September looking grim.
18 Jun 2008 @ 1650
Well UTSC refused me admission, go figure.... I still have some interest in pursuing an MSE degree, but it looks like mom and dad won't make it easy, and they seem to be very negative about it. Seriously, I don't understand them no more. They're excessively pushy and their reasons aren't very good. As parents, shouldn't they be supporting my decisions, instead of telling me how grim the prospects are?
Personally, I don't see how studying elsewhere randomly for 4 months with no real purpose other than to study for 4 bloody months is beneficial. I also don't see how forcing me to return to Vancouver (if I'm not studying in September) is benefeicial either. None of this makes sense, and every time I'm on the phone with them, I feel like yelling at them, or destroying the phone. They keep repeating the same thing over and over, and they don't seem to understand that their wishes don't coincide with what I want to do. Why the hell is it that their wishes are a priority, I mean yes, it's their money; but, isn'it it my life? my future?
Isn't moving out into an apartment on my own supposed to be a huge step? Why would you want to add the extra stress of studying on top of it? Aren't we suppose to go through change gradually? Why are they so opposed to me stayin in Toronto and not studying for 4 months (besides it being financially difficult)?
None of it is adding up, and it's frustrating because I know it's wrong for me to yell at them, and so I bottle it up, but typing it up doesn't really seem to help either.
What should I be doing?? If I want to stay in Toronto, but I don't see any point in studying for 4 months for some pointless reason, what should I do?
UTSC CompSci? UofT Engineering?
06 Jun 2008 @ 1711
Not that the PHP Host was good or naything, god dam stupid ads... I had to limit the frame size to actually hide the ads; but now, the tagboard just has their random ads, because my account with them expired. Oh well, can't expect much from a free hosting.
In terms of school, a 54.3% Sessional Average is not going to keep me in Engineering for September. Current plans are as follows:
Transfer to University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC) in September and do a BSc in Computer Science (assuming I'm accepted)
Stay in Engineering at the St. George Campus (Downtown) and start school in January (assuming I'm not accepted for UTSC)
One thing is clear, I'm not returning to 89 Chestnut come September, that's for sure. But I'll definitely visit.
Summer time!
14 May 2008 @ 0520
Well the semestre's over and the job hunt is still on. I get a feeling my grades won't be too pretty.
The EWB Turnover Retreat at Hart House Farm was nice. Got to get to add more names to faces at EWB-UT, though, it might all be for naught with my poor academic performance this semestre.
Anime fansubbing-wise, it's been about 3 months now, and it's a nice passtime looking over scripts and encodes to ensure they're top notch. SOUL EATER is looking like a very promising series.
For series, that I'm not staffing, Nabari no Ou and Code Geass R2 look nice. Kanokon gets more and more absurd each episode. Hidmari Sketch x365 is supposedly airs later this summer. So lot's of great shows this summer.
"\n" is old school =P
04 Apr 2008 @ 1725
For those of you that didn't notice, "Newline Begone" is now available under the drop down menu. With this you can say good buy to all those "\n" characters in your text files, and your code, saving you a few bytes of data storage every "line". Of course, the douwnside is, you can't use single line comments, and your code becomes impossible to read.
Man I'm such a slacker...
28 Mar 2008 @ 1534
So yea, looking back now that it's almost April, I've done diddly squat this semestre. It'd be a bloody miracle for me to get a 2.64 SGPA now. Man time flies. Final Exams are not going to be fun at all.
Exam Schedule looks like this:
MSE235 - 15 Apr 2008 @ 1400
MSE217 - 16 Apr 2008 @ 1400
MSE245 - 17 Apr 2008 @ 1400
MSE250 - 25 Apr 2008 @ 1400
ANT100 - 29 Apr 2008 @ 1900
AoD Arrives during Midterm Madness =(
20 Mar 2008 @ 2355
So after calling NISA on the 13th, my package arrived on the 17th. Unofortunately, I've had midterms the past few days and haven't had a chance to play Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness. Now all that's left is the damn battery from CodeJunkies. They also suck at shipping, but at least I didn't pay for express from them.
NISA Responds!
12 Mar 2008 @ 0840
Okie, so the Kingston RAM, and Disgaea 2 has arrived for well over a week now. Unfortunately, the iBook G4 refuses to spring back to life despite having RAM that was specifically designed for it. So I've given up on reviving that heap of junk. What can I say? "It's a Mac!"
I also filed my taxes recently, so hopefully Revenue Canada won't chase me down for not filing a tax return properly. Afterall, it is my first time filing on my own.
Finally, after 3 emails, Rosenqueen Company (NISA's Online Store) responded on the 10th of March. They blame the slow delivery on USPS; however, they were not able to produce a tracking number. Surprise Surprise! They did say to contact them if the shipment does not arrive TODAY. Well, I'll find out at the end of the business day whether or not I need to contact them.
