Muse is a new club in DC that I recently visited. I will also be promoting the thursday nights there.
I didn’t have my camera on me last night but it really was a pretty awesome place. You know it will be different the moment you arrive. When walking through the frosted glass door you can either turn left or continue upstairs. The ground floor had a DJ spinning some dance music, mostly of the international variety. Upstairs you were greeted by the top 40 that we’re all used to. Sometimes I get tired of it but found that a fairly impressive ambience, as well as an extremely attractive crowd, caught my attention and had me on that floor for a while.

Pass for thursdays at The Muse

Printable Pass

In total, there are three floors at muse. From the multi-color lighted bar to the VIP tables throughout, I must say it was a great night. Another thing that made me happy about Muse was the lack of the normal club antics. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, let me explain. Even if the club is having a slow night, they hold up the line to make it look like they’re extremely busy: only letting in the hottest (or guestlist) guests immediately. That really annoys me, and I would assume the majority of people. I’m not claiming that there’s never a line at Muse, just saying that it isn’t unnecessarily long.

I’m going to go a few more nights and then write a more thorough review with pictures.

Links:

• The Muse DC
• Get on the guestlist – page contains links to my email and Facebook Events.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Some Pictures:

How’s everyone’s summer going? Anyways, I thought I’d take a moment to highlight a more serious side of the web and college. Today, we will read and (sort of) review the “NY Literary Scene Examiner“.

Indeed, this is a break from the regular posts concerning either my musings or random college shenanigans. Don’t fret, we still find our roots in a much more shenanigan(ish) category.

It became immediately clear that the writer and I had something in common while reading her bio:

Anna Blake is a writer, music enthusiast, and philosopher. She studied English and Philosophy at American University and is currently working on a novel. Her favorite time to write is the middle of the night.

I’m a writer of sorts but only to the extend that I maintain this blog. I DJ and play a plethora of instruments, check. As far as being a philospher, I have a bit of it in me, but I am an economics major. I’m certainly not working on a novel which is quite a feat. But my favorite time to write (or do anything) is in fact in the middle of the night. This post isn’t about me however, it’s about the “NY Literary Scene Examiner.” So then, let us examine Anna’s Examiner.

While in its infancy, it is clear that this site is one to be watched. While reading an article regarding Walt Whitman’s 190^th birthday, I was caught off-guard by how quickly I had finished reading as well as by the fact that I actually remembered what I had read. With all due respect to Mr. Whitman, the subject is not of much interest to me. What was of interest to me was the quality of the writing. As I was reading, the words flowed, almost lyrically, on the page. I learned a few interesting facts and found a pretty cool new site.

As I said, the site is new: there are only three articles so far. The piece that did interest me deeply was on censorship towards a specific author. Rather than provide more links and summarize the articles, I will re-iterate: visit this site. Just a quick read and one can tell that the site is top-notch. Reading has always been a passion of mine and, although I have no aspirations of getting published, I write as a hobby. What really excites me and inspired me to write about this site is that it’s a fairly quick and informative read. Too many times when reading about literature, or authors, the only option is to read 18 pages of history and find out that most of the information is outdated. If it’s not outdated, one probably won’t remember the reading anyways because they would have fallen asleep halfway through. Any author that can keep me on the edge of my seat while reading about an author’s 190^th birthday gets my vote, and my subscription.

I know I can’t wait to read more (I’ve subscribed to the feed in “Mail”) and hope to eventually get an interview when that novel is completed.

So I’m getting back into the development of the main site and have been toying around with some search engine and spider ideas. Any of my technical users out there know of a good, linux-compatible, database driven search engine?

For the non-technical users, what features would you be interested in when looking for a search engine?

Leave comments or send an email to webmaster [at] campusversed [dot] com if you have any ideas or suggestions.

Let me tell you a little bit about what we’re doing here. I’m deciding whether to design a script from scratch or use one that’s currently available. I’m looking into Sphider at the moment. It handles a ton of pages very quickly. I’m testing it out at http://search.campusversed.com/search.php if you want to give it a go.

Okay, so let me tell you why we’re even doing this. I know there are 1,000 good search engines out there. I have no dillusion of competing with google or yahoo, trust me. What I would like to do is provide a search resource mostly specialized for college students. There will also be a location to submit a site for reviewing.

While designing the campusversed site, I realized there was a need for a search engine. My original idea was to create one to search within the database and generally within the individual school. That idea has not been abandoned but I thought about the need to tie all of the campusversed websites together. They will include blog.CampusVersed.com, CampusVersed.com, springbreak.CampusVersed.com, and CampusVerse.com which I envision to include college resources and merchandise. While tying the websites together, I figured: why not include other relevant sites? search.campusversed.com may either be moved or duplicated to search.campusverse.com. Our goal is to put everything together into one convienient resource. Fun, conversation, resources, and merchandise all at one location.

Happy Summer by the way! I think everyone is out of school by now.. or starting for the summer.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

No, I took a trip from College Park, MD to Crisfield, MD. As I realize many of you may not know where those places are, let me start off by saying that it’s about a 150 mile trip that takes approximately three hours (according to Google Maps). Anyways, I was taking the trip alone and got a little bored so I decided I would play with the trip computer of my car a little bit. Also got an opportunity to test out my new GPS (TomTom 740 LIVE) which is amazing by the way. Anyways, back to my point: while on the trip I decided to see how I could get the best gas mileage possible.First of all, let me say that I am not an expert and as always, this is just my opinion and should NEVER be taken as legal advice. Also, I drive a Mazda 3s GT with the 2.3 liter engine. So, all these numbers are specific to my car. Gas mileage can vary due to car maintenance as well as road conditions, tire condition, temperature, and altitude among others.

The main thing that caught my eye is how much gas mileage is affected by the air-conditioner. While driving at 60 mph I was able to achieve 34.3 mpg with the ac off. While the ac was on, it dropped to 29.5 mpg(the windows being open did not seem to affect the gas consumption much). This was on a flat, smooth road at a constant speed maintained via cruise control and measured via GPS. This interested me because in many cars, including mine, automatic air-conditioning seems to leave the compressor on regardless of whether the vehicle is in need of cooling, heating, or neither. I have not been able to personally verify this, but it’s better safe than sorry: turn off the ac when you know you’re not using it, don’t just trust the automatic feature. For the Mazda, this means clicking the auto button (to automatically direct air and fan speed) and then clicking the (lit) AC button to disable the compressor.

Moving right along, I also noticed dramatic changes in fuel consumption based on the speed of the vehicle. All measurements were taken in the same fashion as the AC test with AC off. At 50 mph I achieved an amazing 40.8 mpg. At 60 mph, 34.3 mpg and at 70 mph it dropped down to 30 mpg even.

More impressive is that I averaged over 60 mph and over 32 mpg for the entire trip. So I made amazing time and got what I would consider to be impressive gas mileage.

These numbers may seem insignificant but, when you figure in the price of gas and the number of miles that people drive, the end results are quite significant. According to the EIA (as of May 25, 2009) the average price of gasoline is $2.435. In the United States, the average number of miles driven per year can be placed at approximately 15,000 miles. Assuming I only drove on highways, kept a constant speed, and used the above numbers, here is an approximation of my annual costs:

• 70 mph no AC (30.0 mpg) – $1,217.50
• 60 mph no AC (34.3 mpg) – $1,064.87
• 60 mph with AC (29.5 mpg) – $1,238.14
• 50 mph no AC (40.8 mpg) – $895.22

So now you know some of my results. The difference between 50 and 70 mph is $322.28 annually. This is obviously not realistic because of traffic and city driving but think about the implications of driving a car such as my alternate vehicle which gets 19 mpg compared to the Mazda in which I regularly get 28 mpg. At 19 mpg I would spend $1,922.37 annually while at 28 I would be spending $1,304.46. That’s almost a $600 difference and doesn’t take into account that my other vehicle takes premium gasoline. Also, I drive over 15,000 miles annually.

The bottom line to saving money on gas:

• Drive like a grandma
  • Not my grandma who races people if they creep up beside her, or the one that drives at 30 mph in a 65. Drive around or about the speed limit. I generally drive five to ten over. Remember, gas mileage aside, getting pulled over is expensive.
• Turn off the AC when you don’t need it
• Drive at a relatively constant speed
  • Accelerating takes a lot of energy, and therefore gas.
• Consider swapping out that enormous SUV for a gas-friendly coupe or sedan.

It’s been a while since I have written to all of you so I figured it’s about time. I last informed you of the Did-Itz Facebook aplication via a link to the RoutOne For Life article. Since then, I have had the pleasure of trying the application out myself. This is a pretty incredible application and came somewhat out of nowhere as far as most people were concerned. In all honesty, most applications for Facebook dealing with pictures seem somewhat superfluous and completely unnecessary. This is somewhat similar to what I assumed Did-Itz would be like but I was a little intrigued when I saw some of the features. That being said, let’s delve into Did-Itz and what it’s all about.

Did-Itz is a content-sharing application on Facebook which allows a more streamlined way to share photos and videos with other users, both on facebook and otherwise. It allows sharing via Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook and others. It allows one to share content which is tagged. Effectively creating a directory of all the Did-Itz photos. All this while still respecting several options for privacy which are similar to facebook settings available on albums. The shortcoming here is that it does not allow setting permissions for certain individuals.

The good news with Did-Itz is that it allows for viewing photos as slideshows as well as commenting on the photos while giving “kudos.” This is, of course, similar to the FaceBook features of comment and “like.” A simple, but nice, addition is the ability to see the number of views an album gets. When sharing content with other people for reasons that are not strictly for fun, it is nice to know how much exposure the media is getting (Did-Itz provides users with the number of views as well as unique visitors).

