Return, 2011

The hiatus announced three months ago has official come to an end. Regular posting will resume tomorrow, or whenever I get around to writing something up.

For those wondering why it took me until January 16th to return when I said it would be late November: I got quite busy with schoolwork around Thanksgiving and it didn’t let up until mid-December, at which point I had applications to finish up, and I decided not to return to posting until I was done with all of them. I submitted my last one yesterday. The final semester of my undergraduate career is about to begin, but I don’t expect it to be particularly work-intensive, so there will (one hopes) not be another hiatus. Also, I’ll make an announcement here if/when I hear back from grad schools and decide where to go (if anywhere).

A Short(?) Hiatus(?)

As the astute observer will have noticed, over a week has passed since my last post (my goal is generally to post at least once every week), and similar delays have occurred several times over the last month or so. There is an explanation for this, which will perhaps not surprise you: I’m really busy. I’ve taking above a normal load of classes, several of them are  graduate-level, and I also have graduate school applications to deal with. These excuses, combined with the fact that inspiration has rarely struck regarding topics for posts, have led to me not fulfilling my quota.

Anyway, I’m going to declare victory on this one and say that I’ve been going on hiatus for an indefinite amount of time. I’ll probably make at least a few posts in the coming months, but probably (probably) won’t be back on a regular schedule before December or so. I apologize for not being able to provide an adequate amount of intellectually stimulating material, as I’m sure I usually do. Don’t delete me from your RSS feed.

Can Computers Think? Posters

I was going to write something up about the question of artificial intelligence and whether or not computers can think. But then I came across this set of posters. So instead of writing anything I’m just going to spend a few hours reading all of them. Sorry.

But you can read them too.

A Quick Note

For those who have noticed I haven’t posted much in the past few weeks; I regret to inform you that I will also not be posting much for the next few weeks either. I’m currently on vacation in Galveston, TX, and when I get back will be immediately flying to Spokane, WA. I’ll be back at home on the 12th or so, and will perhaps get around to making some posts by the 14th or 15th. We’ll see. I’ll have a lot to talk about; I’ve been reading Cormac McCarthy, and want to give a review of his The Crossing, a quite excellent book, and will also probably talk about Hopkins and Eliot a bit. But at the moment, I’ll be going back to the beach and hoping the sun hides behind some clouds so its less hot.

New Material

Some new material on the blog:

• New poem filed under “Writing”: “Autumn,” a very dark sonnet. One of my better poems, I think – probably because I wrote it after Junior Poet, and so had a better understanding of how poetry works – though also uncharacteristically nihilistic.
• New link in the right-hand column: Pictures for Sad Children, a very dark webcomic written by John Campbell. (Reading it reminded me of The Magnetic Fields for some reason. I might write something about that connection eventually.)

I find it somewhat odd that these are both quite depressing, since I actually haven’t been particularly angsty recently; I don’t really have any explanation for that. Anyway, enjoy.

“Blogs”

Earlier today, The Daily Kraken, a blog I’ve read for the last few years written by a grad student at the University of Ottawa, linked to Inklings, a blog written by a friend of mine from school (though, bizarrely, I first met her online through that blog, then later met her in person). Since I list both in my Blogroll (over there to the right), I suspect that I was the source of the connection, though I could be wrong. Anyway, I’m taking this opportunity to link to both of them and say, “read! They’re interesting!” And often talk about things similar to those discussed on this very blog.

Incidentally, I used the word “blog” or a derivative thereof five times in the above paragraph, and was struck once again (I’ve noticed this before) by how hideous it is, even considering it’s a neologism. Why can we not use “journal” or something? Sigh… (Which is a funny looking word, though a fun one.)

SCHNEE!

It snowed today in Dallas. I haven’t looked at any numbers, but there’s snow 5 or 6 inches deep in some places. And thus my 7-10 class tonight was canceled, and we might not have class tomorrow.

The snow is awesome. There was much throwing of snowballs, building of snowmen, and general frolicking among the students here. The one downside is that my shoes were completely soaked, and then dried out, and then soaked again even worse… I probably won’t be able to wear them tomorrow.

Anyway, that is all. Back to our regularly scheduled programming sometime in the near future.

Whuzzat?

I haven’t made a post in over a week? I’m not sure how that happened. I haven’t been that busy; in fact, I’ve done less homework than most weeks and haven’t had a particularly active social life. Well, I guess I was sick for a few days (still am, really – I probably shouldn’t be up at 3 AM) and thus didn’t notice time slipping away.

Ah well. Hopefully I’ll have a post up soon about The Unvanquished, which we just finished in my “Faulkner’s Vision” class. Also perhaps something about what I decided today to call the “cosmic aesthetic.” But for now, sleep.

Moving In (September)

So I’ve spent the last four days moving into my new apartment, buying books for the next semester, etc. The week before that I spent procuring furniture for said apartment. Hence my recent lack of postage. (It seems like a lot of the bloggers I subscribe to have been moving in the last few weeks – makes reading my RSS feed much less fun. Guess I’m doing the same to however few people subscribe to me.)

Anyway, this new semester has another interesting feature, aside from what I’ve talked about several times before, with it being the third year I’ve been at the same school, something that hasn’t happened since 5th grade. Namely, for the last year the class of 2011 has been divided in three – the Fall Romers, the Spring Romers, and the people who didn’t go. Now basically everyone is back. It will be fascinating to see how the different social circles meld and break up. If I make any good observations about social behavior I’ll post about it.

And for those interested, my list of classes: Junior Poet (I’m doing Gerard Manley Hopkins), Medieval Literature, Linear Algebra, Analysis I, Intermediate German I. I’ll also probably sign up to audit The Russian Novel.

Miscellaneous

Things that have happened in the last week:

• I registered for classes next semester. Unfortunately the professor who does the Tolkien class (scheduled for the fall of odd-numbered years) is going on sabbatical, so it’s not going to happen, probably. Hopefully he’ll run it in the spring or something.
• I got my housing situation for next semester in order. This involved a helluvalot of last-minute running around, and I actually had to lose six credits in order to no longer have senior status so that I can live in the student apartments here. Which means I no longer have credit for the Chemistry AP. Which is fine by me, I don’t know chemistry anyway.
• I spent the longest amount of time I have ever took to complete a mathematics homework assignment – I probably spent ten hours on it in total. But it was actually three assignments rolled into one.
• I had a philosophy exam yesterday, in which I wrote about contingency, God, and (as always) actuality and potentiality. Though only the first two were part of the stated prompt. It seems like every essay I write for this class comes back to actuality an potentiality.
• I turned in an excerpt from the short story I’m writing for my Lit Trad class and had it critiqued. Here’s a sample, the first 35 or so words of the story:

  Stream of Life

  (X)(G) – Sorcery – Target player gains X life.

  Beep beep beep beep. Beep beep beep beep. Beep beep beep beep. Beep beep beep beep. Beep beep beep beep. Beep beep beep beep. Beep beep beep beep.

  Yeah, it’s kind of weird. People liked it though, for the most part. Not many people got the Magic: The Gathering reference though.

Anyway, this is why I haven’t been posting much recently (and this post itself is hardly a real post either). But I’m hoping to have more pretentious essays about life, the universe, and everything for you come this weekend. Probably I’ll try to have a review of No Country for Old Men, the book, which I finished last week as well.