You know, it’s funny. For such an ubiquitous entity, you would think it would be readily available to spread its prolificacy.

I just got done watching the documentary Helvetica, about the typeface of the same name that is used everywhere. I mean that literally too. If you don’t believe me, look at a street sign

Or a billboard,

And tell me you don’t see it everyday.

It’s the font that has become the face of modernism. Anyway, I won’t spoil the documentary for you, but it really is quite interesting to see just how ubiquitous Helvetica really is, and to understand the underlying reasons for that success in modern society.

It is definitely a film that any designer should watch.

And I guarantee you that if you watch it, it will be hard not to look at printed words and their typefaces the same way again.

About my statement at the beginning, after I finished watching the film, and just before I started writing this, I was planning on making some sort of graphic to go along with it, using Helvetica to emphasize my point in place of the above pictures, but when I opened up Photoshop, I found to my dismay that for such an ubiquitous typeface, my computer does not in fact hold it, and that each version of it, be it bold, thin, etc, made by Linotype costs upwards of $24. Disappointing for a college student on a budget, but fortunately there are plenty of alternatives to Helvetica.

I recently found a blog post titled “100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write,” and it made me think that I should embark on a journey to expand my disquisitory horizons and write some of them, if not all of them. So look forward for still a bunch of life update (a la “It’s Good to Be Home…”) and personal opinion posts (a la “Greased Lightning), but interspersed here and there will be some essays about relevant and hopefully exciting topics. Stay tuned, and enjoy.

Addendum: Also, if anyone has any suggestions or requests for one of those, just throw up a comment with your choice. That way, I won’t have to worry about choosing one and can focus on actually writing it.

Aha! It looks like I’ve figured out why the timestamps weren’t working. Blogger was set to GMT -5:00 (Eastern TIme), and whenever I posted through Contribute, it took Contribute’s time, which was already GMT -5:00, and shaved another 5 hours off it.

Should be all fixed now though, so correct timestamps from here on out. and it even retroactively fixed all of the previous posts, so those are correct too. Thanks Blogger!

It’s good to be home. Not too much more I can say there, other than it’s awesome to see everybody that I haven’t seen for over 11 weeks.

Plus it’s great to be able to relax and not have to worry about homework, tests, or finals. Ahh, freedom is sweet.

I just wish I knew how I did on the Network Fundamentals placement exam on Friday. I really don’t want to have to take that class. I mean, I have an Associate’s degree in networking for goodness sake…

Whatever, no sense worrying about it. If I have to take it, it’ll be net quarter, and it’s not really going to affect my overall schedule one way or the other. I just don’t want to take it…

Anyway, farewell and good night.

It’s Friday. That means four things.

1. I have the Network Fundamentals placement exam in 40 minutes.
2. After that I’ll be driving home. Well, almost.
3. I’ll be driving to Springfield, to go to Superbowl, where I’ll be staying up all night with the youth group.
4. It’s gonna be a long day…

At least the networking exam shouldn’t be too bad. It’s 100-200 multiple choice, true/false, and/or matching questions, and I’m allowed to bring a double-sided 8×11 handwritten sheet of paper. You should see this thing, it’s gorgeous.

It’s snowing, too. Actually, upon a quick look out the window, it looks like it’s stopped for now. It wasn’t really sticking, but I’ll take no snow over non-sticking snow when I’m driving anyday.

Anyway, I’m just trying to kill some time before I have to leave for the exam, so there’s really nothing of any real substance to be said here.

Farewell all.

P.S. For some reason, it seems the timestamp is incorrect. I’ll work on it later. This was posted at about 8:20am on Friday.

I don’t know how, I don’t know why, and at this point, I’m perhaps beyond caring, but Professor Kumar has seen fit to give me an A.

Which sets my quarter GPA at a nicely beatiful:

4.0

Thank you. That is all at this time. Stay tuned…

Well, here we are. Finals week my not be over at RIT, but for me, the war is won. Some battles have been decisively won with a minimal number of casualties, and some battlefields have been left with some blood after the smoke has cleared. Oddly, enough, my expectations of which battles would have which result was off. As I said, I had a few points to spare for my Discrete final. Not as many as I thought though, because I barely squeaked by with an A. There’s no reason an entire third of one’s grade should hinge on the final. It should be a cumulative assessment of previous work, something that genuinely reflects the effort put forth over the entire quarter.

