I am a lazy Nerd

Yes I know, I haven’t posted on the Crazy Cornellian in a long time and I missed two updates on my webcomic last week. Lazy is me. But do not despair, I think I am back on track. And by the way, the comic today is quite nerdy and would require knowledge of Big O Notation and Graham’s number. So in compensation to you, the reader, here is a nice close up of 9th. Stare into its evil-doing eyes of doom!

Need I explain?

It seems like a lot of people don’t understand the first comic in Ally the WebComic. Fine, I’ll explain it for you. Although it seems like nonsense to say that your favorite noise is blue, it makes perfect sense to Ally because different types of noise are classified by color. I could explain some other things in the comics, but I leave it up to the reader to figure it out.

Also I’ve noticed that some people miss the navigation menu I have. I should make some nice graphics for those some day. I’m now using FeedBurner so that I can have some fun stats to play with. There is also an email subscription that I’ve put up on the site thanks to FeedBurner. Anyway thanks to those who are reading my strange creation.

Introducing Ally the WebComic

My winter break was very long and I eventually went crazy and started talking to my lego friends. They told me that making a webcomic starring them would be a great idea since I can’t draw but I can use Photoshop. So I did some fun PHP programing, taught myself how to make a RSS feed (easy), took pictures of my lego friends, did some brainstorming, and spent a lot of time Photoshoping. And thus Ally the WebComic was born!

And So It Begins

 My new blog is up and I’ve already made a couple of posts.  You can find it on the Life on the Hill page.  Also, you now know what I look like and what my name is lucky you!

And in other news, I started playing guitar hero and no, I am not obsessed with it!  …Okay, well maybe a little.

On Hiatus

Just a quick blerb: I got into the Cornell Student Blogging Project! This means that this blog will be neglected and will degrade, but I will still have random fun stuff that I will post every now and then. I knew I got in for a while now but today the new blog went up and have been fooling around with images, themes, ect. I will release the link once it launches in about late August or so. (If you are really tricky you could guess what my URL is, it isn’t surprising hah).

In other news, I made a cool lego creation during my break. I also put up little video of it on Google Video. It was my first time uploading a video for public viewing and it was rather easy but I was disappointed by the poor video quality. I will post something more about it later.

Looking Back

The second semester is now over and it has almost been a year since I came to Cornell University last summer. A lot has happened, so I felt like sharing some random thoughts I have about my experiences so far. Afterwards, I was surprised how much I could write about Cornell; I could have written a long post on every one of my random thoughts. Read on if you dare, I warn you it is very long.

New Flickr Pro Account

I got a nice digital camera in the fall and since then I have taken many pictures, mostly around Cornell.  There is almost always something strange going on around campus so I thought it prudent to start carrying around my camera everywhere.  At first I was often reluctant to take pictures as it would make people look at me and think, “Who is that weirdo taking bizarre pictures?”  and sometimes people will wait for me to take a picture as if my picture taking is of extreme importance.  But now I do not mind as much since many of my pictures were well worth the awkwardness endured.  

I got a free flickr account to as to share my photos with the world, but a free flickr account will allow you to put up only so many pictures, so recently I sprung for the $25 to get a flickr pro account.   I now have almost all of my photos up (the decent ones at least).  There are also some pictures of my Lego creations up there.  Please check out my pictures; I think some of them are actually quite good for an armature like myself.  Oh, and if you also have a flickr account feel free to add me to your contacts.  You can find my flickr photos here.

I love my trackball mouse

I can’t believe that I used to actually move my entire hand to move my mouse. It is much more comfortable to only move a finger or two, especially for a lazy person like myself. If you have never used a trackball before, I recommend trying it out.

 

I first used a trackball when it was the only available option on a very cluttered desk. Since you do not move a trackball you can use it on any kind of surface and save space. Also, if you are stuck with a very high or low surface, moving a conventional mouse can hurt after a while. When I first started, it was difficult and time consuming but after a while I forgot that I was even using a trackball and it became second nature to me. Now after using a trackball mouse frequently for half a year, I feel awkward dragging plastic on a desk with those lowly, inefficient, and antiquated pointing devices.

Right now I am using a Logitech Trackball. There is very little resistance on the ball; it feels like my fingers are floating. It has four buttons and I use the upper left click as a middle click. This is great for closing tabs in Firefox and scrolling, although I do miss my old scroll wheel. It is fun to take the ball out and play with it. My Lego alligator definitely enjoys it and you can even play pool with it if you really want to.

 

First day of classes, first day of woes

Today I had my first day of spring semester classes at Cornell.  Things didn’t go as nicely as I wanted to, but everything worked out fine in the end.  So I woke up early, ready and rearing to go.  Took a shower, eat breakfast, and had plenty of time to spare.  My first class of the day was physics and I was all excited to go to my first ever physics course at Cornell.  I was sitting in the classroom for a while until I realized that I was in the wrong room. 

New Lego Tower

Yesterday, while I was brooding over how my break is almost over, I realized that I neglected to play with my legos. Luckily I avoided disaster and managed to get some quality time in with them. Here are some facts about the new lego tower I built:

• 11 feet tall, freestanding
• Weight: 10 lbs
• 8 hours to build

Since it is so tall, I now have to write a lot about it to fill up all the extra space the picture created on this page. I’ve made many lego towers many times before; they are my favorite type of structure to build. It is very fun to to see how high I can build, constantly redesigning and trying new ideas to get a little higher. For this tower I tried to keep the design as simple and strong as possible. This is a cross section of it:

Above and below this layer would be identical layers, but rotated 90°. Doing this creates very solid connections between layers. This pattern of alternating identical layers continues for the entire length of the tower. Uniformity is important since the tower is only as strong as its weakest part. To make construction and assembly easier I split the tower up into sections, each section being a different width.

I enjoyed working on it especially since I could sit on my couch, drink soda, and watch anime at the same time. Through my intense research and experimentation I have discovered that:

Total Awesomeness = Legos + Anime + Soda

This is definitely true, I double and triple checked my calculations. Looks like I still have some more blank space. I will just fill it up with nonsense so that is cool, yes very. And then this crazy thing happened and it was terrible, I hope everything is okay I really do. Things happen, yes oh yes they do and that is alright and all but it bores me horribly. Then I went to the store and bought some crackers, but it was so ridiculous and made me angry. Oh so ANGRY!

Is that enough? Okay, good.