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Frislander wrote:

hwhatting wrote:

Frislander wrote:I sat my last A-Level exam yesterday, woop! I even reckon I've got enough to get into Cambridge: certainly the maths and further maths exams all felt fantastic!

Congrats! You bought your sabre already?

I've a sneaking feeling I should know what that is but that my dad hasn't told me.

It's a sword. I think Hans-Werner is taunting us with the continental tradition of academics having swords as part of their formal dress.

EDIT: there's also an old urban legend about Oxbridge exams, that says that Once Upon a Time, a student actually read the exam regulations, and found that he was legally entitles to a glass of port (sherry, brandy, flagon of ale, etc) while sitting his exam. He duly turned up at the exam schools (or whatever the cambridge equivalent is?), and claimed his port from the proctors... and the proctors, after some deliberation, gave him his port but fined him for failing to wear his ceremonial sword.

Frislander wrote:I sat my last A-Level exam yesterday, woop! I even reckon I've got enough to get into Cambridge: certainly the maths and further maths exams all felt fantastic!

you're so young omg

I remember posting about this stuff on here like 12 years ago

Salmoneus wrote:

Frislander wrote:

hwhatting wrote:

Frislander wrote:I sat my last A-Level exam yesterday, woop! I even reckon I've got enough to get into Cambridge: certainly the maths and further maths exams all felt fantastic!

Congrats! You bought your sabre already?

I've a sneaking feeling I should know what that is but that my dad hasn't told me.

It's a sword. I think Hans-Werner is taunting us with the continental tradition of academics having swords as part of their formal dress.

With you mentioning that, gach posted a pic of himself with an exceptionally stabulous sword, though that was in commemoration of him becoming a doctor and I'm not entirely sure with what degrees you get said sharp, pointy objects.

Happy: Thinking back, I believe I actually didn't do too badly at the conference. I got some good feedback from my presentation on my work, and there might be a collaboration with a group in Magdeburg that just got opened. Also, Moscow was a cool place to visit, but it felt like I only just began to scratch its surface. Would definitely go back, though hopefully the Russian embassy'd give me a longer-term visa next time...

finlay wrote:

Frislander wrote:I sat my last A-Level exam yesterday, woop! I even reckon I've got enough to get into Cambridge: certainly the maths and further maths exams all felt fantastic!

you're so young omg

I remember posting about this stuff on here like 12 years ago

And I'm young in the year to boot: my eighteenth birthday isn't until the 7 August (though I still managed to get a bit drunk at the pub after my scholl's leaver's presentation).

Salmoneus wrote:EDIT: there's also an old urban legend about Oxbridge exams, that says that Once Upon a Time, a student actually read the exam regulations, and found that he was legally entitles to a glass of port (sherry, brandy, flagon of ale, etc) while sitting his exam. He duly turned up at the exam schools (or whatever the cambridge equivalent is?), and claimed his port from the proctors... and the proctors, after some deliberation, gave him his port but fined him for failing to wear his ceremonial sword.

I can actually believe that: I mean I've got my offer from Selwyn College (another happy thing, in case I forgot to post it here), which means that as a son of the clergy I'm entitled to a small college bursary (it's a CofE foundation).

Usually if I go out late of a Saturday, I'm useless the following Sunday: Irritable, sluggish, cranky, and just generally unproductive and unpleasant to be around.

This weekend my cranky day was Saturday. Yesterday I was in an awesome mood from my trip to the beach and it's carried through this morning.

My team works from home on Mondays, and today I decided to stay over at my parents' (we have the Fourth off tomorrow for Independence Day), so I'm working from there.

That was a really, really good decision, because it is beautiful out, and I'm working from their deck, accompanied by my mother's hens that occasionally come up to see what I'm doing. (and then I freak out, because I think they'll peck at my feet...)

vampireshark wrote:

Salmoneus wrote:

Frislander wrote:

hwhatting wrote:

Frislander wrote:I sat my last A-Level exam yesterday, woop! I even reckon I've got enough to get into Cambridge: certainly the maths and further maths exams all felt fantastic!

Congrats! You bought your sabre already?

I've a sneaking feeling I should know what that is but that my dad hasn't told me.

It's a sword. I think Hans-Werner is taunting us with the continental tradition of academics having swords as part of their formal dress.

With you mentioning that, gach posted a pic of himself with an exceptionally stabulous sword, though that was in commemoration of him becoming a doctor and I'm not entirely sure with what degrees you get said sharp, pointy objects.

Like these ones here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/154814364 ... 182293706/

Note indeed that traditions at your own university may significantly differ.

Happy: Thinking back, I believe I actually didn't do too badly at the conference. I got some good feedback from my presentation on my work, and there might be a collaboration with a group in Magdeburg that just got opened.