And about an hour to an hour and a half ago, I finished my Data Analysis final. Let me first say that I am glad I don’t have to take Data Analysis II. Secondly, I’d like to say that studying, even if it is only going over the review sheet and previous tests the night before really does pay off. I went in there and I pwned that *****. I mean, you should have seen me. I was calculating confidence intervals and figuring population means like I was born with a TI-83 Plus in my hand.

It was beautiful. It was so artistically done.

(Bonus points if you get that reference, even if I’m not dying… To those of you who are uneducated in geekdom: here’s a clue.)

Anyway, so hopefully that should be enough to offset my somewhat abysmal midterm grade, and bring my final grade up to something relatively reasonable. I’m going to temporarily retract my previous statement and hope that in this case, the final is heavily weighted. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that there was a syllabus (Long story, but short version: Original professor had heart problems, we got a new one, new one does things differently…)

Scratch that, just looked it up. The syllabus for 314 (my class is 319, should be the same) says 10% for quizzes and projects, (should be full points), 60% for exams (Damn.), and 30% for final (Booyah!). So I should get a B.

3 A’s and a B. Not half bad if I do say so myself. Not sure what a B is worth, but if I say 3.5, that’s a 3.87 GPA this quarter. Heck, even if it’s only a 3, that’s still 3.75. Boo-fricking-yah.

Now I get to start thinking about winter quarter. Which shoud be interesting, because of the 2 week break 3 weeks in, which is gonna throw off everything. But I’m not worried. I should be able to handle the course load:

• Discrete Math II
• Programming III
• Web Site Design and Implementation
• Computer Crime (Tentatively)
• Intro to Fencing (Sabre)

Yeah, it’s exciting. And now, I think that I’ll go play some Guitar Hero II to celebrate!

This is one of the three weeks out of every year that every student here at RIT dreads, loathes, and is excited for all at the same time. The fear and loathing springs from the fact that these are tests. Tests which are likely worth a large part of your course grade. Could that be a natural source of anxiety? Naaah…

But on the other hand, this is is finals week. FINALs week. It’s the last one before we get two whole glorious weeks of break. Once we hop this hurdle, we’ll be home free. I, for one, am rather exuberant about that fact.

As for my own war, I’ve won two battles already this week. Both my Intro to Multimedia and Discrete Math finals are finished. 99% on IMM. Of course, I didn’t have to take that one since I got an automatic A for winning the Jeopardy challenge, but I was bored, so I did it anyway. And Discrete, well, let’s just say I had a few hit points to spare, so I could afford a missed question or two. Damn you, Euclid…

Tomorrow brings another battlefront, Java Programming, but that should be a cakewalk. It’s all mulitple choice and all conceptual questions, so if I don’t know it well enough to pass, I deserve to fail.

The only one I’m relatively worried about is Data Analysis. I loathe statistics. I depise them with a fiery passion. It wouldn’t be so bad if I knew how I was doing going into the final, but whatever. I’ll make it work somehow.

On another note, pending acceptence, I am no longer a networking student. Professor Lawley “turned me from the dark side” as she so eloquently put it, and now I am an Information Technology major, planning to specialize in Web Design and Development, and Interactive Media. I’m excited, because it will likely have a much broader array of appealing career options. I like networking and all, but there’s not a lot of room to flex my creative muscles, so to speak (and most of the creativity that is there, probably shouldn’t be. Jury-rigging things isn’t an optimum solution, hehe.).

So yeah, I’m excited about things to come. Should definitely be interesting to see where my path leads from here.

To the rest of RIT, good luck with finals, whether you’re taking them as most of you are, or grading them. As Prof. Lawley explained today, all of the stress that students feel before finals, professors feel afterwards. “For every six hours you spend studying, we spend twenty grading.” So bonne chance, viel glück, בהצלחה and bona fortuna!

finals

As the inaugural post of this blog, this is a test of Adobe Contribute CS3, to see just what sort of functionality it really has. I have to say, I’m interested in the possibilities this piece of software provides, and it will certainly be interesting to go forward with it and expand my knowledge of it, and skilset with it.

More to come soon but for now, it’s 2AM, and finals start tomorrow.

Good night.