It's been quite a while since i've written in this thing, but i think tonight is the night to break that.  What's been going on in my life lately?  Same old stuff, only much better, with a few additions.  I'm finding myself enjoying music and mathematics much more than i used to, and programming is becoming less of a task and more fun as of late.  Tonight, for instance, I got to see the Hamburg Symphony play at the Ferst Center.  One of the pieces they played is the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major, a very impressive piece and one of the most well known (and frequently played) violin concertos.  Tonight I heard so much more in the piece than I ever have, it was literally breathtaking at times.  Robert McDuffie, the soloist, did an excellent job.  I really learned a lot through watching him.  I played violin for about 1.5 hours after i got back, what I learned from him definitely improved my playing.  I'm really beginning to see the sheer richness and beauty of mathematics.  I've began to realize that mathematics, along with being the language of logic, requires a lot of cleverness, creativity, and inventiveness to come up with the things they do.  Among the many things I find interesting in math is how mankind once started out with counting numbers which, over centuries of evolution, has churned out such objects of beauty as tensors, topology, discrete mathematics, even computers!  I'm shocked to see just how much of a role automata and complexity plays in the design of basic computational machines, let alone the complicated ones!  What interests me more is that it is logic and solely logic that holds mathematics together -- you can't test a mathematical theory in a lab! (string theory, for instance :p)  Somehow, it all just works, there never seems to be any limit to what all is in God's creation.

Orchestra is going amazingly well this semester.  One of the pieces we are playing is the first movement of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64.  This is one of those rare pieces of music that one finds very rarely in one's life: practically ever phrase in the piece has some sort of personal meaning to me, in all three movements.  I'm currently learning (among other pieces) the second movement of this piece (finally a big-name piece that is within my grasp!)  Good music really makes life rich -- you never lose that sense of beauty, of indescribable awe at just what man can make, what God-inspired things one human can crank out.  I saw this quote in a friend's facebook profile earlier:

"Kings and Lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert, while a couple of young men tinkering in a workshop change the way the world works."

-- Terry Pratchett in the novel, The Truth

Has God called me to change how the world works?  I'm beginning to think so.  It's been prophesied over me before that God has and will put things into my mind that he hasn't put in anyone else's.  I've never really understood just what that meant, but I believe It's meaning is becoming clearer, only i have no idea how, or where, or when, etc.  I'm not even sure anymore if quantum information/computing is the field i should be in!  However, i do still like it, but to sum it up, i don't know what my future will hold.

And that is exciting.

Wow. End of summer.  already.  One of the strange/wonderful things about this summer is that in previous summers (and the part of last summer that i didnt have a job) it came down to where i was just staring at my computer screen blankly or just laying around quite a bit.  And, last summer, like 2 weeks before i got a job, it came to a point that i was sleeping 14 hours a day, and playing warcraft the rest.  Not because i was addicted to the game, but because there was absolutely nothing to do.  This summer, I did not have the first job, and this summer lethargy never kicked in.  Thank God for for not allowing that to happen again, it's awful.  Instead, i believe a lot of necessary things have happened to me that could not have happend if i did have a job.  For instance, i spent the first like 2.5 months of the summer studying mathematics, in particular, tensors and exterior geometry/calc, stuff that will lead to general relativity and other things.  That theory i have to describe intertia may still hold, just not like i thought it would after getting a hit of what gravity really is (i had a slight misinterpretation of the bowling ball in a hammock method of explaing gravity, since i kinda forgot about the ever important world lines, but whatever).

another thing i leared about is my creative potential.  I'm a big fan of epic fantasy/scifi novels (i largely read serieses (that looks wrong, however it's 1:30 am, you'll have to excuse me :p).  One night it hit me:  I need to stay close to the arts, especially music and literature.  First music:  music, especially classical, is a bunch of instruments playing different (in some respects) stuff that represents emotion/abstract concepts/etc.  It creates a lot of creativity to do such a thing (this is prolly why there are so few composers that are well rembembered in the past 300 years).  Epic fantasy/sci-fi (esp fantasy):  the books i read all occur on other planets or just completely made up places with people that can do some pretty cool stuff.  Another thing that takes a lot of creativity to do.  When i'm exposed to these things, i begin to think aobut lotsa stuff.  Most of the big revelations i've had this summer come after finishing books when i'm reflecting back on the story and still amazed at how it ended, puts my mind on overdrive.  Plus the Cogitors in Dune: The Butlerian Jihad inspired me to look at some of the philsophies of mathematics (i can also think Dr. Bellissard for that as well, he's the one that got me interested in mathematical/logical philosophy).

ok first a tangent on mathematical philosophy (you can understand this stuff, i promise, believe it or not there is actually no math).  Hokay so, in mathematics you have a bunch of laws, many of them trivialites (and some of them are so obvious they are "stupid", to use Dr. Bellissard's terminology :p), you then combine these trivialities to make something not so trivial, only when you come to understand this result, it too becomes trivial.  then you take that triviality and combine it wiht others and you get logic.  That's basically how reasoning works.  Back to our feature presentation.

So now i'm more inspiried to write a story myself.  Sorta getting some plot ideas together.  Maybe i'll make a game out of it, but...nah.  I sitll wanna make a game though!

