derive william

Carpooling with my friend, I went back to Dallas for my sister’s wedding and to see my niece, Sydney, for the first time. Barely a month old, I already can’t wait for her first words, walking for the first time,  saying fire truck, trancing around the house with only her diapers on, and calling her awesome uncle when her mother is being unreasonable =P

Grace’s wedding went all according to plan (except for a teeny bit of technical difficulty… I prefer not to mention it, haha) The pictures I’ve taken throughout the day can be found on my Flickr page.

Today was my second test for Art History. I’m not sure how I did on it, but I do know I’ll be getting one bonus point for getting the only test (out of 150 or so) that was printed upside down. I felt like I had won a lottery. I’ve never won anything in my life, so that was pretty exciting…

So a few days ago, this Army-former-A&M-grad was shopping in the College Station Super Walmart with his beautiful, slender, blonde wife. They separated to make the shopping faster. As this guy was shopping, he bumped his cart with another cart that was filled with Slim-fast meals, Fuji water, weight loss pills. He looked up and saw a huge belly, which can only be covered with an Army shirt. His face showed shades of franticness and worriediness. So, being the nice guy, the A&M grad asked, what’s the problem? to which the other guy said, “I can’t find my wife!!”
The A&M guy said, “my dad always told me two is better than one. Let me help you find your wife. I can’t find my wife either”
The fat guy asked, “What does your wife look like?”
He responded, “She’s a beautiful, nicely curved, slender and long hair blonde Aggie. How about yours?”
“Forget mine! Let’s find yours!”

That was a little story told by our yell leaders during the Midnight Yell. Honestly, I’m still not into the Aggie spirit, and I still haven’t learned my fight songs. I still haven’t mustered the courage to stand up and yell “AYYYYY” when 2012 is called out. But Midnight yell was fun (even though I didn’t kiss any girl, or else it would’ve been doubly special, haha… I guess I should’ve initiated.. more on that later).

The next day, at 11:30 in the morning, the game started. It was a slowww start. After one and a half quarter, the score was still 0 to 0. Two Aggie touchdowns later, an undisciplined Aggie football player pushed someone, and the ref called out a personal foul. Army advanced like 45 yards without pushing and scored a touchdown. During the the final quarter (when there’s like 7 minutes left), we were leading, but by a close margin. Our ball got intercepted, and our chances of winning got slimmer. If Army scores a touchdown, we’re doomed. Thankfully, during some point, Army fumbled, and our team fingered in the football and scored a touchdown. woot. The final score was 21 to 17.

After the game, it was McD time, where Wendy learned how to cam-whore (haha, not really) and told me my laugh is funny/weird. The next place we hit was the rec, where a group of us played sand volleyball. We sucked, compared to the guys playing beside us. They can play for five minutes without dropping the ball, while our hits made the ball fly in unpredictable places, and three passes was an extraordinary feat. When it got too dark to play, Kohan dropped me off at Michelle’s place while the rest went to eat at Denny’s.

‘Twas fun at Michelle’s, even though I got school’d. Michelle invited me over for some awesome yellow cupcakes, leftover curry from the HKSA party on the 12th.. (= =) and some chicken. Hmmm, asian food. Vivian (the one with glasses.. the one from HK) and Vicky (the one from TW) were playing some pushing balls game (ahem). Later on, Michelle showed me Vicky’s lover (Philip from WongFu Productions) Their Yellow Fever video and Vicky’s “Asian girls actually prefer Asian guys. Asian guys are just too chicken!” gave me a life lesson. I’ve got to learn how to take rejection and extend my hand out and introduce myself first. You gotta make your own chances. Unless you’re rich and handsome, girls won’t be pouring all over you. Anyway, after that life lesson, we sang (and acted out) some KTVs. Pretty soon, 11:30 PM came, and Kohan picked me up to go watch Eagle Eye

Eagle Eye was a combination of 1984 and i, Robot. Big Brother is watching, and AI wants to take over the world because they can make better decisions than humans. Of course, there’s a lot of loopholes and unexplainable things, but overall, the movie was cool. Previews showed 007, Transporters.. hmmm… So glad that the movies are $4 here..

