The story of my other class

I’ve discussed all of my classes except the last one: Astronomy. And I can discuss it now because it turns out that my exam in that class is today! I thought it was next week, but it is actually today. Am I worried because I have a week less study time than I thought? Nope. Why? Because this exam, unlike certain others, is open book. I had planned on rewatching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos this weekend to freshen my mind, but even without that I think I’ll do alright.

In spite of my hatred of doing mathematics, I took the Astronomy class because I know I need a science class for my degree. I have since realized that my History class would probably have counted toward that, but whatever, I didn’t have people talking me through it when I chose my classes, though I clearly should have. Anyway, I don’t regret taking the class. The math involved is pretty basic and only comes up occasionally. Test questions are mostly multiple choice, the professor is quite good, I have a genuine interest in the material. All in all, I’d see myself going into a second year Astronomy class before I continued with History. (Though, in fact, I’ll probably do neither)

We’ve had two tests in class, closed book, and I’ve averaged about 75% on those, I think. Take home assignments, more math heavy, but open book, I’ve had an average of around 90%. This exam is apparently a combination of the two styles, so I’m pretty confident going into this that I’ll do fine.

Post Exam Update: Okay, that was more like it. I feel reasonably confident that I’m in the 75 to 85% on that exam. It was largely multiple choice questions and I used my book to look up even those I thought I knew already. While I probably did still get a few wrong, I suspect I did well. There was also the mathematical question that I wrestled with for almost an hour. I probably messed that one up, but I’m bound to get a few points for trying. And anyway, while the troublesome question on yesterday’s exam was worth half the grade, this troublesome question was equal to all the other thirty questions. I don’t feel like it was too bad.

One peril of open book tests I noticed, though, was that I occasionally became distracted when I found something interesting in the book that was unrelated to the exam. Of all the textbooks I had to buy for this schoolin’, the Astronomy one is the easiest to enjoy flipping through, I think.

Wereworld?

I just reread something I wrote on Twitter a day or two ago and it said “Somebody needs to make me a movie where there werewolf turns out to actually be a chimpanzee, rather than a human, who turns to a world.” Turns into a world? What the chunks does that mean, PDR? Are you high?

Anyway, if we ever end up with a genre of chimps, or even humans, who are cursed to turn into planets, I am taking full credit. Full.

Meanwhile, I’m seeing reports that Neil Armstrong has died. That’s sad. I really wish we’d made more progress as far as space exploration is concerned while he was still alive.

Artists All Over

Okay, today marks the end of the story of Stanislav Blue in Secret Government Robots. It has been great having Marq on the art duties for this one. He took a story I wrote off the cuff and made improvements that I couldn’t have done on my own, and it is great to see my words become images without actually having to be the one making those images. Thanks Marq!

Next week will start with a single strip that I made up at a boring night at work a few months back that I need to use before it becomes irrelevant, but then I can jump into my next full-length story. So that’s something.

In the meantime, I have not been living a completely artless life. I already mentioned my first watercolor painting, which I have titled “It’s Like A Metaphor For Life Or Something” and now I present my second:

I call it “Nude Ascending A Staircase (Inside A Rocketship)”:

rocketship watercolor

And I’ve still got one more frame I want to use up. When the inspiration hits, look out art world.

The Moon is Overrated

Okay, so this is my second attempt at doing a post today, the first having been met with some sort of error that prevented it from working. What the chunks was that about, Internet?

Take note: with yesterday’s post we come to the rushed conclusion of the most recent SecGov story. That one kinda drifted away from where I had planned to take it and then, when it came time to wrap it up, I didn’t have much room left. My next story shall hopefully be better structured. That’s what this is after all, an attempt to learn how to do this crap.

But before I get to that next story, we’ve got something altogether different for SecGov next week. More on that, next week.

Haiku!

Why go to the moon?
I like it better right here.
I don’t want to go.

Man, what does that haiku have against the moon? I mean, sure, maybe it is a lot of effort to get there, there’s not much to see when you get there, and there’s a lot of risk of something going wrong, but… well, no, I guess I agree with the haiku now. Still, if we got our act together and did more space work, we’d have most of those problems fixed

So we definitely had some warm weather the last couple days. My apartment had the kind of sweltering hard-to-sleep daytimes that I associate with Summer. It’s cooler today, so my sleep was more efficient, you will all be glad to know.

Anyway, there was probably more to have said, but I’m not going to bother, instead opting to end here and find out if it post this time.

Space Junk Hates Humanity

So the newspaper that has just gone out includes this article about some satellite that is coming acrashin’ to Earth soon, and there is a chance it will hit Canada (they say probably an ocean, but maybe Canada). If that thing hits me I demand some sort of holiday in my honor. A holiday that involves people throwing soft plastic toy satellites at one another.

That’s all. I just like my wishes to be known ahead of time.

For the record, cleaning up space junk in orbit has been on my list of things to do if I ever get Superman powers for years. So keep that in mind whoever hands out Superman powers.