Still waiting for:
Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness
Datel Tool Battery
I suppose I should also bug codejunkies about that battery.
Electronics Madness
27 Feb 2008 @ 0928
Ok, so I bought a few things online and they arrived this Monday (25 Feb). It took 8 hours for my new LaCie 1TB external harddrive (301301U) to format itself to NTFS. It then took many more grueling hours moving a little of 500GB of stuff onto it from my other drives. But it's finally done. I also departitioned my 500GB LaCie external, and merged two partitions on my internal.
The other thing that arrived on Monday was 512MB Kingston PC2700 DDR SODIMM RAM (KVR333X64SC25/512). I had hoped this would be compatible with the old iBook G4, unfortunately, it turns out the iBook G4 in my possession is a 2004 model, and not a mid-2005 model. As a result, I just wasted about $40.00 on an ancient RAM chip =(
Currently waiting for the following items to ship to me:
Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness
Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories
Datel Tool Battery
512MB Kingston PC2100 DDR SODIMM RAM (KTA-PBG4266/512)
Finally, I bought QuickTax Standard on Monday; hopefully, I'll finish my tax return stuff by mid-March.
Second Statistic Test another success!
15 Feb 08 @ 0640
Got marks back yestarday! I got 90% (avg: 77.13%) on it! That means I have accumulated 37.8% for final grade in this quarter course already! Hopefully I can do well on the 60% final. As for Organic Chem, my mark for Quiz #1 was 76%, class average of 66.97%. This was worth 10% of our final grade, hurray for 7.6%!
In other news, bought my Chestnut Semi-Formal Tickets yestarday and reading week is coming up! YAY one week break!
YAY! Did REALLY WELL on Engineering Statistics Quiz 1!
29 Jan 2008 @ 2355
The class average for this quiz (worth 18% of our final grade) was 90.2% and I got perfect! WOOT! That's 18% in MSE238H1S! 82 more % to go (aiming for at least 72 of 82)!
In other news, I got a 59.8% Sessional Average Last Semestre. I scraped by! HUZZAH!! My goal this coming semestre is a 2.64SGPA to put me above 2.00 CGPA.
Back from Montreal
22 Jan 2008 @ 1925
EWB National Conference took place in Montreal this past week (Jan 16-20). It was a lot of learning about third world / less developed / less industrialized / etc. countries and the issues like pverty, illiteracy, hunger, etc. In addition to all the learning, I got to meet a fair bunch of people. These people include but are not limited to, members of the UofT Chapter, HR Rep and CEO of Bombardier, CEO of Wardrop, HR Reps from Nexen and EnCana. From these business representatives, I learned more about their companies and their expectations of students seeking a job.
On Sunday, I spent time visiting my friends studying at McGill (Brian & Vivian). Now it's time to catch up on missed lectures and such in addition to finding a summer job.
MSE290 ORAL PRESENTATION?!?!?
04 Jan 2008 @ 1825
Ok, so I just checked my email and apparently there's an oral presentation on our case studies for Monday. Wow, time flies... I swear, this assignment seemed soo far away. I guess it's time to get cracking again.
Happy New Year!
02 Jan 2008 @ 0305
Well my first day in 2008 was rather dull. Tiff cancelled on us for New Year's Eve celebration, so I didn't do anything for New Years except just stay up really late (as usual). Played Mah Jong with family today, really bored in Vancouver for some reason.
In other news, I spent the time to consolidate all the July - December entries into 1 archive. Furthermore, I'll be adopting a slightly different posting format for 2008 beginning with this post. Finally, I'd like to let you all know that I will be attending the 2008 Engineers Without Borders National Conference being held in Montreal mid-January. Expect a few posts about that later this month.
Back in Vanco and BORED?!?
Well my flight back to Vancouver landed on Dec 23 at 2015ish Pacific Time. After waiting a grueling 45minutes, my luggage finally came out. The next few days would be spent playing Mah Jong with parents & grandma. Dec 27th & 28th, I headed up North Van to visit a few friends and old neighbours. Watched National Treasure at Metropolis on the 28th with Eddie, Aaron (Eddie's BCIT friend), and Vivian. It was an ok movie.
This past week has been kind of slow, not living in North Van anymore makes it harder to find people and such (GRRR parents moving in May 2007). Oh well, the New Year is coming soon, I guess I'll merge all the 2007 entries into one archive soonish. Maybe in 2008, I'll update more often?
29 Dec 2007 @ 1755
Anime Archive Listing Up and Running!
All the anime on my harddrives are now listed as a nice sidebar item. Unfortuantely, I can't host them for downloading (maybe if I had a server).
26 Nov 2007 @ 0020
Stupid MSE290!
After a boring evening of typing up my case topic and annotated bibliography, it's finally done. If you're bored, you can read it here (Link Removed - 02 Dec 2008).
