This past Monday, I moved into my new room at Bromley Hall at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign for my sophomore year in computer science. I lived in Bromley last year with Andrew Leman and Brett Dunnam, and we decided to room together again. But instead of being in room 901 like last year, we requested 1101. Same room, just two floors higher. To our surprise, however, when we opened up the room, we realized that it certainly is not the same room. In fact, it is a much better room!The size of the room is about the same, but the walls have been repainted (to an off-yellow instead of white), the closet doors are all new, the furniture is new, the windows are new, and the bathroom (tile, shower, toilet, and sink) are all new. It’s a much better room, in terms of condition, than last year, and we are really excited to be in it.This semester has classes which are not the most directed towards my major. The following is the list of classes I am taking, and their respective descriptions from our course catalog:
- Ethical and Professional Issues in Computer Science: Ethics for the computing profession. Ethical decision-making; licensing; intellectual property, freedom of information, and privacy. Includes oral presentations.
- Computer Architecture I: ntroduction to computer architecture, working up from the logic gate level: combinational and sequential networks; computer arithmetic; arithmetic/logic units; memory organization; control unit design.
- Introduction to Japanese Culture: Topical introduction to Japanese cultural and aesthetic life with attention to cultural and aesthetic patterns as they are reflected in literature, language, and the arts.
- Universal Physics, Electricity and Magnetism: Coulomb’s Law, electric fields, Gauss’ Law, electric potential, capacitance, circuits, magnetic forces and fields, Ampere’s law, induction, electromagnetic waves, polarization, and geometrical optics. Lectures with demonstrations, discussions, and laboratory. For students in engineering, mathematics, physics, and chemistry.
- Linear Transformations and Matrices: Introductory course emphasizing techniques of linear algebra; topics include matrix operations, determinants, linear equations, vector spaces, linear transformations, eigenvalues, and eigenvectors.
When I say I am going to Irish Fest, a lot of people just stare at me blankly. Irish Fest is a irish fest. It is an event put in Milwaukee where some of the best, and some of the upcoming, Irish bands come and perform at outdoor pavilions right along Lake Michigan. The time is full of good music, crazy Irish people, greasy Culver’s burgers, beer for those who drink, and my shave-ices (similar to sno-cones).There were a few bands we saw this year, including:
- Liz Carroll and John Doyle: This duet represents some of the finest Irish music ever produced and ever played. Both musicians are at the top of their class, and it’s the highest class. In terms of musicians and technique, it does not get any better than Liz and John. And what’s unfortunate is that we heard them first, so the rest of the day was a bummer in terms of good music. But that’s ok, they were so amazing that they made the three or more hour drive (thanks to traffic) worth it.
- Leahy: The second band we saw was a band called Leahy. They are composed of quite a number of people, and have a different style than most traditional Irish bands. For example, instead of the classic fiddle, bodhrán (Irish drum), Uilleann pipes, Irish tin whistle, and guitar, they had a different mix of instruments: bass, drum set, fiddle, piano, and guitar. But they had a great groove and after purchasing some of their music, I have come to rather enjoy them.
- Scythian: Though famous, I did not like this band. They were composed of a drummer, a guitarist, a bassist, and a fiddle player. However, they had little technique, and they won the crowd by trying to make Irish music rap music. It didn’t work.
- Frogwater: We ended the night watching a group called Frogwater, with a guitarist, a bodhrán player, and a fiddle lead. While their traditional style was certainly more enjoyable than Scythian, their music lacked a uniqueness such as evident in the incredible work of Solas, Flook, Lunasá, La Bottine Souriante, Liz Carroll, and John Doyle.
For anyone who has not checked out Irish Fest in Milwaukee, I think you should indulge yourself in a terrific evening at Irish Fest Milwaukee 2008.
On Thursday night, my brother Jon and I spent a combined total of $21.50 to go see the new Bourne film: The Bourne Ultimatum. Jon is not much of a movie goer (though I can say the same about myself), and as such, we had to get candy and pop to accompany our cinema adventure. I can’t remember the last time I did that. So Jon munched on Reese’s Pieces, and I slurped down a Coke while we were highly entertained by yet another Matt Damon thriller.The movie, to say the least, was a thriller. It continues the story of Jason Bourne, who is a United States assassin slowly coming out of amnesia, and discovering more about himself, his life, and his abilities. The Bourne Ultimatum finishes off the Bourne series, and I must say I extremely enjoyed the movie.The thing about the three Bourne films, and this one in particular, is not they are not action movies in the way we would consider a movie to be an action movie. The trilogy is not about shooting guns, and in The Bourne Ultimatum, there must of only been, maybe, 10 gun shots the entire film. What makes the movies action movies or thrillers is the constant unawareness of the situation. It’s a CIA movie, a spy movie, a movie about running, chasing, and hiding. But, it’s a cool spy movie. The wits of Jason Bourne add a new dimension to spy movies that makes them thrillers that are also entertaining, instead of just pure adrenaline rushes.One of my favorite parts about the movie was the soundtrack. John Powell does a great job of creating a soundtrack that is not domineering, but rather just another component to making the movie about the story and the thrills. I also enjoyed the Moby remix of “Extreme Ways” for the movie’s credits.The Bourne Ultimatum is a stupendous movie, and will certainly keep you entertained. I loved it, and I can’t wait to complete my DVD collection of the Bourne trilogy.Kevin’s movie rating:
Pretty darn good
Movie Rating Key:
- Best movie I have ever seen
- Absolutely incredible
- Pretty darn good
- I would watch it again
- Good, but only time I am seeing it
- Disappointing
- Not very good
- Horrendous
- Shouldn’t have been made
Kevin’s Rating:
I have had an Apple Cinema Display for past year and a half now, but it was a used old-generation one. As I was finishing up this summer at Apple, I still had my 25% off to use on an Apple product, and since my current cinema screen was ADC and didn’t work with my DVI MacBook Pro, I just decided to sell my cinema screen and buy a new 23″ cinema display. The display came in the mail yesterday (a few days early I will add), so I set it up pretty much immediately.Upon first comparing it with my old cinema, the size seemed smaller, but that was only illusion since the 1.5″ border around the old cinema makes it look much larger than it is. The new one is much sleeker, and of course, it’s made out of aluminum like my laptop, so they go well together. The new cinema has much better color and brightness, and I love the FireWire and powered USB ports on the back. It has a power brick, but oh well. The only critique I have for it is that the arm that holds it up is not as stable as the arms for the old cinema screens. So if you bump the desk or tap on it hard, you can see the monitor just shake a little. It’s small enough where it’s not occurring a lot, but when it does, you have to wait a second for it to stop if you don’t want to get a headache.Overall, I am so far very satisfied with the new cinema, and am looking forward to watching a movie on it in Room 1101 at Bromley Hall!
