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Conferences Eyrie Miscellaneous Topic #272
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Gryphonadmin
Charter Member
12873 posts
Oct-29-13, 09:13 PM (EST)
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"Random crap!"
 
   LAST EDITED ON Oct-29-13 AT 09:13 PM (EDT)
 
I stumbled across one of my notebooks from WPI in the fall of 1991 today. It's... a peculiar experience. For one thing, though I have no memory of it now, it appears that I didn't keep separate notebooks for each class I was taking, but rather took notes in whatever one I happened to be carrying for whichever class I was in at the time. This notebook has notes in it that are obviously calculus, others are from FORTRAN class, still others clearly relate to the "Science and Scientists in Modern Literature" class I took, and yet still more appear to be from Professor Parkinson's history-of-military-technology class. One of those pages, in particular, contains a diagram labeled "HOW TO MAKE A FHUGE CANNON", and shows, well, how you make a fhuge cannon, which can only have been covered in Parkinson's class.

Worse still from an organizational standpoint, scattered in amongst the class notes are jottings from various non-academic projects, including Cyberpunk 2020 and Teenagers from Outer Space character sheets (some of them not in my handwriting - there's a TFOS character in here I'm reasonably sure was Derek's!), playlists for mix tapes, and even a few scene prototypes for early UF side stories, most of which were never written. There's a nearly complete outline in here for a version of Secrets that didn't get made and bears very little resemblance to the one that did, years later; not far from it is a scene from the "Yuri helps Gryphon escape" part of UF3 that was likewise not used.

The calculus notes make no sense to me now, which is not all that surprising, but interestingly, but they don't give the impression that they made a lot of sense to me then, either. There are little asides to that effect scattered throughout them. At one point there is a long equation that I believe involves some form of integration, and then underneath it, in quite large letters, 18-year-old me added the personal observation, "AURGH."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.


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  Subject     Author     Message Date     ID  
  RE: Random crap! Peter Eng Oct-30-13 1
     RE: Random crap! Nova Floresca Oct-30-13 2
     RE: Random crap! Prince Charon Nov-04-13 3
         RE: Random crap! Peter Eng Nov-04-13 4

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Peter Eng
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919 posts
Oct-30-13, 01:06 AM (EST)
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1. "RE: Random crap!"
In response to message #0
 
   I suspect that calculus still wouldn't make much sense to me now.

The only use I've ever made of it was a throwaway joke:


d 2 z a
---: 3x (9y ) 4
da

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.


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Nova Floresca
Member since Sep-13-13
18 posts
Oct-30-13, 10:00 AM (EST)
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2. "RE: Random crap!"
In response to message #1
 
   Calculus, my old nemesis . . . how I hate thee, even if it technically isn't the fault of the maths; when I first went to college, the Parental Unit decided that since I liked Star Wars, I should be a physics major, and filled out my first semester's schedule for me. This included Calc I and Physics I, which requires Calulus as a prereq, which somehow she managed to get around via waver, since I was taking Calc at the same time. Of course, this whole scheme is predicated on the Calc prof. hitting concepts sooner than the Physics prof. When this inevitably failed, and I explained to my Physics prof. what was going on, I then received the 2nd stupidest look* ever from someone in a science classroom.

*the 1st was in high-school chemistry when for no good reason a full 500ml graduated cylinder jumped off the bench and exploded on the floor when I walked by.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."


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Prince Charon
Member since Jan-11-09
288 posts
Nov-04-13, 01:46 AM (EST)
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3. "RE: Random crap!"
In response to message #1
 
   >I suspect that calculus still wouldn't make much sense to me now.
>
>The only use I've ever made of it was a throwaway joke:
>
>
 
> d 2 z a
>---: 3x (9y ) 4
>da
>

>

... and then you start running at super-speed?

"They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on."
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington


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Peter Eng
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919 posts
Nov-04-13, 02:40 PM (EST)
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4. "RE: Random crap!"
In response to message #3
 
   >
>... and then you start running at super-speed?
>

My use of it was stealing speed from everybody I wanted to. (I spared known friends, and assumed that a Paradox Spirit of Time would shrug the effect.)

I used what I kept for super-speed. One of the people who got a share used it to enhance her bullet speed.

Peter Eng
--
Multiple-author cross-dimensional adventures. I miss them some days...


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