Andrew Underwood

Loud sound of fun while I’m trying to sleep

The last two weeks have been very busy for me school wise. Mostly just a formal lab report due and midterms. I also went to the Crowsnest Pass to drop off my car and got a ride back with my Dad. I haven’t realy done anything relaxing or fun for a while.

My two midterms yesterday, to be described in a single word: frantic. The first one started late because the class before ours was also writing a test and they went over the allocated time block. The delay was about 5-10 mins, which was a lot for how long the test I had to write was. Close to the end my prof, seeing that everyone wasn’t close to finishing announced that he would give us extra time to finish the test. I then told him that I had another midterm right after, to which he announced “well I was going to be nice and give you extra time but I guess I can’t.” Everyone else then looked at me and went “Uhhhg.” Sure, make me the ogre.

So we ended up writing all the way until 3:00, which is the time my next midterm started. The prof personally collected my test papers, which was nice. Even though I hadn’t even READ what the last two questions were yet. At which point I ran, RAN to my next test that is usually about a 7 min walk away.

One hasn’t truly experienced university until walking into a midterm late with 200 other students already furiously scribbling away. Arriving I get a wide eyed look from the prof, who heard me opening the doors to the doubled back enterance hallway and thus had an exam ready to hand me. I was only about five mins late but I was sure the last one to get there. Of course there were no seats along the aisle so I had to wade through one of the skinny rows to the very middle. I bumped a couple of people causing calculators and erasers to fall to the floor. Sitting down I discovered that the fold out wooden table was broken so I just rested it on my lap and began the test. I had to write until the very end and wasn’t allowed any extra time. I finished it alright but didn’t have a chance to go over it or recheck any of my answers.

The prof from my first test was courtious enough to give me his card to give to my next prof incase there were any problems but I didn’t ever do this. All in all I think I did well on the tests, as long as the people also taking the first test stopped writing when I shoved all my stuff into my backpack and ran to the next test. As Aaron would say “have faith in the curve”.

Smash

Monday night my car got broken into. It was parked along 105th ave to avoid paying the 50 bucks a month to park in my building’s parkade. The police called me at about 2am to tell me this. The stupid thing is that there wasn’t even anything in my car to steal. The only thing that was taken was a small LED flashlight that was in my glove-box. Earlier that night I was walking through Chinatown, a ‘bad’ part of town and I saw two dodgy guys walk into a dark area where cars were parked with a flashlight. I sort of chuckled and says, look at those guys, they are going to break into cars. Karma, kuh kuh karma… Incidents like this inspire a sense of vigilance in me.

Now my car is parked in my Grandad’s parkade, I can’t really drive it anywhere. I’m taking it home to my the ‘rents place next weekend so it can hopefully be repaired with the parts car that was just sold. Going to have to track down the dude who bought it.

First Aid

On Saturday and Sunday I took a St. John’s Ambulance first aid course. It was a brand new course less than a week old. The last time I took the training was back in grade 10 as part of CALM 20. This course was much more extensive than what I had previously taken. They tell you not to check for pulses anymore, just check for breathing since their logic is if the casualty is breathing, they must have a pulse too. I got 100% on the first day’s test and one question wrong on the next day’s. I haven’t seen test marks like that for a while, it was refreshing.

A battle’s end?

Two knights have been battling since they first met. Every fight they start gives them new experience, a new understanding of their weapons and armour. The fight hardly hardly ever produces a clear winner and the meeting of the knights is different every time. After every battle they go back to their tool shops and develop new and better armor, better swords, and other new technologies to help them win. If one knight dies or stops caring, is that the end of the incentive for the remaining knight to keep developing his battle system?

I’m talking about ATI and nVidia, two compainies that developed graphic card technology. Personally I always rooted for ATI since it was a Canadian company. There was a HUGE competition between these two companies, driving 3D development ever since 1996 when 3d cards first started appearing. The last decade has witnessed a change in availible graphics technology.

Recently AMD, a company that mostly makes CPUs bought ATI. Since AMD has always been about cheaper chips (compared to Intel) I’m worried that it will pull ATI from the front lines of high end, high cost 3D development and leave nVidia the whole high end market. It will be an end to the competition that was responsible for driving the amazing 3D developments over the last ten years. They can’t stop now! Not while we are so close to photorealism.

Hopefully the opposite will happen and it will use it’s ’synergy’ to develop entirely new platorms that make the most of CPU power and graphic chipsets. Only time will tell… or perhaps an interview with AMD. All you real journalists out there, get on that pronto!