Quitting Time

I haven't really done much updating, have I? I mean given the sparse audience that this blog has to begin with, there's really no need to blog. I need to convince myself to quit this five, six year long battle I've had with myself. Life's too short to be bothered by these things. Given the recent string of disasters to hit the world, who knows what's next? Just pray for those who are affected in any way, shape or form.

Out with the New, In with the Old

Windows 7 - I hate you. Aero really needs to stop being so finnicky. Aero off, classic back on. I don't care if I don't get eye candy - I just want things snappy. You'd think having an SSD would be sufficient. But no, Aero has to be that laggy overlay on top of a pretty zippy system.

And why did you have to go and re-organize my bloody control panel? I liked how it was in my old setup. Sure I can change it, but do you think of your non-power users? Why do they have to be put through this whole hell of re-learning where things are located? Why does control alt delete bring up a random screen that blacks everything out instead of the task manager? Every single bloody option that you offer in that menu is available through the start menu anyway. People LIKED old ways of doing things. I for one am not impressed. This is after using Windows 7 for too long. I might just be going back to XP if hardware support comes through.

Old stuff is so much better. Long live XP! That and Windows 2000.

Communication

I woke up this morning to this email from Christina Eftenaru - one of the SFU CS Coop Coordinators.

"Over the last 6 years, I've come to believe deeply in the idea that that becoming a great programmer has very little to do with programming. Yes, it takes a modicum of technical skill and dogged persistence, absolutely. But even more than that, it takes serious communication skills..."

Why? Read more at http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/02/how-to-write-without-writing.html

This got me thinking - I ought to keep blogging. As much as it can turn into a pain in the rear, it will help me down the road. Communication is key for everything we do these days - we're living in the Information age. How else do we expect to exchange information? If we can't communicate properly, it doesn't matter how skilled we are at <$skill>. The best person at <$skill> will be a mediocre person in that particular industry if they cannot communicate. By communicating, we let others know our thoughts. We "get leverage" by letting others know what we really want to say.

Communicate, communicate, communicate. So maybe this is ultimately why I suck at what I do. It isn't because I can't code or do maths do whatever it is. I just can't communicate.

Course Dropped

So I sort of dropped 376 because .. I ended up not needing it. This means..

1) I'll probably be blogging Less again, because I'm not academically obliged to do it anymore. I still might, depending on whether or not I have profound insights to share with anyone.

2) I have to take two courses over the next semester or two as opposed to just the one I have to take next semester

3) My coop Has to go smoothly, otherwise I'll be royally screwed over.

Going to start doing days of gym again. Need to trim myself down and get back to (wait, get To) being under 80kg. My goal for the end of February is to be at 80kg, loaded after dinner. We'll see if I am successful.

Attitude: Lots of vegetables and drink litres upon litres of water. Throw in the occasional chicken breast, eggs, and tomatoes. Rinse and repeat. Find a set of meals that work and stick to it. Stay trim and focused on your goals. You don't want to walk through that dark road again.

Chinese New Year

Just wanted to write randomly about Chinese New Year. Of course the traffic on this blog is so low that no one is really reading it. I just get the odd bot that crawls onto here. In any case, Chinese New Year is today. As a kid I found it really interesting that the Chinese New Year would be on a different date every year. Then I realized the calendar that they work on is old and based around the moon's rotations around the Earth.

In other news, I might end up not needing to take 376. I signed up for the class thinking it would count for my three additional upper division CMPT credits. When I reviewed the graduation plan for my program, it said that these three additional UD credits must come from a list. However, on the SFU official calendar, it only says three additional UD credits with no limitations. Oh the stresses of figuring things out before graduation.....

Boredom

I know I really shouldn't be spending time writing a blog post, but I can't help it. I'm simply too bored right now. I don't want to write my 376 explanation piece. But if I don't put in the effort to work, I won't be able to meet my 3.67 GPA goal for this semester. I must work harder and strive for better things! I guess I should think about how to write this response. I need to keep it in my brain cache longer so I can write properly.

Time to work, ready go!

MSP430G2

I finally got around to unboxing my $2.30 MSP430G2 Launchpad from TI. What a fun toy! All I can do right now is flip the LEDs on and off so it isn't too useful yet. I'll learn as I go whenever I have free time! My goal is to build a controller which will raise and lower my blinds depending on the time of day.

Logically, it is very simple. All I need to do is 1) Get time, 2) run time through logic, 3) raise or lower blinds as necessary.