19 Nov 2007 @ 0418
Powder X-Ray Diffraction
I made yet another program today. This one I used to solve something that could've been done in excel as well; however, I didn't want to manually analyse 90+ rows of data. So for those of you who need to find the Bragg Angle of some crystal system (cubic, tetragonal, orthorhombic). Unfortunately, I didn't code it for the other 4 crystal systems as it wasn't neccessary. Just beaware, that this program works BEST for the orthorhomic crystal system.
In other news, Christine, Tiff, and I drank a bit last night. I STILL find rum to taste horrible. HPNOTIQ wasn't too bad, though.
08 Nov 2007 @ 2233
Thanks everyone for a memorable 19
Well.. birthday's over. Had a nice surprise to kick it off (ice cream cake at like 0030? Thanks! Ryan, Xtine, Tiff!). Dinner at Everest was somewhat surprising as well since I slept from 0630-1730. Then we played MJ, not once, but twice (0030-0200ish and 2330-0130ish). It's been great fun. Also paid a short visit to LCBO today, and made my first legal purchase of Alcohol in Canada. In addition to the celbrations, we were able to finish the three Saws this weekend and STILL have sunday night! Yay Saw Marathon!
It's back to slaving away for school now. Floor Sushi Night tonight should be fun as well.
Once again, Thanks everyone!! Although, I'm disappointed Mom n' Dad seem to have forgotten (they must have their reasons).
04 Nov 2007 @ 0819
Bomb Scare Across the Street from 89 Chestnut!!
FULL STORY from CTV News. I wonder why they didn't bother evacuating nearby buildings.
29 Oct 2007 @ 2030
Chestnut in Winning Form!
We beat Victoria College 10-5 today in Coed Ultiamte Frisbee putting us at 2-2-0. The pitch was pretty muddy; yet, some people on our team still dove to catch those frisbees. Our last regular season match is this Monday against the Engineers!
24 Oct 2007 @ 0226
Coding Late into the Night is NOT so smart afterall...
So This past weekend I was working on a small program that would read a .pdb text file organzied in a certain way and convert cartesian to spherical. It worked fine except for getting "r" for (x,y,z) --> (r,t,p). I thought it was an error in the reading of the file, so I tweaked the reading code for ages and ages... and I gave up on it Sunday morning. Today, I looked at it again and it turns out to be a silly mistake in my sphericalize function. You can now find the functional code here (Link Removed - 02 Dec 2008)
In other news, I got facebook sometime last week. Yay?!?!?
Finally, all non-archive items available from sidebar (stuff above the "Blog Archives" image) has been removed from the Drop Down Menu.
23 Oct 2007 @ 0145
Chestnut Coed Ultimate Frisbee: 1-2-0 | ResNet Traffic Checker now in Sidebar!
We played Rotman (the business school at UofT) today and lost 5-2. It was a tough game ending with a head-on collision between one of our female players and one of their male players at the very end. This loss brings us to 1 win, 2 losses, 0 draws, 0 defaults.
In other news, for those of you living on Univeristy of Toronto residences, there is now a convenient way to check how much bandwidth you used this week. check it out in the Sidebar (or the dropdown menu)!
17 Oct 2007 @ 0030
MahJong: Fun -- Computer being Stupid: Not so Fun -- Bye Bye Vista!
Well on Friday, my computer started acting really dumb. It decided not to recognize my external hard drives anymore. After tinkering with it this entire weekend, the problem is that my computer doesn't like to recognize external hard drives if I shut down the computer and leave the eHDD on. I even spent the time to wipe Vista off of my system.
As for MahJong, it's been awhile since I got to play, but last Saturday and the Saturday before four of us at Chestnut got together and played (I don't remember everyone's names, so I'm not going to name them).
Now that I no longer have Windows Vista, I'm going to rate Vista as a Complete Failure. It wastes way too much RAM, and even when you configure it to save some RAM.. it takes forever to Startup and Shut Down. It's a good thing I didn't have to pay to get Vista.
Happy 10th Birthday to Nullsoft Winamp (even though it's a bit late)! Winamp 5.5 looks so much nicer than WMP11 and iTunes with the Bento Skin that it comes with. Another I learned while visiting the Winamp site is that they're owned by AOL. surprise surprise...
15 Oct 2007 @ 1600
Chestnut Ultimate Frisbee wins First Game of Season!
On Monday (Sep 30), the Chestnut played against Nursing in UofT Intramurals Coed Ultimate Frisbee. Our team racked up four quick points in the opening minutes by pressuring the Nursing team in their defensive zone. The final score was Chestnut 7 Nursing 5.
In other news, I got my first quiz of 2nd year back today. The quiz was for MSE244 (Inorganic Chemistry). The class average was 60.66%, and I got 58.33% (not too bad considering how I didn't study).
