Happy Birthday!
It’s my mommy’s birthday today! Happy Birthday Mom! I wish I could be in Michigan to wish you a happy birthday in person, but I can’t be. I hope it is great anyway.
CS Nostalgia
A few days ago I finally got a couple of old Counter-Strike demos working from last spring. There was a 2 on 2 tournament that I played in with Luke. We usually forgot to record demos, but one of the matches I have is on de_train against Admin (Mantis and AI, who organized and hosted the tournament). For the longest time I couldn’t get the demos to play, and I recently found out that I needed an old version of de_train, which I got with an old demo of X3. So I had the pleasure of watching us play, and win. : ) Here are the screenshots of each half: 1st Half 2nd Half. That tournament was a lot of fun. If I remember correctly, Luke and I won every match except for the one against Zeddi (obviously). Of course we did a lame camp-out thing against one of the teams to win the match by one. : ) It’s interesting to see how we each played back then. Ah, the good old days when we thought we were good.
Watching those old demos and thinking about that tournament made me think of the development of the Wild West, what it has turned into, and what the CS scene at Calvin will look like in the future. As the Wild West, we have hosted clan matches, 3 tournaments, 3 movie nights, over 10,000 forum posts and uncountable rounds on the public server. For me, these are all signs that the Wild West has served the Counter-Strike community well, and I am glad that we could do so. The community is still vibrant, and we have lots of room to do bigger and better things. But now Luke and I aren’t going to be on campus anymore. We’re getting to the point where we would like to have more regular events, and we’d like to use Calvin facilities for them. We’ve had bad experiences in the past with getting Calvin to work with us on this, so some in the community suggested applying for official Calvin club status. Hopefully this would give us the privileges we would like, such as bandwidth for a server and rooms for tournaments and watching matches. However, this would take a lot of work. I’m not opposed to doing said work, and I have definitely put in a lot of it in the past for the Wild West. I’m afraid of two things though.
The first is that our goals are not those of a Calvin club. I’m afraid that we will shape the things we do around the things expected of us by Calvin administration, instead of staying true to the community and what the players want to do. I could already see this becoming a problem when I wrote a preliminary charter. Calvin clubs are supposed to be educational, and further Calvin’s vision of reformed Christian education. Unfortunately, Counter-Strike doesn’t have much to do with these things, and they are not the goals of the CS community at Calvin. It is tempting to try to fit ourselves into this mold, but I think it is important that we are true to ourselves.
The second fear I have is that the whole Calvin club idea is not something people are willing to be dedicated to and put work into. I don’t want to work on it for a year, and have the club vanish at the end of the year when I graduate. On the one hand, it would be good to have the privileges we want even for one year, but on the other hand I would like to see the club continue for years if I’m going to put work into it.
I think I will have to do some more thinking and talking with some other students before I can decide if it will be worth pursuing the club or not.
Vive la France
I haven’t really been doing much lately. Spending too much time on my computer in my room. Standard operating procedure.
However, I did go to Strasbourg, France on Saturday. A group of international students from the University hopped on a charter bus and spent the day there. The leaders of the trip took us to the cathedral when we got there, and did somewhat of a tour of it. This tour consisted of standing in front of the cathedral and hearing a very long speech about the history and symbolism of every sculpture and shape on the whole building. While this was interesting, it grew tiring quickly. I felt like I should stay and listen so I could better understand the building, but it was getting long and boring. After about an hour, I left with some other students, and we started walking around the city.
The most interesting thing we saw was a gay and lesbian parade. As we were walking, there was a parade going across the street we needed to cross. There were floats (trucks), and most of them had people dancing on them and were playing music. There were also people walking. Everyone looked happy and like they were having a good time. But they were all openly homosexual. So on a basic level I don’t approve of their lifestyle choice. On another level I think it is a good thing when a group of people that is often not accepted by society can be together and be happy. So even though I can’t support their homosexuality, I wanted to support them as humans who were enjoying life. I hope I am not so uncompassionate that I forget that those who are different from me are people and are very much like me in most ways.
