considered writing a mini-musical based on the severely hilarious and explosive 2009 blockbuster, "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra". It was very, very fun casting some of our theatrically-inclined friends as characters in the film, but our enthusiasm for writing the thing faded as we realized how damn hard it would be to make a budget stage production out of one of the most special effects-laden films to date. This would be sufficient grounds to abandon the project if T-Rad and I were not so obsessed with the glory that would come with accomplishing the tremendous feat of writing a musical. So we decided to instead create a completely original full-length musical comedy (since we share essentially the same sense of humor). Right now, we don't even know what it's going to be about. But that doesn't mean I'm not excited to the point of distraction.
I've also been concerned lately with the state of my own reading. I haven't read a book for recreational purposes since I read Blindness this summer. Now I've purchased another Saramago novel called "Death with Interruptions", "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer, and "Under the Dome" by Stephen King. I've been tempted to crack open one of these books many times over the past few weeks, and it looks like that will soon happen.
On a less creative note, I've also been extremely determined to finish some of my yet-unfinished video games, and replay some of my old favorites. I haven't finished Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, Final Fantasy XII (this is sad since I've owned it for two or three years), and God of War I. I want to replay all of the Kingdom Hearts games while I'm at it (although I don't need to replay Kingdom Hearts II, since I beat that around a month ago), as well as some Zelda games and Okami. I'm a nerd, I know. At least I didn't mention any of the old N64 games that I will undoubtedly play this summer.
My main problem with all these things flying through my head isn't that I'm distracted by them. Honestly, I really don't give a shit about studying for exams anyway. My problem is that I don't know which of these tasks I should aim to finish first. There's no way I'm going to be able to do all of this before college, yet most of it seems implausible once I actually go there.
One way of looking at this situation would be to say that I should prioritize them in order of how likely I am to accomplish them. The problem with this is that it puts the musical dead last on the list of priorities, which happens to be the thought that I am most excited about. I'll definitely give it some more thought. I can definitely see one of those books in my near future, though. And by my near future, I mean tomorrow.
January 24, 2010
January 19, 2010
Complexity vs. Adaptation
Today was marked by two personal revelations.
First, the events of today left a new Republican Senator with the vote capable of either allowing or preventing Obama's health care bill from passing. (This means it will almost definitely fail.)
Second, and on a more trivial level, I realized that Facebook sucks.
It occurred to me as I listened to my friends argue over the fate of health care in America (ironically on Facebook), my basic understanding of the reason behind the failure of this bill was that it had become too convoluted with earmarks by being tossed around Congress for too long and turned into such a monstrously large, confusing, and complicated bill that it was more and more doomed as the clock ticked away.
Honestly, I don't know anything about health care reform. Obama's proposal came during the summer when I was away from any news outlet that would have enabled me to understand this complex issue. I'll leave my political/ideological opinions out of this, because anyone who wishes to argue against me could probably 1-up me with legitimate statistics. The point is that with each time that the Democrats scaled back the bill to gain support from Republicans, influential conservative talking heads (that's you, anyone-on-fox-news) managed to alienate a huge amount of people to the idea of reform, and the whole situation turned into chaos regarding who to appease to in order to gain support.
Enough of that, it hurts my brain.
On the other hand, I have actually been a huge fan of Facebook since I was able to join (around the time they opened access to high school students). I was apparently one of the few people who supported the famed layout change of 2008, which I don't think anyone is complaining about now. I joined MySpace around the same time (early 2007) so that I could decide which one I preferred using, and MySpace was gone within probably four months. Obviously I made the right choice for the time, but now I think Facebook is destined to face a similar fate to MySpace, maybe within three years.
Facebook has gone to shit recently, for many reasons. I'll sum them up as briefly as possible.
So what's the point of mentioning this? In an attempt to attract more users with its shiny bells and whistles, Facebook added an assload of new features while failing to realize that it had made social networking much more difficult, which is the point of the website itself. Where have we seen this before? MySpace? Definitely. Allowing users to add their own HTML to customize their profile resulted in a very shitty-looking website. Then, it turned into a breeding ground for whiny teens and pedophiles, a ton of spam, and eventually the very same application platform that is currently killing Facebook. As it grew more and more convoluted in an attempt to mirror the then-simpler design of Facebook, it began to lose users to the very website it was trying to imitate. I'm actually guilty of being one of those users; I chose Facebook over MySpace because Facebook was simpler. The reason I was such a big fan of the big layout change of 2008 was because users were making the site a wreck with the relentless addition of their applications, much in the same way that HTML ruined the MySpace experience, and I believed that this would rectify the situation. It did, to some extent, but other problems arose with further layout changes and features, and now I've lost my support for Facebook.
Before writing this, I began to realize a trend that was consistent through both politics and social networking: as something grows more and more complex, it loses potential to succeed. Another example would be the evolution of bacteria. Briefly put, our antibiotics and disinfectants and antiseptics have become so good at killing bacteria that bacteria have evolved to become more and more resistant to them. Is all hope for preventing the spread of bacterial disease futile in the end?
