Captain's Log: Final Log

Hello my fellow space pupils. It is with a heavy heart that I write this final captain's log in hopes to inspire you to keep moving forward with your lives although the captain will not be with you physically. He will however be with you in spirit! There is much to learn still in your young lives and the captain wishes you the best in gaining knowledge and learning from you follies. The knowledge that he has passed on to you will aid you in your survival in this universe and has been passed down to you in hopes that you will pass it on to others. The captain has one final word of advice for internet choices; he recommends you use someone other than time warner cable due to their constant lag spikes and useless service via phone. He would like to suggest AT&T as it is apparently a gamers’ best friend providing low pings all across the universe. Good luck to those of you venturing out to take your final tests on the topics and subjects of this universe and that you pass them using the knowledge you have gained from the captain and from class. He hopes that your remaining journey through The Ohio State University will be both smooth and enjoyable. You will find times of trial, frustration, reward, celebration and happiness. Now continue on in your journeys and never forget that the captain is always a "Pokerface" dance away in the galaxy. Where there is trouble, he will be there, where there is a need for knowledge he will be there, and wherever there is someone in need of assistance, the captain will dance in the face of danger to save them. This is the captain signing out.

Captain's Log 74: One to go

We are very close to our final blogs ad the end of the quarter. This time tomorrow I will be excited as I will be done with the quarter and able to relax and give a much needed cleaning to my apartment. There are many things that I plan on doing over the break form videogames, sports, family and friends time, some card games, and much more. Then I will have to prepare to be a teaching assistant next quarter as well as a student. I look forward to being able to help others through a class I already took and help them avoid the pitfalls that I encountered. It is funny that I just realized that if I simply studied a little each week for my classes I really could avoid the cramming process that I have done every year before finals and midterms. It would be a lot less frustrating and stressful. I hope everyone else's quarter is going well and that they finish strong this will be almos the captain's final transmission and he hopes you all will enjoy the break nad have a great next quarter. I am now going to continue cramming for my exam that is at 7am and I hope that all of you have exams that are later in the morning to avoid creaming so close to the final exam and not having any motivation for it.  Well that is all for  now so the captain is going to log off and study.

Captain's Log 73: The END is NEAR

Finally the year is coming to a close and only one song is standing out at the moment. "The Final Countdown" by Europe. Here are the lyrics to the song so that you too can be singing them in your mind as the end nears! Lyrics are as follows:

We're leaving together
But still it's farewell
And maybe we'll come back
To earth, who can tell?
I guess there is no one to blame
We're leaving ground
Will things ever be the same again?

It's the final countdown
The final countdown

Ohh
We're heading for Venus and still we stand tall
'Cause maybe they've seen us and welcome us all, yea
With so many light years to go and things to be found
(To be found)
I'm sure that we'll all miss her so
[ From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/e/europe-lyrics/the-final-countdown-lyrics.html ]

It's the final countdown
The final countdown
The final countdown
(The final countdown)
Ohh ho ohh

The final countdown, oh ho
It's the final countdown
The final countdown
The final countdown
(The final countdown)

Ohh
It's the final countdown
We're leaving together
The final countdown
We'll all miss her so
It's the final countdown
(The final countdown)
Ohh, it's the final countdown
Yea

So let this song be stuck in your head and look it up if you have not heard it before. It would be hard to believe that you had never heard it before. There are many other songs that are fitting but we will leave those out as this song stands above all else! It is THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!!!

