Refraction

Another Wednesday post. Whee!!

I had two midterms today–Biology and English.

For Bio I was to prepare a concept map (mindmap) and summary sheet. The summary sheet could have absolutely anything on it. In my panic, I forgot about it, and ended up scribbling random things on it before class, prompted by the sight of other people’s summary sheets, which were probably course notes reduced to font size -1. I think I might have overdone my concept map though. It had a lot of lines. And it was more colourful than most people’s.

English was bad. I knew what I was writing for the commentary, but I didn’t do a particularly good job on it; Still, I feeel much better about that than about my answer for the question on The General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales. That was just plain… bad. It didn’t strike me as a particularly literary topic, I suppose. Not after 2 years of the IB program. 😡

Chem lab tomorrow. Does anyone know how to cool a glass crucible quickly? Using an ice bath? You can’t just stick it in since I assume the ice will melt and seep into the crucible, thereby defeating the purpose of drying the thing for 30 minutes….

Oh, this is interesting. I got one of Hotmail’s “service e-mails,” telling me to download their toolbar to stop pop-up ads. Funny thing is… I started getting random pop-ups a few days ago. Merely coincidence…? Perhaps not :tongue: I’ve run Ad-Aware three times now, and HijackThis twice… I haven’t had any in the past hour or so. So…. you can forget about it, Microsoft.

I ended up skipping my Physics study group meeting today, although it was partly due to the fact that I didn’t realize how quickly time had gone by; by the time I remembered that I had a study group meeting, it was already too late for me to hop on the bus. Oh well.

I used my wasted time well, by finishing off a Clover skin that I’d started on the weekend. Heh…. :blush: I’ve only tested it in IE and have no idea how it will fare in other browsers. However, it should be fairly resolution-friendly; it’s possible that even 640×480 users will be able to handle it. Then again, I don’t think I’ve very many readers with that resolution.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to study for my math quiz tomorrow! Yay! :cheerful:

The thing I like about not having a class until 2 on Thursday (if I have one at all) is that I can do whatever I like Wednesday evening and worry about schoolwork on Thursday morning. Most of the time.

Since the Beads & Crafts meeting didn’t begin until 5, I was forced to hang around from 2 about 4 with nothing much to do. Chatted with a old acquaintance for a little while, and then WHOOSH! It was off to the Quiz Bowl meeting. There, I saw another old acquaintance–well, two, I suppose, but I expected one of them to be there–and at the behest of certain members, I sat down in front of a buzzer and felt stupid for about twenty minutes. I ended up joining (but not forking over the fee :biggrin:; deferred payment, you see) and we have a tournament on Saturday which I will probably end up watching but not playing in.

I skipped out just in time to make it to my Beads & Crafts meeting, where we made the cutest little puffy animals. :kawaii: Mine’s a purple cat. The ears are a little messed, but… eh. It’s still cute.

I think I’ll skip out on my Physics study group meeting tomorrow. I just can’t muster up the energy to go to campus for an hour.

or a blog.

Oddly enough, the two tutorials I found on skinning sites were both hosted on cat-related domains – Amy’s, and Jenn’s. Coincidence? I think so.

Anyway, I seem to have kind of worked out of my layout block, so I have a new skin (er, layout) for everyone who’s bored of this default WordPress layout. I have to admit it’s not really my kind of layout–sure, it looks professional and all, but it’s also terribly generic. And the CSS is a pain to edit. :faint: Not only is it long–it’s actually quite complex, and I admit I learned a thing or two about CSS editing it :tensed:

Darn it, that reminds me, I haven’t yet finished the mechanics of the stupid thing–I’ve still got to set up a style-switching page and link it from here… Anyway, check out the Witch Hunter Robin skin, and if you don’t like it, you can always go back to good ol’ default here :biggrin:

