Onwards to New Jersey and New York!

Avast ye mateys! Arrr! :D Lol
Hello dear readers! :)

I yesterday arrived to New York after an insane chain of events that nearly prevented the whole journey. :P

(NOTE, I will update this post with photos shortly, as my phone is having issues recognizing the online drafts and thus cannot add its photos to them)

The immense amount of luggage weighed down upon us, as we trudged towards the emigration areas for Hong Kong. We wielded our Hong Kong identity cards as to exit as residents and skip the longer lines for vistiors. "Heya, Elsa and I should go first right?", I asked my elder sister Anna. Anna's thick brown curls bobbed vigorously as she confirmed, "Yup, and if they don't work we can go through the other way". She beamed, and so Elsa and I trudged on and inserted our cards. Loading... loading.. Okay!
Everything seems good..
We enter the little closed off box area to have our thumbs scanned, so you know: no big deal, we have done this many times prior.
I press my thumb firmly down, silently musing thoughts as I wait for the cue to release my thumb. Twirl, twirl, twirl... nothing.
Suddenly guards come over to our spots and this intense feeling of anxiety began to bind and lacerate my intestines.
"Hey will you two come with us", the blue-shirted man closes to me asked us, "Yeah, go wait over there". He pointed towards this little tiny square bench area connected to a podium-like thing where another guard was diligently working away.
So, the guards then proceeded to tell Elsa and me that our visa's were expired, stating that we owed 160 hong kong dollars EACH.
We didn't have 160 hong kong dollars, let alone each..
And as far as we knew Elsa just graduated from highschool, her visa expired 8 days prior, we didn't think it was that big of a deal.
As for me, Anna tried to argue with the guards and convince them that since I was visiting, or since I just came in to hong kong, my visa or whatever had a grace period of 3 months (which is normally true if you visit another country), and that since I am a visitor I should't have to pay the fees to extend my visa up to that day that I left.

Well, after a heated debate, it readily became clear that it rested upon a technicality: when I came into Hong Kong I used my hong kong ID to enter, and thus entered as a resident, not as a visitor.
Thus even though I was visiting, I was liable to the same consequences for not renewing as a resident of hong kong.

Oh, did I mention our plane was to begin boarding 40 minutes from that time?
Yes, amongst all this chaos we were a breath away from the time to begin boarding. Oh, and they wouldn't accept credit cards.

So these guards detain Elsa and me, putting us in a room while they pumped us for whatever currencies we had and trying to get us to fill out renewal paperwork.
To their credit they did try their best to speed up the process, since our flight was so close to that time.
That ended up taking a looong while, and by then we had about 5-10 or so minutes until boarding.
We paid them with our american currency, 10 of which was Elsa's special 10$ bill she received from her ex-boyfriend, 20 of which was what I had to pay the dude who was going to help us with our luggage once we landed in New York.

Not to mention the 100+ hkd that we gave the guards, which I am sure if you convert all that into hkd and then compare it to 320 will be more than enough.
They gave us 7 usd back, plus like 2 hkd in change.

Wiping the tears from our eyes, we calmed our hearts briefly before jumbling them once more as we dashed out and onwards towards our gate.
We rushed and dashed and passed as we zoomed towards the destination, our luggage careening and teetering precociously.

We finally arrived, making it just before they began boarding.
We managed to be the first people in line, so we got into the plane quite fast after then.

We then put all our luggage in the overhead compartments, and got nice and cosy for our 4 and 1/2 hour flight.
Well, we sat there waiting for like evveerrr, untl someone finally went on and broadcast the message the we would delayed for a while due to "traffic congestion".
Okay, we were delayed for over an hour!
Our stopover was supposed to only be 45 minutes!
If you do the math, you will aptly realize that we would miss our next flight, and would likely have to take the another, probably much later flight.
So we panicked a little, but, being the professional people that we were, we asked a flight attendant about our connecting flight and she asked her supervisors.
Needless to say, the attendant reassured us that our flight would be delayed, since 36 people bound for new york were on our plane, but that we should hurry.