That's the best you can aim for at a conference. Plain networking with optional liver bashing is nice as well, but it's not nearly the same as agreements for collaboration which may even lead to real extra publications.

gach wrote:Like these ones here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/154814364 ... 182293706/

Note indeed that traditions at your own university may significantly differ.

Or indeed at my own college: certainly this doesn't looke like something I'd expect at Selwyn, what with it being a late nineteenth-century Anglican foundation and all that.

Frislander wrote:

gach wrote:Like these ones here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/154814364 ... 182293706/

Note indeed that traditions at your own university may significantly differ.

Or indeed at my own college: certainly this doesn't looke like something I'd expect at Selwyn, what with it being a late nineteenth-century Anglican foundation and all that.

Ahh, so it's a polytechnic red-brick, then! [/condescending]

Salmoneus wrote:

Frislander wrote:

gach wrote:Like these ones here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/154814364 ... 182293706/

Note indeed that traditions at your own university may significantly differ.

Or indeed at my own college: certainly this doesn't looke like something I'd expect at Selwyn, what with it being a late nineteenth-century Anglican foundation and all that.

Ahh, so it's a polytechnic red-brick, then! [/condescending]

That's OK, Oxford students historically used to refer to Cambridge as a whole with "Fen Poly", which my dad (alma mater Trinity Hall) likes to parody in the updated form "the University of Fenland near Ely".

Re swords: no, I wasn't thinking of any ancient traditions, I was referring to this, which I had seen on the exact same day as Frislander's post. Sorry for being too obscure.

Frislander wrote:

Salmoneus wrote:

Frislander wrote:

gach wrote:Like these ones here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/154814364 ... 182293706/

Note indeed that traditions at your own university may significantly differ.

Or indeed at my own college: certainly this doesn't looke like something I'd expect at Selwyn, what with it being a late nineteenth-century Anglican foundation and all that.

Ahh, so it's a polytechnic red-brick, then! [/condescending]

That's OK, Oxford students historically used to refer to Cambridge as a whole with "Fen Poly", which my dad (alma mater Trinity Hall) likes to parody in the updated form "the University of Fenland near Ely".

My own college sometimes gets mocked for being basically a newfangled poly - we weren't established until the rennaissance.
But I remember it did always feel weird to me when I went somewhere like Keble - it doesn't feel properly oxbridge if it was only built by the victorians. I mean, my secondary school was older than that! America is older than that, for gods' sake!

But no serious disparagement is intended, of course. I'm sure it's very nice. Mansfield, for instance, is actually quite pretty. And Keble is really quite impressive, if in a rather impersonal, victorian, modern way. Selwyn looks like it's a sort of mini-Keble? "Your" chapel looks quite nice. Although I must admit I'll never warm to the red brick.

Salmoneus wrote:My own college sometimes gets mocked for being basically a newfangled poly - we weren't established until the rennaissance.

Might I ask which one?

But I remember it did always feel weird to me when I went somewhere like Keble - it doesn't feel properly oxbridge if it was only built by the victorians. I mean, my secondary school was older than that! America is older than that, for gods' sake!

I'm sort-of with you there, though my secondary was only built in the 60s. At the same time though, there's an architectural side to it, since the colleges which are older than that now have mostly Georgian buildings and I'm not a great fan of neo-classical architecture. I also loathe concrete eyesores à la Churchill and Fitzwilliam. On the other hand I do like Victorian architecture, particularly pre-raphaelite stuff, which admittedly Selwyn isn't, but it's close enough for me. Even better, the contemporary section (Cripp's Court, where all the first-years go) is also in red-brick in keeping with the style of the older sections.

Actually, come to think of it, the red-brick seems to be a bit of a theme round that part of town: the nearby houses use it, as do the nearest colleges Newnham, Clare Hall and Robinson.

But no serious disparagement is intended, of course. I'm sure it's very nice. Mansfield, for instance, is actually quite pretty. And Keble is really quite impressive, if in a rather impersonal, victorian, modern way. Selwyn looks like it's a sort of mini-Keble? "Your" chapel looks quite nice. Although I must admit I'll never warm to the red brick.

Indeed, and in fact they're sister colleges.

For the most part, my new laptop is set up, except that I still have yet to switch the Debian install to Debian testing and the video driver to nvidia from nouveau. It dual boots into both Windows 10 and Debian, and much to my surprise scrolling with the trackpad actually works (which was a surprise since the trackpad did not work at all in the Debian installer). The whole installation process was quite painless as whole aside from that getting the system to boot from thumb drives was quite tricky, and getting the boot menu to come up in the first place was annoying. Turning off Secure Boot at least was easy once I got into the boot menu. I do like that the screen is quite large, but the downside of that is that the laptop is definitely on the heavy side.

