HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII n_n.

Much better week, lovely, stupendous, practically UTOPIAN.

I enjoyed myself. Lets talk about it.

First off, and easily the most confusing, I’m now the most ahead on my studies on MATH. Don’t even ask me how, I don’t know why.

I’m joking, its because of matrices.

We stopped taking discrete mathematics last week when our lecturer, dilon mayhew, finished his last lecture with us (loved him, he was amazing <3). Since then, its just been linear algebra, with some extra context in the form of linking the geometric and algebraic aspects of matrices and their future relation to algorithms a bit more clearly.

Its been great, especially since I’m already comfortable with it and have been since high school (and took them in the foundation year too), though its gonna need some practice of course, its still being taken at a much higher level and with a lot more regards as to how it relates to algorithms and the upcoming lessons on graph theory.

And yea, that’s also partially why its been so easy too. This is the precursor to graph theory. Thing is, the things I’ve been hearing about THAT are DEVIOUS.

I mean it, genuinely, our math tutor for the tutorials was teaching us on Monday and Thurday, and I bumped into him on Friday (he’s also lovely), and this guy KNOWS his stuff about the subject.

So its all the more concerning that for both Thursday and Friday this guy would he was genuinely WORRIED for us :”). He kept emphasizing to me out of class how tedious it’d be, mainly because its filled with definitions apparently, but also that the algorithms are just difficult to wrap your head around intially.

Despite that though, I think it’ll be fine. The tutor teaches well, so does the new lecturer, and the time with matrices gave me time to revise some of the discrete mathematics that I never really delved into b4, including the algorithms in relation to graph theory that were initially introduced briefly in week 1 (turns out, its not that hard actually). Even if it’s hard, we’re more than ready.

THE ARCHITECTURE THO (;_;).

The architecture needs some revising.

We’ve gotten into ram now, and nand2tetris shouldn’t be as hard as it is for me now BUT IT IS. I think its that I didn’t really grasp things well a bit past the start.

Everything felt very disconnected past making the nand gates honestly. Looking back on it though, it doesn’t actually seem that hard, and ive been able to focus much more on lectures recently (and ill GET TO THAT), so ill be fine if a revise and build up some knowledge on the D flip flop, and how putting together the nand gates REALLY work.

That’s something that bothered me honestly though. The architecture lecturer we had at the start never really put it together for us. He sort of just gave us the hdl files when we started the labs a couple of weeks ago and just threw us right into it.

In theory, yes, getting us to mess with the nand2tetris code fully hands on and building the hdl files from 0 should work, but the nand2teris book the course is based off of will itself constantly emphasize the necessity of a general understanding of whats happening WITH these systems through the nand gates you make.

He never really went into that, just said what was on the slides (which themselves were more confusing than any other of the modules), made us build them, and never really elaborated on the reasoning behind what we were doing, or more accurately, never broke down the logic necessary to understand how things were coming together.

You get what I mean, right?

Dilon would always break down HOW to approach mathematical formulae, not just USE the method verbatim and move on. At points he’d emphasize that yea, we just need to follow the steps and that the understanding would come later (this applied heavily to assumptions regarding proofs), but the majority of his work emphasized how a mathematician thinks through the issues in place.

Programming isn’t similar, but at least there the slides are easy to understand, and the lecturers will go around breaking down how to use the code and often even how to put things together.

Its to the point that one of the PROGRAMMING lecturer’s was the one to break down what exactly the hdl files we were building were meant for, as opposed to just its literal functionality and how to implement it.

THAT’S what gets you to understand it, you know? If you don’t get why, for me at least, its much too hard to go past that and implement things meaningfully, and that applies TENFOLD for the subject BUILT ON MAKING YOU UNDERSTAND ARCHITECTURE FROM SCRATCH.

ITS NAND2TETRIS, COME ON.

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Admittedly, some people in the course who’ve taken the British curriculum already find this all to be common knowledge, they’ve taken this in some form already, but I haven’t :).

Given that though, alongside a revision of the slides, I plan on doing some reading of the book “The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition : Building a Modern Computer from First Principles“.

Its the book some of the course is loosely based on (alongside another book I cant be bothered to fetch).

I think it’ll be useful in better getting a grasp on the topic as a whole. Also its just seems like a really fun read. I’ve only read up to the preface and some of the first chapter so far, but my curiosity is already peaked, and I’m really excited to continue the read throughout the week.