So... we eventually land, and we are rushing out of the plane and we have to go through security. No big deal, we think, we have these "Short transfer" stickers or whatever, they will prob be quick.. Nope, they analyze everything in my bags and make me open both for inspection.
They took out all my electronics, re-scanned them, andd then found a set of pliers, the small pocket kind that you carry with you for convenience, in my carry-on suitcase. Needless to say, they didn't like me having them, since they have a little knife blade in them.
I didn't care, I told them they could have it.
They kept telling me I couldn't have it, and I kept telling them I don't care, that if they wanted it they could keep it.
Finally they say I am good, I take all my electronics and rush to stuff them back into my bag, with Elsa helping me put them away.

The lady inspecting some of my stuff took away my water and emptied it for me, but she was incapable of putting it back into my backpack so I did that myself, and then Elsa, Anna, and I rushed out and up the escalator.
There were airport people waiting at the top of the stairs to point the 'quick transfer' people in the right directions, and so we started our long sprint to the 17th gate in Korea.
Well, it turns out that the 17th gate happened to be the farthest on possible from where we were, we ran and ran and ran all the way down to the end of the building, then we quickly boarded the plane and sighed with relief: we had made it! :D

The flight had been delayed for 20 minutes to allow us time to make it there, and we had done all the rcrazy running on the moving sidewalks just in case 20 minutes wasn't long enough.
Then began our looong flight to New York!
13+ Hours of flying, it was insane!

During the flight they fed us twice, once when we took off, and once before we landed. Both times the food was awful, the first time I ate some weird beef pasta that tasted really nasty, and the second time I ate scrambled eggs with some nasty garlicky mushrooms or something in them that tasted horrible.
However, the fruit the meals came with and the side dishes like a yogurt and a croissant were both pleasantly delicious.

During the flight I watched the beginning of Pompei, but decided I didn't want to watch it and instead watched The Lego Movie.
The Lego Movie was actually pretty good, but it was also kind of ridiculous and not as exciting as it could be. Also one part of it horrified me, although I guess I am a bit more sensitive than most.
It was surprisingly good for a movie about legos, and I did find it enjoyable despite the obvious undertones that tried to make the movie like one big advertisement.
The commercial implications in the plot made me dislike it severly, but, my own cynicism aside, the movie was actually pretty great.
Bit unrealistic, but whatever it was fun to watch. :D

I only have one thing to say: Everything is awesome! Loll

Anyway, I managed to nap for four hours or so, give or take an hour I couldn't tell, despite screaming children and Elsa and Anna's being noisily.
(Sorry, using an adverb instead of an adjective is something I am beginning to do because it is part of the "Esperanto Idiom" lol. It does make sense if you think about it, it modifies the verb. Being noisily is basically like saying the verb means "to be in a noisy fashion", so basically it describes a noisy existence. It probably has a more intense meaning than the adjective alternative, implying longer duration or habitual occupation of the state of being, but that is inconsequential for now, as it is expressive and I like to use it if I wish. )
(In english I would probably say it sounds more natural, if you yiew to use adverbs as you would adjectives, to use specific verbs with which they sound acceptable. For instance, "being noisily" would sound better inverted, as "noisily being". But wit would also sound better as "existing noisily", rather than "being noisily", because being + adverb implies that they were simply there being noisy.)

Finally we landed in New York! :D
We were pretty calm, since we knew that we had arrived safely and that there wasn't much to worry about.
We exited the plane and headed on over to immigration, only to find that they had these automated personal machines that we could use to create the immigration slips that we needed.
So we go together since we are a family, and one by one we scan our passports and the machine takes our pictures.
I was last to scan my passport and take my photo, and when the machine printed our little papers with customs information mine had a giant X through it.
Underneath it said for me to go see a Passport Something or other officer.
So we got in line, and we showed the dude our information, he asked us some questions socially, stamped our passports and our custom papers, and then we were on our way to the baggage claim.