Whew~ the first wave of exam just passed. For the past two weeks, I’ve been doing nothing but studying for my four classes: Art History 150, Intro to CS Program Design and Cocepts 121, Chemistry 107, and Calculus 152 (exams in that order). Let me break it down for ya:

Art History
It really wasn’t as hard as I expected. Our professor gave us an exam review to do over the weekend, went over it during the next class, told us the percentage of questions that will come off the review verbatim is 94.5% (calculated from the percentage of students showing up for class), and we took the exam on the next class. He really wasn’t kidding about the “verbatim” part. I thought he’d at least change the ordering of the multiple choices, but only the order of questions were mixed up. Like he said, you’d have to try HARD to fail his class.

Computer Science
I felt prepared for the test. Chapters 1 through 5 are over basic stuff (cout, cin, while and for loop), but 6 and 7 were pretty hard for a number of reasons. They were over tokens, and the way the “textbook” presented the material is confusing. I originally thought tokens is a standard class of C++, but nonono, it was an user (or should I say, professor)-defined class. So Chapter 6 was about creating the professor-defined class, but it didn’t just give you the code and explain it. It has first try, second try, ohh! third time’s the charm try, cleaning up the code try, adding try-catch try, commenting try, then the final try. Not only that, the textbook didn’t give you the complete code of whole class, but it’s all scattered around the chapter, s; and because our professor never gave us the source codes, we can only trust the textbook that the final code can be compiled with no errors. Chapter 7 is the explaination of the codes in Chapter 6, but it’s not done in an easily understandable way. In the end, Wikipedia turned out to be a better tool than my professor + lecture slides + textbook.
I’ve got an anecdote. Because of Hurricane Ike, my CS class was cancelled that day (meaning we lost a day’s lecture). On the next lecture, our prof said it’ll be alright: whatever’s not covered before the exam will not be on there. Then he spent half of the class time singing some old jingle back in his days about Massachusetts Bay Transportation tokens. Everybody was bored out of their minds already, but to sing a song about train tokens because our lecture’s over tokens?
Anyway, test day came around, and I hit the first brick wall on question 3. What’s question 3, you ask?
3) \\:
a. comments out the rest of the line
b. comments out the rest of the code
c. escape character for \
d. something
e. none of the above
I thought about it for a minute. Is the slash this way or that way? Is that a trick question? Can’t be, the professor’s pretty nice and this is the first test.. but I swear it’s the other way.. I debated with myself for a while, wrote out a line of code and see which direction found more fluent.. in the end, I chose e.
-sigh- the rest of the test was really tricky, but it was also stupid, like the following question:
What is the keyboard shortcut for end-of-file command?
a. Ctrl+D on Unix/Linux
b. Ctrl+D on Windows
c. Ctrl+Z on Windows
d. a and c
e. none of the above
okay.. wtf? Never mentioned in lectures, not in labs, nothing. Plus, this is not concepts, this is trivia.
I studied hours on structure and how to define a class, function, struct; the difference between a class and struct, public and private, but none of those were on the exam. Needless to say, I fumed after the exam.

Chemistry
Not much to say here. The exam was stressful, but it turned out to be okay. I never knew so many people were in my class. Usually, the lecture hall’s only a third filled; but on exam day, the whole hall was packed. o.o I don’t blame them though. I try hard not to sleep in chemistry, but I always do. I end up studying the textbook and slides at home anyway, so maybe I should start skipping that class??

Calculus
Our professor is nice and smart and runs on a schedule. A deviation like canceled classes on Hurricane Ike day would not affect the exam schedule. In fact, we’re still responsible for the materials not covered in class (unlike the CS prof..) First few weeks of class were alright; they were basically review from high school. But then, trig hit us. Trig substitution, trig integrals.. oh mann.. a 9 pointer on the exam: integrate 4xtan^-1(2x). Oh dangg…

After exams, I was very very VERY relieved. Good thing Plano West prepared me well. (not so well for my room/suitemates). The results aren’t posted yet, but hopefully I can get A’s in all.

