Some Myers Briggs

I've taken the Myers Briggs test a couple times many years ago, but I just brushed the results off as didn't trust the results too much. I felt that if my mood had altered how I answered some of the questions, I'd get a completely different result.

Well fast forward to mid 2012. By this time, my personality and character is a lot more stable. I've been honest with myself, allowing me to understand my character and how feel in certain situations - well enough to put into words. I took the test again for the heck of it, making sure to answer the questions with my instinctual thoughts rather than deep analyses, and volia:

ISTJ.

Oh man, reading the analysis of the ISTJ personality type rustled my jimmies. I found myself nodding to every single sentence, which essentially summarized what I already knew about myself. I'll dump a brief summary here (from Wikipedia). The more elaborate description would be on the personality type portrait page (complete with relationships and family stuff, haha).

 ISTJs tend to be quiet and reserved. They generally prefer interacting with a few close friends rather than a wide circle of acquaintances, and theyexpend energy in social situations (whereas extraverts gain energy).


ISTJs tend to be more concrete than abstract. They focus their attention on the details rather than the big picture, and on immediate realities rather than future possibilities.


preferred to feeling: ISTJs tend to value objective criteria above personal preference. When making decisions, they generally give more weight to logic than to social considerations.


 ISTJs tend to plan their activities and make decisions early. They derive a sense of control through predictability. 

And here are some funny bits:

ISTJs honor their relationship roles very seriously.
Usually able to communicate what's on their minds with precision
Able to dole out punishment/criticism when called for

On the other hand:

ISTJs tend to believe that they're always right (hell yeah).
Tend to get involved in win-lose conversations.
Not naturally in tune with how others are feeling.

I may recall writing a journal entry quite similar to this stuff a few months ago o.O
Well that was that. Now you can read me like a book.


Here's a song:

Moving on in life

I am in the middle of one of the biggest transitions in life.

I am moving

from Hotmail

to Gmail.

I've always disliked the Hotmail layout. It looks ugly. In the day of web aesthetics, Hotmail most definitely does not belong. Plus, the android integration is awesome - my phone vibrates whenever I get an e-mail. Talk about convenience! Not to mention all the calendar/contact syncing going on.

But I do hope there are some more perks to Gmail that I don't know about. They'd be a pleasant surprise.

<3 you Gmail. Would do dirty things to you.

And here's my song of the day (dedicated to Google's email service ;p):

Insert Title Here

It sucks that it's raining again, but it's alright. At least I got to go on the gruelling Grouse Grind yesterday, but wow, taking 2 hours to climb? Fun as it was, I think I'll grab a more competent partner for next time this summer, haha.

^great song, btw

So I've been course planning over the past few days, and I realized that I should've done my research during the CSP workshop when we did research on degrees/majors n stuff. Reminds me of the good ol' days in Senior Planning in high school when I didn't pay attention to what all the tax forms were about (to this day, I am confuzzled over that I'm supposed to write on those).

I'm not even really sure what an Honours is... though it does sound quite interesting, and hopefully I'm good enough. Do I just take a few extra courses and get higher than average marks? Do I have to write some thesis at the end? Wut? Well, off to the UBC site I go...

And because of my awkward situation where I'll be in computer science this winter session without any CPSC courses, I'll have a lot of elective spots available (3-4, depending on how cool I am). I'm not a GPA whore, so I don't think I'll be intentionally looking for the GPA boosters necessarily. I'm not too aware of a lot of elective options though, other than philosphy, econ, more eng etc...

My friend took a Wine Sciences course last year (she's going into 4th year), and she said that it's pretty awesome. Learn about how wine is made, and taste wine during the labs. One of the few courses she didn't want to say goodbye to, she said. I'll probably check it out if it's not restricted to later years - no better way of getting the ladies than impressing them with your extensive knowledge on wine types and tastes.

Signing off.

lol, women

omg, the weather. THE WEATHER! It's getting me dowwnnnnn...

I almost feel trapped. The damn grey makes me not want to look out the window. I don't want to go outside. I feel like I can't do anything; I don't want to head out to White Rock to start cold calling for my painting job, I don't want to go shopping at H&M with my sister, I don't want to exercise. And why is it so cold today?
Oh great, here comes the sun. It's going to go back down in an hour or two.
Wow, I sound whiny.