Ohhh boy, let me tell you the entire baggage claim area was jam packed!
Like, seriously! Tons of luggage coming out of everywhere, people pooling everywhere, and all of the huge trolley-like carts being claimed by people left and right.
I saw what looked like a foreign diplomat shaking his head as he had to wait for one of the carts for his luggage.
So we waited forever to get all our luggage, and then we had to go hunt for a dude to help us load our luggage and take it to where we needed to go.

Well... they put all the trolleys over to the side, and we had to go through this long line to exit the entire area, a line that luckily moved fast.
So we finally get all the way through, and no one is with our trolley.
We can't get it, so we look around and point to our luggage, asking about it.
This black-haired asian dude, with this gray jacket, a walkie talkie, and long black pants pointed towards the exit and told us to shoo.
We started to leave but then Anna and I looked at each other and we realized that he didn't understand that we were missing our luggage.
That we meant that we needed it, not that we didn't know the exit was where the signs were pointing for us to go and where everyone was going.
So we talked to him again and pointed to the trolley standing by itslef, and he then helped us get a dude to take our stuff for us. Sweet.

Okay, so we get out there and I needed to call the pick-up service that our parents had paid for and had arranged to pick us up from the airport, to figure out where they were going to pick us up.
I am the only one among the three of us who had an American phone number, since I go to college in America.
Also, since I pay the bill automatically everything month it should auto-renew and should work.
Well, it didn't. So I had to call my phone company, which has no live assistance whatsoever, to pay the bill.
So here the dude is waiting there with our luggage, while I spend like 10 minutes on the phone just to pay the bill so I can call the dude.
Well it all works out and then I find out that the guy will be there shortly.
Cool, sweet.

Well the dude calls us, and is like "Yo, I am at Terminal 1. Where are you?"
And I am all like, "I am too. Are you near the pickup area, or are you over by the other side?".
Turns out he was on the other side, by which I mean there was a crosswalk and then another little area where cars could stop to pick up people, like a little island type of thing only really long.
He asked me if we could go to him, even though he knew the three of us had 6 items of luggage!
I was like, ehh no we have too much luggage, could you come here?
And he was like, "okay".
So he drives on over and I see him, largely thanks to Elsa's suggestion that I go out where he could see me and I him.
Well, he pulls on over, and then puts the luggage in the car with ample help from me, as he was a scrawny guy like myself I couldn't even contemplate allowing him to load it alone, plus he asked me for help, and then we were off!
I was amazed by all the beautiful sights we saw as we drove around, as even though it was night I was still able to see beautiful lights and bridges and all sorts of interesting things.

We even drove through a china-town! XD
Unfortunately I began to close my eyes as the trip took longer and longer, and while I don't think I fell a sleep I did not see as much of the surrounding areas as I became more tired.

Well, eventually we arrived at our house in New Jersey.
Our Grandfather came out to greet us and pepper us with kisses and hugs, and we took all the luggage in through the garage.
Grandfather was so excited, he just took us on this huge tour of the house, even though we were all so tired and didn't really care.
Well, I didn't really care all that much, I was just so tired.
Well, anyway, somehow all the noise and and excitement culminated in me staying up real late, by choice of course, and I drifted off to sleep on a sofa.
(I didn't mention it, but I showered before bed, which is probably one of the reasons I was up for a while.)

The next morning the delivery dude arrived, and I got the food our parents had ordered for us in my pajamas.
I have been pretty jet-lagged ever since, and even took a long nap today (the day after the deliver dude stuff)

New Jersey is really quite beautiful, and there are squirrels and wildlife everywhere! :D
Also I got to see and cuddle our little doges! ^u^

Not to mention the American food, which is simply awesome! :)
(Not necessarily healthy though, mind you)

Well that was a mouthful! :D
I think I am done writing about this for now! XD
I will write more soon when I have more to write our about or more I wish to discuss :)

Thanks for reading! :>
Remember that I am jetlagged as I write this, so please forgive any weirdness you see that is abnormal for me. ;P

'Til next time! :)

~James








- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:New Jersey

Mathematical Intuition: The Cyanide of Standards-Based Curriculum

Mathematical Intuition: The Cyanide of Standards-Based Curriculum:

I just finished reading a 25 page paper titled "A Mathematician's Lament", by Paul Lockhart.
This document, more than anything else, speaks volumes about what exactly is wrong with our modern school educational systems. The problem is we kill all creativity, all intuition, all beauty, from the subjects we teach.
Of course the abstract concepts we teach have their importance and place, but they should be taught in the context of, and as a derivate of, the natural creative and explorative processes inherent in the actual subjects themselves.