Of course, all this translates to kind of confusing code for me since I have no previous experience in programming Microcontrollers. My C is also rusty! This should turn out to be a good project for me to work on. :D

The Big Bang Theory, S04e13

Tonight's CBS sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" was quite hilarious. Spoiler alerts to follow from hereon out!

Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, Howard, Raj, Amy Farrah Fowler, Bernadette and Penny go on a road trip for a Science Conference. All the actors with college level education are speakers at this conference. Penny and Leonard attempt to engage in coitus but are interrupted by Raj's request to watch another chick flick. Howard and 'Bernie' attempt to take a 'nap'.

Random blog post is done now!

CMPT370

Where do I start my complaints about CMPT370? Maybe I'll just start in the middle.

The class is absolutely boring. There have been two three-hour long sessions so far and I've wanted to jump off SFU Surrey's top floor a few times already. Could you please give us some hands on work every single class? Your presentations are boring. Your jokes are lame. Please stop.

App Ideas and Others

Recently I've been thinking to build an application which is GPS-centric. It will be a game based around using a GPS, much like geo-caching. I'm not sure how I will develop it, nor what platform use for distribution. I do know that I want to build an application which will actually be useful though.

Lately I've been feeling a bit under the weather. Unlike the weeks in Europe when I could look forward to some amazing trip in yet another foreign country, I only have group activities to look forward to now. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's just the same old activities can wear out quickly. I should set aside one of these weeks in January to hike a trail (weather permitting) in Burnaby Mountain - it would emulate the amount of exercise I had whilst travelling!

CMPT376 Blogging, apparently

When I first walked into CMPT376 on Friday, I wasn't sure what to expect. To be quite honest, it will probably end up being a lot like CMPT320 except with more emphasis on writing ability and not critical thinking. I liked 320, so chances are I'll like 376! At the very least, I won't have to do much more programming. As much as I like computers and being geeky, I don't like programming for school. SFU just doesn't have enough Applied Programming. Most of it is to test your theoretical knowledge of concepts learn in class. What's the point of this? Why not throw problems at us instead, suggest some possible ways to solve it, and let us at it? Wikipedia is such a bountiful resource pool for knowledge that we won't really need textbooks in the future. Why do people in first year have to buy a silly $120 textbook which is next to useless compared to wiki? Textbooks are boring.

Berlin, Germany

I'm seriously disliking Blogger's photo-management system. Yet -another- batch of photos I picked that got randomly swallowed up by the service. T_T''

Numerous bad request headers. I'll share an album on Facebook and link it when it becomes available. I had some initial thoughts of Berlin typed up, so I'll just mirror them here. I don't think photo-taking was very necessary for Berlin though. The entire experience was very saddening.

1 - Berlin Wall. I watched many videos and listened to audio clips depicting the issue with this divide between East and West. Since the borders between East and West were put up in a matter of hours in 1959, tens of thousands of families were split down the middle. It didn't matter who they were. All of Germany was split. Half of it stayed within the Iron Curtain, half of it in the West. The families and friends would not be reunited until 1989 when the wall fell down.

2 - Jewish Memorial. What's there to say? This was a chilling experience. This was a very simple memorial dedicated to the six million Jews murdered and massacred in the genocide of the 2nd World War. There were no signs, no descriptions, not a single hint of what the memorial was about. Perhaps this is a better way to think about it. Rather than feed us information, it forces us to reflect and try to remember what actually happened. We ought to think about our human capability for destruction so we don't make the same kinds of mistakes again. The memorial itself consists of numerous concrete blocks which grow drastically taller as you walk towards the centre of the square. Since these blocks begin to get taller than you (1.7m) around 1/3 of the way in, it becomes increasingly windy because it all gets channeled at you. Being inside the memorial felt extremely uneasy. It was as if the blocks were closing in on me. Add to the fact that it was rainy, cold AND windy, I caught a minor glimpse of what the sentiments were for the Jews at the time.

3 - Soviet Memorial for the fallen soldiers in the Eastern Front.

This reminded me a lot of the movies we had to watch in Socials 10 and 11. Although I did not really feel too much for the Soviet Union by observing the memorial itself, there was certainly a good history lesson in the little museum which hid behind the memorial.

So you can see - my trip to Berlin was mostly about the war. There was some minor lapses and dips into sausages and alcohol, but that was about it. In particular, Berliner Weiße was absolutely delicious. Also had some liver sausages and blood sausages. Kind of icky to be honest, but I should have expected it since it -WAS- internals that I had.