By the way, the Calculus challenge from Sep 20th still stands. The problem is as follows:
Find the maximum and minimum distance between the point (1,1) and the ellipse 4x^2 + 9y^2 = 36.
| 2(x-1) = 8ax | 2(y-1) = 18ay | 4x^2 + 9y^2 = 36 |
| x-1 = 4ax | y-1 = 9ay | 9y^2 = 36 - 4x^2 |
| (y/4)(x-1) = axy | (x/9)(y-1) = axy | 9y^2 = 4(9 - x^2) |
| (y/4)(x-1) = (x/9)(y-1) |
| y^2 = (4/9)(9-x^2) |
| | y = ±(2/3)(9-x^2)^(-1/2) |
This means... f(x,y) = (x-1)^2 + (y-1)^2 ; g(x,y) = 4x^2 + 9y^2 - 36 = 0 ; where f(x,y) is subject to g(x,y)
F(x,y) = < 2x-2 , 2y-2 > where F(x,y) denotes the Gradient Vector of f(x,y)
G(x,y) = < 8x , 18y > where G(x,y) denotes the Gradient Vector of g(x,y)
Using Lagrange Multiplier you get the equations on the right:
Solve this with pen, paper, and a scientific calculator (none of the fancy graphing ones) and earn my eternal respect. People with Ph D.'s in Math are not allowed to participate.
03 Oct 2007 @ 1333
Polymers are cool =D iBook G4 Battery Arrived!!
Well last night was rather successful at wasting time. I was talking on DC++ for a few hours, then next thing you know its midnight, and I was too damn tired to write my lab report due on 21 Sep 2007 @ 1700.
So I did what a sensible UofT engineering student would do. I fell asleep, and woke up at 0800. I spent 10 minutes typing the abstract (below). I then got a phone call from front desk to pick up a package. So I went to pick up the package.
Next thing you know I have to go to my 3 hour lab on Casting. So I brought a laptop with me (the iBook G4) to class. After a boring 3 hours of melting, grinding, etching, observing eutectic lead-tin alloy, I headed over to Sanford Fleming and got to work. Two hours later, I'm done my lab report with 3 hours to spare. I emailed it to Ryan for a quick skim to make sure its "acceptable". Printed it off, sketched in the neccessary figures (2 sketches of LDPE at 800x magnification). Now, my lab report is done, and I have yet another one due next week at 1700. Below is the abstract for my lab.
Low density polyethylene (LDPE) was melted then cooled at two different rates. Once cooled, the two samples were observed under an optical microscope at 800x magnification. Using polarized light, spherulites were observed in the sample with the slower cooling rate. Spherulites were not observed in the quench cooled sample. This result is to be expected due to lack of time for nucleation centers to radiate outwards.
In other news, the package I picked up this morning was a new battery for the iBook G4 free of charge. Hurray for Battery Recalls!!
Finally if you manage to solve the Calculus problem I posted yestarday with no other aid than a scientific calculator, I will applaud your brilliance. Please note that people with Graduate Degrees in Mathematics are exempt from such applause as it is expected that you are capable of solving second year undergrad calculus problems.
21 Sep 2007 @ 1618 (with 42 minutes to spare on my lab)
4th Degree Polynomials are FUN!!
I think this academic year will test my time management skills (as if I had any). I'll be busy with Intramurals, Residence Council, Engineers Without Borders, and class work. with that being said, if I succeed, I should be good for the remainder of my Undergrad. However, if I fail, I don't know what would happen...(let's just hope it doesn't get there). So far, my courses have been fairly boring yet somewhat educational. I also seem to be keeping up.
This past week, our calculus prof decided to assign a problem that required us to solve a 4th degree polynomial that does NOT factor without a graphing calculator, or computer! Of course, I highly doubt he realized at the time that it was unsolveable with just a regular scientific calcuator. The question went something like this:
Find the maximum and minimum distance between the point (1,1) and the ellipse 4x^2 + 9y^2 = 36.
This means... f(x,y) = (x-1)^2 + (y-1)^2 ; g(x,y) = 4x^2 + 9y^2 - 36 = 0 ; where f(x,y) is subject to g(x,y)
F(x,y) = < 2x-2 , 2y-2 > where F(x,y) denotes the Gradient Vector of f(x,y)
G(x,y) = < 8x , 18y > where G(x,y) denotes the Gradient Vector of g(x,y)
Using Lagrange Multiplier you get the equations on the right:
| 2(x-1) = 8ax | 2(y-1) = 18ay | 4x^2 + 9y^2 = 36 |
| x-1 = 4ax | y-1 = 9ay | 9y^2 = 36 - 4x^2 |
| (y/4)(x-1) = axy | (x/9)(y-1) = axy | 9y^2 = 4(9 - x^2) |
| (y/4)(x-1) = (x/9)(y-1) |
| y^2 = (4/9)(9-x^2) |
| | y = ±(2/3)(9-x^2)^(-1/2) |
If you solve the equation on the far right for x or y, you'll end up solving for a very sexy 4th degree to solve.
