I figure since I have nothing better to do this summer, I might as well talk about… what I have defaulted to doing since I have nothing better to do. Haha.
Point of Interest #001: MIT forms
I, along with many others, have been hard at work trying to make sure that our MIT forms originally due on June 13th made it to their destination in time. I had actually completed most of my forms already, but I had been putting off doing the FPOP (Freshman Pre-Orientation Program) application for some time, mostly because I had no idea how to answer some of the questions. Ultimately, Jason and I ended up messaging each other on AIM at 4pm EST, exclaiming about 5pm deadline. And thus, I spent an entire hour trying to answer questions that would normally seem pretty easygoing. Eventually, I only applied to three FPOPs even though we could have chosen up to five. My choices were, in order: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Freshman Arts Program, Freshman Leadership Program. I was originally planning to apply for Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Mechanical Eng, and Nuclear Science/Engineering as well, but decided against it. Leadership was the program I wasn’t expecting myself to sign up for, but after consideration, I realized that it would be a good teamwork-building experience… which is nice, because I’ll be needing a lot of -that- when I’m actually at MIT itself!
Point of Interest #002: Music/external organization
Two of my major computer-related tasks of the summer is completed, and it’s only been a week! That definitely gives me assurance that I can complete the other two (one of which is nearly done, see POI #007). Anyways, I’ve transferred all my music over to my 150gb, palm-sized HD. It’s a nifty idea - so nowadays if I’m going anywhere on the MIT campus to use a computer, I don’t even need to bring an mp3 player, I can just carry around my music HD and a set of ear/headphones, plug it in, and listen. It’s also freed up a lot of space on my local HD and also my other external where all my other junk is stored. Speaking of which, I’ve pretty much deleted all the junk that I don’t need and organized my files into neat folders, so there you go. My external is organized and ready for anything else! The only thing I have left is to organize my laptop and prepare it for college work =)
Point of Interest #003: Sekai no Melody hiatus
To tell the truth, my mind is still a jumbled mess from graduation and such. I’m sure you’ve all gone through those times where you really just.. want a break from everything to sit down, lay back, and start pondering life. So yeah, I’ve kind of hit that time in my life where I just wanted to take a mini break from SnM. For the past two years SnM (in addition to school) has consumed my life and I don’t think I’ve really had a day to myself where I could stop worrying about SnM things - who do I need to prod for files, who mixes what, who caused what drama, blah blah. So as a graduation present for myself, I am taking a one-week break from SnM. That means I’m doing NO mixing/colour-coding/organizing/etc. Nothing. And thus far, it feels great =) I’m rather enjoying my hiatus. Unfortunately, it ends in about three days..
Point of Interest #004: Family outings
These past few days, we’ve gone a number of family outings. I’ve been to about five restaurants in the past week only (Serrano’s, Chuy’s, TanTan, Dinho, Olive Garden), in addition to seeing Prince Caspian in theatres. I’m going to pester my mother about taking me to Barnes & Noble sometime soon, since I was given a gift card for that store (by my mother herself, no less), and maybe I can pick up some books for my…
Point of Interest #005: Summer reading
So now that reading is no longer mandatory, I’m actually feeling the urge to do just that. I went downstairs yesterday evening to see what books I could work my way through. My eyes immediately fell on Relativity, a book about - what else - Einstein’s relativity theories. When I opened it, though, I was met with page after page of math formulas more advanced than I had ever even -seen-, so I demurely closed the volume and set it back on the shelf. I scanned the fiction sections of our bookshelves but I had already read everything we own (that wasn’t a children’s book, that is). I looked down at the bottommost shelf, where my father stores his computing books, to see if I could get a book for improving my C++ skills. Everything he has, though, is outdated; there were thick books on Java 1.1, extremely early versions of RedHat Linux, UNIX programming, C programming… but they were all outdated by at least 7 years. I ventured back upstairs, rather dejectedly, and browsed Demonoid for some good summer reading. However, Demonoid’s E-book stocks are like this: chess, chess, Windows, chess, C++, chess, HTML, chess, sex, science, computing, games, chess, Linux, chess, and did I mention chess? So by this time I was extremely frustrated and closed out without downloading anything. I guess my summer will be spent with my Ruby and C++ reference books, since I’ve decided to focus on improving my knowledge of those two languages for the time being. On the contrary, if anyone has suggestions, I’ll gladly take them.
Point of Interest #006: Rainlendar
I’ve always abhorred desktop widgets. Avoided them like the plague. The first thing I did when I got my HP was disable and uninstall the Vista sidebar because I seriously could not stand them. However, along came Rainlendar, which I had briefly used with XP on my Presario last year, and this week I kind of fell in love with it all over it. Perhaps it was because a new version came out, along with some really nice skins that I have downloaded. It’s really nifty; it’s ultra-customizable, and very handy for those of us who couldn’t live without a planner and to-do lists (*raises hand*). Here’s a screenshot of my current Rainlendar interface, and I guess I had better drop the link to the official Rainlendar website in case you wanna download it to try for yourself. And oh look, it’s got another version for when I convert this laptop fully over to Linux ;D
Point of Interest #007: Linux distributions
As vowed by yours truly a few entries back, one of my goals for this summer was to find a Linux distribution that worked for me, and.. I’ve narrowed it down quite a bit =) Well, the fact that I was finally able to get sound recording working on my HP Pavilion under sidux helped my decision a bit, but unfortunately it refuses to load itself onto my Presario, so I have another distribution running on there currently. Speaking of which, here’s a screenshot of my Presario at the moment. Ahh, minimalism + awesome wallpaper = love. Points if you can guess the distro (not much to go off of, haha).
