Blogs/Journals/Diaries Links

Just wanted to bring to your attention some interesting blog/journal links I've come across recently.

Bill Simmons, one of my favourite sports writers, was sent to Houston to check out the festivities before the upcoming Super Bowl. He's a huge Patriot Fan (as big of a fan as Dave Clement is) and his task is write a blog about the week's happenings. He's updating it twice a day! Normally he writes maybe 1 or 2 articles a week! Anyway, his writing is entertaining as always, so check it out.

Slate (one of my favourite op/ed sites) often has weeklong diaries penned by one person. This week is a series on arabic culture, which I confess to knowing very little about. I liked this quote about how "Arab students often just hang out together and take nothing from the States except what they get in classes. They deprive not only themselves, but also Americans, of the opportunity to learn about Arab culture." I can see this kind of thing going on at Waterloo, since there are a lot of middle eastern students in Electrical Engineering. I really like the diaries from Slate and for some weird reason I enjoy reading Dear Prudence.

Just one last link. The Miama Herald has been following around the top ranked high school football player, Willie Williams, as he is getting recruited by different colleges. These colleges have lot's of money and aren't afraid to spend it. For example: for dinner one night, the college sent them to a real expensive restaurant. Willie eventually ended up ordering four lobster tails, two steaks and a Shrimp Scampi. One Lobster Tail was priced at $49.99 and the steaks didn't have a listed price on the menu. Check out the stories, they are pretty ridiculous:

Trip No. 1: Florida State.

Trip No. 2: Auburn.

Trip No. 3: Miami.

With one more school to come!

New Pingu High Score

I don't usually like playing flash games, but this one has captured my attention. Throughout the day people have kept on sending me their high scores, which prompted me to try to beat it.....So beat this!



Yes, that's 1224.1 Pingus. (I don't actually know the unit of measure they are using, so the unit of measure will be known as Pingus (Lang on SLAM suggested this)).

Because I'm an Engineer I'm inclined to say that I got 1.2241 kiloPingus. Beat that!

Pingu

http://www.mironov.net/pingu/pingu3.swf

My record is 1214.

Note to Self:

Don't walk home from school at night in a winter storm wearing basketball warmups.


I just got back from a fun weekend at CUTC. I couldn't make it for the start of the conference, on wed night because of friday morning lab. Well right after finishing the lab, I took off (w/ edmond, a very very fast driver) for the Delta Hotel in Scarborough. I got there in record time and as soon as I walked in, I was pressed into moving boxes. Boxes of bottled water up a flight of stairs. But it's good I earned my keep. CUTC paid for the hotel, food and my attendence at the event. Pretty sweet.

I went as a helper for the video team of Richard/Jeff. I did a lot of filming, which was good because I got to attend events and listen to the speakers. Richard/Jeff basically lived in our hotel room for 24 hours working like dogs on the video. It turned out really well guys! Kuo, Cary and Joseph were also there helping out with a whole bunch of stuff. Cary was a real trooper, hopping around on one ankle and taking crap from angry/screaming CUTC delegates.

This year had a much different feel from last year. Last year I was an attendee and I was just herded around taking it all in. This year, I was moving from place to place and doing work. I had around 3-4 hours of sleep on friday night, which was probably a little more than Richard and Jeff. I thought the best part was the hotel room. When I got there on friday, we had to start on the video that night. To help us through the night, Matt and I made a LCBO run at 10PM. We walked about 20 minutes away to a nearby LCBO and got some BOOZEr, err, booze and carried it back in our backpacks.

Here's us just before drinking, popping the bottle caps with our shirts:


Cheers!

After several hours of drinking, and after Matt has lost all inhibition:


Here is Matt getting up from the bed after finishing his "business". You can see Cary "recovering" in the background.

Here's Matt passed out after a long, hard day's work:


Yes folks, that is a bottle of Olde English Malt Liquor...the choice drink of drunks everywhere!

