It’s been an incredibly productive week thus far. The library has predictably taken over my life, as the Christmas cheer has been thoroughly bleached away by my coursework, and I’ve got a fair bit of work done. I have also had quite a nice bit of down-time this as my society life has been a bit more active than usual.

EPod

Thrillingly, my voice is now available for download through iTunes!! Much to your dismay, this isn’t because of my singing voice landing me an album. Earlier, I posted about EPod, the podcasting team at Imperial I am a part of, and the difficulty involved in doing spot interviews with students without seeming strange and scaring them off. Well, the ePod team have finally compiled together the first podcast of the new season and we are all immensely proud of what we have done. It was a load of fun for all involved, although I have grown quite a hatred of my own “Radio-Voice”. Please give it a listen and tell us what you think and how we could improve the show. (Click here to subscribe through iTunes or to download the mp3)

ChocSoc

Last Monday, I had another chocolate tasting with the lovely bunch at ChocSoc. Chocolate is such a fundamental part of my diet, but it was never something I would think about or explore. A craving will lead to the purchase of a Chocolate bar (or slab on a particularly good day) and 10 minutes later (regardless of size) I am incredibly satisfied with the contents of my stomach. With the Chocolate Society, I get to think about chocolate and enjoy it on a more analytical level. Each week we get quite exotic pieces from round the world and you notice the big differences in tastes. For example, chocolate from Madagascar is usually quite fruity, whereas chocolate from Central Africa is a bit more bitter and earthy. On Monday we tried odd mixes like peppercorn chocolate and aniseed chocolate. It’s great to find and taste all these bizarre things you never thought existed and, of course, free chocolate is the fastest way to my heart

Robotics Society

This was the most fun society meeting I’ve ever been to. One of the people on my course started up a Robotics Society and a bunch of us went to show support. Personally I had no intention of joining, but that was quickly reconsidered after we got stuck in to a “Scrapheap Challenge” style drag race. The room of about 60 people were split into teams and each given a small kit including: two motors with wheel axel attachments, a battery pack and two (horribly manufactured) wheels. We had that and a box full of cardboard, cups, lollipop sticks, blu-tack, tape and other office scrap to produce a car that could travel as fast as possible in a straight line. Being the tight-knit group that we are, all us ISE students stuck together. Using the extensive knowledge of Formula 1 we pretended to have we built what we thought would be good.

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0 to Awesome in 3.5secs!!

Both motors were used in parallel to maximise torque and we made the wheels bigger to ensure they ran at an increased same speed (as the ones supplied were horribly made). The car was long and quite wide to limit it’s turning ability and the car was rear-wheel drive with all the weight at the back to push the wheels into the floor to get the most power out of them.

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It was a lot of fun and resulted in us producing the fastest car and the only one to have two successful runs. As much as the hours of work I missed was annoying me afterwards, I felt like a child again, which is all I hope to get out of any society I join.

Society life is great at university. You meet a lot of very cool people who share your interests, and you do things you always wanted to try, but never had the means to do. What societies are you part of, and which ones do you think I would enjoy?

Thanks for Reading

Chris xx