On a brighter note, I finished reading Lady Oracle, by Margaret Atwood - required reading for my Eng 110 class. It must've been almost a full year since I touched a fiction novel, since normally I'm reading non-fiction books on some non-fiction topic. Wow, is that woman promiscuous. Doesn't really mind a stranger's hands rubbing up her thighs on a bus. Will have sex with strangers within one day of meeting them. Loves wayyy to many people at once. Hardly knows what she wants. Is in a marriage that doesn't satisfy her emotional needs, claims to be in love, while getting it on with another guy as an occasional fantasy escape.

Quote: “How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.” 

Since the book was written in first person, it definitely felt like I was in the mind of the woman. Pretty cool, in a way, and I'm not going to lie - some parts were quite hot n heavy; but there were times I wanted to walk in there and slap the bitch across the face.

That's it for me complaining about a fictional character. Now I'm off to study some more Java.

Naive Ambitions

My god, the weather is quite depressing. It doesn't help that I was supposed to go on the Grouse Grind with a friend on mine sometime this weekend :'( waaahhhhh. I was looking forward to getting hot n sweaty.

Next weekend doesn't look much better either.

So I finished Math 221. The midterms could not have been any easier... but wow, that final could not have been any harder. My bum was not prepared for that, but I find some comfort knowing that there are many many people in this class who probably almost failed the course. Overall, it was definitely an interesting math course that required some different ways of thinking. Trying to visualize anything past the 3rd dimension isn't very nice, but the fact that we can calculate things with vectors in those spaces is quite fascinating. Makes we wonder if there's a sequel course of this.

And now I'll talk about all the cool things I want to do once I become a Master Programmer. They're probably not very realistic, but hey, dream big.

1) Develop an amazing third person animation system: I am still very disappointed at the quality of animations in video games at this day and age, and if anything I want to be able to develop a system for seamlessly merging hundreds of animations of different body parts together, utilizing inverse kinematics to keep the feet in place with scalable inertia values so that the character movements can be tailored to be quick and responsive, or realistic.

2) Develop a mindblowing video game AI system. I don't know what AI coders think of when they code for enemy behaviour in shooters or whatnot, but they're not focusing on the right things. Improving the experience the player has when playing should be the sole focus of the AI.; the player does not care whether or not enemy (or friendly, for that matter) perform intricate, complex manoeuvres when he's not looking. There should be a difference in behaviour when the enemies are in the player's direct line of sight and when they're not. In my humble opinion, the dumbest AI can appear to be extremely intelligent to the player as long as they execute stylish animations during combat.

3) Develop software that listens for particular clapping patterns, and performs a corresponding action. ex) I walk into my house after a tough day at work, I clap twice, sound system gets triggered and plays some 60s jazz songs. I clap thrice (is that a word?), crazy electro house begins to play. I would play different tunes depending on my mood. I'm pretty sure software like this exists everywhere, but I want to develop this one myself.

4) Team up with a mechanical engineer and make a cool sound system. Robotic arms attached to railings on the ceiling, with satellite speakers attached to the ends. A system of 2/3 cameras will detect the location and orientation of my face, and adjust the location of the speakers accordingly. As I walk around, the speakers will follow, providing the best sound experience wherever I am in the room.  MUAHAHAHAHA!

I will post more cool ideas I pull out of my ass later on.

class Hello World {

So today, my dad sat my ass down for an hour to get me in the mindset for programming. He decided to have me go for Java.

It was interesting in that he started off by having me open up windows' command prompt and making me navigate through a billion folders while talking about how in the old days, such prompts were used for basic programming.

Long story, short, I finished off thinking 'what did I just do?' I made the command prompt display the words 'Hello World.', but I still have very little idea of what all the semicolons and squiggly brackets are doing there. From a noob's perspective, the syntax for Java seems a lot more convoluted than that of Python.

I also got in contact with two course advisors on the subject of me taking CPSC for this upcoming summer term. And the general consensus I've been getting is: hold off on it dude, it won't really help you out on the long run. Which is true. In the case that I do take 121 in the summer, I'll likely have to drop Eng 110 (I don't think I can handle both), and in September I would take 110 and English before being able to move onto other CPSC courses. In the case that I don't take it in the summer, I would have gotten the lousy English course out of the way and I would squeeze in with 110 and 121. Either way, I wouldn't be able to start 210 or other courses until the 2nd semester.