(BTW, I should mention this now cuz this is where I’ve been doing my nand2tetris work, but unipol finally replaced my busted up chair with a new one n_n)

That’s another thing I meant to discuss, since I feel its pretty important. I feel as though my enjoyment and curiosity of the subject has been increasing as time passes, both in part thanks to the increased focus thanks to certain tweaks in my study sessions, alongside the fact that we’ve begun meaningfully messing around with concepts past a surface level as of late.

The latter is pretty easy to explain. The programming included a group project a while back, as well as some API work last week, which was all really fun to work on. The architecture, although I’ve found myself a bit impaired in parts of my understanding, is starting to work its way up the chain of command in terms of how pc parts work, and even though the math got a bit easier for a while, it was both time for me to build up knowledge and preparation for something bigger.

The former though, that’s what I want to shed some light on right now.

For some odd reason, I’ve been keeping my earphones on while I’m in my lectures, and its HELPING ME OUT.

Not doing anything with it of course, occasionally ill play music at like 3% volume via laptop connection (phone is much louder at the lowest volume for some reason) but other than that ill be LASER focused with the lecturer in a way that I have ever been before :0.

I think it has to do with all the extra stimuli.

When I fist sat down at the bottom of the lecture hall for the first couple of weeks, it was nice but too head on, I’d have to crack my neck or slouch to even get a good view of the big screen, and I often sat with classmates love them, but didn’t help me focus much for the math and architecture lectures specifically (though this doesn’t apply to programming, that’s in a separate class and its much easier to focus, even with friends around).

Not too stimulating, still a pain though.

Then I sat at the top of the lecture hall a couple of times, and that was MURDER. It was noisy as hell and I could barely focus, it felt overstimulating as hell.

After some thought though, I decided that the middle of the lecture hall would be perfect. Not DEAD in the middle though, on the total end of either side of the hall instead, its isolating in a really good way honestly.

I keep my earphones in, that way even if its a tidbit harder to hear the lecturer, every other distraction gets shut out completely, get comfortable with usually nobody else around in that row, and completely zone straight into the subject, both with listening to the teacher’s advice and by working on it on either my laptop or tablet.

For architecture, I do my best to keep ahead on slides and mess with the code for nand2tetris early, and for math id do the same with the lecture notes and solve questions early.

This genuinely helped with my understanding the topics SO much, I’m not even kidding its almost uncanny. Ive been much less stressed and on edge, and I find myself keeping up rather than catching up on things :v.

There’s also what we talked about last post, and that’s saving more time for myself. I’ve shortened the time I spend just dawdling with friends, not to say that I don’t on most days (like Monday and Thursday), but ill keep it brief when I’m tired and not spend all that days energy hanging out, which I would often let myself do, even if I wasn’t feeling up to it.

Silly in hindsight that I didn’t realize that that would hamper me, I KNOW, but that last post really put things into place for me. Now I feel much less overstimulated and exhausted frequently, and can remain fully conscientious either 3 subjects at any given moment, it makes all the difference.

So yea, its probably a matter of stimuli. went from overstimulated and bit of a mess to a more reasonable, attentive mess :].

O, side note too but the whole earphone thing has sort of extended to some everyday interactions with friends. I find that its just much easier and more calming to keep them in, especially in noisy spaces, since the muffling effect it has really helps me stay cozy, even in public.

Its also making me realize that its surprisingly easy for me to get overwhelmed, and though its as much a problem of me actively extending my focus to the point of hypervigilance a lot more frequently than id like to admit as it is me just not handling a lot of noise well, and that of course maybe I could look into other effective ways to keep my focus centered that have to do with how I think through things too, the earphones have still proven to be an excellent way of keeping me super level headed and less agitated, and I love that.

I wish I could harp on this more but you get the point. Its just that I really want to get across that it feels SO MUCH BETTER now not being as aware of everything, fucking scanning the room as if there’s any need to, or just constantly being bombarded by tons of people and noise 24/7, it’s physically and mentally exhausting and you can barely pick up anything from lectures in that dissociative state, I promise you (-_-;).

Also, the fact that it deafens the person I’m talking to really doesn’t affect me as bad as you think it would, cuz I’m deaf as hell even without the earphones in :p. Sometimes I hear them BETTER.

