07.29.06
Posted in Movies at 3:30 pm by Lawrie
The wedding was awesome. This is by far one of my favorite pictures from the day of the wedding. John’s face is priceless. I put up some of the pictures Evelyn and I took here, if you’re curious.
For my birthday last month, Ryan gave me The Movies game. It’s something like "The Sims Go to Hollywood" in that you get to pretend to run your very own movie studio (everything from building sets to picking stars to making movies). The best part of the game is that you can write your own scripts (sort of) and make your own movies. It can take kind of a while to get used to, but I’m enjoying it so far.
I’ve made two movies so far, both of which are pretty lame. No subtitles yet, so feel free to provide your own! (It should be noted that the titles of both movies were randomly generated and thus have nothing to do with the movies themselves…)
Big Alec’s Payback Machine
Following On
Both are in wmv format and are about 2MB. Enjoy 
Permalink
07.13.06
Posted in Pictures at 11:23 pm by Lawrie
This weekend I’m going to see two of my favorite people get married:
Congratulations, Jessica and John!
Permalink
07.04.06
Posted in Fun Stuff at 11:42 pm by Lawrie
Here’s what we had for dessert today:
A strawberry cream tart, made by yours truly (with help from my mom).
Permalink
06.27.06
Posted in Books at 9:12 pm by Lawrie
I’m reading The Iliad now as book #2 in my quest to read good books this year. (The Count of Monte Cristo was book #1.)
(Random side note: It’s kind of sad that it is almost July, and I’m only on my second book. Granted, I’ve read other books this year, but most of them are of the light and fluffy type that don’t require much thought when reading, and therefore, don’t count. What makes it worse is that when I was little, I used to read ALL THE TIME (in the car, at the dinner table, while walking…you think I’m kidding). My mom actually had to tell me to stop reading so much (and apparently felt guilty about it, because who has to tell her child to stop reading?). And then I got to college, and the time available for fun reading dropped to just about zero. I suppose the good thing about this is that I can only do better in the second half of the year, right?)
Once I let go of trying to pay attention to every name Homer mentions (which is pretty much impossible…the name pronunciation glossary at the end is 40 pages long…characters are often introduced and killed within a paragraph) and let myself slide into the rhythm of the story, suddenly I got caught up in it. There is just something so good and resonant about the way Homer writes that makes the story amidst the fighting on that plain in front of the city of Troy seem so real.
Oh yes, the fighting. The Iliad is a story about war, after all, and a fairly violent one at that. Homer, being the poet that he is, is not content to simply say someone killed someone else with a spear. Instead, you get descriptions like this:
"[the spear] cracked his glistening teeth, the tough bronze
cut off his tongue at the roots, smashed his jaw
and the point came ripping out beneath his chin."
And you thought video games were bad.
There are a lot more fun passages, like one in which a Greek and Trojan get ready to fight each other to the death, realize their grandfathers used to hang out together, decide to become best friends, and switch armor. After all, there are plenty of other Trojans and Greeks they can kill.
Seriously, though, it’s worth the read, as long as you are willing to give it the time and concentration you need to get through it.
Permalink
06.15.06
Posted in Movies at 11:32 pm by Lawrie
On Saturday, I watched Casablanca and The Sound of Music with two friends from church. One of them had never seen Casablanca, and the other had never seen The Sound of Music, so we decided to remedy the situation. (I had seen both, but it had been a few years. And besides, one of the measures of a good movie is its rewatchability.) I didn’t realize (or remember) until well into The Sound of Music that we had chosen two movies about Nazis. If I were a more eloquent writer, or more profound thinker, I would say something about how holding on to the music of your culture can be one of the most powerful signs of resistance, and how evil does not seem to be able to appreciate beauty (or maybe evil resents beauty, since it knows it cannot produce it).