I really wanted to attend the seminar with David Kirk, from NVIDIA, but I missed it. Apparantely, he had some really cool demos. I did attend seminars on Quantum Cryptography and Grid Computing which were pretty interesting. The keynote speakers were a mixed bag. The President of Microsoft Canada talked about pedophiles for half an hour. Boring and depressing. A keynote speaker from NRC was better and had some interesting things to say about Canada and the amount of research going on here. (Not enough, but there is a potential in Canada for tremendous research opportunities).

Anyway, Saturday night was the banquet, where the video was shown. Although there were a few problems with the audio, I think people liked it. I went home after the dinner, because I hadn't seen my family for Chinese New Year's yet. It was nice to be home with the family again....especially the plentiful food part.

Now I'm back at school, with piles of homework to catch up on.

I'm Back...

After a long hiatus.....actually it was a long basketball filled break. My disappearance from my blog happened to exactly coincide with the beginning of the NBA season. I also have cable at home (which is a novelty to me), which meant I could watch every single Raptor game. Headline Sports also has this wonderful program called Court Surfing where they jump around the league and play exciting stuff from every game live.
And with the start of another basketball season, it means the start of another Fantasy Basketball Season.

Quite sadly, fantasy basketball has gobbled up all my internet time and it has made be neglect my blog. I've even been reading fewer blogs from other writers. When I'm on my computer, the first place thing I check is fantasy ball. So anyway, it's a bad habit. To limit myself, I've decided to only check it three times a day...once in the morning (to check the totals from the previous night), once after I get home from school (to make any last minute lineup changes necessary) and once before I get to bed (to see how my guys did). I know it sounds like a lot still, but it's better than before. Trust me. The good news is that I'm tied for first with Dave Clement (who is The Stats Doctor....I'm not kidding about either, he got accepted at Cornell for a Stats Doctorate program. Congrats Dave) in my league. So maybe all this work is paying off...in a strange sort of way. Tim really is right that "out of all the ways we like to escape from reality -- [sports] is by far the most real." (BTW thanks Tim for posting to my site, when I was awol)

Oh yeah, one other basketball related item. I joined an intramural basketball team, which I think is going to be a lot of fun. It's strange that I really enjoy playing basketball and yet I'm so bad at it. If I really had lot's of time, I guess I could practice and improve, but I don't. Barry Ip is the captain, and even Chris Erven is playing on it...so it's definitely going to be fun :)

So has anything happened to me over the last few months? I was working a lot at a pretty enjoyable job (at Sensors & Software, makers of Ground Penetrating Radar) and that took up a lot of time. Our company had developed some equipment for use on the mars rover, Beagle 2, but unfortunately that didn't work out.

I worked out with Monty over the past term. Monty is a beast. He's currently at 185 lbs, but probably can do a few reps at 200!!! Yes, that's right, 200!!! I made quite a lot of progress over this term, and on the last day I managed to bench 175 lbs, which is an all time record for me. I really should pay more attention to cardio though...i get winded running the basketball court! Even doing the CN Stair climb this past term hasn't improved my cardio.

Hmmm, what else was I up to..... I went to an OHL game, purchased a Toronto Mamma Mia Package (Dinner, hotel, Mamma Mia & Raptor tickets) with Kitty, a Raptors game w/ Tim, settled my bet with Keith at Red Lobsters, heared some cool stories from Jeff Wentworth (who came back from spending a year working in Japan), another quake day, another fun Annual Secret Santa, too much to drink at my company's open bar Christmas party (it sounds worse than it actually was...I only felt the ill effects of too much alcohol after coming home), checking out a Jazz club downtown (which I found really enjoyable...I'll have to go again sometime), paintball (spending money for more ammo at paintball increases the fun factor tenfold). That's about all that really comes to mind right now.


