More than a year without an entry

So, what can happen someone in more than a year?

Well, for example:

A course of laser technologies:
This is the back of Ovidijus' (my friend) phone being engraved with a 1064nm infrared laser in one of the labs in Laser Research Center. It was one of the most interesting courses I had in my second semester in Physics faculty of Vilnius University.

This is the picture that was engraved on that back of the phone. It's me in the left, then Gediminas, Lukas, Lina, Aivaras and the phone owner Ovidijus. We were all lab partners during the laser course.

We learned how to operate a laser in the lab, what it contains and how to identify and compare different lasers, how to choose one or the other for a specific application and so on. It was really fantastic in Spring Semester of 09'. Maaaaan, that's ages ago.

Well, what else? Getting rejected from MIT once again but not being very sad about it, though, I still manage to react when I see those three letters somewhere in my curriculum or the media or hear groupmates talking about it. Ah well... life goes on.

One more thing that happened(but not the only) was Fidi - Physicist's day. About it - in another entry. Probably after another year :)

Anecdote!

We had a FiDi(Physicists day) veteran party last friday(students prepare it for the alumni). And one veteran told a cool anecdote. So here it is:
Newton, Pascal and Archimedes were playing hide and seek.
Archimedes was counting to 10.
Pascal quickly ran to hide behind a corner.
Newton saw that he could not hide that fast. He took a stick and drew a square around him, with a side of about 1 meter.
Archimedes counted to 10, turned over and shouted: "I found Newton!"
Newton replied: "Wrong! Newton in square meter is Pascal"

brain5ide at Vilnius University Part 2

The first of September. A national holiday here in Lithuania, because thousands of students start their studies.
So freshmen gathered by the Physics faculty early in the morning (10 A.M. ) to make some T-shirts.
Then we headed to the bus stop to go to Gediminas prospect. This is how a trolleybus filled with Physicists really looks like.

We were swinging the trolleybus together and shouting: "REZONANSAS"(Lithuanian for resonance).
After the trolleybus ride we joined other faculties for a walk through the Gediminas prospect to the yard of Vilnius university, which is in Old town in Vilnius.

And this is how I look:

My friends(Andrius in the bottom, Marius in the left, then Kornelija and Jurgis(roommate)): After the ceremony and the speaches of rector of Vilnius University, Minister of education and science, a classical music concert(which was actually impossible to listen, because of the echo from the walls of the university buildings), me and the fresmen of the Physics faculty gathered together and went to spend some time on the hill of three crosses.

And then there were parties in the dorm that evening. So this was my first day of officially being a student.

P.S. My November 2008 SAT subject test results just came. 740 Math II, 700 Physics. Not bad. But I can do better. I hope :)

brain5ide in Vilnius University Part 1 - Freshmen camp.

As I said in my last post, I'm now a student in Vilnius University. It's actually a fun place to be. Especially the Physics faculty. So let's begin the story of brain5ide in Vilnius university just from the beginning.
Freshmen camp. It took place in some camping site by the Pailgis lake near Vilnius. We all gathered in Vilnius train station, got in to a train and headed to the camp. I met many new people (as I'm the only one from my town in this faculty as a freshman) just while going to the camp and even more throughout the 3 days of camping. During the first day every group (there are 6 groups: Theoretical Physics, Applied Physics, Telecomunicational Physics and Electronics, Computing Physics, Modern Technology Physics and Management and Physics of Nuclear energetics) had to prepare a theatrical presentation of their group. There really were many fun things to see during those presentations, and even some not to see (as a naked guy, only with a fern covering his silly place - from that moment he became a star in the faculty :) ). Then there was an informal "social night" with some (think a lot) alcohol, music, talks and orienteering at night. I led one team(teams were randomly assigned), as I had a flashlight in my pocket, and my team did all the tasks first. The prize was a juicy watermelon :). The next day we had some presentations: StartFM - student radio, StudentuEra - student newspaper, Student scientific comunity, Student representatic organization, FiDi - fizikų diena (Physicist's day) and ISIC - international student identity card.
Asside from the presentations, we had an event of national matter - an Olympic Basketball semi-final match between Lithuania and Spain. Since we were in the middle of a forest by a lake, the organisers didn't anticipate to watch a basketball game. But physicists are physicists :). So there was a TV-tuner, a laptop and a video projector brought in. The cable was connected to a metal coat hanger and put on the roof of one of the houses. And we all (like ~80 people) watched the game together, cheered for lithuanian points and spanish misses and grieved on spanish points and lithuanian misses. The match was had big tension and as sad as it is to admit - Lithuania lost. But we still are in the top 4 of the basketball countries and nobody can argue.
On our second evening there we had to make a presentation from each house(there were more than ten of them). This time there was no nudity. My housemates and me made a funny remake of a lithuanian pop song. We depicted some comical events in the camp, in our house, in physics faculty. When we were singin that song to others was probably my funniest moment in the camp.
After the presentations, there was a party in a bathhouse. I think it I went to sleep as early as 5 a.m. :)
We had to leave the camp by the noon of the third day. The next faculty comming to the camp was Communications faculty(which is opposite to physics faculty in male/female ratio and is located in the same building block as the physics faculty). So we had to greet the Communications faculty girls(when we came to the camp, we were greeted by the Faculty of Economy). And we did. We created a simple little game to entertain a bit. And after the entertaining game we left the camp by the same train by which we had gotten there.

That's all that I was able to remember about an event that happened almost three months ago.

