Really Quick Update

Hi!

A couple things real quick, since I have class in 18 minutes, and I still need to walk to class; it's about 5-10 minutes away.

First, I want to show you my light show that I made mostly over break and finished this week!

I wrote a post last year about having the initial idea and the excitement behind it, but I couldn't bring myself to post it because I was afraid I wouldn't finish it. A lot of work went into this project, from threading 600+ strands of fiber optic strands through needle-size holes to glueing the fiber optics in place to programming the light sequences. My work paid off. This project came out pretty well. I do admit that in my head, it was grander than it appears above.

Second, I have a twitter now! Yay! (Actually, I've had it for quite sometime but I just didn't know what to do with it.) I'm going to be using Twitter to post/tweet 105 firsts I will accomplish this year. I kind of made it my goal to try new things this year, so we'll see. Some of the tweets will be pretty dull, but others I think will be interesting. Who knows? I don't. The link is on the right with the hashtag #emily105 -- I'm smilling right now because I successfully claimed a hashtag for myself. =] The actual twitter handle is @ewlmonkey. So follow, if you're interested. (As for tweeting status updates, I'm not quite sure about that yet.)

Biking in Snow

Last night, it snowed. It was a light dusting but I like it when it snows at night. It's very peaceful. (I've written about snow before, here.) Snowing at night is still peaceful for me even when I'm outside and not warm and cozy indoors. Actually, last night I was in the snow: biking. That's a first for me. Biking in the fresh snow, you start to hydroplane a lot. You may have last experience hydroplane while driving, it's that moment where you lose control of your vehicle, and the tires sort of lose grip of the road and slide a bit. That's hydroplaning. You can imagine that to occur more often with slippery snow and bike tires that are designed for less friction. I was very careful and biked on the sidewalk when possible, especially since I didn't have my helmet or light with me.

Biking in Boston has gotten a little bit more dangerous. I'm not really one to change my habits because of freak accidents. But the thing is that two freak accidents involving cyclists happened late last year in the span of a month: one cyclist got clipped by a public bus and died, and another cyclist collided with an 18-wheeler truck turning right from the left lane and also died. Both of them were BU students. These tragic accidents have put a bit of strain on the university and its students. University officials, city officials, students, and parents have started to wonder if these two accidents could have been prevented. There are a lot of opinions. Some even try to put blame on the cyclist for their carelessness, which I don't agree with but I'll save you from my rant. I also can't help keep the question "what if it was me?" out of my head. It easily could have been me. Surely, my parents would be devasted. And of course my life would be over. So I bike now with these tragedies in the back of my mind.

RIP Chung-Wei Yang and Christopher Weigl and other Bike Accident Victims. =|

Here's a tribute for Christopher Weigl at the site of collision of the second accident I mentioned. I just recently saw this last week. It's a very nice act of thought.  

ROYGBIV

Hello 2013.

I'm back in my on-campus apartment, back in Boston, and back to start another semester.

Break was nice. I did a lot of sleeping. I caught up with some of my high school friends. I've also applied to a couple of internships. And I even worked on a personal project: a light show. The light show is almost done: I've diligently built the display, wired the circuit, albeit sort of messy, and wrote a program to write code for me. So all that's left is to have the program I wrote write some nice sequences to display. It's been tedious work, especially the building of the display part, but I am happy with the results, however crude it is.

This semester will be a good one, I feel and think. So, I look forward to this semester. Well, I'm going to go relax some more: make sure I'm well rested -- I don't want to start this semester tired. =]

I'll leave you with a picture I took today of my prism doing it's job, that is separating white light into red light, orange light, yellow light, green light, blue light, indigo light, and a little bit of violet light.