Note: I am not completely sure of the above Calculus problem, and thus it may be edited at a later time.
Also note: I took five hours trying to figure out different ways of solving this so that I don't get the 4th degree polynomial... no success.
Finally, today in tutorial, our TA told us that the problem results in irrational values even when solved with a computer or graphing calculator; thus, it is close to impossible without any of those aids.
20 Sep 2007 @ 2332
Chestnut Intramurals off to a good start (maybe)!
Well the ballot meeting took place today and Chestnut managed to get ballots for 3 of 7 teams. They are as follows:
Coed Ultimate Frisbee (YAY!!)
Men's & Women's Flag Football
In other aspects of life, Intro to Anthro was boring. The polymer lab was also not very interesting.
14 Sep 2007 @ 2135
First Week of Second Year offically over =(
So classes started last Thursday for the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto. I had 5 of my 6 courses take place during this week (6th is a Arts & Science course). My courses are the following (in no specific order):
MAT294H1
Calculus III | This course ain't so bad... We covered partial derivatives, tangent planes, and gradient vectors this week. |
MSE202H1
Thermodynamics | This course is weird... we haven't done anything about entropies, enthalpies, Gibb's Free Energy at all this week. |
| MSE219H1 | The continuation of MSE101, Fundamentals of Material Science. So far we have learned that MSE101 lied to us about all sorts of stuff.
This course was formerly MSE230 Sturcture of Materials and MSE231 Characterization of Materials. |
MSE244H1
Inorganic Chemistry | We are currently reviewing quantum numbers, spdfg orbitals, and the like. |
MSE290Y1
Communications | This is a year long seminar course. Our case study is about the sustainable developement of plastics... yay more environmental stuff!(sarcasm) |
ANT100Y1
Intro to Anthropology | This Arts & Science Course starts tomorrow at 1800 in Convocation Hall. |
EAS102Y1
Intro to East Asian Studies | I'm currently #26 in the wait list for this course. It's already had one lecture, and I didn't go to that lecture. |
Other than that, this Friday should mark the first day of labs. Friday's lab is for MSE219, it will be on Polymers, whatever that is...
12 Sep 2007 @ 1912
Edited: 14 Sep 2007 @ 2135
Family Guy Monopoly!
We started playing at 2230 and finished a game of 6 person monopoly at 0230. I came in 2nd by holding onto the green strip, and 3 conveyances (rail roads in normal monopoly) for pretty much the entire game.
Third place Petoria and Pewterschmidt Mansion (Boardwalk and Park Place) plus a few properties until he bankrupted, and I acquired his property.
While, first place had the remainder of the board. The bottom three were pretty much bankrupted by midnight, and it just dragged on from there cause of all the hotels and lucky rolls.
It was fun playing with Adam, Rene (spelling?), Daniel (my roommate), Christine (and Tiff), Phil.
05 Sep 2007 @ 0243
Edited: 09 Sep 2007 @ 1840
Frosh Moves In!
Today was a long day in the elevators sending everyone up to their floors (8am - 5pm). So it's back to school now, finally, the building isn't empty.
02 Sep 2007 @ 2340
Return from trip to the states! EAS waitlist shortens some more!
I left for Scarborough Friday night (Aug 17) for a trip to the states beginning Saturday morning.
Leaving early Saturday morning (Aug 18) from Scarborough, our tour group crossed the border with a short wait at the border. Our first stop in the states was in Corning, where we visited the Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG). CMOG was kind of boring. We arrived somewhere in New Jersey that night and that was the end of day 1.
Leaving early once more on Sunday (Aug 19), we headed for a city tour of New York. In the morning, we drove by Ground Zero, took a short walk on Wall Street, saw the New York skyline from Rockefeller Center, and paid a quick visit to the Statue of Liberty. In the afternoon, we shopped at an outlet mall (New Jersey's Largest Outlet Mall supposedly) for a short while before heading for Atlantic City. Atlantic City was kind of dull, but now I kind of understand why Boardwalk is the most expensive piece of property in Monopoly. Boardwalk is right beside the Atlantic Ocean, and it's casino after casino after casino. Each casino was also a hotel. We stayed in Atlantic City in a hotel called Taj Mahal.
The night at Taj Mahal was nice and comfy, but it was yet another early morning. Monday (Aug 20) was a long day at Washingtion, DC. We visited National Mall (a really big park), Museum of Natural History (or something like that), Air and Space Musem, a few memorials (Lincoln, Benjamin, and Washington, I think), and some place close to the White House. Security was tight at all these places. Seriously, I don't get why they're so stressed out about terrorists. Furthermore, what makes the president so special? He's only an elected politican. Politicians can always be replaced. Why do they even bother wasting tax dollars trying to protect him (and the White House). Oh well, at least it ain't my tax dollars. After visiting all these places in Washington, we headed for Philledelphia (I think). Nothing too special....
