The Misadventures of Dan
Peer into the mind of Dan as he tries to build an MP3 Player for his PDA and searches for the next thing in his life be it an electrical engineering job or graduate school.
Thursday, January 16, 2003
.:12:52:00 AM:.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understand; in all your ways acknolwedge him and he will make your paths straight.
... since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may lie a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being stregthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
.:11:08:46 PM:.
I feel exhausted and slightly nauseated today and I'm not exactly sure why. Well maybe the exhaustion is from doing well over an hour of cardio on Tuesday-but I'm not sure. The gym was so hot and it was this sickly humidity that just stops air flow. Anyways hopefully if I can hit the hay early maybe it'll go away and I'll be ready for tomorrow's workout.. but in the mean time bleh XP
Did you know that there are only three perfect numbers between 1 and 100? 6, 28, 496. At least that's what my program says there is. The next number is 8128, and I'm seeing how long it takes to find all the perfect numbers under one million. Its still going :P If it weren't for the fact that I had to print out the factors I think I can cut down on a for loop. Note to self and other c++ programmers FOR is really 'for' ;P
.:12:46:13 AM:.
I seem to have this... knack... an uncanny ability to find errors in instructions. We were in the lab today for my VLSI (Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits) doing the tutorial. Today was my very first crack at this tool they call (and use prolifically) Cadence. Cadence, from my view, is the a program to get down to the transistor level and design components such as inverters, logic gates, etc. All was going well until-wouldn't you know it-I somehow put a variable into one of the components. So of course the thing wouldn't run-not without resolving the element. After half an hour of searching I rebuilt the entire inverter and started over again. In the end I manage to get my series of inverters to work-yay :)
We got our first assignment in EE 445, my C++ course. Now for once and all, I'm not a C++ guru, nor am I even close to being one in C. I just happen to learn C and C++ on my own. It was sort of out of curiosity and out of a certain drive to learn more things. Anyways our first assignment is to create a Perfect Number Finder. What, pray tell, is a Perfect Number Finder (PNF)? Its when the factors of the number including one but not the number itself are added together and result in the number itself so like for the number six: (1+2+3=6). Anyways, that assignment is due next Monday. Which seems reasonable, all the while I was thinking, well maybe if I find all the prime numbers and then based on that I can quickly factor the number and decide if it works or not... one of my Comp E friend quickly pointed out that it was useless to make it elegant. Why, for the love of the world would you put so much effort into making something elegant? I replied "Because I can,". Really that's all, I feel like I should try my hardest to find the best solution for the problem-even if it is the first assignment. In the end reason came to bearing that we probably weren't allowed to use functions (we hadn't gotten that far yet) and so I wrote what I think to be the simplest solution-11 lines of code ;P Hopefully it will compile.
I just finished A Tale of Two Cities yesterday night. I thought it was much better than I first feared. It flowed great, the story was kind of predictable because I remember watching a part of the movie (the last part-the most revealing part) but that totally didn't spoil it. I love reading and absorbing material. I just like the way the mind fills up with stuff and it just starts bouncing around in your head. Like how close Les Misérables and the novel are. They both deal with the French Revolution and they both have this giant love story.
This thing has been on my mind for like forever and I know for sure that it won't go away until I settle it. It always has to do with timing. Some people are pretty direct and I can't figure out how to be direct. I guess its partially due to a fear of losing what you wanted. The shattering of what you had secretly hoped. I know that with God guiding me things will always work out for the best. And yet I'm afraid. I'm so afraid of two many things, finding a job or getting into Master's is the first half and this thing is the second. Yet I know that for now this may seem like the biggest thing I have to and there are yet bigger things ahead (I think). I still can't help but put my mind on them. What will happen?
Monday, January 13, 2003
.:4:18:48 PM:.
People are sometimes surprised by how much "Chinese" things I can like, for example trying to learn how to read/write, watching mainstream movies, etc. While that can be sort of surprising because of the whole CBC thing it all started from a remark I made a couple years back. You see, my friend had a small China flag patched onto the front of his shoulder bag. I don't remember what I said but in the end he replied that he was just as Chinese as he was Canadian-there is nothing wrong with being proud to be Chinese while being Canadian. That struck me-I mean it wasn't that I'm not happy with who I am nor am I ashamed but all the same I never thought about it that way. So that sparked the "Chinese Project" or my get-back-to-my-roots campaign.
Effectively it didn't really mean replacing anything-that was a larger decision than some would have you believe, rather it was adding more. Some people think that when you try and get back-to-your-roots it means abandoning your friends for "new ones" or changing your tastes. I think its totally in the mindset. When you discover something you're not forgetting about the old ways, you're adding new methods. Its like a lego set, you never trash your old pieces-you use them for the base of your new things-that is if you play with lego. I figure how cool would it be if I could start devouring Chinese books, news, gain a better understanding of the heritage that was still evolving across the ocean and nearby. So, piece by piece, I started searching for the basics: I found a really good site (www.zhongwen.com) that explains characters in a way I can understand. I couldn't just memorize them straight-me being Dan, and Dan being weird likes to try and understand whatever he can. Anyways Zhongwen goes into the etymology (or the root) of the character which is really, really cool.
Chinese movies were always in the background. I didn't know they existed until I started to realize that there had to be more than America's Hollywood. What about people who didn't speak English? They had to exist and maybe it might be really cool if I could find them. Officially I believe Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was the first full-length Chinese movie I watched. I liked it so much that I wanted to find more. So one thing led to another and eventually I started chasing them down wherever I could find them-trying to translate the reviews as best as I could.
All this time I was still trying to learn how to read, so I remembered way back to High School where another friend said the best way to learn was to listen to songs and read the lyrics at the same time. I thought yeah, I could try and do that... but wait I can do better! I can do Karaoke! Well I didn't actually "do" karaoke (Dan can't sing)-so I started looking for music videos on the Internet and found them really quickly. They're great because the text below them shows the words they're singing :)
So now you have a CBC who's starting to get into HK and Mainland culture where is there left to go? I know I'm far from being done, there's a whole other half out there. So now, I can listen to Cecilia Cheung and Jay Chou, and Usher and the latest Sean Desmond. I can watch Shaolin Soccer and know about Hero. I want to eventually visit Hong Kong and China and "see the sights". In other words developing my Chinese side(like all things)is a work-in-progress but I'm definitely glad for it.
.:12:56:57 AM:.
doh! I just lost my blog! ahhhhhhhhhhhhh
ahh well I can write about some other stuff. In short, my brother got a laptop this past week. We got a new routher (oooh, ahhh) so we setup our own little network (awww) so we can both use the internet (woohoo).
I had to tell a friend of mine that I didn't play games when he asked about the new laptop. He looked so shocked when I apologetically said I don't play games. I guess its sort of a large shock, I mean one I'm a guy, two, I sort of know my way around the compute, three I'm a guy, four I can talk the talk, five I'm a guy, six, I'm an asian guy. What more reasons does a person need? Well like wearing all black-I defy it. I have nothing against playing games, I just use the computer differently. Like wearing a pair of black pants I play the odd game or two (cough tetrinet) but I don't go full blown... at least I haven't since DDR. I have a skewed view.
Gotta go to bed, its almost one!!!
