5AM Ramblings » inspiration

Last Lecture

Jason — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:57:27 +0000

It was 5:30 when I ran out of things to do (except for psets and studying), so I went around revisiting my normal sites. I was on Wei’s blog when I encountered his most recent post. It was a post about productivity. Ironic, I know. One of his items referenced Randy Pausch. I knew I had heard that name before, and it took a few minutes before it clicked. Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He wrote a book named The Last Lecture that I got from my computer science teacher in high school as an award. I had been meaning to read the book for a while, and I had no excuse to not read. So, I picked up the book and began reading it. I watched an episode of Dateline about Randy Pausch and his book. It was an emotional show and I could feel myself tearing up watching it. The same thing wanted to happen as I was reading the book remembering his inspirational spirit and his story.

I need to read more often, especially including powerful pieces like this book. See Booklist.

Boston Public Library Courtyard

Jason — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:01:54 +0000

As i sit here again marveling at the architecture within the Boston Public Library McKie courtyard with my small mocha latte in my left hand and my computer in front of me, do you know what I’m thinking? I should blog about this. And so, here it is, my second time to the library and my second post. And the second time I burnt my tongue on the hot coffee.

The BPL is amazingly beautiful, and is a great remanant of old architecture mixed with a new wing, all filled with books, books, books. (I’ve got to start reading more) There are all sorts of literature here, especially of a different nature than the MIT libraries. I.E. Anne of Green Gables, for Caroline. There is even a microtext section where it’s on film and you project it onto a screen so you can read it. They even have art exhibits here. I really like this library. Only complaint is slow internet…although anywhere is slow compared to MIT.

I will need to bring my camera next time to document. Now time to finish writing my first post and design the blogsite.