It never ceases to baffle me how we teach Math. Even as a Math tutor, I have found my fellow tutors, and especially the students, telling me that we don't need to teach them the WHY behind anything: simply HOW to solve their problems, irrespective of the reasoning behind it.
This does not lead to them knowing or even understanding math, and only compounds their issues when they get to higher levels of math.

If you are only taught how to solve specific problems without THINKING yourself then of course you will find you can't solve all the problems on your exams! The secret is that solving all the problems requires CREATIVE application of the concepts taught in class, and yet in that very class you are not taught to creatively apply or use those concepts!
What a contradictory way to learn math!
No wonder so many students fail, they are prescribing to the teaching model while the testing model is a vapid shell of the creative process that is inherent in REAL mathematics, and they cannot comprehend how their rote memorization, what they are taught and encouraged to do, has failed to land them in good graces.
It's sad, it's troubling, and it is completely unnecessary and is a really bizarre and abnormal model for teaching.
Oh, except it is not abnormal: it's the standard! Ha!

The fact that I can find people in higher level math courses, math majors, who do not know where the double angle formulas or half angle formulas come from, who don't understand the beauty and interconnectedness of everything we do in math, continues to shock and baffle me.
Do students simply rote memorize everything in High School?
The answer is: yes, yes they do.
And is it their fault? No, they don't know better, and everyone knows your GPA takes precedence, particularly before you get into your dream college.

The problem is the way they are taught and the fact that teaching has been largely reduced into a passive activity for students.
Sure, they can do assignments and use what they are taught, but they aren't engaged, there is no dialogue, no active suggestions or explorations to get people thinking.
They aren't even taught in the historical and exciting context from which all this "Math stuff" comes from!
How many opportunities for original mathematical thought have been passed over in favor of the standard model of passive teaching and note taking?
Or, rather, in favor of lecturing I should say, the current model hardly passes for "teaching".
How much originality and creativity does note-taking really involve anyway?


Our students are never taught or told to play with math, to discover interesting and cool things for themselves, to have fun and gain a sense of intuition for where everything comes from and what place everything has in the greater context.

The only reason I was so excellent at math in High School, and continue to be quite decent in college, is that I actually understand and care about where things come from in Math, I love the history and context, but most importantly of all: I play with math and as a result am accustomed to creative interpretation and intuition when it comes to math.

When I understand where a lecture is headed before we reach there it is not because I read the textbook ahead of time, it is because I have developed my sense of mathematical intuition and mathematical creativity.
I have yet to meet a student who does math for fun as I often do.

I love math and find it to be extraordinarily fascinating and fun, as I do English, History, and the sciences.
People are always shocked when they find out I am a math major, largely due to my passion for writing and my love of poetry and English.
Hahahaha, people have such screwed up perceptions of everything, especially math.

I'll tell you what I told my English professor,
Once you get far enough out (abstract) everything blends together, the differences are artificial.
Math is beautiful and so is English(Or language and literature for that matter, to be more broad), and the ties between them and between any subjects are interesting.
Most notably, in the right context, every subject is beautiful and gorgeous in its own right.
This is where we often fail in teaching: we fail to provide that context, to provide that context so desperately needed and to provide a platform that is both engaging, natural, and inspiring.

These failures are what, I am convinced, above all else, differentiate excellent teachers from horrendous teachers, and are what make or break an excellent education.

I understand why the system is the way it is: it is easier to measure and rank students the way the system is now.
Easier to teach from a prescription than from the soul, easier to try to mechanize and remove the humanity from the experience than to make an organic and authentic, high-quailty, natural experience for students to learn from.
Schooling and Education is largely based on ranking students for some God-awful reason, not about learning or about passion or about making discoveries never before made, nor about creativity.
This is why school often kills the natural interest and joy students have in subjects, why it fails so epically to actually do what it theoretically is supposed to do, and is why I intend to create my own nonprofit entity for learning that does everything the school system does wrong right, without any of the pressures or baggage the educational system has.