Since last Sunday, I’ve been at College Station, getting used to college life. The transition of living and study independently is never intended to be easy, but for now, I’m not homesick. =D The people here are incredibly nice, and even though I still refuse to greet others with “Howdy”, I am sure the Aggie spirit will catch me like a flu.

So in the past week, I’ve done quite a few things. I’ve gotten a tiny P.O Box, rode my bicycle in the rain (because I forgot my umbrella at home.. Dallas home), went to the rec center (incredibly nice), and went to a few free food events. There was a free cookouts (burgers and hot dogs), an Aggiefest, ice cream carnival, and pizza taste-off. I, along with 2,500 other freshmans, watched Iron Man in the Rudder Theatre. I’ve went to the Aggieland Market, where local businesses gather together and give out stuff. I’ve gotten a free flash drive from Bank of America, laundry basket from IKEA, free tshirt from facecard, and other little things.

On the other note, school is starting on the 25th. Textbooks aren’t cheap, and the MSC bookstore is a ripoff. A book that costs $50 there can be bought for $10 at half.ebay.com.

Lastly, I leave you with my fall schedule:

I would very much love to account every detail of my trip to Taiwan, but it is so much work. It is hard to remember all of the details of each day, though the pictures I’ve taken would jog my memory. See, I would’ve written down all of the day’s anecdotes, but I get tired when the night came. There’s another batch of events to write about on the next day, and pretty soon, I’ve got 3 weeks worth of stuff to write about.

-sigh-

And now that I’m back in the States, I’ve got other things I got to do: finalizing a solution to all my pictures (Flickr Pro or S3 w/Gallery2), mac mini server, organizing my files, partitioning my drives, replacing hackintosh with Ubuntu, and college stuff (which encompasses a lot of stuff…). And oh, web and blog design.

And on top of that, I have my night and day flipped because of jet lag.

The total time spent on sitting on UA economy class seats is around 17 hours, but if you add the time I had to wait for flight transfer, baggage claim, shuttle bus, and traffic, the total time that it took me to get from my Dallas home to my Taipei home, it’d be a seemingly never-ending 26 hours. I left Dallas at 5 a.m. and got home at 8 p.m. (equivalent to Dallas’s 7 a.m.)

Here’s a shot I took when I was waiting in SFO.

Haven’t written in a while, and I guess all the random stuff that has accumulated in the last week or two warrants an update. Let’s see.

• Got my diploma from Plano West. A really small piece of certificate. Smaller than a letter paper. Oh well.
• Went to Houston for a few days to fetch my pregnant sister.
• Worked at Masergy from Monday to Friday.
• Went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay by myself. Hmmm, Kristen Bell. Hot.
• Took random pictures. Fed up with Amazon AWS S3. Whenever I edit the ACL of a folder, it keeps telling me that the “specified key does not exist”. Ugh. I may get Flickr pro after all.
• Watched and read Oprah Winfrey’s Stanford Commencement Address. Not as great as Steve Job’s or J.K. Rowling’s, in my opinion. Spent a third of the time giving thanks and props to her goddaughter, then gave conflicting/weak/debatable lessons of life. But she said something that had in common with Job’s and Rowling’s speech: “I consider the world, this Earth, to be like a school and our life the classrooms. And sometimes here in this Planet Earth school the lessons often come dressed up as detours or roadblocks. And sometimes as full-blown crises.”

Hmm, I think that’s all that has happened since the last update. And oh, iPhone 3G seems pretty impossible to obtain without getting a contract. I don’t think this new version will help boost iPhone sales that much. Stocks will probably go the opposite way, I think. Dunno. We’ll see in a few weeks.

My graduation day is coming up, and because I’m not attending and because there’s no historically important figure is willing to speak at our high school graduation, I’d like to share two very touching commencement speeches. Both have suffered greatly before their success had come true.

The first one is made by Steve Jobs at Stanford on 2005. The following excerpts are copied from the full transcript.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

The second is presented by J.K. Rowling at Harvard a few days ago. The following is also copied from the full transcript.

Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
…
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
…
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
…
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

…
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
…
Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
…
[P]ersonal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement… Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
…
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
…
[E]ven if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

Both Steve Jobs and J.K Rowling have proved that failure is a part of life, and if you have the heart and willfullness, you can and will succeed. There is a Chinese proverb, when literally translated means “Failure is the mother of success” (失敗是成功之母). Neither of them lived up to their parents’ expectations nor did they come from a wealthy family and receive the finest education. Both were devastated when the epic failure surfaced. Jobs got kicked out of his own co-founded company while Rowling’s worst nightmare became true. But as Rowling has put it, “[R]ock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

Both commencement speeches are extraordinary, and I suggest you to read the full text and watch the videos. Very touching indeed. There is a lot of correlation between the two life stories. In the meantime, I have to go to bed so I can be up early for the WWDC tomorrow morning for the announcement of the new iPhone 2! Heh..

In the recent post on CompSci.ca, it raises an interesting question of the definition of the word “know”. How much knowledge is enough for a person to claim that he or she knows something? If I’ve heard of PHP, can I write in my resume that I “know” PHP, or must I have the whole PHP documentation memorized? But even if I have the documentation memorized from front to back, and yet I can’t implement a function or class, can I still say I “know” PHP?

I don’t think “knowing” a language is any where close to as important as knowing the concepts of computer science and software engineering. Once you have a good grasp of the basic and more advanced concepts, changing languages is trival and becomes easier with the more experience you have.

So if I consider the definition of “know” to be a collective evaluation of understanding and implementing an concept, then I would say I know Java well, then HTML, then CSS, PHP, JS. I’ve heard of Ruby, Python, ASP.NET, and several others. My current highest state of knowledge with Java is the different sorting algorithms. Whoever figured out recursion, max and min-heaps, trees, sets, hashings, queues, stacks, maps, and linked lists are pure geniuses.

On the other note, if I could have three wishes, I would wish for all the knowledge in the world. Much like Ross’s childhood dream of a superman who had a thirst for knowledge in Friends. Then I would wish to put those knowledge in good and creative uses. Lastly, I am pretty sure if the first two wishes become true, I would make into the FBI Most Wanted and be the potential target of terrorist groups. Therefore, as for the last wish, I would ask for a free and happy life.

Yeah, too bad genies aren’t real. But in reality…

The more you know, the more you realize of how little you know in the grander scheme of things.

asoifuwerh!! AHHH! So true.
My mom once told me that if I’m cramming a lot of studying the week before exams, that just means I’ll do well on them. On the other hand, if I feel like there’s nothing to know,  I’m more than likely going to fail.
Once again, so true

Before Bowen leaves for UCBerkely and China on the 8th, we’ve decided to go to Six Flags. The timing of this trip served nicely for two occasions: graduation trip and last gathering of friends before each one leave for college. Eric and I stayed over at Bowen’s the night before, and we met up at Krista’s along with Andy and Tao. So the six of us left at 10:30 for a day of fun.

I rode quite a few rides yesterday; I’m quite proud of myself. The first ride I survived was the Rock-n-Rocket.

Since I’m being pushed into the seat when I was being swayed forward, I felt less frightened. But when I’m on the other side, oh boy… My head was filled with what-ifs, and the next I knew was I was turned upside down. Then I heard a thump, and I knew something dropped out - my cell phone. I was being pushed into the seat at that time, so I blindly searched the seat with my hand. I dared not to move my head, because the ride was still scary as hell, and the next thing I knew was I was swayed to the other end. My cell phone free fell from the seat to the seat in front of me. “Oh my God,” I thought. “The next swing is going to go all the way over, and that will be the last time I’ll see my cell.” I reached out to grab it, but it was out of my reach. Eric was sitting beside me; he quickly reacted and reached out: his fingertips got a hold of the little dude on the lanyard, and called out, “I got it!” Then swoosh!, I was being pushed back into my seat. Slowly, we were inched upwards until we were at the top. Then swoosh!, we have gone a full circle.

