The Mandelbrot set

I'm doing a project on this flamboyant set for PMATH 370. It's interesting and yields eye candy when the numbers are crunched. I'll put up a link to my project website once it's done! Update: here it is!

So it's 11:10 pm now. Alan comes in and says "I will take a shower sir." I counter with "see you tomorrow!"

Behold: the thing that reads a lot!

Lately, I've been watching Gilmore Girls to get re-acquainted with my feminine side. I've discovered that I can relate to the show on many levels. Its protagonist Rory reminds me of myself before I got my first computer. Like her, I was "the thing that reads a lot," consuming both fiction and non-fiction, novels and magazines, scientific journals and poetry. Actually, not much poetry, but hey, the point is I read a lot. Nowadays I don't read much save course material (shamefully not much of that either) and the news every week or so.

I have to start reading more, especially since I'm set for law school. So starting Christmas break I'm going to read lots. Rory's collection will be a good place to start.

Choices

Choice is a great thing to have. The liberty to make decisions is often taken for granted in our society. Yet choice can also be as a burden, a pressure on one's shoulders. When I'm presented with difficult choices, like most people I tend to weigh the pros and cons of each choice:

So the game today is Pick Your Ideal Law School, and on the table I have two great universities from Canada and the HYSCCN clique from the south. I haven't been accepted to many places yet so I'm being a little preemptive. Oh well.

Toronto
Pro: reputation, Bay St. placements, faculty
Con: weather, "competitiveness"

UBC
Pro: location, curriculum, and there's a rez with tatami flooring
Con: it's far away, biglaw placement

Harvard
Pro: reputation, students, faculty, NY placements
Con: lots of US history (this goes for all US schools though), cost (this too)

Yale
Pro: reputation, reputation, faculty, students
Con: low chance of getting in, cost

Stanford
Pro: campus, students
Con: cost

Columbia
Pro: NY placements
Con: cost

Chicago
Pro: don't know much about Chicago actually
Con:

NYU
Pro: New York
Con: New York

This goes to show I have much research to do before I can start deciding.

End of term draft

During a break from studying I drafted Time Spiral online with Alan. Unfortunately we both lost, but when I tested my new G/W token deck against five of Alan's draft decks, it performed 2-0, 2-0, 2-1, 2-0, and 2-0. So it's surprisingly good -- and it recovers from bad hands gracefully. Its main weakness is evasion creatures, but it features cards like Aether Web in the sideboard to recover.

Oh and this is the first time I've used my sideboard to great effect! So here's the decklist.

17 Lands
11 Forest
6 Plains

15 Creatures
1 Durkwood Baloth
1 Greenseeker
2 Herd Gnarr
1 Savage Thallid
1 Spike Feeder
1 Sporesower Thallid
1 Thallid Germinator
2 Thallid Shell-Dweller
1 Amrou Seekers
1 Castle Raptors
2 Icatian Crier
1 Outrider en-Kor

8 Other spells
1 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1 Tromp the Domains
1 Strength in Numbers
1 Thrill of the Hunt
1 Fortify
1 Griffin Guide
1 Pentarch Ward
1 Temporal Isolation

Cards of note in my sideboard are Chronosavant, Pull from Eternity, Primal Forcemage, Phantom Wurm, Havenwood Wurm and Aether Web.

The deck's main strength is its synergy: Outrider/Shell-Dweller, tokens/Fortify, tokens/Tromp, tokens/Strength in Numbers, Icatian Crier/Herd Gnarr, Thallids/Herd Gnarr, tokens/Primal Forcemage, and so on are game-winning combos. Herd Gnarr became 14/14 flying trample once, and Tromp and Fortify have each made a life total drop below -18.

Yet Alan's decks weren't pushovers -- not even close. If he has time he may post his decklists for all to see: some contain a questionable number of bombs...