Tuesday was another early morning, we were headed back to Toronto. Canadian Customs is much less strict than American. Probably, because we're not constantly reminded of the "terrorist threat". Seriously, the states have got the dumbest government... there is no way you can prepare for a terrorist attack, no matter how much "security" you put in place. Why do they even bother trying?
After staying the night at my relative's tuesday evening, I was headed back downtown on yestarday (Aug 22).
Yestarday was some what interesting. I was heading west to Finch Station (Yonge & Finch) from Miliken & Finch at about 1300. I kind of dozed off on the bus and missed the Finch Stn stop (Yonge & Finch) and wound up at Neilson & Finch (further east from where I started) when I woke up. After arriving at Finch Stn for the second time, I hopped on the subway and got off at Dundas Stn and walked to Chestnut.
I received part of my dental claims (apparently, we aren't 100% covered) when I checked my mail yestarday.
Pictures from the trip may or may not go up, really depends if I feel like it or not. There you have it, my 4 day trip to the states.
Today, I checked ROSI and the waitlist shrunk some more! I'm now 45th in line for EAS102Y1Y (hurray?!?!?!), and there are currently 57 students wait listed for the evening lecture section.
23 Aug 2007 @ 2205
TagBoard Visible without Inline Frames!
As you can see the tagboard is now visible using regular frames! The inline frame version of the site still exist (select it drop down menu).
You are now able to enable and disable the tagboard (not available with inline frames).
16 Aug 2007 @ 1741
EAS102 Waiting List shrunk a bit!
Yay! I'm 49th in line as of 13:40 today. As of 13:40, there are 54 people on the wait list for the course, so 5 people are in line after me lol.
My other elective choices (though I don't need to take tons of electives) don't work out too well.
ANT200, plenty of space for lecture but no tutorial space that fits into my schedule.
ANT204, plenty of lecture space, but no tutorial space that fits into my schedule.
EAS209, plenty of space, but timetable conflict.
LIN100, wait list is bigger than EAS.
16 Aug 2007 @ 1356
HSS/CS Elective Selected
Despite staying up late into the night last night, I fell asleep before 6am. =(
With that said I started enrolling for my elective 5hours and 20minutes after enrolment started. The results are as follows:
EAS102Y1Y - Wait List (54th in line)
ANT100Y1Y - Enrolled
Just out of curiosity, what the hell is the marking scheme for a UofT A&S course that ONLY has a 2 hour lecture??
14 Aug 2007 @ 1130
Minor Changes to Site!!
As shown to me by Ryan early this morning, some browsers do not support inline frames (or they do, but only in certain modes). For example, the Blackberry only supports iFrames in certain modes.
Therefore, an alternative index page has been created. However, the tagboard has been disabled in this new index page; simply because I couldn't find a way to hide the ads.
Visit here (Link Removed - 02 Dec 2008) to visit the non-iframe version of the site.
Visit here (Link Removed - 02 Dec 208) to visit the iframe version of the site.
There are currently no plans for a frame-free version of the site.
By default, the site will load the non-inline frame version.
You can enable and disable inline frames in the drop down menu located in the sidebar.
12 Aug 2007 @ 1715
Gundam Expo in Tokyo
Today marks the opening day of the Gundam Expo 2007 in Tokyo! Oh, how I wish we had something like that over here in Toronto. Anyways here's one of many pictures I found at http://www.gundam.info
11 Aug 2007 @ 0150
C compiler
As my site stacks up in content, I feel it is important for people to be able to access all the little goodies.
For those of you who do not want to purchase a C compiler for my programs, Dev-C++ is a pretty decent compiler that I had to use for one of my courses. It's FREE!!
At this point in time, Dev-C++ is currently NOT Vista-compatible.
In a few moments, Dev-C++ will be added to the sidebar.
07 Aug 2007 @ 1620
Another nifty upgrade to string manipulation program!
The program now forces the user to enter an output filename DIFFERENT from the input filename.
The program does NOT accept the following:
Input: C:\folder1\folder2\abc.txt
Output: C:\folder1\folder3\abc.txt
Output file name MUST differ from input file
07 Aug 2007 @ 1609
String Manipulation program update!
The program now accepts user designated file!
A full filepath is required; otherwise, it assumes the file is in the same folder as the .exe file!
07 Aug 2007 @ 1257
String Manipulation program for Ryan Doherty
This is a simple little string manipulation Ryan needed. Basically it converts an "input.txt" to "output.txt".
input.txt follows the following format:
>string
string2
string3
output.txt reorganizes string2 and string3 into columns
Nothing too fancy... to save memory... reduce #define n
Source Code -- No Longer Available (19 Sep 2008)
07 Aug 2007 @ 0339
Bourne Ultimatum
I watched the 3rd Bourne movie on Friday night (Aug 3), and it was a good move. There were some minor discussions about Ratouille last night; however, that never went through.
