A Good Week

Hello. As with most of the other students, (except for Paul!) I haven't blogged in a long while, so I have some catching up to do. I don't have a laptop, so it's difficult to squeeze in time for blogging. This week we worked in teams to complete our mini-sculptures, and next week, the final sculptures will be due. The kinetic sculptures are extremely fun to work with and build because there are moving, rolling, and bouncing parts in addition to all the electrical and programming components. Now I know that if I am to become an engineer, I would probably specialize in mechanical engineering because the it's fun to see the product of hard work moving around.

It was frustrating to program in BASIC, especially since none of the four members of my team has experience programming in that particular language. We weren't quite sure which commands to use and when, and how to use them. Professor de Callafon's help was a relief, but we still ran into problems and roadblocks after that, and the machine wouldn't work the way we wanted it to. In the end, we found that the main reason why the program wasn't working was because we were using the gosub command improperly. After jumping that hurdle, the construction of our mini-sculpture went smoothly, and we even had some time to add some icing after baking the cake. ;)

Here's the website for Team SuperMario.


The activities for this past week were fun. However, I wish that they were not made mandatory. A few times before I didn't feel like participating in the eveningly activities due to homework that I needed to do and sleepiness. Talking with my brother over the phone revealed that 2005 COSMOS in UCI gave the students more freedom regarding what recreational activities they wanted to do. However, it doesn't seem like the system will change anytime soon, so I'll move on.

Yesterday we went to Calit2 on an on-campus field trip. That was even more fun than the field trip to the aerospace museum, and I recommend that Cluster 2 go on the same field trip in future years if possible. As a student and a future jobholder, it is interesting and enlightening for me to see what adults do during the day. I am always curious as to what office and working life will be like, since, as a student, I have no clue. It is also helpful for me to know these things when choosing prospective careers for myself.

Last night I went on the Haunted Tour. The best part of the tour was when we were taken to the Stairway to Hell - a graffiti room where a UCSD student named Danny Durazo died years before. Reading all of the messages that people had spraypainted onto the walls was spooky and intriguing at the same time. I wish that we had more time to spend in the stairway to explore.

Well, I look forward to the weekend and the trip to the San Diego Zoo.

Until next time,

Vivek Choksi