I also went and saw the movie 28 Days Later tonight. There’s a film with some impact value. Whoo. And visually very well done too. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes a good suspense movie.
Hot Hot Hot
It’s hot. I don’t really mind much during the day, as it’s only been up around 90 to 95, but it stinks at night. I hate trying to get to sleep when it’s warm. The best is when it’s really cold in my room, but I can get under my thick blankets and be warm. I fall asleep in record time. But when you’re actually sweating as you’re laying in bed. Icky-poo.
Monday was the German bank holiday of Pentecost. Businesses were closed, and of course we had no class. A lot of the federal holidays here are Christian ones. Why do we have so few church holidays in America that are federal holidays? Christmas. Any others? Is Good Friday a federal holiday? We don’t get it off at Calvin. What does it say for our nation when we have Memorial Day and Veterans Day, but no Ascension Day or Pentecost? Probably not too much good, from a Christian point of view. On the other hand our law-makers do tout separation of church and state pretty proudly, and I am fine with not having Muslim or Hindu federal holidays. Maybe it’s technically better (more fair?) that we’re more neutral in this respect, but I think it would still be nice if we weren’t.
Munich
Yesterday I spent most of the day in Munich. I rode with some other students from Karlsruhe, so we could see the BodyWorlds exhibit. This is an exhibit of real human bodies that have been cut open and plastinated in order to preserve them. The purpose of the exhibit is to educate the public in human anatomy. Of course I had learned some about the topic in my high school Human Anatomy class, but it was very interesting and educational to see real examples of it. There were quite a few different bodies on display, and many were displayed to clearly show one or the other system (such as the nervous or skeletal system). Here in Germany it was a huge issue whether or not the exhibit would even be allowed to be shown, because of moral reasons. Many find it perverse and wrong that human beings should be cut open and put on display for the masses to see. Some of the displays were not allowed to be shown (such as the horse and rider display) because they were not academically educational enough. Many visitors and others have found it perverted and not appropriate handling of human bodies. I can’t say that I share these feelings. Of course no one contests the use of cadavers by doctors and med students for educational purposes, and I don’t see why it should be different with the general public. And that’s eventually why it was allowed to come to Germany, but there is still the issue of presentation. Many of the displays look quite artistic, such as the basketball player, or the chess player. Some find this disturbing. I think a good point was made on one of the displays (where the man had a hat on his head). It was said that when learning is made interesting, fun, or even funny, it draws more interest, but if it is grotesque, then it pushes people away. I agree completely. If they can make the exhibit more lighthearted, so that it doesn’t scare people away, I see that as advantageous. More education is a good thing, right?
Old Computers and Verbindungen
Yesterday in my History of Computing class we had a guest speaker who is the head curator at the Computer History Museum in California. It was very interesting, I thought. Maybe I’ll have to make it out to California someday to visit the museum. He said I could get a back-room tour if I mentioned that I had spoken with him. Sw33333t.
Then I went to see the movie “Rabbit-Proof Fence” last night. It’s an Australian film about some half-aborigine children that were taken from their home to be raised correctly in the English way. They ran away and walked 1800 km back home. It was a really good movie. I wonder if it was even released in America.
Tonight I went with a bunch of guys from my house to another Verbindung, because they stole our flag. It was a nice evening where I met some new people and had some interesting conversation. I’m glad I went.
Tomorrow (well, technically later today) I’m leaving for Munich at 8:00am. It seems there is an exhibit of preserved human bodies and body parts, most of them cut open so you can view the organs and other parts inside of them. Should be very interesting.
Keine Lust
Sunday afternoon, and I don’t feel like doing anything at all. On Friday I went to the Herbert Grönemeyer concert in Ludwigshaven. It was good, but my back hurt so bad from standing for 5 hours that I couldn’t really enjoy the end. Oh well. I’m glad I went.