Camp is going well. The weekend was a lot of fun. I actually got some freedom on Sunday, My cousin picked me up and we went to Comic Con. I met Rob Corddry of the Daily Show and the creators of Home Movies, it was pretty sweet. There were a bunch of cool booths, including lots of people dressed in funny outfits, a booth with two playmates from 1996, and other random stuff. Afterward I saw a movie I had long anticipated, A Scanner Darkly. Overall, I enjoyed myself.

The other thing I did this weekend was work on a one minute movie for my class. 95% of my time spent on the movie was for the first 7 seconds (the intro.) Here is the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkU4VpM4Wso

Last night I spent about an hour making a duct tape tie. (insert picture). It probably wasn't worth the time, but oh well.
Today has not been overly exciting, as the Discovery Lecture was not as interesting to me as the previous two. Good news came via our professor Joe Pasquale (when he enters the room I am tempted to say YO JOE!, but I have yet to do so) in the form of our field trips next week. One day we will visit San Diego Padre Stadium to see how the Jumbotron works, and the other we will see Jeff Krichmar (one of the past speakers) robotics lab. The only downside is I may never get to see "A Scanner Darkly" in theaters.

As of last night we are free at last! You will not believe the new freedoms we have! I am now allowed to walk to the center of campus without having my hand held! They might even change lights out on the weekend to midnight!
I laughed when people cheered at these new freedoms. My parents thought I was less of a liability at the age when I didn't know the difference between waffles and pancakes. I have yet to leave campus, but I am still enjoying the camp.
I am learning a lot, in both the realms of software and programming. I also have managed to get in a good amount of basketball and television over the weekend, a great combination. I just wish I wasn't treated like a little boy.

Today we learned the basics of Adobe Premiere, here is a link to a video I recorded on the camera they gave us (pretty bad quality, but oh well). My group was practicing for a "cheer" for the "Cosmo-lympics." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QW_K7I-ikU

I cropped a bunch of pictures and put them together. . . .you can guess what they are if you want.







Whole thing - The Kramer
Head - Jim Gaffigan
Facial Hair- Al Swearengen
Necklace - Mr. T
Left hand - Dane Cook doing the SuFi
Right Hand - Ali G

I tried a new technique this morning. I woke up later, ate only a banana and a bowl of cereal. Rather than using the 45 minutes alloted to eat breakfast, I got it down to approximately 8 minutes. Tonight we have the Cosmo-olympics. I am doing the Trivia portion, and I will be able to see if the hours I have spent in front of the television , listening to music, etc. have paid off. As much as I admire the time put into our dance and cheer, I will not be upset to have the vital nap time (4-5:30ish) all to my own.

The picture is a negative made using Python, its pretty neat what you can do.

It is the fourth real day of camp and the early mornings are getting to me. Luckily, I have not yet succumbed to coffee, something that my brother had to resort to when attending a summer camp similar to this one. I have grabbed one piece of fruit from each meal in order to stockpile a psuedo-breakfast without needing to go to the cafeteria. I'll see if this will enable me to wake up later.
Last night we played dodgeball. I ended up being much better at throwing the ball than I had previously thought. My school held a 64 team "Dodgeball Mania" where each team consisted of 6 players. My team, Improv Club presents Captain Planet and the Planeteers, lost badly in the first round to Godz Gift to Women. Although we lost, our team entrance was very epic. If you know the show, we had five of our members combine our rings and another member of the team hidden in the audience, fully adorned in Captain Planet gear. Personally, I was Kwame. Anyway, this time around I did much better in dodgeball, even if I did not have my planeteers by my side.

I started today differently than past days. I woke up at the exact same time, climbed down the ladder in the same lazy manner and packed up my backpack just as I had the previous day. The difference came with the shoes I chose to wear. Rather than putting on my Reebok's, I put on my Rockport Prowalker XLs, walking shoes generally geared toward a more elderly audience. What is someone under the age of 45 doing with these shoes? Well, while I bought them before coming to COSMOS, it is clear that they will come in handy. Walking shoes come in handy when each day consists of about five miles of a trek between classes and food/dorms.
Today, we (as in the students participating in COSMOS) listened to a lecture on Brain Based Devices that, surprisingly, kept my attention to the point that I wasn't even falling asleep! This feat could not be accomplished by the lab safety lecture the previous day. Afterward my cluster went to a classroom to learn grammar. Memories seeped in to my brain (not a device but the actual thing) of being the Content Editor for my school newspaper. I remembered back to editing articles each day, crossing out commas, making sentences don't have prepositions that they end on. I have never been much of a grammar-ista, but don't ever tell me someone did "good" on. . .anything.
In the afternoon we (as in my cluster) had a discussion on quantum mechanics. Memories seeped in to my brain of my dad discussing the topics with my brother and I, but mostly my brother. I could not remember too many specifics, but did remember enough to follow along. The idea of the line between humans and machines being hazy is bizarre and seems at the same time not that unlikely.
I'm hoping that I will get an Ethernet cable in a few hours which would allow me to be on the Internet more frequently. Until then, I bid you adieu.

As I sit in front of a computer and reflect back on the last two days, no specific emotion comes to mind. However, I am quite tired. Prior to coming to COSMOS, I had adjusted my schedule to SSD (Summer Standard Time). By this standard (2 hour delay), I have had to rise out of bed at 4 a.m. and 5:25 a.m respectively the last two days. While to a farmer this may seem like lunch time, to me it is more like "never should be anywhere but lying in bed" time. The food has been quite good actually, better than one might expect. This could easily change.