Country count was upped by two since my stop took me to Riga. :D

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=560314&id=727335006&l=00c1a639c4

Country count: Iceland, Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Estonia, Latvia, Russia(next up!!)

Tallinn (2)

So the following days in Tallinn, I really was quite bummed out because of the weather: Why

does it affect me so? :( In any case, I chilled out at the hostel (Monk's Bunk) a lot. The people were just too wonderful and everyone had so many stories of adventures to share!

There isn't much in photos and all the ones I just tried to upload, blogger(read: google) decided to not upload for me. In any case, my remaining days at Tallinn were surprisingly interesting although all the tours I wanted to go on got canned. More specifically, the gun shooting which I absolutely wanted to do was NA because the place was too far, and no one else was interested, and the transportation there costs about 40e. Then the trip to small town Paldiski where an old Soviet Union sub base existed also got canned because the tour's car broke down. All in all, quite depressing.

His presence is everywhere.

I decided to go out on walks the next day to the not so busy new town area -- it was quite bland since I was basically walking in a suburb. The church I discovered looked pretty cool from the outside, but alas I was not meant to be inside since it was closed. Circling back to old town around lunch time, I ran into a series of narrow back streets and I just had to take some photos. :D

Yes, it was raining hard.

At night, I went back out for more walking. This time, I went uphill and found the PM's home. It looks pretty impressive at night when its perched over the outside of the city. It looks toward the north and the Gulf of Finland, and it was surrounded by a faux moat about 50m below the foundations of the building. Walking up these stairs almost killed me.

White as marble.

Goodbye Tallinn!

I met a Canadian, a Lithuanian, and a German on my last day and we all had a hearty breakfast. Hostels - that's what its all about isn't it? Meeting new people, exchanging contacts, understanding different cultures. Since I was due to leave this day, I wasn't able to go on the other tours they had signed up for. The clouds opened up for a brief moment this day. Specifically, they opened up for the one hour that I would be out by myself, walking towards the ferry terminal. Some things are just magical aren't they?

Country Count: Iceland, Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Estonia

Tallinn, Estonia

Interesting town, Tallinn is. Its old city centre (where I stayed) was not too large at all - you can make the rounds in about two hours if you walk briskly. Being a non party goer, I took the opportunity to sort my thoughts out in the mornings by going out for early walks.

Feeding frenzy thanks to a crazy old woman.

Tallinn is full of sculptures, old buildings, and (what has now become my enemy) cobblestone. Not many people know about this city just because its so small with a population of approximately 400k. Of course, these 400k people are squeezed into an extremely tight area thanks to the proximity of the buildings. What's interesting is that there's a law in the city that prohibits the building of structures which are taller than St. Olaf's church. Even if Tallinn is the up and coming high-tech city, there is a serious lack of skyscrapers which you'd expect of such cities. In total, there are six(!!!) skyscrapers in the city, none of which are allowed to be any taller than 130m.

The medieval structure of the old city has carried through to this day. Numerous courtyards like the one below can be spotted. They are literally everywhere in the old town. This particular

courtyard was interesting: I just felt it was the perfect blend of modern engineering blending right into traditional architecture.

I know I should blur out the license plate..

Should I mention the weather? The sun was out the entire time and the temperatures were so comf.... I can't lie. It was cloudy, raining, windy, and absolutely cold. It seems that my last two trips have been like this. Seeing as St. Petersburg is my next stop, I hope that if it does have to precipitate, that it comes down in the form of snow. At least this way, I can enjoy it! Despite being from such a rainy city myself, I find the rain hard to handle when combined with wind.

I returned to the hostel after an afternoon's worth of photo shooting. At the hostel, I met the most friendly people thus far on my trips in Europe. It literally felt like going to a friend's place to hang out and relax. Heck, we even had a communal dinner made by a young Swiss Farmer! Yes we had to pay, but it was interesting sampling a dish from other cultures. I was going to turn in for the night after such a hearty potato based meal, but I decided to venture out again to capture One Shot (:)) before calling it quits for the day.

The city hall with old town square in none of its usual glory.

Tallinn(2/3/4) should be arriving soon with absolutely no photos. Most of the charm Tallinn had was in the people I interacted with and all the various stories which I heard. :) Nevertheless, more updates to follow!

Not dead!

I'm still around unfortunately. :D

It will be a fun next six weeks! So many trips planned out. The first one will commence tomorrow for three days! My trip plan at the moment looks like this.

