Test Post

I've been playing a lot of Go (Weiqi, Baduk...) lately.
Today, I read that the sixth line is sometimes called "the amateur line" and the seventh line "the expert line". I'm not expert enough yet to tell why they are important precisely.
I gave a shot at playing at four corners on seven seven points rather than a "sane" opening, and the game between myself and the program (Gnugo) at the default setting was pretty close - it won by 15 stones. I think it was because I built a huge inside wall and then pushed on two sides to make life on the edges. It still had the feeling of being unsound play, though... not as solid as playing in the corners, where "real" players play.

I figure there are still major fundamentals I don't grasp about position on the board, though I think I understand the notion of thickness at least superficially, though there is a lot of depth there http://senseis.xmp.net/?Thickness%2FAtsusa and the proverb "play away from thickness" makes sense in theory, but brings chaos to me if I try to implement it too strongly - I can't just tenuki (play elsewhere) every turn after all...

In other news, school is going mediocre. I'm not worried about a D in any class but I am worried about a C in Calculus. A third of our class was devoted to a chapter I still feel I don't understand very well and we're getting towards the end of the year. At least Chapter 9, three-space and vectors, is "easy" stuff (Just trig, har har!). Well, at least next quarter it will all be over (and I'll only have two calculus courses instead of one... waitaminute...)

I think a bunch of books for my birthday was a bad present; its hard to focus on classes, haha, when I'm waiting to try to get a grasp on Aubrey de Grey's book on aging, Melanie Mitchell's Guided Tour of complexity, etc... in addition to my library books. I'd like to find out what the number Gamma is all about but I haven't gotten much past the opening of the book I have on it, I keep jumping from project to project....

I've been writing again lately too, though not much, mostly junk. I started on a horror story that looks pretty cliched (an adoptee looking for his biological parents finding out they are horrible monsters) but going from not feeling creative at all to feeling like a copycat is a victory of a small sort:)

The next time I get money, I need to buy a lamp so I can read in bed.