288: "You're ridiculous"
Howdy folks, it's El again :) Did you miss me?
I decided to start today's post just for funsies. Luke is in class right now, and I should probably be doing homework, but why would I do that when I can do this?
I learned this morning that you can integrate using matrix multiplication. If I didn't love linear algebra before, I certainly do now. The amount of connections between this type of math and so many other areas of my life is actually crazy. Linear algebra is everywhere. It's in my game theory class, it's secretly in calculus, it's in computer science. Heck, the other day I was even mapping my studying vs academic performance to a matrix 💀
Over the years I've found myself increasingly mapping day to day concepts to math and computer science ones. It's the same feeling that you get when you play a video game for too long or right before bed and then you find yourself still seeing those Tetris blocks (or Minecraft blocks, etc etc) float down even when you close your eyes. I love the little overlaps - honestly the connections between entirely different subjects is where the gold is at. That's a big part of why I'm getting my two minors; I really want to work at the intersection between math, CS, and business.
Alright writing about math has motivated me enough to actually go and do it, so I'll bid you farewell for now!
Luke here: Apparently my blog has been hijacked by the aforementioned free agent, but there is both nothing I can really do about it at this point (deleting someone else's thoughts would be massively antithetical to the blog, and also it was my girlfriend), and it gives me an excuse to write less, which is welcome.
Today's been somewhat of a shitshow, but all for internal reasons. The sickness that took us (but mostly El) out last week has returned with a vengeance. Getting up this morning was one of the worst mornings I've had in a long while. I feel like I've had no appetite today (I did eat, I promise), and I've been totally out of it. I think what I have is usually described as a "head cold", but I've definitely been running a fever, because I feel warmer than usual, especially my face, and my head feels like it's been full of mush (where my brain should be). I have been coughing and hacking too, though with some actual success; I hawked some great loogies today, and the coughing wasn't empty, it was actually clearing shit out of my throat. It helped a little bit, but that wasn't the main cause or symptom, just the most obvious one externally. I took some mild drugs, which I think helped a little bit, but honestly it's hard to say. The single thing that helped the most was actually riding my skateboard; I did quite a bit of zipping around this evening, and the movement of the air was really really really nice.
Classes today were all good, though not that noteworthy. It could just be because the mush that I've become didn't absorb most of it, or just because it's another day in the life.
I do want to briefly complain about my EE329 professor though, who told us a couple times today that he wasn't going to teach us something, and that we were supposed to just ask "(our) AI", which genuinely pisses me off. I figured it all out myself, of course, and I could tell many of the other students had the same reaction, but it still made me annoyed.
Italian film today was amazing, by which I mean raucous. We watched most of Divorce: Italian Style, which is a film from 1962 that is insane. It's about murder, mostly, and I don't want to spoil the plot (nor type everything out right now), but it's so horny and unserious. I thoroughly recommend it.
After that I had Wind Power, which was good. We got a lot of report feedback, and I need to go through and implement a bunch of it ( not doing that right now), and then they're running testing tonight, but I do not have the faculties to be there, so I'm not.
I came home to a couple packages, one of which you'll hear about in just a sec, and the other of which is parts for my skateboard. I don't know if I'd mentioned it, but I completely redesigned the pulleys that I use for the red wheels on my skateboard, and the bolts are used to hold the two-part pulley together, because plastic by itself doesn't have the strength.