During this past year at the U of R, I lived in Hollister 640, a single in the Susan B. Anthony building. The room had a fantastic view of the Genesee river and the skyline of downtown Rochester. I loved to just stare out the open window at night and enjoy the lights. One of my favorite memories came during the first few weeks of school, when I could see, over the Kodak building on the far left, the fireworks that were being shot off after the Redwings baseball game. I’m really going to miss this room.

The shot above is ISO 50 with a 10s exposure. I tried exposures between 5 and 15 seconds but decided that I liked this version the best, because it captured the cloud without blowing out the lights in the foreground. No editing except a small crop.

By the way, I’m now a junior

High Falls, from the pedestrian bridge

The space is unused currently, although in fairly good shape. The security guard who showed us around told us that the revolving part of the floor has been cemented down since the restaurant closed in the mid-1980’s. The outer perimeter has been glassed in to create 10 or 12 small rooms, each with a view of a different part of the city. There are signs in some of the rooms showing what landmarks can be seen in that direction.

The 21st floor of the First Federal Building, which used to house a rotating restaurant

I got a chance to take some good aerial photos of the city, although it was a gray, cloudy day, the windows were dirty, and my camera isn’t very good. However, I think this one of the view looking towards the U of R came out OK. In the photo there are three bridges. The one most in the foreground is Broad Street, and under it is Rochester’s abandoned subway. Before the subway was built, it was an aqueduct for the Erie Canal, which was rerouted to bypass the center city. The city is now planning to rip out the street and make it back into a canal, in hopes of restoring some of downtown’s former vitality. Other landmarks of interest are the library, which is between the two bridges, and built so that water goes right under it, and Cobb’s Hill, which can be seen in the far background with the radio broadcasting towers on top of it.

View of Rochester looking towards U of R, taken from the top of the rotating restaurant

More photos from the trip can be found on my flickr page.

The five finalists for the new logo have been selected from over 100 initial ideas. The shield has been updated but still retains many of the important elements of the old logo: “Meliora,” the motto, meaning “Always Better,” the three divisions of learning, and the dandelion, which is an important school symbol. The goal for the logo is to look unique, but dignified, and to signal that UR is a “world-class research institution.”

Personally, I like the crest on the second logo, but I like the typography on the first. The name fits inside a clean rectangle, and the word “Rochester” is emphasized without having to be disproportionately larger than the first part of the name.

Which logo do you like best and why? Leave a comment here, and be sure to take the official survey so that your vote can be counted.

I think that most college students believe that there is little that each of us can do to bring about positive climate change, because we don’t control many aspects of our energy usage. So I put this list together as a jumping-off point for people to start thinking about easy ways that they can save energy. I’m also hoping to motivate myself to do more of these things by actually writing them down. If you have any other ideas, please share them in the comments.

If you want more statistics on world energy usage, a good place to start is the Energy Information Administration of the US Department of Energy.

