SPOILER WARNING

Do not read any portion of this post, even the comments, if you have not thoroughly read and enjoyed the Harry Potter novels. If you continue reading knowing full well that spoilers lay ahead, then perhaps you need a kick to the head.

I’ve finished reading all seven books.

The last one was a bit of a doozy. I found that there were parts of it that I enjoyed, and parts of it that I did not like. On the whole though, it was an incredibly gripping book. Unfortunately for my weak heart, the death toll spans an epic distance.

If you haven’t read the final books, you should. Whether you have started the series or not, you really should read through them all. When read back to back, you begin to unravel some of the mysteries before you are supposed to (for example, I knew of the location of two of the Horcruxes before they were revealed, and I had guessed at the third, although it was revealed mere chapters later.)

Oh yes, and both of my predictions made in an earlier post were correct (although one could be rendered false on a technicality, I’ll let you determine which one).

And, as a final note, many of the deaths that occured in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows grieved me deeply. Dobby especially.

On another note, how much suffering does the Weasley family have to endure?

Arthur Weasley - bitten by a snake and almost killed. Bill Weasley - mauled by Fenrir Grayback, horrible scarred face, shows some werewolf tendencies Fred Weasley - killed George Weasley - loses an ear because of a curse sent by Snape Ron Weasley - suffers numerous wounds, and is actually dismembered a few times through apparation accidents Ginny Weasley - narrowly avoids a killing curse from Bellatrix Lestrange

The only ones apparently sparred are Molly Weasley, Charlie Weasley and Percy. Of course, it could be argued that Charlie works at an extremely dangerous job ( “dragon-rustler” ), and Percy is not on speaking terms with his family for three years. Oh, yeah, and Molly pretty much dies everytime one of them is injured. I mean…what the fuck Rowling? Do you have some serious grudge against this family?

And you killed Colin Creevey? And Dobby? Why? Dear God…why…I was so sad when Dobby died…You have no idea.

Anyway, enough of that.

Those of you who have read the book, feel free to discuss below.

Okay. Well, the first ‘The Coin-Op’ comic is up on deviantart (until we get an actual proper place to host them, plus a new comic template).

Anyway, the thing about this comic was to emphasize that we were taking an absurdly long time with the first comic. Tori and I are well aware that we have been taking forever to actually deliver on anything related to The Coin Op, and so we decided it might be beneficial to throw up some more filler material. But then, that evolved into a somewhat funny idea of a comic where Tori was explaining that she was having trouble actually making the comic, and Tabi suggesting she throw up some filler material like other comics do.

So, yeah. We were just poking fun at how people throw up incomplete comics, filler material, or guest comics when the real work cannot get done. And, I thought it would be humorous if - rather than having neutral filler material - Tori would make the foolish mistake of throwing up some blatantly out of place filler, like - say - best Holiday Wishes.

That is the justification for that.

I’ve got to go to Waterloo today. I will have more updates later. Adios.

I saw this over at DeviantArt, and thought it might entertain you all. It is the first of many.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Are you fucking kidding me!?!? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?!

They’ve announced a new Super Smash Bros. Brawl character. Pokemon Trainer. A nameless, faceless Pokemon trainer. Suddenly, my hopes for the inclusion of Captain Olimar, Chibi Robo, and other good characters is dwindling. If Pokemon Trainer can get it, there is no hope for the world. In many ways, this looks like a stupid character. But, on closer inspection, there is something interesting about him.

And that is that you do not fight as him. Pokemon Trainer is essentially a gimmick so that they can let Poke-fans play as three Pokemon at once, the original starters, Squirtle, Bulbasaur and Charmander (although the later two are evolved). This way, it seems that you can switch in battle between any of the three in a Sheik transformation style.

While I will concede that this is interesting, I hope that somewhere, the person who is responsible for this is eating some honey garlic Pidgey wings while wearing their Pikachu skin slippers as their house burns down because the Charmander’s tail that powers their fireplace got out of control. For we must all abide by the punishment. Jesus…

I thought, given last weeks Franklin Badge announcement with the words Mother plastered all over it, that the new character would be Ness. But no. Pokemon Trainer. Super.

Joyous day.

I am released from the horrendous prison that was the University of Waterloo, and I am now free to enjoy a paltry two weeks of simple pleasures before I  start working…back at the University of Waterloo. My co-op job is with the Math Undergrad Office, and I’m really looking forward to working there.

Exams wrapped up uneventfully, I suppose.

My zeroth exam was Studies in Children’s Literature. I wrote to the best of my abilities for the in-class final essay, but I’m sure I got another sixty. I couldn’t develop any satisfactory reasoning in my mid-term essay, and since the final essay was written in the same time period as the mid-term essay, but with more questions, I figured I got about the same or worse. I can only hope my term paper was enough to salvage my mark.

My first exam written was Linear Algebra, which I am extremely concerned about. It is quite possible that I failed that class. There was only a single midterm, the assignments, and a final which was worth a hefty amount of marks. While I felt I knew the material really well (it mostly seemed to boil down to row reducing a matrix to echelon form and checking some things), the exam really destroyed me. There was one question on change-of-coordinate matrices that was gibberish (no one I knew answered it), but we afterwards decided that it must have had something to do with partitioned matrices. The point is, you couldn’t answer the question by reducing the one matrix to the identity matrix, because it was 2 x 4. Frustrating. I hope for the best.

My second exam was Computer Science (CS134), which was a course with surprisingly little programming. I did my best with efficiency and Big O notation. As far as the programs, I think I created an extremely efficient way to answer the problem. The recursive program went extremely well, but I butchered the sorting algorithm (no time). Fortunately, the sorting algorithm was worth an unfathomably small amount of marks.

In fact, most of the marks were from binary tree traversal questions. Since those are self-explanatory (preorder is root, left subtree, right subtree, and in order and post order just move the root along), I aced any related question.

My third exam was Calculus II. My knowledge for most aspects of the course seemed to be reasonable. I even answered a question that the child prodigy in our house didn’t get (he is sixteen and in honours math). So, I was proud of that. Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel that I messed up on some of the power series/Taylor polynomial questions. Andrew, if you read this, what is the Taylor polynomial of lnx at x=2? Everyone was confused by the fact that we all calculated its radius of convergence as going to infinity, which makes no sense, since lnx does not exist for any x <= 0.

Anyway, my final exam was Youth and Adolescence (other English). It was a cakewalk. My prof also handed back an assignment I wrote, about the differences between Frankenstein the film and Frankenstein the book, which evolved into a critique of the Hollywoodization of classic literature and the blatant disregard for the meaning of the original text. I was incredibly proud of the assignment. I got 100% on it. And his comments throughout it implied that he was in a state of pure artistic ecstacy as he read the assignment.

All in all, I feel I did fairly well. I am so worried about Linear Algebra, but it is out of my hands. If I have to take it again, so be it. I think my main failing with Algebra was that I focused too much on Calculus (to compensate for a poor Calculus mark first term), and I neglected Algebra. I’ve really got to find a nice balance.

Anyway, I will update when I get my marks, provided they are not too humiliating and also provided that I do not forget.

There will be a flurry of other updates, so be prepared. Sorry that this post is incomprehensible if you aren’t in math. That’s my bad.

I moved out of V1 N3 on Wednesday, and we came right up here to Pointe-au-Baril on the same day.

I’ve been hanging out here, relaxing in a post-finals style. I’m reading all the Harry Potter books right now. I’m on Goblet of Fire. After re-reading the books, I have a deeper hatred for the movies.

Anyway, all updates will resume as of Sunday, August 12th. I will have many things to comment on.

Until then,

Lemony Snicket…

I mean,

Granite