More Fun with the VSA

Yesterday was a lot of fun, in my class we discussed the cryptography Jason had given us to look and do some problems on. It was mostly about the Bifid Cipher, and encrypting/decrypting messages with that. When we had finished going over that, we moved on to some problems in the book. I haven't come across problems of that difficulty very often. I love this class a lot because it makes you really think, but you aren't pressured to get the right answer because there aren't any grades or tests. It's awesome. 

Downtown Nashville, as seen from my room

We went to lunch after we worked on the problems in the book. Lunch wasn't really exciting, unlike Tuesday, when the fire alarm went off, but I think I'm ok with not having to evacuate the building on a false alarm a couple of days in a row. 

Back in the classroom, we kept working on some problems in groups, with my group trying to figure out how to convert 13 into base Pi, as well as trying to figure out another really hard base problem. The problem involves base Phi, or base (1+square root of 5)/2. We were trying to figure out if every number has a unique representation (can't be represented more than one way) in base Phi if only 0s and 1s are allowed and 1s can't be together. It was super fun trying to find these answers, because it really made you think. I think that's my favorite part about the VSA so far - that you really have to think, and hard.

The blackboard we filled in the afternoon

That night was great too. We had our first SOFT night (Sign Out for Free Time) where we could sign out to go off-campus in a specific radius. I went with a group to SATCo's, the San Antonio Taco Company. (They do like their acronyms here.) It was super good, they had us complete forms as the menu so you'd just hand them your order and it was out in no time at all. It was especially nice to not eat dorm food, and good non-dorm food at that. After the SOFT night ended we headed back to our dorms for some sleep.

Eating out at SATCo's!

Today was similarly great (I'm sensing a pattern here) and started off as usual, with class. We worked on understanding the card shuffles, and I think we finally got it! The solution was complex, but I'm glad we figured it out. It was a super hard problem, and we still have plenty more to work on. Most of our morning was devoted to the shuffles, but in the afternoon we also did some work on the Chinese Remainder Theorem. It's super complex and I don't quite understand it yet, but I can't wait to figure it out.

The remainder of the day I spent doing laundry, which wasn't too interesting, and at the dance.

The dance was pretty fun, and everyone else I could tell was enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, my stomach was bugging me a little bit so I decided to go to the game room and hang out there for the last half hour or so of the dance. I don't think it's anything major though, so we'll see how it goes tomorrow.