Anyway I'm hoping to blog more often now and more consistently, even though I have a busy school term ahead of me. I'll try to find a photo of myself to put on my friendsters site (the site is sooo slow, it always pisses me off too much and i just stop trying to use it), which I have totally and completely neglected. And I will try to keep up with other people's blogs. I mean, how can give up on reading blogs when I have one like this to look at, err read. :)

But seriously, seeing other people blog consistently is a very good reminder to blog. A friend at Western, Patrick Ma, just started a very good one and he blogs like crazy (with daily pictures to boot!). Also, one of my softball teammates had a very popular and entertaining series on Understanding Girls. Check it out.

Happy New Year!

Another Long Offseason Begins...

I remember back in high school a few of us were sitting around getting ready for a fantasy hockey pool. Someone came up and asked why we got so worked up over things like that; after all "sports weren't real". At the time, I had no answer and simply ignored the comment, but I have since learned that I love sports precisely because -- out of all the ways we like to escape from reality -- it is by far the most real.

We all watch movies and TV shows and read books -- all are scripted and move inexorably towards a preordained ending. Yet sports is real life -- a warlike struggle, a duel to the death contained on a field, on a court or on a diamond. It is as real as life gets. And when once in a while, the truly remarkable happens -- like Kurt Warner going from bagging groceries to winning the Superbowl -- it is beyond the imagination of even the most far-fetched Hollywood writer.

As the Eagles lost again tonight and conclude yet another disappointing season, it marks 20 years since the city of Philadelphia has last won a sports championship. People talk about how the Leafs haven't won the cup, but at least most Torontonians know what it felt like to win the World Series -- arguably an even greater triumph in sports. I know that it is puzzling why I follow the Eagles with such devotion. Look in my room, you will find back articles of Eagles Digest -- the official publication of the Eagles that I had mailed up to Toronto for what was then a mini-fortune -- dating back to 1995 (i'm not even joking). In my basement, you'll find tapes of Eagles playoff games from 1990 and the 1991 Video Yearbook. If anyone has a copy of our Middle school yearbook, even my quotes in like gr 7 were about the Eagles. And I still read the Philly papers daily (especially the sports section).

I think this devotion borders almost on the religious. OK, that's going too far, and it is absurd to suggest that one should love sports in the same way one loves God, but there are certainly parallels between a devoted fan and a devoted worshipper. Every year, the fan puts his faith in the team, puts past disappointments behind him and thinks with an unquestioning faith "this is the year we do it; this is the year we FINALLY win the championship". It doesn't matter if the team has let him down in the past, the true fan will stubbornly remain true and doggedly keep cheering even when times are down. His faith will be tested along the way by many disappointments, but ultimately, there is the promise his faith will one day be rewarded with the ultimate goal -- a championship.

Of course, just like in religion there are fairweather fans; aka "bandwagon jumpers". Some people like to believe in God only when things are going well, when life is as it should be. As soon as life takes a wrong turn, off they jump from the bandwagon and turn their backs on God. This is something we often see in sports. The team plays well, and everyone's a fan; things go badly, and people immediately trash them, trash the superstars and laugh at those who stubbornly keep the faith. Anyone know a priest? That's actually not a bad sermon. haha

But yeah, there are many parallels between sports and religion. I cannot rationalize why i love a team from another country and another city; this devotion cannot be expressed in words. I don't know why bad things happen in sports, but I do know I'll be back next year for another exciting season of Eagles football. It was disappointing, but my faith has not been shaken.

As Phillies great Tug McGraw once said: "Ya Gotta believe!"

This Term's Sit-In Course is:

I've always liked variety in my schedule, and in the past, when I've had courses such as Literature, West Thought, Eastern Thought, Calculus, or Physics on my timetable, variety wasn't the problem. In fact, it was often part of the problem! -- but hey, no one said university was supposed to be easy. This past year, as my schedule (see below) has become increasingly dominated by courses from one single discipline, I've decided to sit in on one extra course each term -- some random, fun course that interested me, but that I didn't have time to write the papers for. So I would just show up to all the classes I could make and contribute once in a while to the discussion. No one knew I wasn't supposed to be there (I think technically you're supposed to pay a 'listening fee' for doing that, but that's gotta be a scam if I've ever heard of one).