As many of probably have noticed, I have not been here for the last week or so. But, aha, I have explanations for why, and am prepared to share those with you.
- Intern Presentation (Part 1): So for most of the summer at Apple, I have spent my time working on a project for my team that I was going to present to my department. So two weeks ago from this Thursday (26 July), I presented the project to my department director, his staff, and the 13 other interns in the department. Oh, and in case you forgot, the department I work in is Development Technologies. The presentation went really well, and it was a lot of fun showing everyone what I had been working on.
- Intern Presentation (Part 2): At the head of Apple is Steve Jobs. Under him, there are about 11 Senior Vice Presidents in charge of things such as iPod, iTunes, retail, finance, operations, marketing, industrial design, applications, and software engineering. And as you can probably guess, I am under software engineering, which includes everything that ships in the Mac OS X box (which does not include iMovie, iPhoto, etc., or any of the pro apps). My Senior Vice President is Bertrand Serlet, and under him are 6-7 directors of departments, with Dev Tech being one of them. As with my department, the other departments also had intern presentations. From the 6-7 departments, one intern is chosen from among all the other interns in that department to present to Bertrand and the rest of his staff. My project was chosen for this, so last Thursday I got to present to the Senior Vice President of Apple’s Software Engineering, and I think it went ok. It was mostly just fun to do. So along with that, he invited the 8 of us (a department had 2 interns instead of 1 present) to dinner tomorrow night, so that will be exciting.
- Yosemite: Right after my presentation on Thursday to Bertrand, my family and Leslie arrived at Apple. We spent that day touring Apple and Pixar, and then having dinner with friends. On Friday, Dad, Mom, Jon, Jennie, Sarah, Leslie, and I packed up and headed five hours across the San Jacquin valley to Yosemite National Park for the weekend. It was absolutely gorgeous! We started out by driving up to Glacier Point which overlooks the entire valley and half-dome. Oh my, it was beautiful! We spent Friday night and Saturday night at this little hotel about an hour from the valley. It consisted of these little cottages which were the rooms, and they were very quaint. On Saturday, we drove into the valley and hiked up Vernal Falls, which is a 317 foot waterfall cascading between two huge rock faces. It was, as with most things in Yosemite, absolutely gorgeous. We finished Yosemite on Sunday with looking at the sequoias at the Mariposa Grove. Those trees are just massive! They are 20-30 feet in diameter it seemed, and tall, and just big. The trip was awesome, and it was just great to be with my family.
- San Francisco with Leslie: On Monday, Leslie and I spent the day together in San Francisco. It was my surprise to her, and while she knew that we were going to do something together, she had no idea what or where. We took the 8:00 express into the city, and then rented bikes on Fisherman’s Wharf. The first time I was in San Francisco, it was really warm and sunny, but this time, it was cloudy and freeeezzzzing! So as we biked around the wharf and across the Golden Gate Bridge to Yellow Bluff on the way to Sausalito, we were just frozen little ice cubes. We had lunch on Yellow Bluff, which I just mentioned, and looked out over the bay and San Francisco. Despite the clouds, it was still pretty. We biked back to the city, dropped off our bikes, and then walked to Pier 33 to catch a ferry to Alcatraz. Alcatraz is just freakin’ awesome! It has so much history. Les and I took an audio tour, and got to hear all about the stories of the place. We both really enjoyed that. And as we were going around Alcatraz, the sun broke through the clouds, and as we took the ferry back, we were able to enjoy a beautiful sunset. Upon arriving back to the wharf, we went to Boudin bakery and got hot clam chowder and a huge loaf of sourdough. Oh, so good! We finished our evening off by walking to Ghirardelli Square and got some chocolate. At that point, we decided to look at the train schedule, and which to our dire concern, we realized that the last train for a few hours left in twenty minutes a long way from where we are. So we payed a cabby well to get us there on time, which he did. Another great adventure with Leslie!
So that is where I have been. I have had a great couple weeks, and I am sorry for not writing on my blog earlier. I took over 400 pictures in Yosemite, and another 220 in San Francisco, and I will post them soon.