Ok...

I just got from home to my dorm and decided to have a moment of relaxation. Blink 182 is playing in the background. You may not follow, so I'll try to explain it right now.
My last post was ages ago and the next will probably be ages later. Well, I got into Vilnius University, Computing Physics course. I was #4 by admission points to this course. I'm now studying for more than two months(since 09-01). I live in the dorms because they're really near the faculty. My classmate who got into Medical faculty, lives near me but has to travel >1h every morning to get to the faculty. So I couldn't be happier to be able to live in the dorms.
What else... Ah... yeah... I got my first job for Elsis Verslo Sprendimai - a Lithuanian business IT solutions company. It's not a biig job yet, I'm just learning the work methods and the software but it's interesting and the staff is really cool.
I also keep building websites while not doing other things. It really gets overwhelming but I like it so far.
Oh, and I am also trying to get into MIT again this year. I won't try to get in as a transfer because it would be even more impossible than a freshman admission.
That's all now. See you when the hell freezes or I get into MIT (dunno which will come first).

Lithuanian exams part 2 + Graduation + Driving lessons

Read the title, so we go in order:
Lithanian: 64th percentile (that's the only thing they give us - percentiles...)
Math: 99th percentile
IT: 93rd percentile (omg, omg, totally awesom if you take into account how much I had screwed up)
Physics: 97th percentile.
So, summing everything up, I'm probably gonna get into my course of choice - Computational Physics(why? just because someone told me that if I want to learn anything new I should not take IT course only).

The prom is happening this Saturday! I'm graduating!!! This feels awesome and some sort of awkward. I'll just need to get used to it.

Oh, and driving lessons. Today I had my first one. The instructor just told that he had had worse students than me. But it was OK. Really, I didn't crash into anybody and the car is pretty much safe until my next lesson.

Lithuanian exams

Yet again my do-not-procrastinate-to-blog plan didn't work out. But now I'm full of stuff to tell anyone who dares to read this blog.
As you know, I haven't been admitted to any of the US schools that I applied. One possible reason is that I didn't send then the TOEFL instead of SAT reasoning, which was awful. At the beginning I thought that TOEFL wasn't necessary and it costs so I decided not to take it. But then I tried to apply to Richmond American International University in London, I needed the TOEFL and I made it on March 1. You can see the results on your right. I got into Richmond, but for some financial reasons I'm not going there. So here I am, worrying about my final high school exams in Lithuania because they're the only thing that can get me into a school in Lithuania (there are no interviews, no teacher recommendations, just plain old sorting by test scores).
The first exam I took was Lithuanian. I don't think it was a very tough one but there's the thing that it really depends on somebody who checks my work. I actually went to the exam pretty relaxed and was kinda relaxed all the time while sitting there, but the thrill got to me just after I left. It's the only exam in Lithuania that you MUST take and if you fail, you're in a terrible position.
The second exam was IT. A bunch of MS Office knowledge + Pascal coding. There's an interesting story about my IT exam. During the first part(the test) I was OK. But there's always the second part which was one of the worst nightmares I have ever seen. So, there we had to write two Pascal programs according to the task(it tells where to use a procedure or a function, what data types to use, you just have to put it up to a working program). We had 1.5h for the task. So there I was, writing my first program, debugging it and writing proper comments(they rate these too, as the part of the coding style, or smth.). Ok, so I completely finished the program. Then I noticed that I had a typo in my filename(and you couldn't have a typo), so I decided to rename it. I went to the program folder and saw a bunch of files, the debug data for compiler. Well, who am I to keep then, so I deleted them. And along with them I DELETED MY PROGRAM. And you konw, since I'm a computer wizzard, I don't delete regularly, like when the files go to recycle bin. NO, I had to delete it by pressing Shift+Delete, which deletes the files completely. So there I was in the exam place after an hour without any program. My hands began to shake. For a minute of something I had lost hope. I had various thoughts, like should I leave the exam and come again next time(which wouldn't be the national level, but a school level and school level sucks when you're applying) or should I go to google and quickly find a file recovery program. But with my experience with looking for free software I knew that I wouldn't find anything. So I calmed myself and just thought about it. It was still in my head, so I quickly rewrote the program just from my head, tested it and it worked like it supposed to. I didn't comment it properly, but just went to another program. I read it, didn't understand it in the beginning. I read it again and the teacher told that there are 15minutes left untill the end. And I was one program short. So who needs understanding a task, right? Those 15 minutes were one of the ugliest in my life, but then again I probably broke my typing speed record because the guy that was sitting next to me was staring his eyes at my keyboard. I wrote the whole algorithm, it was syntax error free, it compiled and didn't work. It was in a neverending loop. I tried to debug it, but couldn't make it on time. The old "5 more minutes" would have worked out for me, but it was the end. So I hope that people will at least go throught the algorithm and give me some points for it. As I spoke to other guys, nobody actually wrote the second program in my test center or it was someone to whom I didn't talk, so I might have some chances compared to others :D.
The third exam was Math. Hell yeah! It was the only exam yet that I didn't suck much and I'm not worried about it at all. I solved all the tasks and that very same night I checked my answers with some other people and they were almost the same (there's one problem of probabilities that I got wrong, but it's not a major mistake). So now I'm at least cool about my math results.
And there I have, one last exam that's going to be on Monday. Physics! I'm not that confident about it as I was in math, but I still have the whole weekend to prepare and I think I'll make it.