The Last Candle

In one fell swoop today, I was able to tick off a bunch of the “Things to Do While Alive” list. It starts with taking a creative writing class with a professor, Mark Yakich, who has published a book of his own poetry this past Spring, Unrelated Individuals Forming a Group Waiting to Cross. That’s pretty durn good right there, methinks. <p/> But how about having the book delivered straight from the hands of the author during class? And then having it autographed and illustrated on the spot?

<p/> Honestly, I’m not much of a poetry fan, and I don’t expect Unresolved to light my fires for sonnets and iambic pentameter. And I don’t care: I bought the book to have something to remember the class and professor by, totally annulling whether I like the actual written word inside or not. (Okay, not totally. If I like the stuff, it’s that much better. But it’d just be a bonus.) <p/> But, most truly, the class I’m taking taught by Mr. Yakich (Intro. to Creative Writing) has easily been one of the best liberal arts courses I’ve ever had, and the class one of the top from the entire duration I’ve been here at Central. The man knows and loves his art, and — luckily for us students — he enjoys passin’ it on.

More than a week since updating?! Terrible. I didn’t think it was that bad. Then again, once upon a time one update a week was pretty good. How the times have changed! <p/> My lame-o excuse that I’ve been very busy with school. Over the break I finished up the William the Conqueror eight page history research paper and finished a 20 page research paper on ray tracing. Not to mention at least one differential equation a day, which is quite enough for me, thank you very much. The days prior to break was spent getting things out of the way so I didn’t have much more than 30 pages and five calculus problems to do. Satisfied? No? <p/> Well, I suppose there’s been a little Halo 2 here and there as well. Just enough to keep me from getting dull. <p/> And now: back to work. And some play. And more work.

Rock music Music pop culture polemic General entertainment magazine Rolling Stone has released a list of the best 500 songs of all time. I think these things show up about every year, and I wouldn’t be suprised if they’re different every time. Regardless, I took the time to wade through the offerings and pick out how power/progressive metal groups fared in the timeline of modern music. Here’s the list:

 

Can’t say I didn’t see those results coming. Widen the genre to just “metal” and you get the usuals AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and so on. I was half-expecting to see Dream Theater make an appearance, since the single Pull Me Under was quite popular in the early 90’s, but no dice. <p/> Here’s my share of fortune telling for today: when Nightwish or Opeth or Blind Guardian or — and this would be quite an amazing thing — Gamma Ray finally finds a wide market domestically and attracts well-deserved attention to the genre, these lists in the future are going to be composed of power metal tunes. Mark you that.

FIRST, BABY. First. <p/> Bungie.net’s online stats system rocks the frickin’ house like a wrecking ball-hastened eviction. Not only does it show the detailed basics such as total frags, shot accuracy, PVP stats and so forth, there’s a service called the Game Viewer. This fine web application serves up a match history with a zoomable map of the level showing who killed what poor soul using which weapon, including where each person was at the time of the kill. That alone is pretty nifty to browse after a match, but in a CTF match or something with heavy strategy, it could be very useful to see what tricks the opponents (or your own team) is up to committing. <p/> If you have a Passport.NET account, you can see all the gory details of the Game Viewer for the aforementioned battle at Bungie’s place. Alternatively, here’s a local image of the overview map from the same match. Looks like absolute MAYHEM, doesn’t it? The map’s pretty scrunched up in that wide view of the level, but within the Game Viewer there are a dozen options to view the different rooms close up for finer detail of deathbringing. <p/> Very cool stuff. And yes, as evidenced by the linked image, I was the only one to commit a falling suicide. It’s a lot more humorous looking at the history of the incident, indicated by the lone arrow falling into the white oblivion at the bottom center-right of the image than it was to actually be a part of — which was caused by leaping off the side of the structure in the middle of a heated dual-weapon gunfight. D’oh.

Vodka is a very malleable spirit, evidently. Once there was the revelation of home liqueur, but the latest breakthrough is filtering cheap vodka to make it taste better than a more expensive brand (and not a decarbonated lemon-lime soda and ammonia mixer):

In the alchemical tradition, creation of the Philosopher�s stone is the ultimate end to man�s needs. The stone has the power to cure disease, prolong life, and possesses the added benefit of being able to transmute metals, as in lead into gold. <p/> As scienticians, we believe that such an object exists, and that it can be used for our own dastardly purposes. Our theory is that a simple brita water filter can be used to make bad vodka, into good. In our case this meant turning a Vladimir�, into a Ketel One�. At $11.09 for 1.75 liter (Ketel is 11.99 for the 350 ml), Vladimir is a steal. It is, however, painful to drink, has a repugnant aftertaste, posesses a bouquet reminiscent of rubbing alcohol. Our working theory was that these terrible qualities were caused by a lack of proper filtration, and that running our Vlad through a charcoal filter would remove some of the impurities causing these odors and flavors.

Go team go! Hack that vodka! <p/> The only spirit that I’ve had more than a base affinity for is Bacardi Vanilla Rum, but I’m interested to test this out. Now to see if Joe will relent his Brita pitcher and filter in the name of scientific progress and evaluation…