Classes are now in session. I took four of the freshmen students assigned to me for this week and gave them a tour around the science campus. They got right and proper anxious when I told them that there are currently only five seniors left on our physics track. I guess that there are worse ways to motivate people. They seemed to like everything about this place. Aside from that, I told them about possible student research, where are good places to eat, whom to ask about random bureaucratic crap, why should you always skip the student-faculty liaison, where can you get the licensed software and all that other auxiliary stuff that makes your life on campus easier. Crafting: I made some soap. Cold process with sunflower oil, nothing fancy. Both are from the same batch that was decanted four times in a nearly-boiling saturated solution of table salt. Word of advice: use distilled water for this purpose. Both the calcium or magnesium ions (stuff that's in tap/hard water) can and will decrease your yield and purity. The final product's pH is around 6-6.5 (it was 8-9 before the first decantation) so it should have only a slight drying effect. The one on the left is just your normal soap. The one on the right was mixed with 150 mg of silver citrate. That way it should exhibit some anti-bacterial properties. The difference in colour is mainly caused by the fact the one on the right dries a lot faster (larger exposed area, additional mixing to distribute silver citrate evenly). Ghetto chemistry at its finest. Games: The Call of Cthulhu session was great! Everyone plays as either a police detective or officer so at least there's no need to contrive some lazy reason to explain why all those people are working together. How do you all know each other? From work! Awesome, now there's no need to make the first few sessions mainly about earning mutual trust. Since we play, at best, every other week it's a very well received change of pace. Chess: I'm 4 out of 4 and on fire! My opponent (black) resigned from this position:
