Today I went to the Video Games Live concert at the Mershon Auditorium. I'm trying to think of a clever adjective to describe it, but I can only think of "awesome".

The Columbus Orchestra and choir performed a wide variety of music. Everything they did was amazing; notable highlights include The Legend of Zelda, Medal of Honor, Final Fantasy, and Advent Rising. They also had performances by The Video Game Pianist. You might have remembered him from the videos of him playing video game music blind folded. He did a medley of Final Fantasy. He was really amazing; his hands were a complete blur, jumping from one end of they piano to the other. During the encore we made him play some Tetris and Mario. Also, the building has a 3-story pipe organ; he used it to play Castlevania.

They had some contests during the show too. During one of them, two volunteers got to play Frogger (with the orchestra playing the music along in the background). Whoever got the highest score would win a $2,400 laptop. The first guy, well, I guess he got nervous and completely messed up. All of his frogs died before his 2 minutes were up. The other guy just played it safe and won.

The final piece was Halo, which was amazing because of the choir. It was just like the opening song. Mike was next to me and kept yelling, "One Winged Angel!" between each piece. He was lucky, because the encore was just that. They played One Winged Angel, which is the final boss theme from Final Fantasy 7.

In conclusion, I am tired.

Posted by Terence! at 2:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's that time of year again... time to take midterms. They come so soon, and sound so intimidating; my roommate had one as early as 1.5 weeks into the quarter. I can honestly say that I have the worst study skills ever.

My strategy is this: I skim the textbook and pick up all the basic facts and equations. During the exam, I rely on my common sense and intuition to put everything together. What happens is I'm still taking the test 10 minutes after the bell rings, and the teacher is practically yanking it from my hands as I try to scribble some final incorrect answers.

The results are inconsistent: sometimes I'll end up with a delicious A or B+, and other times I'll get a test back and the paper will be soaked in red ink, with occasional dry white areas showing through. If you were to plot all of my grades onto a curve, and then construct an amusement park ride using the curve as the basis of the track, I would first make sure the ride was within 5 miles of a hospital and a law firm.

The thing is, I'm not too worried about bad grades. College classes are usually very generous with curves, so your best bet is to hope everyone else fails. Or, you could try hard and do well. I heard good things about that strategy.

Posted by Terence! at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Next Thursday there is a Video Games Live concert at the Mershon Auditorium at 7:30pm. VGL is a concert tour that performs video game music internationally. It is a pretty well known event, and I'm going to go with a few friends. I've heard about the event before but I didn't think there would be a concert so close to me. It's literally about an 8 minute walk away. They have concerts all over the world: all over Europe, Brazil, Canada, and now the US.

The Columbus Symphony performs the music from various video games, from really old Atari games to the newest ones, like from the Halo or Metal Gear Solid series. They play the music while a bunch of crazy visual effects goes on, and there is video game stuff everywhere. I'm pretty excited about going; we are getting the most expensive seats, and have a pretty big group going. It's definitely a good break from midterms!

Posted by Terence! at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's such a nice day outside, and here I am inside, telling you about how nice of a day it is. The weather has been terrible the past week, but it looks like it's improving. My roommates and I were planning on having a cookout last weekend. I bought an 8 pound box of 32 burgers, and miscellaneous delicious items. The weather was terrible that weekend though, so instead I ate at my brother's house where we had a 7-hour Terminator marathon. This weekend looks potentially cookoutable; now I can finally get to those burgers (although I secretly ate some (via the stove) last night for dinner).

Gah, I have my window open (I guess that means I'm half outside?) and the smell of some grilled burgers is permeating throughout my room. Not fair. I think I'm gonna eat some right now.

Posted by Terence! at 6:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So the other day, I was at Meijer doing some grocery shopping.
I noticed some Easter themed tables where they held Easter related contests. One of them was to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar. The prize: the beans themselves. Now I am usually a good sport about things. But I am also very competitive, and when jelly beans are at stake, I bring out the math. I counted the number in the circumference and the height, and plugged it into the following equation:

height · circumference²

4π

The result was 732, which I hastily marked on my entry form.

About 20 minutes after I leave the store, I got a call: "Are you Terence Lee?"

"Yes."

"You just won the Meijer jelly bean contest! There were 720 jelly beans in the jar."

They asked me my age. I panicked. I thought the contest was just for cheery 7-year old kids. I told them the truth: I was 19.  Awkward pause. "Okay, I guess we don't need to get parental permission then." Whew.

I went back to the store and picked up the jar. It looked like the staff was expecting a little boy or girl to show up. Nope. Those little kids probably made dumb guesses like 100.  100 is probably the biggest number they can think of. I crushed the dreams of little children and gained some tasty morsels (my two favorite hobbies) all with one application of math. My self esteem is pretty high right now.

The moral of the story:  Teach your kids geometry in 1st grade, or a mean college kid will steal their candy.

Posted by Terence! at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)