carlo angiuli (blog)

Why, Mr. Title-to-this-post, I couldn’t agree more.

(Part two in a series of epsilon posts.)

It’s been a crazy year. I’m in a different world than I was in January.

The college process, for instance. Way back in April, I took the SAT and ACT for the first time. Soon after, I took my first AP tests. And in the past few months, I’ve gone from having no idea where I’d end up at college, to formally accepting the Wells at Indiana.

Scholastic Bowl has been quite the whirlwind too. I proved myself at the varsity level, going from a novice junior with only one year of experience to traveling down to Florida in June as a member of the six-person Team Illinois.

Then during the summer, I helped start a question-writing company that’s writing for tournaments and conferences around the state, from suburban Winnetka to deer-hunting Wayne City. It’s been a lot of work–I’ve written 640 questions myself, which translates to about 150 pages’ worth. And besides that, I learned Perl and wrote a 1500-line web application that hasn’t failed us yet.

And this year in Scholastic Bowl? I’ve been a playoff moderator at three tournaments, all of which I helped compile, and two of which I helped administer. I came out on top at this year’s Scobol Solo (of 112 individuals). Our team placed second and fourth at Northwestern NAQT, so we already have a bid to Nationals–last year, we didn’t have one until NAQT State in February. Can we place higher at NAQT Nationals this year? Are we going to PACE Nationals too?

In math team, I continued my streak at Regionals and State, tying for first individually at Regionals and placing second at State. I’ve placed all six times–can I make it eight in 2007?

I’m assistant-teaching–indeed, doing a great deal of the teaching myself–for the AP Calculus BC class I took last year.

And, as hectic as it has been, I’ve mostly managed to hold on to my closest friendships and cultivate some new ones I value dearly. And a whole host of new friendships is on the way in college.

It’s been a great run in high school. This leg might be almost over, but there are many to go–I’m not planning on slowing down.

If pictures are worth a thousand words, I’m sure that knowledge ought to be worth more, at least fifteen hundred words per gram. I mean, I guess I’d have a hard time choosing between two pieces of knowledge and three quality pictures. Depending on what was in the pictures, of course. Or what the facts were. Anyway, we all know that knowledge is power. (It does a lot of work in very little time, hence the high wattage.)

But I digress. I suppose now’s as good a time as any to offer the readers of this blog–almost all of whom know me to some good degree–some miscellaneous advice, knowledge, news, and any other odds and ends which, piled together into a little heap in the corner of the internet, might be enough to merit a little frilly imaginary bow on top. In other words, this is my attempt at a purely verbal holiday present for my readers and friends.

Wells Scholars Class of 2011

I am about to inform four colleges that I plan to matriculate at Indiana University in the 2011 class of Wells Scholars. The Wells Scholars Program is a unique program offered by Indiana extended this year to 29 individuals, who have proved to be some of the most interesting and exciting people I have ever met. (Any of you reading this? Carol, are you there?) Despite widely varying interests and talents, all of my fellow scholars showed an incredible spark that is uncommon even in the most intelligent students. I thank Tim Londergan, Charlene Brown, and the rest of the faculty associated with the Wells program for their impeccable taste, and their ability to pick 57 deserving finalists out of a pool of what I hear to be well over a thousand applicants.

In addition to providing full tuition, room and board, and other expenses, the Wells program will provide a summer experience stipend and pay for two semesters’ study abroad. Because outside scholarships (and Indiana’s National Merit scholarship) get refunded to me by the bursar, I will actually be making money every semester. Plus, I have my eye on a few people who might be able to jumpstart Indiana’s College Bowl team with me. No matter how you look at it, it’s an opportunity I can’t pass up.

xkcd

If you haven’t heard yet, you really ought to read xkcd, the funniest webcomic I have come across. Updated three times a week, it is written by Randall Munroe, a former NASA roboticist who quit his job to live on revenue from xkcd merchandise. While often about pop culture or romance, the comics also frequently reference physics, college math, and computer science, so you have been warned.

The Daily WTF

If you are a computer programmer, you absolutely must read The Daily WTF, a hilarious website powered by disgruntled programmers and database managers that share stories about the obscenely idiotic professionals and code bases that surround them. My personal favorite is one about a content management system that assumed a user was authenticated unless he had a cookie to the contrary (isLoggedIn = False), and deleted pages by clicking on a link. Google’s web crawler happened upon the system and proceeded to delete the content of every page…

Foxit Reader

If you are wondering why you have to read PDFs with the clumsy and slow Adobe Reader software (or you’re just sick and tired of waiting on the splash screen for five seconds each time), I highly recommend you download Foxit Reader, a tiny and blindingly fast substitute to Adobe Reader. While it lacks a few bells and whistles, it is a single 4 MB executable file that starts up immediately and seeks in files much faster than Adobe Reader does. Many plugins are available on the website–both free and paid–that add various functionality. But if you’re still filling out some printable PDF forms for college, you may be glad to hear that it saves the content of PDF forms! No more retyping the same information every time you open a PDF!

Winamp

Continuing the software parade, I highly recommend Winamp for your music listening purposes. It’s another lightweight snappy program that offers more functionality than Windows Media Player and iTunes. Its library management is by no means inferior to that of iTunes, and unlike iTunes, it supports global keyboard shortcuts to control playback (something that I cannot now live without). Plugins are available to transfer music to iPods (all versions and generations). I have it configured to minimize to the system tray so it doesn’t use up my precious taskbar space.