Learning for the love and sake of it.
I am a purist, make no mistake.
I believe in doing things for the sake of the things themselves, and being a philomath and bibliophile, I intend to make an entity for learning that actually cares about learning itself, not ranking individuals pointlessly and/or grubbing money to perpetuate an antiquated and shitty system of education.
We all think that college and school is about learning, but no there are ulterior reasons for why things are the way they are, and believe me: things are not optimal if these institutions are actually here to help us learn.
These decaying and horribly inept systems in which we compete and memorize have little to do with learning and everything to do with ranking and competition, things that are, true, american, but things that do little to augment or improve the learning process. (Well, sure you can measure and track "improvement", but you, and I am certain your students, can surely tell when a student is struggeling? And if the dialogue in class was truly bi-directional, you wouldn't an abstracted way to measure and analyze students and their issues: they would tell you what they need help with.)


Until things change we will just have to grit our teach and form clubs that attempt to augment and counter the passion-killing modern educational system.


I will write more on this, this is far from over.

~James

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

PhP, html, and CSS oh mai!

<i>Hello Readers! LOL</i>

Eh? what’s this you say? That ^ is not in italics? O_O
Erm.. how embarrassing! :_; lol
Here ya go:
Hello Raiders! :{P

Better, eh?
What’s with that face.. What, nothing? Hmm.. okay then, fine, onwaardss to glory! @u@!

Strangeness aside, welcome to the abyss of my splendidd and interesting mind! :D

I am currently reading three books on PhP, and am looking into content management systems like Adobe CQ5.
What the hell is that?
I am not sure, but it is pretty damn legit.
LOL

Anywaaayyyzz,

PhP is a lot like Perl, only easier to use. :P
Well… I kinda love Perl, but I like PhP too. Smexiness~*sniff, sniff* XD

The way HTML works is like you have a bunch of tags which tell the web browser how to display and format text, right?

Well PhP is a scripting language that you embed in special php html tags: <?php ?>
How this works is like so:
The server parses the page with the php in it and replaces the php code with the output from the php code.

i.e.

<?php
    print “<i>I LOVE CHEESE!<i><br>”;
?>

This code would be replaced by
“<i>I LOVE CHEESE!<i><br>”
In the html file sent to the web browser of whoever is viewing your website.

Thussss, you can make websites that display different content for different users depending on certain factors, etc, make websites that accept user input and do different things based on that input, etc.

Perl does the same thing basically, but is not embedded in html.
Rather, Perl has html embedded within it.

Honestly it doesn’t bother me either which way, I just write functions to do all the html dirty work for me anyway.
And I will eventually make a perl script that can read in a file and format it how  I wish.
Not really that big of a deal either way, but PhP is definitely the favored one currently, while Perl has a huge existing code base that you could draw from.

Honestly, you could probably get the two langauges to work together.
Something I am going to play around with soon I think >:D
Hehehe… ;)








Here, for example, here is a VERY small demo site I am working on in PhP.
I’ll sprinkle some comments throughout to explain what the heck is going on lol.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//
  DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtl1/DTD/
  xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/
  1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"
  lang="en">
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
    content="text/html";
    charset=utf-8 />
  <title>Basic PHP Webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
  <p>Hello world! DERP!</p>
  <?php
        echo "<form action=\"first.php\" method=\"post\">\n";
        htmlForm("radio", "gender", "M"); #I tend to be a lazy coder, and make functions for everything. This function is used to create “input” fields/forms
        htmlForm("radio", "gender", "F");
        htmlForm("submit", "", "Submit");
        
        #echo, print, both just output text to the html webpage this PhP is embedded int
        echo "<br>Hello PHP world! DARP! ^u^<br>\n";
        htmlPrint("Hello Johnathon!<br>", "i"); #this is an interesting function I made
        #the idea is that you shouldn’t have to type <i><b><u>”Some text”</u></b></i>
        #instead you just type “ibu”, and the function takes care of the rest for you

