Archive for the ‘Videos’ Category

Slideshow

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

For all of Sunday night, and most of Monday night, I was working hard on the Math Team’s annual slideshow, which has for several years been the domain of personal idol, Dan Pfeiffer (Why did you leave, Dan? WHY?!!!) who regrettably graduated. He did the previous two year’s slideshows, 2006 and 2007.

It runs a total of 6 min 20 sec and is comprised of photos from Mrs. Barfield, Schmitz and myself. The two songs used are, well, the first one is obvious, and the second one is “Little James” by Oasis.

Perks to being the one making the slideshow:

  • Acne mysteriously disappears from all photos of myself.
  • I can name myself whatever I want.

Drawbacks:

  • White people’s red-eye. Red-eye is never a problem with Junyong or Matt Yang or Junyong’s sister. This is also why Walthers didn’t appear as much as he could’ve.
  • Single core rendering.
  • Format compatibility.

There’s a weird happy feeling that I get knowing that I created something special that people enjoyed, like inventing a famous sandwich or case mod or webapp.

You’ll notice that I wore contacts for the night at the hotel. This was for several reasons, one of which is to have adequate vision for swimming in the pool. I want to avoid accidentally tackling an unusually tall 12-year-old Canadian tourist by the pool deck during a heated game of Leonhard Euler. I have a supply of 30 pairs of disposable one-day use contacts just for such a purpose. They have an interesting effect on people. Nicole thinks I look younger, while Dan thinks I look five years older. I think I just look weird.

The Frisbie We Know

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

The Scholastic Bowl has a history of esoteric sweatshirts and mantras. (You may have been witness to one of last year’s triumphant “Panda Joust!” war cries.) This year’s shirt follows up on that with this somewhat bewildering image on an orange background adorning the front.

John Locke rides a therapod into battle

I’ve never owned a hoodie before. The Scholastic Bowl hoodie would be my first. Until now I’ve had to try to bear the school’s fluctuating temperatures, which hasn’t been very hard. My frigid home has thankfully forced my metabolic rate to increase to keep me from dying.

Only that I love this hoodie so much that I’m actually finding excuses to be cold so that I can wear it. It’s so cuddly and warmly and soft. The thing is: I found that I could only wear it at home, outside, or on days when the physics room is cold. All other times this week, the classroom has been sufficiently warm (for me at least) for just a t-shirt. I don’t know how all the PE leaders and university sports enthusiasts do it. Of course, it may be that most of the week preceded Thursday’s marathon 10-page free response 210-point ~18% of our final grade acid/base test. Due to that, I have been sweating profusely for several days.

So that’s why it was pretty damn lucky that Neal gave me his flu. The chills I get for hours on end enable me to wear my beloved garment first, third and seventh period. Downside: feeling crappy for the chem test.

Oh, well, I survived. All the way to 3:14 when I was still working on the titration progression calculation I had started at 1:07 and was almost late for the Scholastic Bowl meet at Elk Grove.

You all know about Frisbie’s love of songs from the musical Rent. Well, he finally got over his initial camera-shyness and has come out of his shell. Allow me to present Frisbie’s debut performance: a carefully choreographed number from the musical Side Show.

The Devil You Know

Our two matches resulted in one victory and one defeat. The defeat was a result of my own ineptitude, self-distrust, yadda yadda yadda. You’ve all heard one of my self-contemptuous blame-fests before.

The point is: we’re going to regionals.