10/28 - 31, Tallinn Estonia

11/03 - 06, Berlin Germany

11/11 - 15, St. Petersburg Russia

11/17 - 21, Manchester(?), London(?) UK

11/25 - 28, Venice(?) Italy

12/01 - 6, Paris France

12/10 - 15, ?

12/17 - 20, Maastricht, Amsterdam(?), Brussels(?), Brugges(?), Belgium and Netherlands

12/22 - oo, Vancouver Canada

Yup... looks like a heavy set of trips for me. Wowee! So much fun to be had! The great thing is that I only have one more course remaining and if all my exams went well (and I have reason to believe they did) it means I only have one final in my second period. Isn't life wonderful?

Next update will be for Tallinn, Estonia featuring the feared AK47!

Germany, 3. Sidestep into Austria

Day 3 of our Germany trip.

We woke up at a much more reasonable 8AM instead of the 4AM we got the previous night. I still maintain it was worth it to get up early. In any case, while everyone else woke at 8AM to enjoy the free breakfast (and it was good too!) provided by the Hostel, I decided to wake right near sunrise time. I managed to catch these absolutely epic shots of the sunrise. Amazing skies atop the hostel we stayed at. I wish we could have stayed for another day to enjoy the beautiful sunrise. Something about orange / pink / red skies seems to attract me. Its really a shame I didn't grab camgirl's fancy camera to go out to take these shots.. otherwise we'd be able to share.

The mountains in the distance after we made the descent to the bottom of the mountain, where we visited Austria afterwards on our way to Schloss Neuschwanstein.

The sign was so unofficial: I guess Europe really is starting to become a land with no borders except for.. well, the countries that sit on the edge.

And here we are at the famous Schloss Neuschwanstein!

The place was quite breathtaking. I'm certain that many countries have these viewpoints, but I felt right back at home with this view here:

This concludes Germany. I won't be travelling much in the next month seeing as finals are looming just around the corner, but I should be hitting up Russia, UK, and Italy in November. Any further suggestions for me?

Country Count: Iceland (for a grand total of an hour... LOL), Finland, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria (for a grand total of less than an hour, more LOL)

Germany, 2

Oliver was a very good car! This is Oliver. He is a Black Opel Astra with leather seats inside. We took the liberty to rent a handheld GPS for the car because we (apparently) hate maps. So of course, in a foreign country where I hoped nothing would go wrong, the GPS decided to tell our driver to 'Make a U-turn, if possible" on one of Germany's unrestricted Autobahn sections. Umm....... no can't do that. As a result of this, I got to the airport roughly 40 minutes late, but still in time to catch the airport.You see, by the time Oliver returned to the rental place, he had apparently done over 1600km in three days.

About Oktoberfest.... It is a truly amazing sight to behold. The sheer number of people is absolutely overwhelming. The amount of beer was overwhelming, and the amount of sausages! So many good hotdogs! We waited in line for about two hours to try to get into a tent for Oktoberfest, but alas it was simply not our day.

We couldn't get in and there were just too many people... I'm pretty certain I had about two or three cigarettes worth of second hand smoke that day too. Instead of staying in Theresienwiese where Oktoberfest was held, we decided to go to downtown Munich.

Before we left, I managed to snag a shot with some German patrolmen at Oktoberfest. He initially said it was 50e to take photos with them and he had me duped for about 5 seconds. Germans have humour too!

We headed to downtown Munich for some city wandering. The centre of Munich is kind of interesting... It had a nice mix of old and new architecture. To be honest, it didn't have as much of a wow effect on me as Prague did. Nevertheless, some of the architecture there was still very beautiful. This is one of the scenes you see right away the moment you get to ground level from the underground subways. On a nice day like ours, the sight was quite breathtaking. We had lunch afterwards, and someone decided to try something that was labelled as "I'm going to splurge on lunch today".

It came out to be this dish (Apologies for the half eaten dish..)

That's right. Fresh Mozzarella cheese with a healthy portion of tomatoes. For 10e. Given that some people don't fancy cheese and certainly not tomatoes, I had to engage in a dish swap for my vegetarian pasta.

Regardless, this was basically day 2 of our trip in Germany. Photos to follow in the next few days for our very brief stint into Austria and our visit to Schloss Neuschwanstein, inspiration for Disney!

