A Merry Merry Christmas

I am going home now.

Goodbye.

Have a nice holiday.

And a Happy New Year!

'Tis the season

Every day in high school, on the last day of the fall semester, I wore a red and green outfit. Usually this meant red pants, a green sweater, and whatever other red and green clothing I could find -- possibly red socks, or green socks, or a red shirt under the green sweater, or a red vest. So in the continuation of that lovely tradition, today I shall wear the same thing. Some people think it's dumb, but I like it.

Make a Web page

During winter study, in addition to interning in a seventh-grade math class at Mt. Greylock, I will be teaching a Free University class on making a Web page. I am teaching it in pure html, while Seth Izen, the coordinator of the Free U, is teaching Dreamweaver. I wonder which of us will get more people to sign up? And who will have more people come? And if anyone will sign up or come at all? And if anyone actually still exists that doesn't know how to make a Web page yet?

I compare a Web page made in Dreamweaver to a cake made by Sara Lee: Sure, it looks like a real cake, but when you read the ingredients, it has so many twenty-letter words that you don't know what you're eating anymore! (I have actually never eaten a Sara Lee cake.) Likewise, when you look at the source code of a page made in Dreamweaver, there is so much useless junk there that you have to scan down and down and down until you find something that actually affects what the page looks like.

For instance, the Free U description book is a whopping 215k. I bet that if I were not frantically studying for an art history exam and attempting to learn 2500 years of architecture in the next 12 hours, I could create the same page in a tenth of that. Dreamweaver may be convenient, but it is so inelegant. Though this blog is published by Blogger, I weeded out all of the useless junk out of the source code when I began, and so only that which is essential remains. When you make a page with Dreamweaver, you have to spend a long time weeding out the useless stuff if you want to have an elegant and efficient page, and that's just no fun.

But my Free University course -- that's fun!

WSO

Seth Izen '08 made a blog post bemoaning the fact that the Estro-Gym is always full of girls and he feels weird being the only guy there.

So I suggested that if they want more men to go, they should change it from the Estro-Gym to the Testoster-Zone.

Testoster-Zone.

I still think that's really funny.

This is a nicer poem. I wrote it.

Some people procrastinate on the Internet.
I procrastinate by writing rhyming poetry.
Inspired by 'Twas the night before finals:

Twas the night after finals

'Twas the night after finals
And all through the college
The students had purged
All their last-minute knowledge.

All the papers and tests
Wait for profs, to be read
And a term full of knowledge
Drains out of my head.

The bar down on Spring Street
A prime place for drinking,
As students rejoice:
A whole month without thinking!

And back in the dorm
I am free from the pacing
Of my brilliant suitemate
When his mind is racing.

Now his eyes are wide open;
Great joy frames his looks
As he cries out in joy:
"A whole month to read books!"

No more late-night coffee
That never stays hot;
Now I can sleep soundly,
And also a lot!

I'll burn all my notes;
I'll forget how to study,
'Cause now 'tis the season
To sing with a buddy.

Away from this cold place
Where the wind makes me shiver;
And back home to the hearth
With some gifts to deliver!

This month shall remind me
That life's not that cruel
And I might just survive
Despite bad grades in school.

And finals are over!
So swallow your pride,
And look for a chimney
With Santa inside!

Perhaps you'll be lucky
And find such a fellow
With a nose like a cherry
And a tummy of jello.

And if you do, well then --
What was all the fuss?
Who says that the teachers
Know more life than us?

If Santa exists,
Then who needs exams?
Just ask for a good grade
And while everyone crams,

You can be smug
'Cause your answers are right
And besides, you'll know Santa
Does come in the night.

Composed and copyrighted by Diana Davis
approximately half an hour ago.

This is a nice poem. I didn't write it.

Now I Lay Me
Down to Study,
I Pray the Lord I
Won't Go Nutty.

But If I flunk,
Don't Pity Me at All,
Just Lay My Bones
In the Study Hall.

Tell My Prof
I Did My Best,
Then Pile My
Books upon My Chest.

Now I Lay Me
Down to Rest,
And Pray I'll Pass
Tomorrow's Test.

If I Should Die
Before I Wake,
That's One Less Test
I'll Have to Take.

ARTH 101

After my final grades are recorded, I will discuss ARTH 101 online. But not until then, no, I am not quite that stupid, despite what my ARTH professors may think.

St. Peter was crucified upside-down.

Did you know that? I didn't even know he was crucified to begin with, but that's okay because Protestants don't have saints. This is one of the extremely useful tidbits I have learned in ARTH 101. Also that architects and curators are natural enemies, like the mongoose and the cobra. Professor Johnson has said that twice now. So I remember.

