antonywilliams.com

Apparently, it costs $125 more than the cost of tuition/books.
The deeper I look, the more I realise that there are tons of hidden costs. At least twice a week I pull an all-nighter. Once it gets to 3AM, I'm in desperate need of snacking, and end up swiping my signature card on the vending machine at least three times (I'm talking about the Clyde building....that's right...it never closes). In a sense, sleeping is a great deal. Not only is it fun, but it's free. Staying awake longer only means you have to eat (and therefore, buy) more food.... :(

A couple of days ago, I decided I would be needing a new calculator to do LaPlace transformations (thus the $125) as that would, in the long run, save me money otherwise spent at vending machines late at night while trying to do the transformations by hand.

The end result.... An HP50g

It was just barely released, and is far superior to any TI (I currently have a TI89)
It centres around RPN (Reverse Polish Notation)
A genius way of typing equations into the calculator with the minimum number of keys pressed.
It's actually an interesting read for anyone remotely interested in maths/electronics as it has a lot to do with how the calculator actually calculates an equation.

For those who can't be bothered to read a bit and become educated, I'll give a brief summary.

Suppose you try to find out "1+2". On a TI you'd type "1+2"
With RPN you have to enter numbers into the memory, and then tell the calculator to add the numbers from each part of the memory together. (It's much easier than it sounds)
So, in RPN you'd type [1] [enter] [2] [+]
The idea is that you enter "1" into the stack (kinda like a specific part of memory), then enter "2", and tell the calculator to add the contents of the 2 last accessed memory slots.
Trust me, it's easy, and it makes more sense when you're entering a huge equation, as you type it in just as you'd work it out manually. You have no need for parentheses.
Another simple example would be "(1+2)*5"
In RPN you'd type
"1", then enter in onto the stack, "2" and then add that with the previous number on the stack, and then "5" and multiply that to the previous number on the stack (which is now the sum of 1 and 2) so,
[1] [enter] [2] [+] [5] [*]

cool eh?

OK, now lets really see the benefits by seeing how you'd type in a big equation like this


There are a lot of brackets that can be mismatched. Having to type something like 6*(exp(4/5)+2)/sqrt(sin(3)+4)= isn't very intuitive - it's not written on paper like that.

The animation below shows how the same formula is entered in RPN. The equation is built bit by bit, from the inside out. Start off by typing [4] [enter] [5] [/] to get four-fifths. Then make it the power of e by pressing the [e^] key. Add 2 to that - [2] [+]. Then do the rest of the equation in the same fashion.



The benefits are a huge increase in speed (after you've practiced entering it in this way, obviously)

I'm sure you're all glad to know that I'm now gonna be doing homework that bit quicker, and going to be getting a little bit more sleep!

The day finally came!
My cast was removed on Wednesday 6th Sept.
I suppose I was expecting to be playing the piano the next day.
Little did I know that the removal of the cast was only the first step of the recovery process.
The first thing I noticed was the size of my hand/wrist/fore-arm. The whole thing has shrunk, and it looks feeble. It sucks. I'm gonna have to lift weights to fix that ASAP.
I also couldn't move my thumb at all.
I came back the next day to speak to my Dr.
He wasn't there. I asked to speak to another Dr. to ask him what I should do (whether to try to force it, or stretch it etc..)
I hate going into Doctor's offices when you don't have an appointment, a they're treated like royalty. You have to speak to them through a secretary. It's extremely condescending.
The nurse came back and said "The other Dr. says for you to come back tomorrow to talk to your Dr."
Great....How helpful. So, I skip out of work to go the next day to see my Dr.
He doesn't see me either, but I have to talk through the clueless secretary again.
She then says "It's normal."
I ask "but is it really normal to not be able to move it at all?"
She clearly doesn't know anything, and gives me the same response again.
I guess I'll have to wait until my appointment 2 weeks away!
Clearly I need some Physical Therapy, but I'm not sure I believe in that kinda stuff.
I don't need help just to stretch my thumb. Can't I do that myself....and for free ?
I'm fed up with having to pay for stuff that should be free!

I got back to Provo, UT Saturday night.
It sucked. I spent about 20 hours in a plane.
I know what you're thinking... it doesn't take 20 hours to get to Utah from Spain.
well.... it does if you're a cheap skate.
It was cheaper for me to fly from Spain to Austria, and then to NY, and then UT.
For those of you who know your geography (in other words... those born outside of the USA) you'll know that Austria is east of Spain, and consequently, in the opposite direction of the way we were to eventually travel. Unfortunately I'm a cheap-skate, so I opted for it anyway. Total time from boarding first plane to landing in SLC.....26 hours.
Wikipedia states that the recovery rate is generally one day per time zone.
that would mean I'll take 8 days to recover.
Not good, as I start school just 2 days after arriving.
I flew SpanAir to Vienna, Austrian Airlines to NY and Delta to UT.
Can you guess which was the worst ?
Delta was the absolute worst.....and by far!
Not only was the pilot terrible, but we were delayed by over an hour, just waiting in the plane.
We took off 80 mins after boarding.
The worst was that every 10 mins the pilot would announce (over the P.A.) we're cleared for take-off, so it'll just be a few more minutes. By the 3rd time I knew not to believe him anymore.

After all the strict checks through countless metal detectors (which, by the way, didn't pick up on the 4 steel pins holding my thumb together) they were stupid enough to give us metal cutlery to eat with.
Isn't that ridiculous?
They accuse people of everything under the sun for accidentally having nail clippers in their carry-on, and then give everyone on board a metal knife??