Germany

It started out with a briskly cold day (I swear it was colder than the forecasted 1c at 4 in the morning) in Helsinki, catching the 4AM bus to the airport. The bus took about half an hour to bumble toward the airport but I didn't manage to catch any sleep while on the bus. Being sick absolutely stinks when you're about to go on a trip. Ignore the man in the photo. I was too tired to take this shot with my hands or even find anything to plunk the camera onto, so pavement was fine for me. :D

Once I got to the airport, being kicked around for the check ins kind of sucked. When all was said and done, I was glad it took me a while, because this sight awaited me while I was chilling at departures.

Let's go to Germany! After a two hour flight, two sandwiches on the flight and a 15cl can of Sprite, I arrived in Stuttgart where I was to wait for a few hours for my ride toward Munich.... or so I thought. While in Stuttgart airport, there were many things for me to see! They had a flight history exhibit going on so I took a look. Wandering the airport was fun for about two hours, then I had to settle down and start working. Unfortunately, Stuttgart airport is cheap. No free wifi was available (boo!) Even at Stuttgart Airport, they care for the kids. Look!

Aside from kiddieland, there was really nothing worth looking at (lol) at Stuttgart Airport. I sat down and worked from 11AM in the morning until 6PM, when my travel buddy and her friends picked me up in a Black Opel Astra. I have nicknamed it Oliver. Oliver was a cool car! He took us to many places and we had many adventures in it. Oliver took us to our eventual hostel for the night which was another four hour drive away from Stuttgart. Oliver took us to Oktoberfest. Oliver took us to Neuschwanstein Castle too! I love Oliver. More updates to come re: Germany in the next few days! I leave you with a jaw-dropping photo of the sights we saw at 7AM in the morning at Oktoberfest.

Sunrise at Oktoberfest in Munich.

Prague and Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic

Returned from a four day long trip in Prague & a satellite town of Prague.

Prague in one word was “Golden”. The taglines that people use to describe Prague are very accurate! The city was absolutely full of spires everywhere. We stayed in the Old Town area where we saw many historical relics! Unfortunately, it was rainy for 60% of the time we were here so the photos were not very beautiful. I only caught a few with my EPL-1 but the proper DSLR didn’t arrive until it started raining.


Photo of the winding river that runs through the centre of Prague. This was from the airplane hence the blurriness.


Photo of the grand tower which the king of Prague used to cross under every time he returns to the city. It is now a huge tourist attraction with at least four spotlights illuminating it at night. The surrounding area glows like gold because of the incandescent lighting and golden reflections close to the building. Absolutely beautiful!


This sort of became my dinner for three different days. Bratwurst with Baguette style bun! They taste delicious and they’re around 50CZK ($2.50CAD). I realize these are just hot dogs, but for such a big hot dog they’re hard to resist!


The amazing hospitality at Old Prague Hostel. If you don’t mind people invading your privacy when you sleep a little bit, I highly recommend it! Cheap rooms, free breakfast, free wifi, free maps. How does a little hostel like this even survive? Sadly, I never got this guy’s name. He’s pretty cool though.


Seeing a bunch of tourists waiting in front of this building. Not too sure what kind of building it is, perhaps a hotel? This is at around 8 in the morning. Note the sun rising in the reflection and the blue skies – this was the one and only sunny morning we experienced.


Couldn’t capture much of the Prague skyline from here, but the sunrise is absolutely exquisite.


The small little creek that runs under Charles Bridge – its an offshoot of the main river. Does this look like Venice?


:O PAVOL DEMITRA! Oh wait, why’s he wearing a Canucks uniform?


The little street on the left sort of does represent Prague. The Old Town is littered with streets like that snaking all over the place. I got lost (on purpose) the morning I shot all these photos just to see if there were surprises – and there were! I went through so many narrow alleyways and walked on so many streets built from cobblestone!

People Break Things and Suomenlinna

So today was supposed to be the 'bed-bug spraying day'. Apparently people get bed bugs easily in Helsinki.

Long story short, when I came home, I found that the frame in my door had cracked wide open. They claimed they had the key.. but.. who the hell breaks a frame like this? How much force did you need to use bro?



I guess I've bee neglecting this blog lately. There's been too much work at school what with all the case studies and responses every two days. Regardless, we managed to hit Suomenlinna as a chinese tourist group on Sunday. Suomenlinna is a fortress island built in the 18th century by Sweden as an attempt to defend their waters. Read more about the Fortress here.



Oh look at that, its me on a honking huge cannon!



Isn't this beautiful? Mr. Sun decided to come out and play halfway through the day!
Tomorrow I head to Prague. I'll attempt to provide daily updates as I make my way through the historical city! There's much to be seen!