1. Shut your computer off or put it to sleep when you aren’t using it. I know that we all like to leave our computers on all the time, me included. It’s much more fun to come back and see IM’s and emails waiting, but it wastes a lot of energy. If you use your computer as an alarm clock, get a program that is able to wake your machine from sleep in the morning (such as Alarm Clock, so you don’t have to leave your computer on all night. If you have a second LCD monitor, shut it off when you aren’t using it.
2. Take a shorter shower. Everybody likes to take long showers, especially when you don’t want to go to class in the morning, but just standing under the water is really wasteful. Shortening your shower by 3 minutes can save anywhere from 7-15 gallons of water, depending on the showerhead.
3. Shut off the lights. This one’s easy. Don’t leave lights on when you leave the room, ever. Don’t turn them on during the day. If you are using your computer at night, only turn as many lights on as you need to keep from straining your eyes.
4. Get fluorescent light bulbs. They are 4-6 times more efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs, meaning that you can buy a 15W fluorescent bulb that produces as much light as a 60W incandescent. In addition, fluorescent lights produce less heat, and last an average of 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs. Simply replacing one 100W incandescent bulb with a 27W compact fluorescent will save the equivalent of 800 pounds of energy-producing coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 365 pounds over the lifetime of the bulb. Students here at the U of R can’t complain that fluorescent bulbs are too expesive – the school will give them to you for free.
5. Use public transportation and carpool. Many college students have cars when they could really get by without them. Public transportation, although a slight inconvenience, is much more environmentally friendly and more economical, as most schools offer free bus lines. If you are going home for break, find other students from your area to carpool with. You’ll save a lot of money and have more fun. U of R students can use the online rideboard to post ride requests or to look for potential passengers.
6. Turn your cellphone off at night. No reason for it to stay on, only that there is the possibility of getting woken up during a really deep sleep. If someone absolutely needs to reach you, there are other ways.
7. If you can, turn down the heat. Better to wear more clothes to keep warm during the cold months than to overheat your room. If you can’t turn down the heat, talk to your campus facilities department and complain that the dorms are too warm (most are).
8. Print less, print double-sided. Many professors ask students to read online or pdf excerpts from books and magazines. If at all possible, read them on your computer screen, not on paper. It’s not that bad if you make the font large and adjust the contrast levels to make it easy on your eyes (some LCD monitors have a “text” setting). If you do have to print, use the double-sided setting, and set the ink level to light. And when you are done with it…
9. Recycle. Especially paper. The more we recycle, the less has to be produced from scratch. When you recycle last week’s homework, or today’s newspaper, you save energy from being spent on cutting down new trees, and also those trees are now able to reduce the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Each citizen in the United States uses an average of 650 pounds of paper each year, compared to 40 pounds a year in developing countries. If you are able to, buy recycled paper to use in your personal printer. Buy notebooks made from recycled paper. Recycle everything possible, and if your school doesn’t have a recycling program, find out why.
10. Share these tips with everyone you know. Be the person that walks around shutting off lights and dripping faucets. Educate your friends and those you live near. To effect significant climate change, there must be a huge reduction in the world’s current carbon emissions. The irony is that to produce this huge reduction, everyone must do their part to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

Brown: Visitors to Brown’s website are greeted with an extremely simple, clean homepage that has a header and a list of popular destinations, with related links in smaller text to the right. When mousing over an item on the list, it slides open like a drawer to reveal a recent news item. “Life on Campus,” for instance, reveals information about a series of free concerts to celebrate a newly renovated recital hall. These drawers are extremely well-implemented; there is even a short delay before they pop open so that you can move your mouse freely without springing open every drawer.

Dartmouth: Dartmouth’s three-column design resembles that of a blog, with quick links to events and news on the right, short news features in the middle, and important links on the right. The header is a large, visual representation of recent college events; each time the site is refreshed, a random picture is selected from a pool of nine or ten. The pictures are replaced with new ones each week. Needless to say, the photos are beautiful and convey well the collegiate atmosphere. The spacing is perfect, the colors are very pleasing, especially the light background, and the text is the perfect size.

It is interesting to note that Brown’s site was developed with the help of Pentagram, a design company with a wide portfolio and many recognizable clients. Dartmouth’s, on the other hand, was developed totally in-house. I slightly prefer Dartmouth’s design over Brown’s because everything is visible at once. Although Brown’s tabs are sexy, the appeal wears off quickly.

I suppose that I’m writing about other collegiate websites because I have website envy. The University of Rochester’s site looks quite outdated. I want to be able to set it as my homepage, but it’s much too static. Great websites, such as Dartmouth’s, are always changing. There is something new to look at every time you visit. Another great example of this is MIT. The homepage image is created by a different member of MIT and changes each day; it is used to spotlight important research and events.

At Rochester’s site, the news section, which is the only dynamic part of the page, is too small. College news should be prominent; it should be the second thing (after the logo/name) that catches the eye. It shows that the college is alive, that faculty are productive and that students are enjoying themselves. Another problem is that the same thirty or so pictures have been gracing the front page for the past few years. The whole site could use more of the screen; right now it isn’t taking advantage of today’s higher-resolution monitors. Hopefully a site redesign will arrive with the new logo and new identity that we will be getting later this year.

