Happenings in the Infinite Corridor - a miscellany

Despite Pi day, this week has been a bit of a disappointment in terms of interesting happenings around MIT. The dome has gone back to being a normal colour and everything. A lot of the poster boards are being redone, so there are fewer unsanctioned posters for crazy stuff. So instead of one crazy story from the infinite corridor, this week I will show you all the weird little things that I have taken pictures of in the infinite corridor since I arrived that don't really warrant their own post. I'll try and do it so they go from the East side of campus to the west, finishing under the dome in lobby 7.

Proof that the infinite corridor is so-called by everyone at MIT, even sign makers.

Here is a helpful light to guide you down the infinite corridor. It was only there for a day, but I saw someone video-ing it as it flashed away, so perhaps it has been saved on the internet for posterity (the lights all flashed, to make the light look like it was moving away from me, down the corridor).

Miscellaneous painted posters from the class of 2008. There were a lot more than just these two, but I couldn't stop at every poster board in the corridor! Also note the nerdily named Valentine's dating site, nChoosetwo.com - oh MIT, you are so MIT-ish.

The cute little beaver in the collage below is an app competition mascot. The little sign for the Green Room reads "The prime location for MIT students to take a break or nap while travelling down the infinite corridor". I have never seen anyone napping in the Green room, but I did once see a girl with a totally fantastic unicorn hat. And not forgetting the robot overlord poster under the dome...

Finally, more pictures of the dome being purple, including a purple ribbon last Friday.

 I still find the robot overlords sign funny. I'm not sure anything will be as good a "happening" as that.

Happenings in the Infinite Corridor - Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

MIT has this corridor which is known as the infinite corridor. It is very long.
I walk through it everyday on my way into work. I start out under the dome in lobby 7 (where I first saw a real life MIT hack). The infinite corridor and lobby 7 are the source of most of my little MIT stories. So I thought I'd collect all of the cool little things that I have seen in and around MIT into some kind of series. A lot of the time I'll put photos of stuff like this on facebook, so I'm sorry if you end up seeing the same photo twice, but I know some people read my blog that are not my facebook friends (for example - Hi, Grandma!)

When I walk into lobby 7 at the moment the first thing I see is this:

Banner for MIT's 150th birthday, complete with the 2011 brass rat

MIT turned 150 years old last year! Happy Birthday, MIT! 

Sadly Harvard also had a significant birthday last year. They turned 375 years old had a giant red velvet cake (Harvard colours are red velvet cake colours). I haven't heard about any giant cakes for MIT's birthday celebrations, so maybe I'm not so sad about missing them. Maybe MIT makes up for the lack of cake on Pi Day? Mmmm... pie.

These are the views from under the dome in lobby 7 down the infinite corridor and straight up into the dome.

Even at 7:15 pm there are people going places in MIT

So now that the scene is set (a little bit) I'll show you Friday's lobby 7 happening / hack.

Just in case you can't read the banner in my ropey photo (sorry, I was in a bit of hurry!). Here is a zoomed in and instagram-ed version...

But not only was there a banner, the pillars under the dome were also decorated.

The right hand column pillars are either side of the entrance, hence the weird light.
My favourite is the blue one. Obviously.

It certainly brightened up my Friday morning!
Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

MIT is a little strange

I like MIT a lot; my department is very nice and everyone I speak to is pretty much normal and very friendly (Hi Employers! Don't worry, I'm being nice about you on the internet - please don't fire me! Plus it's true, MIT is great. Go Beavers!). But every so often, or rather, most days, when I'm walking to work I'll see something and just think to myself "Wow! MIT is really MIT-y". By which I mean it's charmingly nerdy. Nerds are King! You can even buy "Nerd Pride" stickers and shirts in the Coop.

Today's nerdiest moment was seeing this in the lobby of building 7, which is the building you can see behind me in my current profile picture, up there on the right. 

Yep, MIT has already decided whose side it is on when the human/robot war comes, and it is standing with Skynet. Hell, someone in MIT is probably building Skynet right now. Maybe they have already built Skynet! Just because they wanted to see if they could, and they thought to themselves "It'll be a cool project, robots are cool". 

In fact, stuff like this is ALL OVER campus. Every day I walk from the lobby of building 7 to my building through the infinite corridor, which traverses most of campus and is lined with poster boards and has little seating areas. There are always nerdy posters advertising nerdy events, like a recital from the singing group "The Asymptones", or another recital, from another nerdily named singing group, "The Logarhythms". Yesterday I saw a girl in an amazing unicorn hat. If the corridor wasn't so busy I would probably stop to take a photo of a cool poster every 10 metres. Even today there wasn't just one thing that I thought was worth taking a photo of on campus:

So, admittedly this isn't as good as the robot overlord thing, which really made me chuckle and stop dead in my tracks, but the sign did still made me laugh out loud (LOL IRL). I saw this in front of the student center (by Dunkin' Donuts). Yesterday morning this sign said "tech fair" - this morning "car thief". There are just low-level hacks happening everywhere. MIT has a big tradition of "hacks" (a wikipedia article is proof of real, legitimate thing, people). According this site - "The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!)". There are even posters all over campus explaining the best hacks, my favourites are this, this and this. 

The first day I arrived here I came across a hack. I walked straight through the lobby of building 7, very jet lagged, and the entire lobby was covered in xkcd comics. The comics were marking the 1000th xkcd (now that I think about it, I'm surprised MIT didn't wait for 1024 to celebrate). There was a big banner and everything. I totally didn't realise it was a hack (which it was, because it's featured on the hack website). I thought that MIT was doing something nice for xkcd, because it is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and it is nerdy, and xkcd is nerdy too. Boy, is MIT nerdy. On my first weekend there was a giant puzzle game happening all over campus. Last weekend there was a cardboard boat regatta in the Zesiger pool, which I did not realise was for boats that should carry people until I saw that photo on the front of the Tech. The regatta is called the "Head of the Zesiger". 

It's not just the big hacks all over campus that make me smile, this is what the fire alarm looks like on the floor above mine at work.

Little nerdy moments are everywhere. It certainly makes walking to work more interesting.

I can't wait until Pi day - I have been assured it will be good. I hope there's pie........

UPDATE: The soldiers are everywhere!