Did-Itz is not a replacement for the regular Facebook albums though. The main way to get content up is to already have it under a main album and to “create a Did-Itz.” Did-Itz does not allow uploading of videos but does allow embedding from sites such as YouTube. This permits users to share videos with the same ability to post comments, give kudos, etc. My main gripe with Did-Itz is that it does not allow for one to simply browse through friends pictures and the tab feature is not working yet. I would say enabled but it unfortunately is enabled and simply will display a message “coming soon.” So the only method of sharing is to post links or publish stories. My last complaint is that it is missing any sort of tagging feature.

So, to wrap it all up:

The Good:

• Comments
• Kudos
• Slideshow view
• Ability to share on multiple platforms
• Video embedding

The Bad:

• No tagging
• No tab
  • Or box as far as I can tell
• No uploading videos
• hard to browse pictures unless you know what you’re looking for

The Bottom Line:

Did-Itz is a great application to share across multiple platforms if you wish to do so. If you just want your pictures on Facebook, I would recommend holding out until the application reaches a bit more maturity. Did-Itz is a great application and website to watch. I fully suspect that they will bring great things in the future and are already well on their way. As tested, the product is great but could use a few more features to fully realize its potential.

Experts argue that sleep is essential in good performance on exams, yet we all find ourselves studying through the night. It’s a week of all-nighters that hopefully result in positive exam results. We all know the exams are coming but inevitably wait until the end to try and prepare. Although the exam is on the whole semester, students try to learn the content within the last hours leading up to the test. Why then, does everyone do this? It seems to be two-fold. There are the students who have studied as hard as they can all semester and probably know the content, and then there are the slackers who wait until the last few minutes. The “good” students are most likely still staying up all night. This is usually because they have the idea that they have to cram again at the end to try and get the absolute highest grade they can. The ones that haven’t studied all semester are obviously doing it out of necessity.

I would recommend that those who have studied all semester to maintain a regular schedule. Just study a little more each day and get your eight hours of sleep. Sleep is very important to the mental process and will help you stay clear and think straight. If you haven’t studied at all this semester, I’m sure the 7-11 down the road has an ample supply of Monster energy drink. I go for shots of espresso but each to their own. I always wished I could study all semester and then just be ready at the end. And I probably am. The problem is, by the time finals come around I’m so stressed that I can’t bring myself to study without making distractions along the way. I probably only need to study the same amount as I usually do, but this takes four times as long when I can’t focus and keep worrying about the end of the semester. This is because I inevitably have a ton of work that is due in the last few weeks of class. I’m not as worried about the final as I am about getting everything done. It’s too late now, but the best advice is to simply stay on top of all assignments.

As I said, it’s too late to fix those problems. Here are some tips for final exam week:

• Do not try to study 12 hours in a row. It’s not going to work.
  • Instead, plan in study breaks.
• Write you studying schedule ahead of time.
  • Think about how much time studying for each exam will require.
  • Also, consider the important of each exam. Prioritize!
• Get Sleep
  • While some people, like me, can do fine on two hours of sleep, most can’t.
    • Also, it’s unhealthy when you don’t get enough sleep.
• While you’re procrastinating taking study breaks try exercising.
  • This can actually give you more energy.
  • As with any other break, don’t let it take too long. You don’t want your study break to become pointless procrastination.
• Study in groups
  • This does not mean finding your best friends and cracking a beer.
  • Find people that are interested in studying and have similar classes.
    • People from the specific class work well
• Make sure you plan ahead so that your employer (if you have one) knows that you cannot work as much.
  • If you don’t have a job, make sure that whatever normally occupies your time gets a smaller time allotment

Surviving College Life » Final Exam Survival Tips

De-motivational Video (Collegehumor all nighter ‘09 trailer)

http://www.collegehumor.com/videos/playlist:AllNighter09 for the new clips.

So, the work on the site is reaching its 1.5 week mark. This seems like a short period of time. However, when you consider how few hours of sleep I’ve gotten it is a while. And, if you consider how my normal procrastination time has been shifted to what I like to call productination time it becomes epic. I just looked it up and someone has already claimed that word, which disappoints me. So here’s some quick news for you:

• Site is still not ready for Internet Explorer
  • Macs are better anyways and whoever uses Internet Explorer on a Mac is literally retarded. Thanks.
• Final ad banner placement has been decided. Seems fairly unobtrusive to me.
• Backend for posting pages complete, working on integration now
• I’m already celebrating over 1,000 views on a site that isn’t live yet. (They’re not me)
• The under construction page looks awful. I was going to work on it but then decided that time could be spent better updating the actual site.
• Home page school search box now searches schools more quickly and instantly displays results.
• Sitemap is self-updating and interactive now (sort of.)
• Over 10,000 lines of code now.. and counting.
• Still working on the scripts to post view and comment numbers.
• Some of the pages were just put on there as blank pages or duplicates as placeholders
• I’m going on another 30 hours of no sleep. I’ve created the ultimate finals week.

And now, I’ll find a slightly relevant video to post here as will be my habit for most posts.

And this is the awesome song that plays during part of that clip:

And another awesome song from the movie:

And it seemed well-suited that I post the “Honest College Ad” in my first post here.