It seems that the only way to ensure that anything survives in this world is to make sure that it remains simple. For example, Google has maintained its simple format for several years, and has become a staple of the internet experience. But how can we save ourselves from new political, natural, and economic threats if we stay the same? We can't. We have to be able to adapt to our environment. Facebook adapted to the demands of its users, but in the process created a monster. Congress adapted as much as possible to the economic desires and ideological wants of its members, but even with a reasonable method of lowering health insurance costs, the bill was doomed to failure. The real question is: How far must we go to adapt to the world?
In neither situation was the end result very different from the thing it was trying to improve upon. Facebook became more like MySpace, and the proposed health care bill was, as I interpret it, compromised to the point where it would not have changed much in the current system. In a weird, sort of ironic way, our overly feverish attempts to correct the flaws of something that is broken doesn't appear to fix anything. My belief is that they have been mulled over for so long that the people in charge of fixing the problems forget what they're trying to fix.
Sorry, I realize that this thought was really long and boring. But it was important that I record it because I think this will be something that I need to remember in my future career, whatever it may be - even the people in charge of the most powerful country in the world tend to forget to keep track of what they're trying to do.
First, the events of today left a new Republican Senator with the vote capable of either allowing or preventing Obama's health care bill from passing. (This means it will almost definitely fail.)
Second, and on a more trivial level, I realized that Facebook sucks.
It occurred to me as I listened to my friends argue over the fate of health care in America (ironically on Facebook), my basic understanding of the reason behind the failure of this bill was that it had become too convoluted with earmarks by being tossed around Congress for too long and turned into such a monstrously large, confusing, and complicated bill that it was more and more doomed as the clock ticked away.
Honestly, I don't know anything about health care reform. Obama's proposal came during the summer when I was away from any news outlet that would have enabled me to understand this complex issue. I'll leave my political/ideological opinions out of this, because anyone who wishes to argue against me could probably 1-up me with legitimate statistics. The point is that with each time that the Democrats scaled back the bill to gain support from Republicans, influential conservative talking heads (that's you, anyone-on-fox-news) managed to alienate a huge amount of people to the idea of reform, and the whole situation turned into chaos regarding who to appease to in order to gain support.
Enough of that, it hurts my brain.
On the other hand, I have actually been a huge fan of Facebook since I was able to join (around the time they opened access to high school students). I was apparently one of the few people who supported the famed layout change of 2008, which I don't think anyone is complaining about now. I joined MySpace around the same time (early 2007) so that I could decide which one I preferred using, and MySpace was gone within probably four months. Obviously I made the right choice for the time, but now I think Facebook is destined to face a similar fate to MySpace, maybe within three years.
Facebook has gone to shit recently, for many reasons. I'll sum them up as briefly as possible.
- Chat doesn't ever work.
- The notification window goes off the screen when you get many in rapid succession
- Very few applications work properly, and many are actually phishing applications disguised as "wall posts" and such that can hack your accounts.
- Groups have mostly deteriorated into "freebie" groups, which are also spam.
- The groups that aren't freebie groups are almost completely plastered with spam and trolls.
- Notes, while occasionally interesting, are largely stupid quizzes that people stole from MySpace in order to talk about themselves.
- Worst of all... fan pages. They aren't even legitimate entities or funny things anymore. They are random thoughts that everybody has thought at some point, and everybody joins about 15 of these ever fucking second. It completely covers my news feed, and I can't filter these posts out of my feed at all. It's so fucked up.
So what's the point of mentioning this? In an attempt to attract more users with its shiny bells and whistles, Facebook added an assload of new features while failing to realize that it had made social networking much more difficult, which is the point of the website itself. Where have we seen this before? MySpace? Definitely. Allowing users to add their own HTML to customize their profile resulted in a very shitty-looking website. Then, it turned into a breeding ground for whiny teens and pedophiles, a ton of spam, and eventually the very same application platform that is currently killing Facebook. As it grew more and more convoluted in an attempt to mirror the then-simpler design of Facebook, it began to lose users to the very website it was trying to imitate. I'm actually guilty of being one of those users; I chose Facebook over MySpace because Facebook was simpler. The reason I was such a big fan of the big layout change of 2008 was because users were making the site a wreck with the relentless addition of their applications, much in the same way that HTML ruined the MySpace experience, and I believed that this would rectify the situation. It did, to some extent, but other problems arose with further layout changes and features, and now I've lost my support for Facebook.
Before writing this, I began to realize a trend that was consistent through both politics and social networking: as something grows more and more complex, it loses potential to succeed. Another example would be the evolution of bacteria. Briefly put, our antibiotics and disinfectants and antiseptics have become so good at killing bacteria that bacteria have evolved to become more and more resistant to them. Is all hope for preventing the spread of bacterial disease futile in the end?
