hot udon and hot thoughts

i’m going to try to blog weekly this summer, just to keep a record of what i am doing.

the school year technically hasn’t ended yet (exams are still going on), but i finished my one and only final last friday. so, this is my first week of summer!

today i took the red line to porter square and tried yume ga arukara for the first time. i ordered their “hot udon”:

it was the best udon i’ve had in boston (and maybe the best udon i’ve ever had—so far, at least). the broth was rich and savory, and the noodles were very soft and bouncy. the beef was also super tender (which is where many other restaurants fall flat), and they included some extra fatty cuts. i do think it was slightly on the pricier side ($15) but i think it’s good value considering the other options in the area. they also had a spicy udon that i want to try, so i may be going back soon in the future.

instead of the taking the t, though, i will probably ride the m2 shuttle using my newly obtained harvard id! i finally figured out how to apply for one (it turns out i just had to google “harvard library card mit” and i got to this page). after getting udon, i walked to harvard square. to get the card you first have to set up an appointment with the privileges office at the widener library. from your appointment, you then go to the smith campus center, ask security to go the 8th floor harvard id office, and finish the process there.

i then walked to the donut villa diner in central square and met up with some friends. i ordered a waffle with strawberries and cream:

apart from the absolute mountain of whipped cream, i wasn’t particularly impressed by the waffle (and it was $12 oops). in fact i wasn’t particularly impressed by donut villa in general (i am slightly biased though because i donut like american diner style restaurants), but they did seem to have good vegan offerings.

ok don’t worry i won’t only talk about food! here are some of the other things i’ve been doing:

• this afternoon i tried to install arch linux on the desktop pc i grunged in fall semester. it was really interesting learning how to partition disks and getting a better understanding of how linux works. unfortunately, my current setup’s ethernet connection isn’t working for some reason so i need to figure out how to fix it.
• i made a discord bot to automatically scrape mit confessions posts, forward them to a discord channel, and store them in a database. i’m hoping to do some cool data-science-y things with the database.
• in a discord server i’m in, someone proposed the idea of crowdsourcing grades data to determine course grade cutoffs (for courses that don’t release their exact cutoffs). i made a google sheet and google form “app” that lets people anonymously enter their grades and then automatically formats the data into cutoff estimates. i may send it out (first to ec-discuss probably, then possibly dormspam?) after finals ends. i learned how to manipulate arrays in google sheets, which was very cool (and also learned about the query function, but i ended up not needing it).
• i djed at a hall (internal, so invite-only) party! it was my first time djing in an environment and it was fun to try different things out. i definitely learned a lot about what music people like.

looking forward, there are a few things i’d like to do over the summer:

• start exercising again. to be honest, building up an exercise routine again is the main goal i want to accomplish. i stopped exercising this semester (outside of skateboarding and walking around), and it has not been ideal. i’m currently planning to run in the morning, and do strength training in the afternoon. this will entail shifting my sleep schedule forward, which is something i want to do as well.
• go out and explore boston! i’m going to be living at my frat’s house in back bay, which is a super convenient location for going out in the city! it’s very hard for me to get off campus during the school year, so i really want to take advantage of the summertime to get to know boston better. i’m excited to try out different restaurants, but i think i’ll mainly just be walking around a lot!

and here are some things that would be nice to do, but aren’t as high of a priority:

• learn a violin piece. i want to maintain my skills over the summer, and i think working on a piece of music that i like would help!
• learn how to ollie. i’ve been struggling to ollie for the past several months. maybe it can finally click in the summer?
• learn more rope dart moves. so, unfortunately, i did not get more into fire spinning this semester. what i really need to do is go somewhere spacious, and watch some tutorial videos while practicing. i just felt too self-conscious to do this during the school year
• djing and music production. i made a remix of dnce’s “cake by the ocean” for a compilation, and i was super happy with how it turned out. i want to build my audience more, but i honestly don’t really know how to socialize online. i’ll keep trying to submit to compilations (so one track a month!).
• youtube? i’ve been considering reviving my youtube channel (i just got a new camera lens). however, youtube content is very difficult and time-consuming to produce. i do have some old footage i can edit, so that’s also an option.

since i’m doing web dev for my internship this summer, i probably won’t do many cs-related projects during the summer—at least until my internship ends.

i’ll be packing and moving the rest of this week, and my internship starts next week. see you then!