But as I am neither very eloquent nor profound, I am not sure how to follow up on those thoughts. so I will just say that eating lunch and watching movies with friends is an enjoyable way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Permalink
06.03.06
Posted in Pictures at 1:43 pm by Lawrie
A window in a classroom in Building 1 at MIT. Taken during the 3-day marathon study session last year in which Evelyn, Daniel, and I had to teach ourselves half a semester of probability.
Permalink
05.27.06
Posted in Pictures at 12:06 am by Lawrie
It’s been far too long since I’ve posted anything here. I get ideas for posts, but when I sit down to write them, I can’t figure out what to say. Or how to say it. So for now, until I can get some writing done, I’ll try to post some pictures I’ve taken. I’ll add the pictures as I post them to the new ‘Pictures of the Moment’ photo album on the sidebar.
Cherry blossoms in bloom:
Permalink
03.25.06
Posted in Books at 11:10 pm by Lawrie
I decided that I wanted to read some good books this year. A couple of weeks ago, I was with my dad at Barnes and Noble, and I picked up a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. It was mostly an impulse buy. I wanted something to read, and I remembered liking the movie. (Yes, I know there are better ways to pick books.) It’s turned out to be an excellent choice. Apparently a well-written adventure story with interesting characters is not an impossible feat, after all.
Permalink
02.02.06
Posted in Fun Stuff at 10:59 pm by Lawrie
When I was growing up, we had an Apple IIe computer. (Actually, we still do. It’s sitting in my closet at this very moment. And it still works) I loved it. I used it to write the little reports you have to write in elementary school, like about a president (James K. Polk) or a planet (Neptune). I also used it to write my very first short story. (It involved a boy who wanted a dog. And then got one.) But my most favorite thing ever was playing games on it. And my most favorite game was Rocky’s Boots. Oh, man. I spent hours and hours playing this game.
What is Rocky’s Boots, you ask?
It was a game designed to teach kids about logic gates and circuits. You learned about AND, OR, and NOT gates. It even taught you about timing and flipflops. Of course, I didn’t realize it was teaching me about these things until I started learning about logic gates in college. In the game, you have to build a circuit that will kick out certain shapes based on a particular rule. (Okay, that probably doesn’t make too much sense. There’s a better description of it at everything2.) If you kicked all the right shapes and didn’t kick any of the wrong shapes, Rocky the Raccoon would appear and do a dance for you.
Hmm…perhaps a picture would help:
Don’t you just love the giant pixels? And how can you go wrong with a dancing raccoon?
Permalink
01.30.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:50 pm by Lawrie
To break in my new car (I have my own car now…how strange is that?), I decided to take a road trip this weekend to visit some friends from school. To keep myself occupied during the drive, I started thinking about things I did when I was little. And boy, was I a strange kid. Or perhaps I was just imaginative. Or something.
The first thing I remembered was the long car trips (10-12 hours) we used to make a few times a year to visit our family in New England. I used to sit in the backseat of the car and watch the trees flicker past and imagine that our car had these giant metal blades that stuck out horizontally underneath the backseat windows and cut down all the trees as we passed by. At first the blades were just really long and straight, but then I kept making them longer and longer until they completely circled the earth and joined together to form a giant metal circle. I have no idea why I thought about this.
Once, someone let our family borrow their camcorder (probably so that we could record some sort of holiday or family gathering). It was one of those big bulky ones that actually recorded onto a VHS tape. One of my friends and I used it to record our own version of America’s Funniest Home Videos. From what I remember, it mostly involved one of us falling down somehow. Over and over again. We thought it was hilarious.
I had an imaginary brother, whom I named Jonathan. Eventually, I got bored with his name and renamed him David. (Or maybe it was the other way around…I don’t quite remember.) My mother still thinks that somehow I had two imaginary brothers, even though I keep telling her that I just renamed him.
Another friend and I used to re-enact TV shows that we really liked. Except that I don’t know if re-enact is the right word. We made up our own characters and plots and stuff and acted them out.
I told you I was a strange kid.
Permalink
« Previous entries · Next entries »
