Group 8 Day 9

Day 9

Today is our last third day in Stanford and we had a mouth-watering breakfast with scrambled egg and yogurt. We then headed back to our dormitory for our first visual design lesson. The teacher was very hilarious and the lesson was appealing. We first received an art kit with several color pencils and a pile of white papers and tracing papers. We then learnt to draw and sketch basic shapes such as cube, sphere and cylinder. The teacher’s skill on drawing was very impressive. After observing his demonstrations, we were able to sketch and shade realistic shapes. After that, we formed groups of four to write a story by drawing different elements in the story. On Friday, we are going to have our second and last visual design lesson. We are all longing for it and hope that we will learn further skills in drawing.

In the afternoon, we went to the computer history museum. It was big with many information and exhibits. There were areas introducing different topics such as calculators, supercomputers, inputs and outputs, as well as mobile computers. There were as many as 20 areas and we spent a total of two and a half hours in the museum.  We gained a lot more knowledge on history and development of computers. Computers create different forms of art such as pixels and 3D painting. It certainly provides entertainment and is an inevitable invention in human history.  The Utah teapot was one of the most important discoveries as it helped to improve art forms made by computer and lead to rising of Pixar movies. This is the reason why Pixar movies always include a teapot in scenes. The teapots may even act as a surprise part! Apart from that, we had the chance to play early computer games. We played ping pong, pacman and they were really fun. At last, we went to the souvenir shop. We bought ice cream which were prepared for astronauts. It was delicious and we had a great time in the museum.

Afterwards, we went to the main company of Facebook and took a group picture in front of the LIKE logo there. We were so excited because we use Facebook almost every day, and now we were able to be there, where the whole operation takes place - and we found the place so amazing! We quickly finished our meals and head back to the dorm for house meeting. The highlight of the night is the fire pit night! We are now all very ready for more s’mores and group activities! Woo-ooh! 

Jackie Fung, Maisie Luk, Michelle Ng, Kelly Ng