Winamp is free, but Nullsoft also offers a Pro version that offers many additional features, like full-speed CD ripping and encoding.

More coming soon…

It’s really hard to install packages when the entire problem is that your computer can’t access the internet in Linux. Somebody needs to put together a reasonably-sized offline Debian package repository. (I searched forever, and all I found was a site with several DVD ISOs, which wasn’t quite what I was looking for.)

Which got me to thinking. Debian-based distros are perhaps the most prevalent flavor of Linux at the moment. Knoppix, Ubuntu, Debian itself…and for good reason, because the package system is so strong. Fedora Core is the only system that comes close to the same depth of package repository. So people everywhere know the name Debian.

But what they don’t know, I’m guessing, is where the Debian name comes from. Back in the early 90s when Linux just started, a guy named Ian invented one of the first GNU/Linux distros, and called it Debian, after his girlfriend (and now wife), Debra. Now people everywhere are talking about Debian packages. The extension, of course, is “.deb”.

Now, that got me to thinking. Isn’t it remarkable that Deb’s name is everywhere? Ian was in the right place at the right time, but he did a lot of work to start up the Debian Project. But now, its name–his name, her name–is referenced literally worldwide by those in the know. Isn’t that sort of…I don’t know the word. Romantic? Isn’t it wonderful that his work has paid off, and not just for him, but in a way, her too? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that sort of romantic. Poetic, perhaps. (Those of you who know me particularly well have seen I’m somewhat of a closet romantic.)

And I particularly enjoyed Monday’s xkcd comic. I guess it resembles what I want my life to be. I like free thinkers, people who aren’t worried about being different when they want to. But I don’t like people who bill themselves as free thinkers–those are the people who challenge authority just because they dislike it, not because they have any good ideas. The avant-garde artists. The outspoken anarchists and atheists. (Sorry, Dirac; I appreciate your contributions, at any rate.) No, that’s not what I want at all.

More than anything, I want someone to talk about everything with. Someone on my wavelength. And whenever the beats stop–when she comes by at the same speed, with the same frequency–there will be no phase disparity; the interference will only be constructive. And I won’t want to let go.

Please don’t make me let go?

And my computer works! I didn’t even lose any data! Marvelous.

Merry Christmas.

I’m reformatting my hard drive and installing WinXP and Ubuntu! No more Win98SE Chicago kernel for meeee! (It’s mainly been laziness and conservatism that has kept me on it; finally it’s too much to bear.) Wish me good luck…hopefully my computer will be functioning again by tonight! Well, installing OSs isn’t that difficult…it’s the drivers that will get you.

Y’know, for all the bad rap that Microsoft gets, a lot of its work is pretty good. The problem is that their software works too hard at being program- and user-friendly. I’d elaborate but I’m going to be rather busy for the next several hours. Perhaps I’ll continue at some later date.

Thanks again to Patrick for lending me a nice big external hard drive on which I have backed up all my files.

So awesome. Best tournament ever.

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve said anything over here. What has happened lately?

I’m waiting to hear about the Wells Scholarship at Indiana, which calls all the finalists on Friday.

Saturday was Loyola’s new frosh/soph tournament, the Davey and Goliath Throwdown I. Coach Riley’s Rambler Classic ended in my sophomore year, and this year, Matt Laird is taking it up with new questions (Aegis’s, of course!), a new date, and…well, fewer teams.

The tournament’s logistics were a bit off, partly because some coaches take twenty more minutes (!) to read rounds than other coaches. The morning rounds ended at 1:45 (!).

People felt pretty good about the questions, though, except that they were sort of hard for frosh/soph. I honestly don’t know what I knew back in frosh/soph. I’m not even such a good judge for varsity-level questions. I mainly go off of what I know to be in the canon, not just “random facts that Carlo knows,” because that would certainly end in disaster.

Speaking of which, New Trier’s highly-anticipated Varsity tournament is this Saturday! I’m really excited! Last year was our first year, and we received high praise from many of the coaches and even players. I think this year’s questions are totally amazing. I feel like many lesser teams will be way out of their league, both with the questions and the competition, but I would rather cater primarily to the top teams. Pretty much every top team I can think of is attending, and I want to make sure they’re happy. We’re fully testing these questions before using them, and we’re providing every moderator in the tournament so that nobody runs behind schedule.

In essence, New Trier Varsity represents what I believe to be the ideal Illinois tournament. I hope others agree. It will be very interesting to see how the day turns out. If you’re a player or a coach and you read this, I’d really love if you send me any and all feedback you have.

If you are a non-Scholastic Bowl friend of mine and you’re interested in spending some portion of your Saturday seeing what Scholastic Bowl is like, let me know. I’m interested in showing other people what it’s like, and what with being at New Trier and me being a moderator/co-Tournament Director, this would be your best opportunity to watch some quality teams on some quality questions. Let me know.

Well, I’ll go back to writing more questions. Wow, I really hope it’ll go well.

So my flight got cancelled, then my next flight got cancelled, then my next flight got cancelled, then my next flight kept switching gates, but I managed to get on it as a standby. I’m in Bloomington right now, in Indiana University’s Memorial Union.

Perhaps I’ll elaborate on the fun I had at O’Hare at some later date. It makes for a decent story.

Yay for airplanes. Boo to snow.

See you later,
Carlo Angiuli