Simeon Kesler's Blog

Hello to all readers and subscribers (unfortunately, there aren’t any of these yet – get subscribing!!!) of my blog.  I apologise profusely for the lack of postings, but things had gotten busy (and I had gotten lazy in postings).  This is going to be a very large post, with details of the past few weeks (the bulk of the post), Spore (woo) and possibly even more.

To start, events that have transpired notably include my birthday, the Parent’s Shabbos (and the huge build-up to it), the start of Java programming, some more photography and the realisation of the passage of time (dubbed URCT).

 

First in that list, my birthday.  Thanks to everyone for the greetings and gifts (and sorry if I haven’t contacted you individually).  I haven’t really doen anything for it this year (been very busy) – maybe later after term’s finished.

 

Second item, the Parent’s Shabbos(although Ma & Pa weren’t there, as they were going off to Israel on Sunday, in a trip booked a month before we found out about the CUJS special once-a-year Shabbos).  This was the main reason (along with supervision work) for my extreme busy-ness recently.  The entire week (and a bit) beforehand, was spent cleaning up the society building (being Buildings Officer) – this included the simple of helping to move boxes, to the effort of toilet-seat and hand-towel dispenser installation, to the downright yuck of cleaning a clogged sink, to the worst of all my jobs in my life so far of cleaning a clogged toilet in the girl’s bathroom.  This last one a really want to forget, but I just seem to keep mentioning it for no reason whatsoever.

Once the Shabbos had arrived, my job hadn’t finished – I had to arrange and supervise security, where I took many of the shifts myself.  Then, after Shabbos, I helped with the clean-up operation.  All in all, the weekend was a success, and I enjoyed helping out (real credit for the Shabbos goes to Daniel Guetta and Ahser Steene, our Presidents for the current term).  The speaker, Maureen Lipman, provided much comical enjoyment.  And, once the weekend departed, I managed to get to mostly full bottles of Coke (opened but not finished).

 

Now for that third item, the art of programming in Starbucks and the variables and functional relations involved in a Espresso Frappuccino.  Bad puns over and done with, only one thing about Java I find stupid (bar the obsession that Java programmers have with coffee, and that the Computing Laboratory here at Cambridge insist on using Unix when programming Java) is the way of declaring the main procedure in the class of interest – I know it all has meaning, but typing out public static void main(String[] args)every time is just nuts (they should’ve reserved main and had all the junk resting in the procedure for declaring what follows that keyword).

 

Finally to the forth item, the photos.  Nothing much this week, mainly more pictures from West Cambridge.  Enjoy these at your own leisure.

From left to right: A punter on the Cam; King’s college; some flowers; a blackbird (or thrush); Canadian geese and a moorhen

A stitch of West Cambridge farmland (as a link)

Maybe next time, I’ll walk up futher, and get some pictures of the open farmland and diverse wildlife up there at W. Cambridge.

 

That leaves at an explanation of URCTs, Un-Relatavistics Cambridgshire Temporalities (known to the layman as Unrelatavistic Cambridge Time, but we know better than that).  This are the laws of physics (over 204,539.2 of them, and anyone breaking them can be severely punished by the Inter-colligeate Bureau of Felonies (IBF)) that dictates that although it only feels like a few fleeting moments have passed, in actuality to the rest of the world and (here’s the weird part) Cambridge, it is already almost (as of midnight Thursday) exactly the halfway mark of my first year at Cambridge.  In even more bizarre turns of events, the complement to those laws, the STURURCTs (Silly and Totally Unnecessary Revisions to the URCTs), states that, when excluding the weeks of exams, I am already over halfway into Cambridge, and nearer to the end than I was at the beginning.  Absolutely bonkers, come to think of it.

 

Wow, this post is long.  Just a game to mention now: Spore.  Anyone who’s heard me talk about this game would know that I like to talk about this game, first mentioned in 2005 (not here, obviously).  Brought to us by that iconic gaming designer, Will Wright, creator, father and mother to SimCity, the Sims, and just about anything with “Sim” in its title (not including me), Spore can be regarded as SimEverything- you start with a cell, and evolve it up all the way to an intelligent creature, and then develop a civilisation that eventually reaches space and goes on to discover the galaxy.  The game is of an epic scope, but mostly in that it uses procedural generation techniques (look it up yourself) to allow the user to create literally anything they want, which will then move very naturally.  Anyway, the big news is that Spore finally has a release date – 07/09/2008 (British dating system, i.e. 7th September, 2008).  To find out more about this game, I recommend my current favourite fan-site, Spore Illustrated.

 

Anyway, that about wraps it up for this week.  I’ll leave you with news that the next post (coming much sooner than this one did) will include details and pics from the pub quiz (tomorrow night) and the CUJS ball (next Sunday).

 

Toorrraahhh,

Simeon

(P.S.  If you can’t tell, I really miss writing those Prefect Notices.  By the way, to those who still haven’t gotten their books, I’ll be sorting it out personally either this coming break or at the end of the academic year)