Captain's Log 72: Info on My Favorite Game

Players are formed into 2 even teams with 1-5 champions on each team. Each team starts at opposing sides of a map, near what is called a "Nexus". A match is won when either the opposing team's Nexus is destroyed or the other team surrenders. To destroy a Nexus, each team must work through a series of towers called "Turrets". Turrets are often placed along a path to each base referred to as a "Lane". Along the way, each player must gain levels from killing the opposing team's "Champions" and "Minions" (small NPCs that constantly spawn and attack the other team) and defeating neutral monsters (some of which grant buffs known as Crests upon death). Also, champions purchase "Items" with in-match gold to improve their champion. In League of Legends, each player starts at level 1 at the beginning of the match and can obtain the maximum of level 18 with their champion, leveling 4 different champion-specific abilities.
The idea of a spiritual successor to Defense of the Ancients that would be its own stand-alone game with its own engine, rather than another Mod of Warcraft III began to materialize at the end of 2005.^[9] League of Legends was born "when a couple of very active DotA community members believed that the gameplay was so much fun and so innovative that it represented the spawning of a new genre and deserved to be its own professional game with significantly enhanced features and around-game services."^[9]
Riot Games was co-founded by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill.^[8] They partnered with some of the key creative minds behind the creation of DotA-Allstars, Steve "Guinsoo" Feak and Steve "Pendragon" Mescon.^[9] Riot Games officially opened its office in September 2006, and currently has about 40 people working on League of Legends, "including their robust technology platform to service and operate the game as well as a team dedicated to community relations."^[9]

Captains Log 71: Caprica

I wasn't particularly fond of the episode we wathed today. It did not appear to be going anywhere in the long run and in the end it was just sort of decent. The characters nor the story line were all that interesting and it didn't hold my attention very well. The episode lacked action and the frontal nudity of the girls did not help it keep my attention. It might have been their desperation move to keep male viewers. More action or scenes with a deeper plot would have been appreciated to at least keep me interested in this perspective.  I am unsure of what else to say about it as most of the episode just did not keep my interest and the storyline appeared to sit still. A few people died and there was a virtual girl who was a copy of the real girl that died. Honestly that is about all that I got out of it and I am not surprised that it lacked in the story line department. Most prequels are not that great because the show has already advanced beyond the spec of the prequel. Who cares how it got to where it was in BSG? We do not need the pre-story after the actual story was made. It is along the same lines of how I feel about the star wars pre-stories coming out many many years after the star wars trilogy had been out. They were my least favorite movies and I disliked all of them. I guess I am just not an overall fan of prequels. The just seem pointless after making the story that came after them. Why not just start with them?

Captain's Log 70: Blog About Physical Chemistry

Here is an excerpt from my lab report that I have gotten to write every week of this quarter:

This experiment was utilized to determine the vapor pressures and enthalpies of sublimation for vanillin and o-vanillin. The experiment used a diffusion pump with a liquid nitrogen trap to expose pellets of vanillin and o-vanillin to low pressures at specified temperatures.  Geometry optimizations were performed on the monomers and π-stack, mirror and rotated mirror dimer structures of vanillin and o-vanillin using the semi-empirical AM1 level of theory. The computational results gave energies of -91.64 kcal/mol and -89.73 kcal/mol for vanillin and o-vanillin respectively. The results from the dimer structures of vanillin gave values of -183.42 kcal/mol for the π-stack, -183.12 kcal/mol for the mirror and -187.69 kcal/mol for the rotated mirror structures. . The results from the dimer structures of o-vanillin gave values of -181.42 kcal/mol for the π-stack, -182.24 kcal/mol for the mirror and -182.06 kcal/mol for the rotated mirror structures. The results suggest that the rotated mirror structure was the most stable structure for the vanillin and the mirror structure was the most stable structure for the o-vanillin.  

The vapor pressures for vanillin for trials 1 and 2 were found to be 0.24 Pa (75 °C) and 0.064 Pa (60 °C) respectively, and 0.034 Pa (38 °C) and 5.36E-3 Pa (31 °C) for trials 1 and 2 for o-vanillin. The experimental enthalpies of sublimation for vanillin and o-vanillin were found to be 82.6 kJ/mol and 180.7 kJ/mol respectively. The literature values were found to be 88.7 kJ/mol for vanillin and 54.1 kJ/mol for o-vanillin. The experimental and literature values for vanillin are fairly close while the values for o-vanillin differ by a larger magnitude. The experimental results suggest that o-vanillin is more stable than vanillin, but this is not true. An error must have arisen in the experiment that skewed the data for the o-vanillin data such as water trapped in the crevices of the Knudsen cell. It is suggested that the experiment be performed with improved equipment and a more water tight cell be used.

How exciting does this sound?