I'm following myself.

I accidentally started following myself today. Oops. Haha at least I'll know that I posted something for sure. And nobody else is doing it.. why not start a trend? ; )

So the semester is ending fast. My finals seem to be as early as they possibly could be, so I won't have as much time as expected to study, sadly. But I'll get them over with and that'll be nice.

I like my Eng 198 group's project. The hovercraft is coming together nicely, and Kevin had a surprise for us today, we are going to control it with a super NES (I think that is what the system is.. I'm not a videogamer..) controller! I am really excited to see if we can get it to work. The circuitry is hard to figure out, and I'm an EE major. I have a LOT to learn. Next semester I'll be in ECE 190 and I hear that if you don't know C, you will be in for a tough class. I don't know C.

IExpo is Wednesday. It should be alright, I think what my ESS group is doing is really cool, except I can't tell you and spoil the surprise. I guess we are still going to do iTeams next semester... I hope they become less stressful. Lots of enthusiasm in iFoundry as a whole has dropped, to put it frankly. Not that it can't continue, but is it improving things? That is the question that the people in charge will have to think about. The goal of iFoundry was to basically make engineers more aware of the complexities of the real world. I suppose it has, anything that makes you go over and above will make you learn things that you wouldn't normally learn. I think that some things should probably be changed. The whole "my iTeam has to have an event every week and change the world" idea should be halted. Please. We are also trying to do well in our classes, and it just isn't possible. Eng 198 is good. Some of the lectures have been iffy just because they are saying things that are common sense, but others have been good. And if iFoundry wanted an iCommunity, they have one. I recognize kids from iFoundry and we actually kind of know each other. And in Eng 198, I can honestly say I know at least half of the kids names. Ok that sounds bad.. it's only a class of 30.. haha. But you get my point, in my normal lectures or normal discussions, I know probably 10% or less of people's names.

I wish everybody good luck on finals!!! And I believe that this is my final blog (7!!!!), so Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!!!

The dress of the future, it lights up!!

I saw this at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Thanksgiving break

The semester is coming to an end. It's Thanksgiving break and I'm at home with my family. Still plenty of homework to keep me busy, though. I'm expecting finals to be a bit stressful, but once we're done, Christmas break is going to be the best ever! I actually won't have anything to do!!! Wooo!!! That is the great thing about college, we work hard and we get it done, no need to spread stuff out when you can work a little harder and get things done. That's a great strategy to have, maybe I need to think a bit about how I operate and see if that's the best way. I tend to be the person who works hard at EVERYTHING, so I keep busy. I am the type that spreads stuff out, too. Is that a good thing? Well I don't get quite as overloaded I suppose. But on the other hand, when it is Thanksgiving break, I want to have a break. Instead, I have to do homework stuff like this every day. Hmm.. Study skills are very important, and efficiency. I can always improve on that.

In class, our next project will be due soon. My group is building a hovercraft that we plan to program to steer. I hope that we are able to program it well, because that seems to be the hardest part. We are basically done with the actual hovercraft already. I have some experience with hovercrafts already, because for AP Physics last year in high school, my "project" was to make a hovercraft. I actually was pretty successful because I was able to make it remote control to steer it and control the major duct (hovercraft for fan). I was messing with multiple motors and a servo just like what we are doing now! It was an individual project and I really enjoyed it. But my major problem was controlling all three parts, the two ducts and the servo, with the same battery/remote control. Maybe they weren't getting enough voltage. Actually one of the problems now that I am remembering was that the servo which controlled the rudder would automatically turn to one side whenever I turned it on. That was a bit frustrating...

Here are some pictures of that:

One interesting thing for our project is that we are trying a COMPLETELY different skirt design than what I used, which you can see easily on the bottom left picture. My skirt on that hovercraft ran around the edge of the craft, while ours is like one big bag over the bottom. They both seem to work, but I think that I prefer my old one. It was good to try different designs, though.

2nd Semester Schedule, updates on other iFoundry stuff

Hi, so it's already November now. Goodness how time is flying this semester (except when we're actually in class)! I feel really at home here at the University of Illinois. Basketball season is starting, our football team won a game (vs. michigan!!!), life is good. : )

Illinois: 38 Michigan: 13

Illini fans party like it's 1983!

So this week I signed up for classes. I am so thankful to be a James Scholar for that. It would be terrible to have to wait another 2 weeks to sign up for classes and have a ton of trouble getting in any good ones.. I'm an Electrical Engineering major, so I'm taking ECE 190, MATH 241, PHYS 212, and RHET 105. ECE 190 is supposed to be harder than ECE 110, which I'm already in, and the professors aren't supposed to be good at speaking English... MATH 241 is supposed to be EASIER than MATH 231, so I'm excited. PHYS 212 could be weird because I heard that there is a lecture where the professor teaches two classes at once and in one of the classes you have to watch it from a video camera. That would be terrible.. And RHET 105 is just supposed to be a lot of work writing papers that don't mean anything. It'll be 16 credit hours, so that seems good, especially since it's only 4 classes. This semester is like 5 classes plus iFoundry/iTeam stuff. Hopefully there will be less iFoundry/iTeam stuff next semester.. Then I'll have more time to focus on my actual classes.

The iTeam things have really taken a toll on my time, and what gets me is that we aren't even getting credit for it. We get 1 credit hour for Eng 198, iFoundry, and the iTeams. We should get like 4 or 5, based on all the work we do! I was happy when Kevin, my iChair, mentioned that maybe we will just simulate doing the project instead of actually doing it, since it would be a TON of work. I agree, I suppose it would be good experience to go through the motions, though that would even take a lot of time. haha sometimes I wonder what classes other people are taking where they don't have to worry about their time commitments as much as me...

Anyways my group is building a hovercraft for the Eng 198 project. I'm pretty excited to see what we will be able to make it do.