We here at the University of Rochester see a sickening amount of UR puns throughout the year. The prize for winning Intramural sports is a shirt that says “UR A Champion,” the orientation packets say “UR Here,” and the money on our debit account is called “URos,” pronounced like Euros. There are even Facebook groups dedicated to curbing the proliferation of UR puns. And now they show up on not one, but two different Valentine’s Day hearts. Maybe the Admissions Office should start sending out “UR Mine” hearts with acceptance packages, and “UR Bad” hearts with rejection letters. OK, that idea was even worse than the original pun. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Although I and many other college students now get our news mainly from the internet, it is refreshing to have the option of an old-school newspaper. First off, the comic section and crossword are two integral parts of the paper that can’t be duplicated online. Also, a paper can be read in many places where it would be impractical to bring a computer. Try reading internet news while walking to class; that takes real coordination. I often pull the paper out and read a few articles if I get to class early, and I also read it when I’m riding the city bus to my volunteer job tutoring at one of the local schools. I know that I won’t read the paper everyday because I’m much too busy, but it is great to have the option.

My only gripe about the program is that money is being spent on USA Today, which seems to be the paper that people want to read the least. College students either want to read a real newspaper, such as the Times, or the local newspaper. USA Today is something that travelers read while staying in a hotel because they don’t care about local news. Unfortunately, USA Today is partly involved in bringing this program to campus. The Collegiate Readership Program name is theirs, and I’m almost sure that they are providing some monetary support for the program. The money would be better spent on more of the other two papers, though, as copies of those are usually gone before noon. However, I can’t complain too much, as fewer papers left means that more students are taking advantage of this worthwhile program.

Update: At 9:30am this morning, there were no copies of the New York Times left in my dorm. Luckily there were still piles in Wilson Commons.

I’m hesitant to speak about the semester when it isn’t actually done yet. Although 23 credits was absolutely insane, and I’m entirely sure that I won’t take that much of an overload ever again in my life, I must say that it was a really good experience to have. It will make next semester feel like vacation in comparison, and it has really gave me an idea of what it is like to be so busy you feel like you are going to go out of your mind. Another great thing about it was that it made the semester absolutely fly by. Most weeks I didn’t have a spare minute to think, from Monday at 8am to Friday at 3pm, and I really enjoyed it. It also helps that my classes were interesting.

Looking back, I thought that:

• My Multivariable Calc class was going to be easy (Hell no)
• My Discrete Math class would be interesting (Turns out I already knew most of the course material, and the homework was really long and repetitive busywork)
• My Physics class would be moderately hard (There were pages, and I mean pages, of math every lecture. I still haven’t wrapped my head around all of the derivations)
• My Arabian Nights class would have really good discussions (There were classes where only one or two people talked)
• I would really like my Circuits class (I loved it)

Top prize for my favorite class of the semester was my circuits class. The lectures were well taught, the labs actually helped me learn the material, mostly because they required designing circuits as pre-lab exercises, and the homework was almost fun in a nerdy way. Physics was a close second. That class took me to a whole new level in calculus, and made me want to get a minor in Physics. Lectures were good, but not outstanding, but the lecture notes that our professor gave us every class were fantastic. It was like he wrote his own textbook. So if you attend the University of Rochester and you ever have the chance to take Circuits with Professor Jones or Honors Physics with Professor Cline, I highly recommend it.

Next semester is the first semester that I am taking not a single liberal arts class. Quantum Mechanics, Data Structures, Signals & Circuits II, and Computer Organization are all on the horizon. I’m pretty excited, but first I have four exams and a hopefully fun and relaxing holiday break to get through. A thoroughly satisfying fall semester, but one that I’m glad is almost over so I can stop being so busy! Now back to the books for the next seven days straight…

These two recent additions join a room whose walls are covered with Weezer, Phish, DMB, Harry Potter, U2, and Paul Simon posters. There’s a poster dating back to the Nintendo 64 days of Mario in a bunny suit holding a silicon wafer (IBM designed the 64 chips, codenamed Gekko, and they were manufactured in Burlington). An upside-down C-3PO mask watches over the corner of my room, and there is a really colorful Peanuts mural that I made by cutting up an old calendar. The best part, of course, is the view I have of the river and the Rochester skyline from my sixth floor window.

I’ll try to post some pictures of my room when I get a chance. Everyone who comes in loves the way it is set up and decorated. I can’t say that I disagree