So plan: self learn (and learn from dad) a shitton of programming basics/skills over this entire summer. While writing essays or whatever for English. And painting for that extra $. When the time comes this winter session, I will be able to handle some of the new content they throw at my face;

}

Sleeping like a baby, AGAIN

So yesterday was my friend's 19th birthday. Celebrated with 5 dudes running around doing what guys usually do: have BBQ, play games, watch a movie (Prometheus, fk yeah!), eat dinner, etc etc.

We event went to Karaoke. 5 dudes in a room singing songs. Hot stuff.

Afterwards, it hit midnight and I was getting sleepy. The dudes were planning out a bunch of animes to watch for the rest of the night until they fall unconscious, but I was already reaching my limit for the day. Ugh, I knew this would come, and to be fair they probably expected it to some extent. Still I had to stay for almost 30 minutes as they tried to convince me to pull the all-nighter with them.

Sure peer-pressure sucks, but I knew that the right thing to do was to just go home and sleep. I wouldn't be very fun nor energetic when tired. Best for me and them.

Now, I am home all relaxed from a good night's sleep. My friends, on the contrary, are probably still passed out from the lack of sleep last night.

-

Goal: figure out some way to stay up late on those occasional days when I should. Coffee/energy drinks are off the list for being ineffective.

Wanting to talk?

Sometimes I love talking with people. Other times, I just don't feel the drive to. I'm trying to figure out why - slowly.

One thing I discovered today is that I find myself inclined talk after giving my face a good stretch. And I mean my entire face. Once I stretch my jaws muscles, my cheek muscles, eye muscles... basically every muscle on my face (which probably results in an incredibly goofy face) I just feel really outgoing. On the contrary, if my facial muscles have been rusting all day, I just don't feel like moving my mouth, and generally try to stay away from long talks. Like today. Friend of mine experienced many long periods of silence on the bus today after class when I'm normally on the chatty side - might've been awkward for her o.O

This reminds me of a study I read about stating that not only do our emotions affect our facial expressions, but also our facial expressions affect our emotions. From what I recall, the study was done by showing people funny cartoons, one group with a pencil between their teeth to that they're stretching their smiling muscles, and the other group with something on their mouths that somewhat forced frowning. The smiling people found the cartoon significantly funnier than their sad-face counterparts. Hmm, food for thought.

Project 'Get A Super Sexy Michael Phelps/Arnold Schwarzenegger Beach Body During Summer'

...is totally not going as I half-assedly planned a month or so ago. I must've been right at 140 pounds for the past half year, maybe even longer. Not too shabby for my height of 5'6" (decent pecs, I gotta admit), but not really Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I do manage to maintain/make small gains through the relatively consistent home work-outs. 20 minutes of some weight training 3 times a week, enhanced with a backpack filled with massive textbooks. In addition, I am requesting high protein dinners from mom, and trying to eat everyone's protein source before they actually get to the table while reducing my dinner intake when I've been a lazy fatass all day watching Youtube. I'm thinking that I gotta start using some heavier dumbells. My 10 pound one just isn't cutting it anymore - time to use my massive money stash on some 15s.

New half-assed goals (that I might make serious over the next few weeks):
Hit 145-150 pounds by the end of the summer, maintain single digit body fat %. Eat lots.
Figure out how my body's metabolism works when dealing with muscle.

Going places

LONG POST INCOMING! (I think.)

So over the past few months, I've been telling people that I intend to switch into engineering. And it was true - I did fully intend to do so. I applied, and I got accepted a few days ago. Yaaay.

Over the course of half an hour, after a talk with my dad, that may no longer be the case. Now, I don't want to appear to be a little indecisive bitch about things, so hear me out. I'll lay out a bit of backstory.
So over a decade ago, my dad was quite the hot stuff. He was in the way upper ranks of software development, and lived in Connecticut for several years while he worked at Oxford Health Plans. He raked in almost $70,000 per year, and our family seemed to be doing quite well. I also got the coolest toys during that time period.

