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Today was a fun last day of classes. I’ll run through my day (don’t mind the simple sentences – it’s sort of like a list.) First period, I had English and did nothing. Second Period I had a free. Third period we actually reviewed math. Fourth was Gym and 6 people showed up. Steve and I were talking to Waters about how bad the Yankees are.

Physics gets its own section! First off, I got extra credit for handing in the same teacher autographed copy of the reference tables (handed out in September). This was great because I lost them once and feared I wouldn’t get credit. As soon as I found them, I copied them and taped the original to my wall. Then the awards were given out. Poor Steve got last place in the Physics Olympics, but got a cool potato growing thingy. First place was given Mets tickets and second place was given a gift certificate to Coldstone. And then awards were handed out for memorable moments in class. I got “Closet Physics Geek” for calculating the speed of sound from fireworks and other geeky physics things I did. I also won the tight T-shirt competition (because I was dared to wear one) and finally, class webmaster. I’m not mentioning all of the awards people won, but Dannyrob won most likely to pelt Joey the Cat with an egg (after yesterday’s incident after the rocket launches). Lee won the quantum physics award for being obsessed with photons all year. He also won the Emperor Palpatine award (because he shot bolts of lightning at people from his fingers while using the Van De Graf Generator)

After that I skipped lunch and stayed in Physics to watch the rocket launch videos from both classes. Then I went to the Library when it was done. Seventh period was Chorus and we practiced two things for graduation and then went to an air conditioned room. Eighth was Business Law and we also did nothing. And finally, ninth was History and we did a course feedback sheet, handed in a final essay and attempted to watch Chapelle but our über computer restrictions wouldn’t let us launch a dvd player. (Rumor has it that Period 6 History was blasting it in the library!) So we left 10 minutes before the bell rang and I was outside. I didn’t even hear the last bell of the year…

And then I walked to Dannyrob’s and was there until about 5, ate dinner, picked up Marc from some horrific party, walked to Borders, then came home.

So that’s my day. And that’s the school year. Senior next year! I usually don’t post news about me, but today was fun, so this is an interesting change.

Today was launch day and it was fun. This is whole reason why I took physics (well, not really). Steve and I worked on this last Friday and last Sunday.

We got to class, made the final preparations and then went outside to launch. Unfortunately, Gone Phishing (our rocket) did not do too well. It launched nicely, but the nose cone got stuck and the parachute did not deploy. It was in the air for a little over 5 seconds (sounds like a short time, but it was launched vertically at 90 degrees) before crashing into the ground (nose cone first). The egg did not survive. Bottle rockets are bulky and unstable. I’d rather use real model rockets with real engines – those are even more fun! I have to admit, some rockets were designed very nicely. We came in 5^th place, but that’s okay – NASA alwasy blows up rockets…It was a fun experience, anyway.

I then went out to see the other Physics class launch but had to leave at 1:00 for another class, so after setting up and such, I only saw three launches. It was all a big party. People who weren’t in the class were out there watching.

Images of building and launching the rockets are up here. Check it.

Apple Quicktime has released Quicktime 7. Quicktime was always average with the mov files. As of now, the best videos are compressed with Divx or Xvid codecs. But with the release of the new H.264 codec, videos can be higher in quality with reasonable sizes. Of course Quicktime 7 is still a beta for Windows and sucks. I’m bragging about the codec, not the program. So stick with 6.wahtever is out until they release 7 final for Windows.

QuickTime 7 features a state-of-the-art video codec called H.264, which delivers stunning quality at remarkably low data rates. Ratified as part of the MPEG-4 standard (MPEG-4 Part 10), this ultra-efficient technology gives you excellent results across a broad range of bandwidths, from 3G for mobile devices to iChat AV for video conferencing to HD for broadcast and DVD.