Exams

Now is the time of exams in the Wonderful World of Williams. Somehow I have to learn lots of things and solve lots of math problems and write lots of words in the next few days. I am hoping to be brilliant. Let's see how that goes.

Diana's Running [B]log

Please note this lovely addition, which you can see in a convenient link on the sidebar. I am currently training for a spring marathon, and intend to post my training progress there. This will be my third marathon, as my first were Boston (2003, 3:38) and Vermont City (2004, 4:19). I hope to be able to train significantly more this year than I was able to last year. Today, for instance, I ran nine miles.

I am generally following a training schedule that appears in Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger, which I received as a "gag gift" from Megan at the cross country banquet. I only wish I had some way of measuring the distance of my runs, but someday I may have a vehicle and will thereby be able to ascertain, after the fact, how fast I have done these runs. Check it out!

Mozilla Firefox

I have this program called Ad-Aware SE Personal that scans my computer for spyware. Whenever my computer is making "thinking" noises when I am not actively using it or running any programs, I assume that it is some spyware program collecting data on me, so I run Ad-Aware SE Personal. On Monday, I ended up running it three times within the space of about 10 hours because my computer just kept making noises when it shouldn't have been doing anything. The first time, it found 24 spyware files. The second time, it found 2 spyware files. The third time, it found 11 more spyware files.

Enough! I have heard about the security holes in Internet Explorer, and how wonderful Mozilla Firefox is, without ever feeling the need to switch over, but Monday pushed me over the edge. I now do not use Internet Explorer at all (except for the fact that I suppose my desktop runs on it), only Mozilla. Good riddance, IE.

And do you know what? Mozilla Firefox is better! First of all, when you download it, it imports all of your settings from IE: Bookmarks, Google toolbar, status bar, home page, hyperlink underlining style, even icon sizes. Most people probably didn't know that all of those options existed, but I have customized my own enough to appreciate the fact that Mozilla kept my customizing intact.

Additionally, it has these wonderful things called tabs. Instead of opening up a new window every time you need to go to a new page while keeping your current page up, you just open a new tab in the same window. Then your taskbar doesn't get clogged, and you can switch back and forth very easily between Web pages. Additionally, if you are working on two things at the same time -- reading Google News and opening those links, plus researching something and looking at multiple articles at once -- you can have one window for each project, and multiple tabs within each for the related pages, thereby organizing your online experience.

Wow. Mozilla Firefox rocks -- no wonder it has 10% of the market share. You can download it here.

Stat on AIM

I have just had a discussion with my Statistics professor via AIM. I think this is pretty neat. I had e-mailed him a statistics question that I had been wondering about, and he answered most of it, but I wanted some clarification, so I checked my buddy list, found that he was online, and we had a conversation about it! That's pretty neat. I have never before heard of a professor giving out an AIM screenname to his classes. All professors give out their e-mail addresses and office extensions and hold office hours; twice (Mr. Parris and Professor Morgan) they have given out home phone numbers, but this is pretty cool. As Professor De Veaux pointed out, though, I could have come to his office hours instead (he has several hours every day, much more than the 2.5 hours seemingly required by the college) because it's easier to talk than to type. Well, that's true.

I have always enjoyed discussing math via AIM with my friends when they have questions about their homework; I tutored many Exonians, past and present, last year on AIM. I think that this is the best use for a messaging program: asking questions about something important when you really want the answer, right away. And naturally math questions are the best kinds of questions! (In my humble opinion.) The great thing about math is that often, you can just say one little thing and the lightbulb will go off and the person will realize, "Oh! I see! That makes sense." And the instantaneity of AIM thereby achieves its potential.

If you really love Christmas

This is the song from my head all day, as it has been snowing and I have been thinking about how wonderful a season Christmas is:

I feel it my fingers,
I feel it my toes,
Christmas is all around me
And so the feeling grows.
It's written in the wind,
It's everywhere I go,
So if you really love Christmas,
Come on and let it snow.

This song is a spin on the normal "Love is all around"; this one is called "Christmas is All Around" and appeared in the movie "Love Actually," which ACE showed (and which I saw) on Valentine's Day Eve this past February. Quite a good movie; I recommend it.

Snow!

This morning when I woke up I heard something that sounded distinctly like someone shoveling snow. But alas, it was not. That was sad. I was so hoping that it had actually snowed overnight.

And then... it really did snow! Wow. And it snowed in nice big fluffy snowflakes, too, the kind that fall gracefully and make a nice fluffy blanket all over everything, with little implausible spheres in it. So as I went pool-running, every time I was running towards the windows, I watched this lovely slow curving pattern of beautiful snowflakes. I love snow.

