iceblaeze's tumblr (?)

iceblaeze - 19 - second year physicist

[iceblaeze]

another year, another login

Hello everyone! Instead of doing my physics homework that I should try to not hand in late this time, I've rediscovered Tumblr! How lovely.

I guess I'm a second year now, which seems sort of strange to say, but I've gotten used to it. In my course at university, this is where you specialise more, and can devote all of your free time towards one flavour of subject, instead of suffering between three mostly-unrelated ones and maths.

I'm a nerd, so I'm doing Physics A, Physics B, and Maths.

Anyway, onto non-academics!

Since the school year started, I've started keeping a mostly-daily diary on QOwnNotes (yes, I use ubuntu now!) which is hopefully going to help things cement themselves in my brain. Hopefully.

There isn't that much else that's really worth talking about on here. I hung out with some friends, procrastinated, got free food at society events, procrastinated, started using my bike, and procrastinated some more.

Anyway! I'm going to go do my homework now.

[iceblaeze]

where i've been (2023-01)

Here's a nice photo of the library and some of my earth science notes.

I spent Christmas with some friends, and played some Scrabble, which is actually incredibly fun. The score was very close at the end, at about 60.

We didn't realise New Years' fireworks were a thing in my city, but watched one of the online streams of fireworks in the country capital.

I also went on a trip to one of the other universities in the country, and practiced being bad at photography. Here are some pictures I took, bonus points if you can recognise the uni!

I hunted with TTFKATFKA...TTNBL for MIT Mystery Hunt, and I've signed up to help with the next one. Overall, it was a fun Hunt, but (as others have said) quite long, and I particularly enjoyed the story incorporation and characterisation. I ended up missing most of it because of time zones and other commitments, like my mocks, but oh well.

Mocks (mid-January) didn't go too well. Lots of heavy revision needed, which might be a struggle with how much stuff I've got on my plate.

Term's started up again, and I'm swamped with all sorts of busywork. I also wanted to start a puzzle club at my uni, and I'm going to help out with a guide for USESO. If you want to know more about the guide, DM me and I'll message you once it's published!

[iceblaeze]

oh no i forgot about the blog again

[iceblaeze]

2022-12-22

Another day at the Department of Chemistry's cafe, with another cup of coffee! I'll be making some Earth Science and Chemistry notes again :)

[iceblaeze]

2022-12-21

I went down to the Chemistry department's cafe (which is a hidden gem) to do some past papers today. They're closed after tomorrow which means I have to come here tomorrow too :)

The coffee is really cheap! They have mugs you can use, and you can add as much milk and sugar as you like to the coffee. It's every Arch Linux user's dream- affordable and customisable.

I also went to get a secret flavour of ice cream which ended up being chocolate and brandy. It was delicious.

[iceblaeze]

2022-12-19

It's a lovely warm day today but that also means all the snow has melted. I headed outside for once and was shocked by the courts being green instead of white. Grass pics not included.

There's a warm humid breeze blowing. It gives me late summer/early autumn vibes.

I've sat down in my current favourite spot in the library (natural light! and you can see the old buildings from the ceiling window thing!) and am going to work on some special relativity as well as kinematics if I can find problems for them.

[iceblaeze]

Physics is harder than I thought it would be :( but I guess I'll keep trying. Did a few questions and went through the relevant parts of the special relativity book. I'm going to see if I can watch some Aggretsuko later and maybe get ice cream for myself as a treat :)

[iceblaeze]

2022-12-19

It's a lovely warm day today but that also means all the snow has melted. I headed outside for once and was shocked by the courts being green instead of white. Grass pics not included.

There's a warm humid breeze blowing. It gives me late summer/early autumn vibes.

I've sat down in my current favourite spot in the library (natural light! and you can see the old buildings from the ceiling window thing!) and am going to work on some special relativity as well as kinematics if I can find problems for them.

[iceblaeze]

Last night I went to the common room because I saw it was empty, and sat down to do part of a past paper. It's a really nice place to sit down and do work. Would be nicer if it weren't pitch black outside though...

[iceblaeze]

2022-12-15

We're gonna be back at it again today with Chemistry questions in the morning, until maybe 3 pm where I decide to get proper food or just reheat some stuff in the microwave. Hall is supposed to be Staff Xmas Lunch today, which I think us students won't be allowed to eat. I'll check anyway.

I need to check with the CU about my calculator, and at least get a sticker onto it before mocks during Lent. I might do that in the afternoon, depending on my mood, or I'll swap to another subject.

[iceblaeze]

...oops I've been procrastinating reblogging this.

Lunch was available :)

Also I did a few questions and then spent the afternoon in the English Library which was a nice change.

[iceblaeze]

2022-12-15

We're gonna be back at it again today with Chemistry questions in the morning, until maybe 3 pm where I decide to get proper food or just reheat some stuff in the microwave. Hall is supposed to be Staff Xmas Lunch today, which I think us students won't be allowed to eat. I'll check anyway.