A little bit odd and perhaps a tad paradoxical, but pretty cool, methinks.

So YEA, already a lot that happened JUST with the academic side of things, but we’ve got more to yap about of course.

For one, I finally got around to trying my hand at some chickpea curry, and here it is:

You can tell it wasn’t SUPER creamy, I plan on adding a lot more milk next time (most ppl buy coconut milk 4 it but I can’t be bothered). Even so, and the other two ingredients I missed (a herb and tahini), it still tasted pretty nice, and now that I bought all the missing ingredients, and found out why all my foods have been tasting OFF recently, I think it’ll taste much better.

Yea I know that last comment was a bit random, but LET ME HAVE A MOMENT CUZ IVE BEEN DOING SOMETHING STUPID.

Remember the chili I made a while back? Said it was burnt right?

I did burn a little off the bottom, yea, but it didn’t really meaningfully incorporate into the chili so the chili tasted alright. That wasn’t what was off about the food, and whats BEEN off for over a month now.

Ive been using SMOKED PAPRIKA INSTEAD OF REGULAR PAPRIKA X).

Its so silly honestly, I realized in the MIDDLE of putting some in the chickpea curry and hurried back to get the right paprika, and thank god for it. I REALLY don’t like it smoked, genuinely just taste burnt. Would probably work better in something like chicken or even beef, given you cook it at a really high temp for a nice crust, but NOT on chili funnily enough, it tastes way better with the regular or sweet paprika :).

Anyhow, curry was good, and so has the instant coffee ive been making for uni days. Like I mentioned before, Ive been having it without any coffee and just a tad bit of milk, and as of late ive really grown accustomed to it. I was even gulping it down today, though to be fair I DID put a lot more milk this time.

Got some cocoa powder for my breakfast too and thats been pretty nice. Figured id find an alternative to milk chocolate since whenever I buy it (and yea I bought some to indulge a little this week >:)) I finish it wayyyy too quick. I was gonna go with dark chocolate but figured cocoa powder was more versatile, goes with both my weetabix fruit milk breakfast and with fruit and yogurt as a snack.

OF WHICH THE FORMER I HAVE MADE A GREAT DISCOVERY.

Dunno if I mentioned it last time but I’m mentioning it again.

Microwaving the frozen berries into a mush of compost instead of putting it in the microwave with the milk, is SO MUCH BETTERRRR.

The sweetness and sourness from the berries mesh together into this symphony of delectibality, its no longer a sour mess but represents this sort of beautiful heterogeneity between the fruits, or rather it has gone from a complete and utter mess of heaps of scrap and bolts and sound into a BEAUTIFUL MELODIOUS ORCHESTRA.

I’m dramatizing but seriously, it tastes a lot better now –_–. Try it out sometime, it tastes good.

Truth be told I tried to take pictures of it several times this week, but id either forget before having it or it’d look like a total mess cuz I add the weetabix at the top last and then break it and it looks like a mess, BUT TRUST, THE, PROCESS. ITS WORTH IT >:).

That’s about all for how I’ve been eating this week, but what I’ve been listening to (and WILL listen to) will definitely blow you away as well.

For one, I just found out ENA has A SOUNDTRACK CD, CHECK IT THE FUCK OUT

ITS SO COOL :O.

And I’m telling you, IF YOU KNOW ME, YOU KNOW OLIVER BUCKLAND.

This motherfucker is an AMAZING composer, literally my favorite ever, and you add his songs in the same CD AS METAROOM?????

GIVE IT TO ME >:/.

Ill probably buy it sometime soon, at least before black Friday ends on December first, but ima see what else I wanna buy off of fangamer too.

Also added a bunch of Oliver’s songs back into night wander while I was at it, but that was sort of a separate ordeal honestly.

Basically, I decided to go through my youtube music account the other day and added a TON of old songs back into my playlists. So much so that the main playlist, hodge podge, is over 1000 songs now :0. Pretty nice.

With that came the revitalization of a bunch of playlists, mainly iced tea, since I new many of the songs I wanted to add were on my youtube music account, but night wander and break it got a facelift too. Break it got a lot of the songs that were on night wander, and night wander was tweaked be fit the idea that I laid out for it more than it did a couple of posts ago when I mentioned it.