So naturally when I went to lunch, and happened to be there right at the end of lunch when dining hall people were no longer around, I tried to take a tray out to use as a sled. I made sure that no one was around as I left the dining hall, and acted as though it was completely natural to be doing such a thing, as I always do when I am doing something strange. But wouldn't you know, some dining hall women on break were sitting at a table at the bottom of the stairs, so I had to dash back up and pretend I had never been trying to do anything at all. Foiled! Foiled like a second-order binomial...

Art History

[Note: * = requires Williams login.]

David Hammons was the Williams artist-in-residence in 1993. He made two pieces of artwork -- the controversial *Rock Fan and the simply odd *Yardbird Suite and said something I thought was quite funny. When asked about Postmodernism, he replied: "The only Post I've ever heard of is Post Toasties." I thought this rather clever, as it is silly to label one style as only "Post" something else, as though whatever style they created was merely derivative of whatever came before. So "Postmodernism" was bad enough, but now I have learned that there is something called "*Post-Postmodernism." Aaaah! And whoever came up with the term was brash enough to put Frank Gehry, architect of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, into this bin! You should not put such an imaginitive architect into a second-derivative bin.

Today I ran the Gale loop connected to the Hopkins Forest loop, for about 11 miles. It was apparently over 40°, which is my cutoff for shorts vs. tights, but the wind was very strong, especially at the top of the Gale hill. This is hunting season, but there is a hunting hiatus on Sunday, so the forest was open to recreational, i.e. non-gun-toting, visitors. According to the log at the entrance, hunters have killed about 10 deer so far this season, which means about one per day. I will be happy when hunting season is over and my bright clothes are for a recreational, i.e. non-hunter-repellent, purpose.

I will also be happy when there is snow on the ground. Last Thanksgiving, I woke up at 5:00 on the day I was going home for break to run in Hopkins forest. It was actually so pitch-dark at 5:00 that I had to wait for it to get light enough to see my footing, but when I went out to run, there was a new dusting of snow on the ground. I was the first one out, so I made the first footsteps in the snow everywhere I went. I crested the hill at the top of the forest just before sunrise, so as I was coming down the other side, the beams of sunrise made the snowy bare tree branches glow red. On the day of the Putnam, we had a blizzard. We had crew practice on the rollers that morning, so after I had set up my rowers in a long connected roller line with Elvis' Christmas CD (good erging music? no, not really, but with the puffy snowflakes out the windows, it made for a nice effect) I went out to run in the winter wonderland, and ran into Eric Engler on his way to the Putnam.

I want snow!

Posterior Analytics

Aristotle wrote an important book called the Posterior Analytics, in which he discussed how to do science. (Science is not purely deductive, in case you were wondering.) However, I do think that whoever translated (or invented) the title could have used better word choice, because "posterior analytics" makes me think that it talks about looking at someone's bum.

In other news, apparently this blog does not use Movable Type, because Movable Type and Blogger are two blog services that are very different. So although I have pings, I don't have Movable Type. Maybe they aren't called pings in Blogger. But I will call them pings anyway because I am fond of the word "ping."

I went for a nice run today, up Luce and then exploring until I found Blair. I had always heard about the run called "Blair-Luce" but I had never looked for it. I ran at dusk, and the mountains were really quite beautiful. It's getting cold, though, so I wouldn't have wanted to analyze my posterior because it was very cold indeed.

This morning, I took the first half of the Putnam exam. The Putnam is a competition consisting of two three-hour sessions, where you get six problems in each session. Each problem is some kind of difficult proof, and if you prove it flawlessly, you get a 10. If you do lots of good work towards a solution, you get a 1. Otherwise, you get a 0. So scores range from 0 to 120, with a median score of 0.

I worked on two of the six problems, and got a relatively satisfactory proof for one, with a not as good pseudo-proof for the other. But it was fun. I don't think I'll go back for the second half, though, because it's probably not worth it. I was told this morning, "don't even go -- you'll get a zero no matter what." Ha. Nonetheless, I went to the first half, because it is better to earn your zero than to... oh wait, no it's not.

I also found it funny that if you are female, you put a red dot sticker on your exam to indicate that you want to be elgible for the prize that goes to the highest female scorer. A red dot, indeed.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

Diana's Anti-Blog has now officially moved to this new and (hopefully) improved location. Benefits:

1. Comments. You can now comment. Try it out.

2. Movable Type. This results in a most wonderful thing called pinging.

Drawbacks:

1. It's not really an Anti-Blog anymore. It's more of an actual blog.

2. No more "smaller than the file size of a typical Internet photo."

But here we are. I will improve the graphic design soon.