I need to check with the CU about my calculator, and at least get a sticker onto it before mocks during Lent. I might do that in the afternoon, depending on my mood, or I'll swap to another subject.

[iceblaeze]

an update

Hello everyone, I've been... busy, to say the least. Michaelmas has ended for two weeks now, and I've just been catching up on sleep and socialising (as if I hadn't done that enough already during term time).

I've just cleaned out my desk, and it looks like this for the time being, while I work on cluttering it up again.

I'll be working on some past Chemistry tripos questions this afternoon, then dinner is going to be sweet potatoes wrapped in foil and microwaved because they're 99p at Sainsbury's (is that each or per kg? who cares! they're big and cheap and hall is closed).

I guess I'll update you all in a few hours :)

[iceblaeze]

I mean, I tried. Got through two questions last night.

I also learned that you should not microwave foiled sweet potatoes. We took the foil off and microwaved normally.

The hot chocolate is from Knoops :) I was very surprised to see they have a student discount.

[iceblaeze]

an update

Hello everyone, I've been... busy, to say the least. Michaelmas has ended for two weeks now, and I've just been catching up on sleep and socialising (as if I hadn't done that enough already during term time).

I've just cleaned out my desk, and it looks like this for the time being, while I work on cluttering it up again.

I'll be working on some past Chemistry tripos questions this afternoon, then dinner is going to be sweet potatoes wrapped in foil and microwaved because they're 99p at Sainsbury's (is that each or per kg? who cares! they're big and cheap and hall is closed).

I guess I'll update you all in a few hours :)

[iceblaeze]

ahhghggh ive been lazy

okay im gonna try do one (1) pset a day. and post it here. starting tomorrow because im sleepy. feel free to harass me into doing it if i haven't yet. thanks x

[iceblaeze]

And this is why you don't try to grab your book with wet hands.

[iceblaeze]

3 studyblr tropes + my reactions

"IceBlaeze, you've had this blog for like four hours now. What could you possibly know about studyblrs? You haven't even contributed to the community."

You're right, I don't know much. But here are my thoughts on the studyblr aesthetic.

1. Notes upon notes upon notes!

There's an incredible bias towards content-heavy subjects like medicine (so many anatomy notes!) and what I can only really call "humanities" for lack of a better label. Yeah, you can tell I'm more of a science-y person. I suppose this bias is only reasonable, given that a major theme of studyblrs and studygrams are having very neat and aesthetic notes, preferably with faux-calligraphy titles in pastel colours.

In defiance of this, I'll give you guys a sneak peak into my high school subjects with basically no content and I am also starting to face the consequences of taking absolutely no notes during online school, or in the case of chemistry, at all this year. That is, I have no notes to show you guys :(

2. Pastel aesthetic

I suppose the beauty of pastel is that you have an entire spectrum of colours which are relatively easy to tell apart but still look good together. Being able to change your colour palette without changing your entire vibe and still being recognisably you seems to be a bonus for those of you with more than one subject, but it also means that all of you look the same! That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a very common theme.

In defiance of this, I'll show you the two colours of fountain pen ink I have: dark blue and black. Oh, and my preferred ink colour on Goodnotes is navy blue.

3. The stylus + tablet + tablet stand + laptop + laptop stand combo

Jeez. How much tech do you need??

Just kidding, everyone I know who is reasonable at maths has an iPad, Apple Pencil, and at least one laptop. The idea seems to be: use the stylus on the tablet to do problems, laptop for basically anything else, and tablet for Battle Cats. The general consensus from the studyblr community here seems to be the same but with the addition "use the tablet for notes/journaling as well", which I would know if I actually talked to people who wrote notes and journaled but that's for another post.

A side note about tablet stands and laptop stands: Why would you have a keyboard for your tablet when you have a literal laptop with stand as well?? Laptop stands I get; sometimes you want the screen to be somewhere and the keyboard to be somewhere else and you want it to be portable. But adding a keyboard to your tablet effectively makes it a touchscreen laptop running a mobile OS... c'mon.

In defiance of this, I'll... uh... not use a laptop stand I guess. I'm guilty of having and using the other four things in that combination. But what can I say? It works!

[iceblaeze]

hey it's me

uhm. oh yeh i heard people don't like reading chunks of text that aren't capitalised and properly punctuated and stuff so....

Hi. It's me, IceBlaeze (yes, that's how I stylise it when I'm not doing all-lowercase-disregard-punctuation-style texting) and I've got a Tumblr blog now. I've actually got two but the other one's unrecognisable if you know me and found me by my internet handle and almost unfindable if you didn't.

I created this during a Discord hiatus when I discovered I get really bored really easily and talking to people intimidates me to get stuff done. So I wouldn't expect this place to be active after... say, a week? Who knows.

I think I'm going to go for that studyblr-esque thing here. Not very good at it, tried it once in 2017 or 2018, then gave up. Hopefully now with a complete disregard of aesthetic (if you've seen me irl you know) and a screw-you attitude to getting followers or whatever, it'll work out. Or not.