That included swapping around harsher or faster songs into other playlists, focusing more on music with retro or liminal-ish vibes (though I use “liminal” super loosely to help visualize things, its more-so just my vision of a retro night walk), and adding songs from the original playlist on youtube music, concatenate, that really locked things into place.

Its still crazy that I was missing so many Iliver Buckland and EX-LYD’s songs from the playlist b4 this to be honest, they’re literally what DEFINED concatenate, but theyre here now <3.

Goes to show I’m nowhere near done with these playlists, but im more than happy to keep at it. I love tweaking them, and I love using them.

Anyways, I think its about time things come to a close on today’s post. Don’t get it twisted, id go for longer (things have been great (n_n)) but I gotta get ready for classes tomorrow.

Before I go though, Id love to share some music with you if you don’t mind.

Of course, the sidebar on this post on the site should have my spotify account for you to access (and all the playlists Ive mentioned), but ill include them here in-case you’d like to go to any of the playlists I’ve mentioned directly.

You’ve got:

(night wander) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0idJ34aOuuCDcOy54Dym07

(hodge podge) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1LA3OvpyczWdRzp8ulWc0P

(Iced Tea) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2kbvcJ1irDivPtLuXnVYbO

(Break it) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3qZ2rNbYFFz729gTBCxm7L

and a BUNCH more I’ve neglected to mention this post (Ive been DYING to talk about decahexatris but itll have to wait).

Thats not what I mainly wanted to share though, instead I thought it’d be fun to share some of the specific songs that Ive been loving this week so you can have a listen too :).

There’s ‘can I call you’ by kruu and channie, a beautifully made song that feels super spacious, I feel like I could float on clouds listening to it https://open.spotify.com/track/1YXZlPIjONEnirCmrw6mCB.

‘Iris Out’ too, from the recent chainsaw man movie. Haven’t talked about it yet but I watched it and trust me, it was an unforgettable experience even after the cinema, unbelievably somber, but I’m keeping my experience with the movie for when I’m ready to share that with you all.

Often, special experiences like those tend to sit with me for a lot longer than you’d expect, and this movie was one of them. So while that work of art on film brews in my brain, enjoy the intro, its sick (and the full thing on youtube is even better) https://open.spotify.com/track/59hVbgr8rfYkDbHfr8RcGI.

‘Software gore’ too, it’s an EP so good I genuinely worry about even giving it this small of a mention, but I’ve been playing it nonstop for 2 weeks now. 8485 just makes amazing music, and there’s no better example other than this, and basically ALL of her other music <3. https://open.spotify.com/album/3lyCkGXK5OjJsUFaGhSVgf.

‘goreblog’ and ‘anthropol’ scratch my brain in all the right places (goreblog especially), and ‘something bad’ is super transcendental and still full of sick beats, but what really sells the EP for me is the motif.

“We are ourselves no longer”.

It’s repeated over and over in different parts of goreblog and something bad, following the violent acts in the first and the regret of the second, and it perfectly encapsulates that specific feeling of change.

Doing bad things, even if not intentionally, fucks with you, your self perception is twisted by your consciousness until your not yourself anymore, and through both the act and the sorrow, the EP pierces that straight into your heart.

We are ourselves no longer.

W are ourselves no longer.

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Its so fucking good, go listen to it.

Last but not least, there’s jack conte. Ive mentioned him a couple of times already, but last week I gave him a listen by putting all his music on shuffle on a trip to get some stationary equipment (aka sharpies), and its the only thing that kept me alive in that horrid weather. It turned a blisteringly cold and exhausting trip into an enjoyable roller coaster of emotions, and I enjoyed every last second of it while nibbling on the milk chocolate coins on the way home.

I’ve mentioned kitchen fork and yeah yeah yeah (V2) already, they’re my favorites, but eat, push, these days, carousel waltz, long long time ago, theyre all otherworldly. If you want an order, check out VideoSongs, Vol. 1, then figure it out from there. Or start with my favorites (kitchen fork on youtube, trust me, the official video AND slay the princess animation cuz they’re both sick).

Up to you (~_~)

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3NhMdYv1pNWHQZruHqs4FY

Anyways, that’s all from me for now. I hope you enjoyed yourself. If you’ve gotten here, have a sip of water or smthn, you deserve some specifically now >:).

Thanks.

See you next week (^_^)/.