Hello all,

Since Thursday, I haven’t gone neither to work nor to University classes, because yesterday was a public holiday and tomorrow will be Easter Sunday. Yay! I was REALLY in need of a rest, and admit maybe this semester I’m pushing myself too hard, with the 25 weekly hours of classes, 20 hours of work at Overplay, plus who knows how many hours of studying and assignment programming at home. Not to mention training for the GRE =/ Well, well…it’s all for a good cause, I suppose, namely the cause of graduating soon and spending a whole year (until September 2010), in case I’m approved by Digipen or the Guildhall, just doing whatever I want, with no diploma-related worries.

Of course, though it’s quite reassuring that this semester will be my last in University with actual responsibilities (read: having to take boring and arguably useless courses, like Electronics Laboratory), the problem lately is that I hardly have the time to, you know, reflect about things I’m doing or want to do soon, or simply relish on creative and random thinking. Having ideas and trying to execute them on the side of my main line of work is very important to me; I love learning with no obligations or pressures attached, and that’s exactly the type of thing that makes me, in turn, stand whatever challenges come in my way with few complaints or fear. BUT…since all I do lately are tasks compelled by obligation (as much as I may like them, or not), I end up becoming too stressed out and dramatic, giving too much importance to things that aren’t really important. An example of that would be a complicated translinear circuit I had to build for my Electronics Lab course; since I remember well that theoretical Electronics was the only subject till now I nearly flunked, I got very worried about the circuit, and spent like 6 hours trying to build it on Monday. Now, that was completely uncalled for; it’s cool to be persevering and all, but it’s not OK to persevere in doing things the wrong way, or for the wrong amount of time. As a consequence, I not only didn’t manage to build the circuit, but spent the rest of the week extremely tired as well. Instead of trying to do something I don’t know how to do, I should have, since the beginning, asked the professor to delay the circuit hand-out, and do it with me next class. That’s what I did…but only after suffering. Moral of the story being: work smart, not hard. And know what you are able to do within the available time frame

Aside from all that, I had the pleasure these days to study about K-D Trees, which are a special case of BSP Trees, used to perform nearest-neighbor searches and other stuff, such as raytracing. Quite easy to implement , it seems, on its simplest form. I also found an unbelievably useful 300-page free course on the ACM library site, about collision detection. The course supposes the reader is a newbie on the subject and intends to transform him/her on an expert XD. So I definitely got interested, mainly because I intend to go back to programming Everball soon, and I’m still not satisfied with its physics simulation. It has glitches and some rare unpredictable behaviors, and I’m pretty sure it’s due to the way I perform collision detection.

Last but not least, here is a touching video I found on Youtube. Lately I’m watching more Youtube videos, although I’m classically not a fan of the site because of so much of its content being disposable (in my opinion). But I’m on a search lately for forms of conveying deep feelings that don’t require dialogue. Feelings that are more blurred than simple happiness or sadness. And this is a good example of this mixture shown by actions, and not words.

During my search I ended up finding this other video with one of my favorite musics, Mad World, by my favorite band of all times (seconded, maybe, only by Cure): Tears For Fears. Yeah, old bands, I know…but good, meaningful music never gets old.

Happy Easter for all! And, if you truly feel happy on Easter, don’t forget to wish for the happiness of all those who aren’t quite so happy. On this mad world we live, too few people are truly happy for my liking…