I can actually get into the flow in working on my own projects again, and this isn't a fluke lasting only a few days. This really is wonderful, as I so, so missed working on my own projects outside of work, and hated that I just couldn't do it.

Salmoneus wrote:

Frislander wrote:

Salmoneus wrote:

Frislander wrote:

gach wrote:Like these ones here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/154814364 ... 182293706/

Note indeed that traditions at your own university may significantly differ.

Or indeed at my own college: certainly this doesn't looke like something I'd expect at Selwyn, what with it being a late nineteenth-century Anglican foundation and all that.

Ahh, so it's a polytechnic red-brick, then! [/condescending]

That's OK, Oxford students historically used to refer to Cambridge as a whole with "Fen Poly", which my dad (alma mater Trinity Hall) likes to parody in the updated form "the University of Fenland near Ely".

My own college sometimes gets mocked for being basically a newfangled poly - we weren't established until the rennaissance.
But I remember it did always feel weird to me when I went somewhere like Keble - it doesn't feel properly oxbridge if it was only built by the victorians. I mean, my secondary school was older than that! America is older than that, for gods' sake!

Weirdly enough, my college is also older than America. Which is not very common for an American college...

Frislander wrote:

finlay wrote:

Frislander wrote:I sat my last A-Level exam yesterday, woop! I even reckon I've got enough to get into Cambridge: certainly the maths and further maths exams all felt fantastic!

you're so young omg
I remember posting about this stuff on here like 12 years ago

And I'm young in the year to boot: my eighteenth birthday isn't until the 7 August (though I still managed to get a bit drunk at the pub after my scholl's leaver's presentation).

Hey, that's the day after my birthday! And dang, you're young: I'm turning 31 this August 6th. Probably won't get even a bit drunk, since I'll be amidst a cross-country move and I have a two-year-old.

My ACTFL OPI* rating for French came back and I got advanced high. I'm very happy with that as it's one level short of the highest level superior (well, there can also be distinguished but it's rare). Your average educated native speaker is likely superior so for a second-language speaker I'm happy. My French rater told me I was on the cusp since I was tested using superior scenarios but it was too hard to maintain the conversations. I had to talk about how to convince people to support green energy and how to combat loss of employment due to automation which is difficult enough in English let alone French.

*It should be noted that these ratings are for oral skills and not writing or reading skills. My writing and reading skills are likely a bit lower because I learned French through so many informal channels that I never had the opportunity to really refine my writing and reading skills. I can read novels but I couldn't comfortably read something like La Comédie humaine in French and I couldn't write up beautiful prose in French without consulting dictionaries and whatnot.

Just got back from a really excellent vacation in Yellowstone National Park! (and Grand Teton National Park. And Arches National Park. And Rocky Mountain National Park. We sort of ended up doing an unplanned driving tour of the entire Western US)

Here is a picture of a bison for your viewing pleasure:


(might be too wide, I tried to resize it but it's not quite small enough)

I don't identify as a boy.

I was going to post this in the 'What are you playing' thread, but it actually seemed more appropriate here.

I've been playing a lot of Breath of the Wild lately. It's the first game in, like, at least five years that I've really had fun with. I got out of gaming for a long time due to life (mental health difficulties, mostly), and found I had a lot of trouble getting back into it; games just didn't feel the same as they did when I was younger, in some way that was hard to pinpoint. I was wondering if perhaps I'd just grown out of gaming, and that bothered me a lot. I really don't enjoy TV or movies much, or written fiction, for that matter. Games were basically the only narrative medium that appealed to me. It felt crappy, not having any type of narrative or creative work that I enjoyed taking in on any kind of regular basis. Anyway, I started playing BotW and actually felt myself wanting to play it. Not, like, twice a month, but every day. And somehow it's managed to capture the magic games once had for me, to a certain extent. It's not a perfect game, by any means, but it's literally the first game in years I've actually enjoyed; it's one of the few creative works in that time that's managed to inspire much emotion in me at all. I'm really happy about it.

That's awesome! I'm currently having similar feelings about Morrowind; I like games, but I just haven't cared that much about them lately, which I regretted... until I started playing Morrowind. (and now I can't stop!)

With videogames, for me at least, the feeling of actually experiencing whatever-it-is that the story is about is just enjoyable in a special way that books and movies can't mimic. Sometimes, you don't wanna read about or watch someone else be the hero... sometimes you wanna be the hero. This song kind of captures the feeling.

So the A-Level results are in an it's official; I'm headed for Selwyn college! There's stuff I need to deal with first before I head off on 1^st of October, but now at least I'm certain that's where I'm headed.

Frislander wrote:So the A-Level results are in an it's official; I'm headed for Selwyn college! There's stuff I need to deal with first before I head off on 1^st of October, but now at least I'm certain that's where I'm headed.

Excellent news!

Congratulations!

Thirded