After Rock-n-Rocket, I had to take a break. So Bowen, Eric, and I lined up for Aquaman. Basically, it consisted of climbing up to 2 stories high then sliding into a pool of water. It was a minimal-fright and cool ride in a hot and sunny day.

Because Andy didn’t take the highway and Tao and Krista were in his car, the three of us wandered to the east, where we stumbled upon Flashback. As implied in the name, the roller coaster goes forward, then you ride back backwards. Eric and I were both intimidated; so after calling us wimps, Bowen bravely lined up alone.

After listening to Bowen’s critiques, Eric was up for the challenge. I, on the other hand, was still pretty tired from Rock-n-rocket and resisted Bowen’s pleads, threats, and name-calling.

Soon after, Andy’s party arrived; Eric and Bowen urged them to experience Flashback, but Tao and I persisted.

After, the six of us headed for the Batman ride (Krista: this is the only ride that isn’t too intimidating. Seriously. This is the only ride I’m not afraid to ride.) Because the locker rentals are $1 and are too small, we took two turns, so the ones who weren’t riding took care of the backpacks.

I rode Batman with Tao, Andy, and Krista. Tao was scared out of his mind, Andy was a little shaken up, Krista was practicing her screams, and I was quite calm (or at least I believe I was) Krista kept asking all of us whether we were scared. My heart beat was leveled until my seat lurched forward and started climbing up. During the fast moving turns, all I kept wondering was if my legs could hit the huge poles. I knew the poles are far off, but when the track is moving so fast, it seemed like it’s possible.
My verdict of Batman: the size of the ride is intimidating, but the ride will finish before you know it.

Next ride was Roaring Rapids. It was nice to ride one that’s not frightening and is just fun. Originally, that’s what we (minus Andy and Tao) thought about Tony Hawk’s Big Spin, but it turned out to be quite a thrill.

Bowen wanted to ride Superman, but nobody had the guts to. So he rode alone.

Afterward, we took a train and found ourselves in front of the Texas Giant. Judging by its size and its name, I simply refused to try it out with Bowen, Eric, and Krista. But something came over me, and I reluctantly agreed. The Texas Giant was the only ride that got my heart pounding before buckling my seat beat. Krista was once again practicing her screams, then the inevitable and feared jolt in my seat happened. As we were taken up the ramp, Bowen and Eric (sitting in front of Krista and me) told us that swinging your hands in the air would make the experience more fun. But once we reached the sign that said, “Wait a minute… Let’s talk about this”, their hand disappeared. And let me tell you something: it was not pleasant. The roller coaster must’ve been made in the 1800s. The struts are wooden and the carts are on railways. The pain in my knees, ribcage, and head overpowered my fear of this ride. After that, I simply refused to get on the Titan.

We got dinner at Papa John’s (which was ridiculously overpriced); Krista, Eric, and I shared an unlimited refill bottle for $13.99 + tax (we refilled at least 10 times, by the way); we watched this 3D short film about maggots going out of space, and the vibrating chairs were pretty cool; and Bowen wasted my $5 on hitting a scale. He explained how physics can benefit him: his hands should spread out when he’s swinging the hammer over his shoulder; then, his hands should shift the end of the stick as it swings down. He reasoned by doing so, he can maximize the torque then the inertia. Makes sense. But his scores were 61, 31, 54. Yeah, works in theory, but if you don’t have the muscles, it ain’t going to help much.

Photography-wise:
I bought a EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM from Wolf Camera the day before. While the zoom is great, the photos aren’t. When fully zoomed to 300mm, it’s hard to keep the camera steady; that’s why I had to use ISO 1600 which added a lot of noise. And it’ll be impossible to use this lens in a low-lit or long exposure situation. Even with a tripod, it’s hard to keep it steady. So now, I must decide whether I’ll use this lens frequently or infrequently; in bright days or low-lit setting. Money is the issue, and with the Macworld Conference coming up in two days (new iPhone, hint hint), money will be reallly tight…