In first term, that course was Russian Literature. In terms of sheer perseverance and mental satisfaction, I'm pretty sure that reading a novel by Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky must rank right up there with any other human experience. It's probably equivalent to running a marathon with your eyes and with your brain. And I knew that without this course, I would never finish even one of these books -- let alone the 3 that I read heading into the term. No, not War and Peace, yet, but like running marathons, ya gotta work up to it. It was the perfect companion to all the math and stats i was doing at the time.

This term, I'm sitting in on Christianity in the Modern Period... Kind of a critical analysis of my religion that I'm fond of. I've always wanted to learn more about Roman Catholic doctrine (my parents chose not to send me to Catholic school despite my relgious upbringing) , but it looks like the focus of this course is more Protestant. Nevertheless, it should be a good time and I'm hoping it brings up a lot of compelling questions that religon raises.

I was actually tempted to overload and just take those two courses, but I decided against it. I've overloaded in both 2nd and 3rd years to take interesting courses like these, and though I managed, it was pretty intense. Seeing as I have those extra credits (plus a full-year equivalent at U of T summer school), I have more than enough credits. In fact, I could have underloaded this year if I wanted to, but perhaps that's just not my nature. So auditing will be where it's at.

My Blog now!

I don't know what happened to Nelson, but I will take care of this baby until he returns. Maybe he's too busy with fantasy basketball (his team kicks ass whereas mine is now terrible) so he's found other ways to distract himself.
Anyways, let's see whats new in the Hammer:

Courses: I was hoping to have a relatively relaxed final year, but that's not going to happen with all of the following on my schedule:
Econ 3AA3: Advanced Macroeconomic Theory: A course on building macro models to estimate changes in income, interest rates, and unemployment resulting from policy changes.
Econ 3A03: Advanced Microeconomic Theory: Uses calculus and optimization to model consumer choice and utility maximization.
Econ 4G03: Advanced Econometrics: A hardcore statistics course to study economic data. I was leaning against taking this one, but i'll have to learn this stuff in grad school anyways, and I'm doing very well in stats, so i figured i'll kill myself and take this one. Taking all three of the above advanced theory courses in the same term is unheard of, though!
Econ 4A03: Honours Seminar: In undergraduate economics, we rarely have time to discuss the policy implications of the theory we build.... most courses simply develop analytic tools that we'll need down the road. This seminar course discusses the economic impact of social issues such as post-secondary education, divorce, for-profit hospitals, or an aging population. It also requires a 20-page term paper, but after my 60 page undergraduate thesis last term, I'm not particularly concerned.
Arts&Sci 4A06: Independent Study: I had the opportunity to be on some media research team studying globalization and the news... Basically they hooked up digital cable to my house, and I would monitor the Hong Kong news, while other team members would watch other newscasts. It sounded like fun, but the work is tedious and taking time away from my hardcore economics courses which have a lot more to do with my future plans. I'm hoping it gets my Cantonese a lot better though.

I was hoping to only take 4 courses in this last term, but it looks like i'll stick with 5 for now. I may drop econometrics later on in the term.

Overall, though, it's looking like an academic future is looking more and more likely. I've been working really hard and getting really good marks these past couple of years. I honestly think I'm a better student now in university than I ever was in high school. I don't know what it is, but I'm just really motivated to work hard. Just the other day, I wandered in to see my economic history professor (a class that I really liked and did really well in) and he mentioned that he would like to hire me (he's writing a book on healthcare economics) for some research help! He definitely encouraged me to go into academic economics and wrote a reference letter for me. I'm not sure if I'll be able to handle the extra work given my hectic schedule (i'm also a TA for an Arts and Science Western Thought course), but I'm sure it can't hurt -- especially if it stretches into the summer.
I was talking to Carol today, and I get the feeling that neither one of us is too keen on leaping into law school too soon. I think I'm going to explore economics first, and see what it has to offer.