I like this skin for several reasons: first off, I got it to work! Kinda impressive, I think 😉 Secondly, it features Witch Hunter Robin, which probably isn’t very trendy anymore since it was released in 2002, but they just started showing this on YTV, and I like it so far. It’s a little dark but not depressing; it is a little slow but since I’ve only seen the first three episodes… I assume it’ll pick up a little later. The music is wonderful, from the rockish opening, “Shell,” to the assorted BGM throughout the series. The animation’s not bad, either. Thirdly, I dusted off my non-existent PHP programming skills to insert a random quote in the layout. Ha! I don’t need to download simple scripts like this when I can write them myself. :smirk:

I think I’ll just stick them all under the “more” link…

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I’m particularly fond of today’s strip for “The Coast” (summarized here in text form since I don’t have a scanner):

Panel 1
Lawyer: “Your Honor, this man stole a CD. I ask that you sentence him to twenty months!”
Judge: “One month.”

Panel 2
Lawyer: “ONLY ONE MONTH?!”
Judge: “I have that CD at home. There’s only one song worth stealing.”

Why buy one song for 15 dollars when you can download it for a dollar (or, more likely, for free?) Sure, I can rattle off the stock answers: To support the artist. To support the people working at the music store. Because digital pirates are bad, bad people.

I suppose that the furor over personal downloading has crowded out the old-fashioned kind of piracy: bootlegs. While shopping in Chinatown for F.I.R.‘s album (or you can look at their Hong Kong site, instead) I came across a bootlgged copy of Utada’s Exodus album. I was briefly tempted to buy that, but deicded against it in the end because 1) I’d promised myself I would not download this album and I’d go buy it when it came out; 2) the bootleggers had added random songs and didn’t always have the titles right; 3) it didn’t seem to be a very high quality bootleg–the cover was faded; 4) I was really hoping I’d find F.I.R.’s album, so I wanted to keep my money in my wallet. :tongue:

I’ve always maintained that on a moral scale, downloading is better than buying bootlegs. Yes, both hurt the artist (and all the other people involved in the chain of selling you the CD), but only one profits a group of shady people. No, I’m not talking about the shady downloader. I’m talking about the shady bootleggers! Okay, so maybe a case could be made that the people in the store who sell bootlegged CDs have to make a living. That doesn’t change the fact that the proceeds (in other words, your money) of bootlegging may go towards organized crime; at least the majority of downloaders aren’t involved in that. Hopefully.

Wait, this had nothing to do with the comic strip, did it?

[edit] I think it’s weird how I never post on Mondays and Tuesdays but have posted consistently for the last couple of Wednesdays :bored:

*points at title* Someone out there had to say it 😛 And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, too bad.

Oh, how I hate layout block. >_< I can’t seem to think of a way to make a trendy anime blog skinnable >_> Or written in valid XHTML. Wait, I haven’t even read that skinning tutorial yet …

Oh well, at least I can install smilies. Go me! :good: But now I need to make me a list of smiles, so I don’t get confused and start typing non-existent smilies like 🙂 O_o;

:biggrin: :happy: :angel:

This entire entry is devoted to a song. Yeah, I was bored. Wait, I have time to be bored? Maybe it’s just a byproduct of spending too much time listening to my mp3 player on the bus. The entry probably makes more sense if you listen to the song, actually …

You’ve been warned. You really want to read this randomness? Okay, well, they’re your brain cells … :weird:

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Okay, so I admit it, I have been watching Canadian Idol. And my final prediction? Kalan Porter will win, since he has hordes of screaming, obsessive, willing-to-spend-two-hours-voting fangirls behind him. Oh, and he can sing. And play the violin. And he looks like Frodo. Except it wasn’t Frodo who sang in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, was it? Wasn’t it one of the other hobbits? Merry, perhaps?

Anyway, there’s my two cents on the matter. I might tape the finale and watch it some other time, when I er… actually have time. I thought Theresa sang the “obligatory Idol song” better, but I’m pretty sure Kalan will win.

And meanwhile, idols on the other side of the world are duking it out in a tournament! I love this.