Another thing i found out: one of my giftings is prophetic dreams.  Last friday we were in Swainsborough GA visiting some family and my greatgrandmother.  She doesn't have much longer to live and is not in the greatist of health anyway.  She says she's ready to go and my family has really accepted it.  She's 93 years old!  On top of that she has had nothing short of a superb life, the type of grandmother you want to tell you stories :p (lemme tell ya, stories of stuff that happened on their farm are nothing short of entertaining, especially when i have/can go see where a lot of it happened, even their tobacco barn was still standing when i was younger, i havent seen it in years though so i dont know if it's still around.  Her house is still there and still the way they left it too, we go there occasionally and shoot guns in the backyard where there is no civilization for miles).  So, back on subject (wow this has more tangents than one of Daniel's sermons).  Friday night, after dinner and getting back from the hospital, i was sitting at the table with my mom, grandmother (on my mom's side) and my aunt Cebral (pronunced aint ceebrl :p yes that is her real name...my grandmother's first name is Cuby, and great grandmother's name is Cuma.  pattern? yeah, i think so).  One of my cousins or something like that was there as well.  All of us have prophetic dreams, and theirs are the strongest at predicting death.  I dont think my grandmother really has them often, but she does.  They all knew that my great grandmother, because of the dreams, didnt have much time left.  And so far, this is the way it has been for many many years hwen someone close to them will die soon.

another thing about the dreams:  i dont dream when i'm not rested or getting enough sleep.  And that i should start keeping a record of them so that i may run them by people to help uncover the meaning.  Now, and for the rest of my college career, i wont take more than 15/16 hours.  I layed out my schedual earlier this summer, and it is quite possible for me to do that, with taking like 9 hours next summer.  Plus being burned out by midterms is not the way to be.

Going back to the music thing, i will be doing more of that violin thing this fall as well.  With the lower amout of hours, i hope to spend more time playing the violin.  I know that, someday, i will be playing in some kind of church band in it.  Plus, my goal for this fall's audition in the orchestra is to be a 1st violin with either ppl behind me or on the outside row.  I think i'm ready for the more difficult stuff (and i wanna play osme of the main themes, isntead of the rythims backing it!).  You would be surprised at how often the 2nd violin part is actually much harder than the 1st violin part, however the 1st violins hit the higher notes (which sound AWSOME on my violin, at it's best it will sould very quite yet can still become so loud my ears ring a little afterwards, and it will sound even better once i get the annoying overtones out of the A-C, accidnetals included, on the E string).

Excersise:  In my sched in the fall, tues and thurs my first class is at like 1pm, leaving me several hours to do whatever i want. So i figured i should stay on a more even sched and get up and go cycling or to the gym on those mornings.  I'm rather liking my abilities to swim a mile in under 40mins and swim a lap and a half in an olympic sized pool without coming up for air (i have yet to come close to breaking my record of 2 laps w/o coming up for air, but i'm getting there).  Plus i feel a lot better when i get the blood moving in me frequently.

There was a third thing, oh yeah:  BREAK TIME.  So far, the last 3 years, i would wake up, go to class, do hw in between, come back to my room, do more hw, go to bed.  and on the weekends: wake up, do hw, do more hw, go to bed.  no more of that crap.  I wanna be able to get back to my room and have some time where i can do whatever, like reading or playing warcraft, and, above all, have more time to spend with friends.  One of the things that i havent liked about myself is that i've always been "the double major."  Why was i like this? because, as stated earlier, that's all i did.  I wanna do more.  Lots more.

I think my keyboard is starting to get tired, so quick shower break.  wow 2:11 am.

Ok, back to work.

Academics.  I have a 2.4 gpa now.  The reason? not resting/taking too many hours.  was addressed earlier, but please please please pray for me on this one.  If there are any areas that i need prayer for, this is pretty much on the top.

The lab -- I wanna spend more time in it this semester, and be there consistently.  I wanna start really working on lab stuff, for instance the floating tables and lasers, and really put my creative/inventive giftings to work in there, not to mention learning a lot about quantum optics.  Which also requires that i actually start reading papers on doppler-free spectroscopy.  Looks like i have something to study this week ^^.

Other things/projects:  I've really been trying to get perfect pitch lately.  I'm getting to where i can recognize some notes by their names (mainly A's and E's) which would help me play by ear and improv -- basically what i'd be doing in a worship band.  And i want to compose.  I had this excellent guitar riff in my head and i just cannot rembmeber what it was, but if i had been able to write it down i'd still be able to rembember it and use it.  Lemme tell ya, that riff was cool.  And there's that vocal thing, good song ender.  That one i heard in a dream.

And last, and the most important, my spiritual walk.  Daniel seems to have a lot of cool stuff with ENCM that's gonna happen, and i'm definitly looking forward to it.  The best thing about encm is the fellowship.  We will be growing this fall, it will be excited.  I've also been praying for something absolutely crazy to happen, some complete and utter miracles ("Acts worthy miracles" is the phrase that comes to mind).  So, i'm looking forward to a lot of growth in numbers and more this fall.

This fall semester is going to be very exciting.

(1749 words, i think i just set a new blog length personal best)