But he wasn't (probably isn't) a very sane man. He suffered from extreme paranoia, which made him quit the job after 3 or so years and return home. To stay forever unemployed. While believing that people were out to kill him. He broke down and went to the hospital a countless number of times, taking in medication after medication. I swear, he must've taken in every kind of drug that exists for suppressing negative emotions. I'm not too sure about this, but he may even be diagnosed with some form of schizophrenia.

So that's the dark side of my family. My mom's been supporting our 5 member family for most of our lives off of a near minimum-wage job. Heck, we've never even owned a car. Now it's quite understandable why I dislike my dad a lot. It's not because he treats me like a kid or that we have a lot of disagreements... it's that I just don't respect him. He has the potential to go out there and make the big bucks. Maybe we could live somewhere other than an apartment for once.

So I didn't know what to expect when he talked to me about what major I should go into this afternoon. He saw my engineering acceptance letter and asked, 'Yo, what's goin' on?'

I had considered computer sciences for a potential degree. I also considered engineering - engineering physics, then branching off into the software engineering. My main motive was to find a degree that would show that I have a strong set of analytical skills that can be put to use in a job, preferably one that pays nicely. It was likely my lack of knowledge on the computer science side of things that pushed me over to engineering. My dad talked about the computer science field; the great pay, the job opportunities, the flexibility both in the type of work and in what coutry the work could take place, etc etc. This is when I realized that this man knew what he was talking about. His level of knowledge on computer science and the industry had never hit me previously, but now I was aware of it.

He advised that I go into computer sciences, if I am considering that area. To go all in (with a hint of applying for med school later on too, haha).

He also mentioned that he could help me out. Teach me some of the advanced techniques of whatever software engineers do. Essentially, I would be able to think like a programmer before I hit the job market.

And all this from a man I hardly spoke with over the past couple of years. It's definitely a lot to take in.

I feel that my dad has a valuable bank of knowledge on everything and anything related to computer sciences. He can easily fill an entire bookshelf with books on various coding languages and things on databases blah blah blah that I do not quite understand yet; in addition, he has quite the resume with several project lead positions at notable corporations. I guess I should make good use of it - extract all the knowledge, and utliize it well.

To conclude: I am (for safety, I'll say most likely) going to transfer into computer sciences. Maybe I'll pursue engineering afterwards? Maybe I'll combine the degree with something like physics, or make use of the bunch of bio courses I have lying around in my transcript.

But whew, I need some time to think stuff over.

P.S. Caro, got any input?

Not doing much of what I should

Today, there was no hot water in my apartment. Our entire family resorted to heating up water on a stove in a massive pot and using that to wash ourselves. No, not all at the same time. Of course, I missed the hot stream of water running down my naked self, but using small basins did the job quite well. In fact, we had a lot of water left. I surprised myself with how little water I needed for a full wash.

But lets talk about less trivial matters. Yesterday must have been the least productive day of my life. During the 15 hours that I was awake, I must have used roughly 40 minutes total actually preparing for my linear algebra midterm. 40 minutes. That adds up to 4% effeciency. Wow.

The thing about being 'in the mode' for studying/being productive in general is that you gradually lose it over time, and you have to push yourself into that mindset. Over and over and over; it's never always there. On the plus side, once you're in, you stay in until you finish your duties. Still, my lack of productivity yesterday still bugs me. Too many distractions with my new Windows 8 Release Candidiate OS on my laptop and behaving like a piece of poop and my brother wanting to play League with me all day.

What I'm worried about is whether or not I'll be able to handle my second year Engineering courseload effectively this September. I will be commuting - no more 15 minute walks to my home from classes :( - for just over 3 hours a day. That sucks. Plus, I need to maintain my consistent sleeping schedule of sleeping at 10:30 and walking up at 6:30. Supposing that classes end at aroud 4, I'll have 4 and a half hours of time at home before I have to enter dreamworld. I'll use up a good hour for eating dinner/taking a shower and all that jazz, and half an hour to do my random internet surfing. 3 hours to study and work on assignments per weekday...

I am not a guy who likes to rush things. I like the tortoise mentality as opposed to the rabbit one: slow and steady wins the race. Hopefully next school year doesn't drive me up the wall.

Signing off.