the eXternal mind

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Wait! Before you call some organization for the detriment of child violence or something to its equivalent, I would like to explain myself.

There was a “political cartoon” mini-competition in AP European History last week for extra credit points. I was part of an awesome group including Euge, Steve, Liebniz, and C. Grace. Since we all had somewhat horrible Euro grades (well, it just might be me), we decided that the best way to win would be to draw super-awesome cartoons–and so we did, in our opinion.

Euge drew two hilarious cartoons (he should scan them) in his usual stickfigureish style. Chris drew a Mario and Luigi adaptation of Giuseppe Mazzini’s meeting with Victor Emmanuel symbolizing the unification of Italy. Liebniz drew the death star and Brandon the Hut. I drew for the Germany category depicting Otto von Bismarck’s “Blood and Iron” phrase.

Well, maybe, I was a bit too clear about that. We (the group) took the straightforward approach for the cartoon and went for humor instead. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out very well. Here’s how the results went:
Mrs. W: “Group 1 (our group) gets 5 extra credit points!”
Us: “Yeah!” *All looking happy since we think we won first or something*
Mrs. W: “Group x1 wins 7 extra credit points!”
Mrs. W: “Group x2 wins 8 extra credit points!”
Mrs. W: “Group x3 wins 9 extra credit points!”
Mrs. W: “Group x4 wins 12 extra credit points!” (or something like that replacing xn with the group number)
Us: “Oh crap. We must have done really bad.”

Oh, yeah, right. About my “cartoon”. Well, if art is supposed to capture a certain emotion or feeling, then I think my attempt at the manga-like cartoon seemed to work. Because of the intensity of Bismarck’s goals, I thought his mindset was really emphasized in his “Blood and Iron ” phrase. When the rest of the group suggested that I draw blood and iron literally, I drew blood and iron, literally. Just imagine how much it would hurt to get smashed in the face with a huge high-density iron. Yeah, that’s exactly how Bismarck worked (I’m supposing, of course).

So, I tryed to put more dynamics in there, but I’m still horrible at drawing people that I botched a lot of the angles up. I was trying to simulate fast motion with the lines, but that’s not quite how manga artists do it. When I was reading Initial D, I realized that perpendicular lines are used to blur the edges. I think in other action manga, no arm is drawn at all, just lines marking a boundary. It’s quite interesting to draw actually. It helps me look at the world with some perspective… (bad pun intended)

Okay, this is not an April Fools joke. I swear. I maintain that everything I say below is true. Eugene was witness to this.

So I was at Granite Run Mall on Monday for the science fair and after wandering around for a long time scrutinizing projects with Euge (we applied our scientific knowledge to some of the projects and saw some serious flaws in some of the results and conclusions), we decided to trudge into Radio Shack to see if we can come up with a way to build a weapon from the electric and magnetic concepts we had learned from AP Physics. Admittingly, we couldn’t come up with anything good besides looking for the biggest bad-ass capacitor we could find, charging it up, and discharging it on people. There were also ideas of making epileptic blinking LEDs or ear piercing peizo sound generators.

Then, I turned around and something caught my eye: Initial D Manga!

Okay, let’s stop here and consider this statement:

1. Radioshack is selling manga.

Next, pinch yourself, because you are awake. This is not a dream. Read that sentence again and do not panic! Yes, Radioshack is selling manga. No, you are not going insane.

Well, I thought I was going insane when I first saw the three pack bundle of Initial D sitting innocently on the bottom shelf. “That’s insane!” I practically yelled. In fact, I might have. I don’t remember.

Now, consider this next statement:

1. Radioshack is selling three volumes of Initial D (1-3) for $5 (all three).

Now, you might be saying: “So what? Am I supposed to do a backflip or something?” My response would be: “Yes, yes, a backflip would suffice.”

Considering that each volume of Initial D costs $10, the three pack bundle would logically be $30. However, Radioshack is selling it for $5 despite this ominous stick on the back saying $20 (for all three). I even asked the lady if it was an error, but she shook her head and sold it to me for five bucks. Wow. That’s great :). Considering my lack of monetary funds, that deal was too good to past by!

Now, I swear that they had a pricing error. There should be three packs left. Get them while you can.

Here’s the situation: I have one week to complete a research project for the upcoming science fair.

Here’s how I’m doing:
So far this week I’ve been sacrificing homework and cows to conduct research in neural networks and genetic algorithms. I am two days away from the project deadline (Sunday after 7:30PM), and I think I’m somewhat on schedule. I spent most the the week reading literature on neural networks and learning how they work. I was stuck on designing a good experiment since I did not want to do the cliché handwriting recognition application. Just a few hours ago, I thought up a good way to compare multi-layer backpropagation NNs with genetically evolved NNs so I’m going to go all the way with this idea.

Hopefully, I can program this in two days! Can mikeXstudios make it? Or will the evil villian Pro. Crasti Nation lead to mX’s demise?! Find out on the next episode of: mikeXstudios gives a meaningless update on his exploits!

*Isn’t the suspense killing you? Well, they say that curiosity kills the cat! (Please disregard these meaningless statements, my brain is thinking faster than I can process information at this point). What if I write a script that manages files and call it: Xfiles (continuing the naming format of my programs)? Arctank.

Hey, you know what I just realized, I’m writing in stream of conciousness! w00t!

Um, oh yeah, heart of darkness, er, neural networks.