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Wednesday, 14 September 2005, 14:27:49 EDT

Why haven't I posted in a while? There are several reasons. The foremost being classwork. I have a ton of classwork to do every day; especially since I seem to love being at least one section behind in every class I take. I currently have about four sections of Linear Algebra work and 3.5 sections of Calculus III to catch up on. The Linear Algebra is actually rather simple. It is just time consuming because of all the matrices and the lameness of the book's author. Calculus, though, is different.

It is interesting the way calculus courses are split. The first course covers differential calculus; the second builds on that and covers integral calculus with sequences and series. The third course steps it up a bit and starts dealing with three dimensional space. My first test, this coming Monday, will cover vectors, planes, surfaces, and lines in space. It is all very pretty but it is also all very complicated. For example, finding the equation of a plane that contains the intersection of two given planes and a given point takes a wee bit of thinking. If I had my calculus book with me right now I would actually go through that problem here but it, and my work, is at home; so, I will do that later.

When I haven't been working on classwork I have been watching the first season of Lost on DVD. My roommate got me interested in the show at the end of the season a few months ago and I can't resist a good story line. Best Buy always sells new release DVDs at a discount and I got an extra $10.00 off because of my store card. So, I bought the season set a day or so after it came out and have been watching it whenever I can since then. I will have the first season wrapped up before next Wednesday's season two premiere. The show itself is good but the DVDs are poorly produced. My first complaint with them is the movie trailers that automatically start playing on the first disc. Sure, put them on there as "features" but don't start them automatically. I didn't buy the DVDs to watch movie trailers; I can do that online. The other gripe I have is the lack of editing for DVD. Every time an episode would fade to black for on-air commercials the DVD episode will fade to black even if it would work without the fade. If the show is going to cut to a completely different sequence after the break, which it does frequently, then it is okay to leave the fade in. But, if the show is going to immediately pick back up where the fade cut in, then take it out for the DVD. It is just annoying; bootleggers do a better job of cutting out commercial breaks than the people that produced this DVD set. Those are really the only problems though. The menus are well done and they included 5.1 and 2.0 audio; which I like, because I don't have a 5.1 setup.

For a network television show, Lost is very good. It has a complex, engaging, story with decent writing. It isn't quite an HBO show but it works. It is certainly a lot better than the "reality tv" crap that is clogging the air waves now. If you haven't seen it you should at least rent it. I am not even done with the first season and am anticipating the second one.

There, that is why posts have been few here this month. I am just doing too many other things. I will probably post that calculus problem tomorrow so stay tuned. It is a doosie.