Movies-wise, I'm hoping Rush Hour 3 will be good; but, I haven't seen the trailers at all. In fact, my TV has been on "standby" for the past who know how long.
EWB hosts a concert at Metro Hall this coming wednesday (Aug 9), I might go.... might not.
05 Aug 2007 @ 2051
End of EWB Week for me.
Yestarday was my last day helping with the Fair Trade Awareness campaign. Over 30,000 packages of hot chocolate was distributed by EWB over the past few days (Jul 31 - Aug 2). There was a short blurb on it in the August 2nd Toronto Star (see A12).
Other than that not much has really gone on. All of July's entries can be viewed in the Archives.
There's some tweaking to be done with the site. You'll notice a C Source Code section in the Drop Down Menu. Currently that is not completely functional; however, that should be rectified by next week.
03 Aug 2007 @ 1124
More EWB fun!
Yestarday we finished packing the rest of the hot choclate satchets.
Today at BCE Place (Bay & Front), EWB had an information booth where we were also handing out free fair trade hot chocolate. The workplace challenge was also promoted.
Today's the 31st of July.. so it's the last entry for the month!
31 Jul 2007 @ 2037
Fun times at Engineers Without Borders!
I volunteered to help with some of their Fair Trade awareness stuff, and so we had the training today.
After an informational 150 minutes, we headed out to lunch together at a Vegetarian Restaurant called Fresh. It's at like Spadina & Richmond. The food wasn't too bad. We were there for a good 2 hours just chatting.
I figured I didn't have any plans, and there were 30,000 satchets of Hot Chocolate to prepare for Mass distribution. Myself and a few others helped out for a few hours, we got about 3400 satchels prepared in about 90 minutes. Then we had to tidy up the EWB National Office cause we made a mess with cardboard everywhere.
Anyways, it was a good experience. I got to meet some upper years, and learned a bit more about Fair Trade.
Fair Trade Coffee can be found @ Starbucks & Second Cup upon request. Unfortunately, Tim Horton's & Timothy's do NOT offer Fair Trade coffee options.
Look for bright orange shirts at TTC stations during rush hour and get some Fair Trade Hot Chocolate =D
28 Jul 2007 @ 2023
Mastermind debugged with MORE functionality!
- Fixed bug where program gave improper "colors correct" statement.
- Fixed bug where it displays "Congrats...." after you have won once and lost at later.
- Added User defined settings
- Added Guesses remaining statement.
Note: It is NOT smart to set size to an insanely large number.
Memory usage can be approximated at: "User-defined size" * 12 + 52 bytes.
Just click the same old link below.
28 Jul 2007 @ 0601
Mastermind for Command Prompt / Terminal!
Okie... I got bored and decided to make Mastermind in C. The source code is HERE (Link Removed - 02 Dec 2008)!
To play, you will need to compile the source code using a C++ Compiler (ie. Dev-C++).
The #define statements allow you to quickly customize the difficulty of Mastermind :p
26 Jul 2007 @ 0556
Mozzila Firefox and IE 7 Minor Visual Differences Abolished!!
For those of you who just LOVE Internet Explorer, this site will now load with the same look as a Firefox user.
I must admit, this was not intentional. This just happened as I was fixing up to code to make it look better on the DS Browser in Overview Mode.
IE users: Enjoy!!
23 Jul 2007 @ 0133
Next Project: Optimizing this website for Nintendo DS
It is important to note that the Nintendo DS has Pre-Penitum II processing power, and has 8MB of RAM (the GBA cartridge slot).
With that said, when this is done... this site SHOULD load on ALMOST any mobile browser. That means you will notice some changes to this site over the next few weeks.
This project would also make this site W3C compliant (or close to), not that I care whether or not it's W3C compliant or not... I just think it'd be nice to make this site load beyond the realms of Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.4.
22 Jul 2007 @ 2005
Restoration Project Success!!
Thanks to Ryan, I was able to test that my hub works fine now.
19 Jul 2007 @ 2350
My nano has risen from the dead! Also, FutureShop sucks!
So Ryan had posted on MSN that a store not to far from where I'm living had LaCie 500 GB external harddrive on sale at $137.00 CAD. I check the store's website (infonec.ca), lo and behold, it's the same LaCie harddrive I bought not long ago. So I check my receipt from futureshop, it's well within the 30day limit. I head down to Futureshop three blocks away.
I go in, all the staff are "looking busy", there's like 3 guys helping one customer. A few minutes later, one of them asks if I needed help, so I told him I was here for my price guarantee on my external harddrive. He asks me which store, I told him "infonec", it's like a block from futureshop. He replies by claiming that Infonec is not an "Authroized Dealer" and hands me their price guarantee ad thing and runs off.
