Linguistics, Dancing, and a Few Good Books
Wherein I post about the excitements and mundanities of life in Providence, RI| [blog home] |
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| Don Blaheta is a sixth-year PhD student in Computer Science at Brown University, studying Natural Language Processing; he just finished up an AM in Linguistics across the street in the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences. In his copious free time, he does competitive ballroom dancing, sings in two choirs, hangs out with the Brown-RISD Catholic Community, knits obsessively, and reads sci-fi, fantasy, and alternate history novels. |
25 December 2002
Merry Christmas!
Well, my family's tradition is to exchange gifts on Christmas Eve, so we're done with that. My headliner item is a nifty digicam. I feel obliged to post the first picture ever taken with it---that's my room at home, cluttered as usual but seen in crystal clarity. This thing is great; it just figures out the correct settings to take a good photo. Let's see how it does at ballroom meets, though....
Other things I got include some DVDs, a really loud rainbow-coloured umbrella, a couple of six-suited decks of playing cards (the usual four plus crowns and anchors---the crowns are red and feature royals that wear glasses and carry sceptres, while the anchors are black and have royals that wear eyepatches), a scrabble page-a-day calendar, some clothes, and (god help me) Starcraft. I played a couple rounds of it at Thanksgiving, courtesy my cousin Steve, and decided that it was A) really cool and B) much too addictive to actually get. I need to, you know, finish my thesis. Anyway, I must've dropped mention of it, because my parents bought it for me. It's sitting in its box. Staring at me. Calling to me.
Excuse me, I've gotta go. See you in a few weeks.
"And then there's bash. I mean, BASH? It's like a neanderthal playing in a steel drum band. And sed and awk sound like a cartoon Roman senator cussing. So you've got this cussing Roman senator with a massive forehead playing in a steel drum band, or you've got the ageless wisdom of the clams. Isn't it obvious?" --Jered Wierzbicki
Posted 5:47 AM [+]
| Don Blaheta / blahedo@brown.edu |
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