Bill Gates

Today, Bill Gates visited the Claremont Colleges to give a talk to the community.  A lovely perk of being from Harvey Mudd College was that everyone was given a free ticket to attend, which meant that the majority of the school arrived in force.  President Klawe suggested that everyone where their "The most Amazing College (you've never heard of)" shirts in order to express the spirit of the school.  It was really fun to see everyone flocking to the auditorium like this, especially since the event appeal made many people follow through.

President Klawe lead the discuss through a series of questions (primarily regarding philanthropy and healthcare), then the room was opened to questions from students.  Bill Gates seemed very friendly, and clearly invested in the topics of which he spoke.  When prompted with a question regarding taxes/cuts (the potential funding cut for Polio research/vaccines which he is attempting to prevent), Bill Gates said that many Americans would state that they would like more tax cuts, but when given specific programs (such as education) would find them uncutable. As such, he said that "You prove that what the American public is really against is arithmetic."  Overall, it was a very interesting talk, and I am glad to have had the opportunity to attend.


Unfortunately, the conditions were not great for pictures, but here are a couple anyway.

Afterwards, there was a little reception with food and drink (Bill Gates was not here, he had to leave).  But Tessa, Carling, and I ended up talking to a very nice alum from HMC.  He was very interested in all of the changes that have taken place since he graduated (the new core, in particular).  It turns out that he is an engineer, though he hasn't done much engineering, but has still had the opportunity to work with NASA.  He pointed out how important it is to figure out something we love to do, and said that if NASA was an area of interest, both engineering and computer science would be equally applicable.  For a while, I had seriously consider computer science over engineering, but once again, I am unsure.  At least I still have time to decide. 

Spampede!

This half semester has been much busier than the first semester of college.  While it hardly seems possible, the amount of work has significantly increased which means less sleep and less free time.

However, not all the work is bad.  In fact, the last CS assignment was very enjoyable.  While the required work did not take a significant amount of time, the extra add ons were a lot of fun, and much more time consuming.

Yet, the result is definitely pleasing:

The point of the game is to eat the "spam" (this may seem weird, but it is almost an inside joke in the CS field at Mudd) by guiding the centipede about the screen.  One interesting options is the AI option, which causes the centipede to play the game autonomously, which can be selected using 'A'.

Also, I choose to add a large number of additional features which include:

1. Being able to change the difficulty of the game (by altering both speed and generation of spam).

2. Working through multiple levels (either automatically by eating spam, or by selecting them in the levels menu).

3. The capability to play against an enemy centipede (the yellow pede in the second image) or alone as selected in the game menu.

4. And finally, a help menu with various instructions on gameplay, such as which keys to use (IJKL).

If you would like to check it out and actually play the game, I have it running on my HMC site, linked to below:

http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jhoffswell/spampede/Spampede.html

Please enjoy!  And let me know what you think!