I read and there it is in the ifne print "from Authorized Dealers". Now I happened to be in their Computer department, so I borrowed without permission one of their laptops to check this out. I decide to head to LaCie Canada's website. I click on the "Where to buy" button, and guess what Future Shop wasn't there. At this point, some other FutureShop employee comes over and asks if I needed help, so I explained to him the whole situation.
Apparently, this guy was new. He gets the department manager (or he seemed like it anyways), and I have a small chat with him. He asked for proof of such lowered price, and I showed him infonec's website. He went on the phone, called up infonec (or so it looked like), and told me "they don't have it instock, so I'll give you $20.00 back". Now I didn't really care at this point. Afterall, I got my harddrive for $170.00 which is pretty cheap for LaCie.
So I got $22.80 back today. Yay!
In other aspects of life, my router forwards ports again! It was just one silly little setting that I messed up. Finally, my iPod Nano seems to be working again! Hurray!!
19 Jul 2007 @ 1611
Want this page to load faster?
Ok, so this page isn't completely ad-free (if you pay attention to the status bar when the page loads). First off, it grabs majority of the data from "individual.utoronto.ca". Then it'll grab the Tagboard from "phpnet.us", my current php host. Because of this, there are ads that load, that you can't see (yay frames without scrollbars!). They however do take up your precious loading time.
For Faster Ensure that your firewall / router / whatever blocks out all content from "adserving.cpxinteractive.com". As there are ads hiding in the Tagboard right now (evil evil free php hosting).
I'll make a post when I've switched php hostings.
Another observation I've made is that the "individual.utoronto.ca" server is not super duper consistent. Just refresh if the page doesn't load quickly. Since individual.utoronto.ca hosts webspace for ALL of UofT students, it is expected that it doesn't load instantly everytime. Please bear this in mind whenever you load this page :)
18 Jul 2007 @ 0401
DC Hub Restoration Project
Well as of two days ago, I've started working on restoring the hub and so far I've had little success. Tonight, it seems my router has decided to cease all port forwarding activities. It's no longer a matter of configuring YnHub.exe but a matte of configuring my router, and Windows Firewall.
So far, I can connect to the hub locally, meaning from the computer hosting the hub, which is pretty damn useless. In anycase, by the time I have this figured out...it might already be September, at which point all this would be pretty pointless.
Hopefully, I get it all tweaked out by the end of July. If not, I'll just give up.
18 Jul 2007 @ 0200
Got my first 'A' in University!
So marks for the summer session came out today. I got 89% (85-89 A, 90+ A+) in APS106, Fundamentals of Computer Programming, and 72% (70-72 B-, 73-76 B) in ECE110, Electrical Fundamentals.
So now I've pulled away from my dreadful 1.00 GPA in the Fall semestre, with a Cumulative GPA (CGPA) of 1.81. CGPA is the average of all courses taken for degree credit. UofT uses a 4 point GPA system (4.0 for A or A+ , 0.0 for F).
Other than that, nothing much exciting happened. I bought myself a 1GB microSD card for my cell and got a USB microSD card reader along with it. My nano is still dead =(
12 Jul 2007 @ 1555
iPod Nano seems to have died one me :(
I let the batteries run out and now it won't charge. The five "Rs" on the apple website don't seem to be helping. Hopefully their support forums will have a solution sooner or later.
11 Jul 2007 @ 1600
SMS Page Updated
Just a few minor changes. It was just way too dull before.
10 Jul 2007 @ 0540
Live Earth 7/7/07
Online Replays of the Concerts Available HERE courtesy of MSN.com
08 Jul 2007 @ 0010
Changed Color of ".co.nr" icon
I decided the blue icon didn't fit well with the grey website background. So I changed it to grey.
04 Jul 2007 @ 1237
Fido strikes back?!?
So I got my first bill today, and guess what magically appears, "Balance from your last bill: $ab.cd." Now I'm wondering, how exactly do you get a balance on your account prior to your first bill. I decided to inquire about it in person.
I walk into a Fido Store, they put me on the phone with "Customer Care" (aka some random guy in who knows where). After like 20 minutes of discussion, nothing is resolved because I'm not an "Authorized User" of the account listed under my mom's name. Now, I have to play e-mail tag / phone tag with my parents! Hurray?!?!
So, for all of you who pay your own bills... read it thuroughly before paying it!
03 Jul 2007 @ 2051
URL Redirect Set Up!
http://dtswan.co.nr now redirects to this site.
In addition, I got a new external harddrive yestarday. It's a 500GB LaCie.
01 Jul 2007 @ 2205
Happy Canada Day! & Website Up and Running!
Yay! Canada!! I know this is rather simple in appearence and some what lacking in content. Rest assured, more content will come.
URL Redirect hasn't been set up yet, but it will be soon.
01 Jul 2007 @ 0000