It seems that the only way to ensure that anything survives in this world is to make sure that it remains simple. For example, Google has maintained its simple format for several years, and has become a staple of the internet experience. But how can we save ourselves from new political, natural, and economic threats if we stay the same? We can't. We have to be able to adapt to our environment. Facebook adapted to the demands of its users, but in the process created a monster. Congress adapted as much as possible to the economic desires and ideological wants of its members, but even with a reasonable method of lowering health insurance costs, the bill was doomed to failure. The real question is: How far must we go to adapt to the world?
In neither situation was the end result very different from the thing it was trying to improve upon. Facebook became more like MySpace, and the proposed health care bill was, as I interpret it, compromised to the point where it would not have changed much in the current system. In a weird, sort of ironic way, our overly feverish attempts to correct the flaws of something that is broken doesn't appear to fix anything. My belief is that they have been mulled over for so long that the people in charge of fixing the problems forget what they're trying to fix.
Sorry, I realize that this thought was really long and boring. But it was important that I record it because I think this will be something that I need to remember in my future career, whatever it may be - even the people in charge of the most powerful country in the world tend to forget to keep track of what they're trying to do.
January 10, 2010
Week of Hell - Volume 1 of 1 (hopefully)
It's inevitable in this time of the year - school gets incredibly hard following a mind-crushing winter break and the resulting work to do becomes unfathomable. This year I think I'm a bit more well-off than last year, but that doesn't mean I won't be grumpy and groggy for the next several weeks. This actually probably means I won't post for a bit.
Semester exams are coming up soon, which is not what I'm referring to when I describe hell week, because high school exams are typically a joke. No, the next week is going to completely consumed by preparation for these exams, and study in general. I'm just surprised that it happened so early in the new year.
So here is my to-do list for right now:
Semester exams are coming up soon, which is not what I'm referring to when I describe hell week, because high school exams are typically a joke. No, the next week is going to completely consumed by preparation for these exams, and study in general. I'm just surprised that it happened so early in the new year.
So here is my to-do list for right now:
- Study for Organic Chemistry - quiz tuesday, exam monday (even the quiz is vitally important, so yes, lots of study will ensue)
- Write research paper for Geology (this also includes actually doing some research)
- Study for Geology final exam
- Study for AP Statistics exam
- Prepare for a 40-minute presentation in English on a book that is pretty boring and uninteresting.
- Memorize a bunch of french words, do a bunch of other random shit in french.
- Give a presentation on the nothing I did over winter break - in french.
- Write/carry out a Psychology experiment
- Practice/rehearse with Winter Legends
- Attend open lab, get extra credit somehow?
- Create a trifold poster about my experience working essential as an intern at a company where I did analytical chemistry - and then extensively rambling about it to an audience of two.
- For the weekend:
- Toil away on English presentation
- Study like mad for Organic Chemistry (Which I refuse to call "Orgo")
@@@@@
Update! I'm done with all of this shit, and I'm actually somewhat surprised that I did. Everything went over well; I got credit for my Mentorship and, for the first time since early in my freshman year, got straight As. How cool is that? It's sort of a miracle that I got an A- in Organic Chemistry, since I only managed to get a C+ on the exam. For the first time in a very long time, I'm ecstatic with a report card.
January 9, 2010
Why today is the best day ever already at 5:30
- I woke up today with the forceful obligation to do some homework. Instead, I finished up my Kingdom Hearts II file that I started playing over winter break. It was fucking awesome. The Kingdom Hearts games are probably my favorite series ever - I started with the first when it came out when I was in 5th grade and have been in love with it ever since, despite how admittedly gay it is. The story is tight, the gameplay is ridiculously fun, and there's plenty of stuff to do. All the time. Recently I bought 358/2 Days for the DS and I've been working on that, although right now I'm only about 1/2 of the way done.
- My computer is a Sony Vaio, and despite the fact that Sony generally makes high-quality audio products, the built in speakers are absolute shit. I remedied this by using the money I got for Christmas from family members to purchase some Bose Companion 2 speakers. The difference in quality can't even be described in words, but I'll try. Do you remember when you went to the circus as a kid and saw people doing some of the most insane stunts and acrobatics ever and you were completely dumbfounded? That's pretty much what I feel like about my new speakers. They aren't miraculous by today's standards, but they certainly are relative to what I'm used to.
While I'm at it though, I'll say that I watched the first part of this movie called Cashback the other day, which is like a British indie art film. It wasn't very good, despite getting good reviews. And I'm pretty sure it's not because I didn't "get it." There wasn't much to get as far as I interpreted it. The entirety of the 50 minutes of the movie that I watched was spent on a weird combination of a melodramatic breakup with the protagonist's girlfriend, which was accompanied by music you'd hear at the end of a tearjerker war film when somebody dies; confusing, unfunny slapstick, and him stopping time to draw pictures of all the smoking hot model women that happen to shop at the grocery store where he works after stripping them naked.
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