Beginnings

Beginnings are hard. The beginning of the quarter is the hardest part for me, because I find it really difficult to ramp up my enthusiasm for a course. But I think I've managed to get it back on track now, having just submitted assignment 1, only... 4 days late.

It was really interesting restraining myself to use only HTML. I didn't make my first web page until long after CSS was the accepted standard, and it was awkward trying to do things in HTML that I really would have preferred to do in CSS. "Back to the basics" is almost never out of place.

I chose a topic that really interests me - maintaining engagement, within the specific context of UCSD. No, I don't mean engagement as in marriage, I mean engagement as in attention, but I choose to say "engagement" because it feels like a much more active word, just as we should all be active. UCSD has a reputation for being boring, antisocial, or dry, but this reputation is largely undeserved, and has its origin in the way those people parroting that line choose to interact with UCSD as a whole. Perhaps UCSD does not have a culture that sweeps people up and draws them into the fold, but that only means that we must choose to actively interact. I wrote my website for assignment 1 detailing some of the activities and ways of approaching college life have helped me to maintain engagement, and be excited about what I am doing.

I'm still drawing a blank for the project. In Cogsci 102C I remember bursting with ideas, because I was safe to play in the realm of the hypothetical. We didn't need to actually build our fantastic calendar system. Now I feel a little bit restrained by reality, and by the scope of the course (web programming, essentially). I am excited about what's available: Google APIs, Facebook APIs, Pipes, Flickr, and on and on, but all of this excitement is running up against a wall, because I don't know what I actually want to do. Hopefully this is just a mental block that will take care of itself soon enough!

Here I Am

Hello world!