        #olin just is online input, name stolen/borrowed from my CIS101 professor
        #so basically if there is a form named “gender” it returns the value passed in from
        #the gender form, or if there is nothing it by default returns NULL (which is also a form of false in PHP)
        if( olin("gender", NULL) ){ #SO if “gender” passed in some info

          #okay this is kinda sketch, bear with me…
          # here I am using the “tertiary operator (?)” which is like this
          # if olin(“gender”) == “M” then $message = “Male, and…”, else $message = “Female..”
          # so $var = conditional ? true_result : false_result;
          $message = ( olin("gender") == "M" ? "Male, and good thing too.<br>Men tend to overlook ugly websites! XD" : "Female, and why welcome Missy!<BR>Please don't judge the ugliness of this website.. I'ma working on it! I swear! XD" );

          #simple print statement
          print "Hello User! You said you were " . $message;
        }
 
 
        #These are constants, have to be defined using define() function
        define(NAME, "John" ); #You can define constants like this.
        define(AGE , 18     );
        define(SEX , "Male" );
       
        #These are predefined variables that store info about the environment teh script is running in
        $fileurl     = $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'];
        $user_agent  = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
        $server_info = $_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'];
       
        echo "<br>\n<br>\n<br>\n";
        echo $fileurl     . "<br>\n";         #IF you are confused, the . means concatenation
        echo $user_agent  . "<br>\n";  #i.e. joining strings together, or turning two things
        echo $server_info . "<br>\n"; #into one string
        echo PHP_VERSION  . "  kaj  "  #i.e. “Apple” . “ Pie” –> “Apple Pie”
                          . PHP_OS
                          . "<BR>\n";
       
        echo "\n" . NAME . " " . AGE . " years old, " . SEX . "<BR>\n";
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
        #Now for the functions I wrote…
        #Note that I will not be putting comments in this section.
        #Except for a few on Olin I think. (Oh and function names in PhP are case-insensitive.
        #Olin() is olin() is oLiN() is etc etc
       
        /*
          htmlPrint isn't perfect yet, as it only does tags with one letter in their name (i.e. p, i, b, u, etc)
          Due to the way it splits the input into individual characters.
          Needs regular expressions, as well as looking for special html tags that don't need a twin, will fix later probably tomorrow
        */
        #htmlPrint( $textToPrint, $stringOfTokenSeparatedhtmlTags, $classId
        #htmlPrint("Wow, what an interesting person", "pibu", "" ) #last one is always classID I think, or we can u
                                                       #se regular expressions to find out which one contains a keytoken
        function htmlPrint( $text, $html , $class = NULL ) {
          if(isset($class)){
             #classID not used in this version, probably will find a better way to implement it anyway
          }else{
            $arrayHtml = (isset($html) && strlen($html) >= 1 ? str_split($html,1) : NULL); #temporary for now, until I master regex's
           
            $leng = count($arrayHtml); #might cause an error since I am making it NULL if $html isn't set n stuff.. lol
           
            /*
               This loop is taking all the html tags (that have no < > yet) and is putting their matching tags at the opposite side of the array
               i.e. p i b </b> </i> </p>
             */
            for( $i = 0; $i < $leng; $i++ ){
              $arrayHtml[2*$leng - $i - 1] = '</' . $arrayHtml[$i] . ">"; #making the matching tags for the original elements
            }
            #make all the first tags
            for( $i = 0; $i < $leng; $i++ ){
              $arrayHtml[$i] = '<' . $arrayHtml[$i] . '>';
            }
            $leng2 = count($arrayHtml);
            for( $i = 0; $i < $leng2; $i++ ){
              if($i == $leng2/2){
                $text2 .= $text . $arrayHtml[$i];
              }else{
                $text2 .= $arrayHtml[$i];
              }
            }
            echo $text2 . "\n"; #not sure if the /n is needed or not..
          }
         
        }
       
        #htmlForm("radio", "gallon_price", "");
        function htmlForm($type, $name, $value ){
         
          echo "<input type=\"$type\" name=\"$name\" value=\"$value\" ";
          if( $type == "radio" && isset($_POST["$name"]) && $_POST["$name"] == $value ){
            echo 'checked="checked"';
          }
          echo ($type != "submit" ? " /> $value \n" : " />\n");
        }
       
        #
        function olin($name, $default = ""){ #assuming you made it here, $_POST[] is a special variable that holds the data submitted via a Post method from an Html form.
#As opposed to $_GET[], which holds data from a Get method from an Html form.
#Also note that in PhP, unlike in Perl, arrays are also considered scalars and have the $ sign
           if( isset($_POST[$name]) && !empty($_POST[$name]) ){
             return $_POST[$name];
           }
           return $default;
        }
   ?>
</body>
</html>

Well there you have it!
A simple script hacked together in PhP!
It kinda demonstrates my laziness and the dread I feel when it comes to writing html by hand lol.
Wherever possible I try to make functions that can efficiently minimize my work and do all the repetitive stuff for me.
They are in beta form right now, but they will continue to become more powerful and sophisticated as I become better and better at programming (in general and in PhP and Perl).

Whether or not writing functions for such trivial purposes is good practice or not.. well.. I am not sure, but until my programs are pressed for memory I won’t worry too much ^u^

I’ll be working on a website for PhP and Perl soon, teaching their basics with examples and quizzes :{P
(and one for Esperanto and the like hehe XD)

Will take a long time though @o@
But those are some pet projects I am interested in pursuing. :D

Well, there is more I could talk about, but I am going to let this post come to a close lol.

Thanks for reading! :)
And code on mah brothas and sistahs! \m/_(^TuT^)_\m/

Sincerely,

~James D.

The strangeness that is TEH INTERWEBZ!

Hello denizens of the world of darkness! c}:
;P

How art thou and thine kinsmen! Ho ho ho!
*Retoricalness* *Doesn't really care what you sayness*

I have mixed the batter of thine bread, and beaten it upon thine head, wherein it lies yet still. *scratches head*

Yet yonder mill would till and till, 'til yet in the evergreen glades, riotous pigeons and tiny girls, wickedly smile while wielding shades.

The crimson of thy apple is the bosom of thy grave, as figures in the shadows whisper: of they who they don't save.

Pinging pongs do daylong dillydally while singing Oprah bashes heads.
#Roids#

Ronald Region does some treason to taste to tiff a piece of bread.
Pinking and thinking that reason is raison, while squishing and squeezing a tiny head.

Le babe is the shiz, excreting and meeting every old fool along the descretionary quiz.

If I had a dime for every dime I had I would have twice as many nickels as quarters do at the 3am rush to brush by.

Singing softly hardly certainly rectifyingly rectifies the claryvoyent sitaution of the Gods.

Free calculus responses the death of bridge troll Larry, twice the burden and twice the beard of bard's card's deer Barry.

Worvly, just Worvly.

Worvly durvly curvly lurvly.
Lovely, dovely, curvy, maneatinginsectoidly.

Scrape scrope scraight screech scrandaranda screemo screalto
SU MADRe!

The estate of estrangement is one indeed.
INdeed one is such as one was supposedly supposed to be, and as such, such manipulation can never the daylight see-for upon it would be a tree- and such leeway as can we give never them to receive.
Amanatee.

Derp darp dorp derp derp dorp daaaarrp.
:P
Derp code.

Ex:
1Derp darp doorp dorp durp darp dorp durpitty durp durp darp.

2Durp durp dorp durp darp dirp derp dirp derp dearp.

1Derppity derp darp?

2Derp darp!

1Derppity derping derp derp!
Darp derp!

2derp.

1So derp ka.

2So derp.


Biyokin desu ne?
Hai, watashiwa byoikin desu X.x

Miaj vortoj ne estas tre normala mi pensas sed mi sxatas cxi tiun stilon de skribado.









- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Teh Interwebz!

Looking Towards the Future

Saluton Amikoj! :)

Cxi tio tago mi havas bonajn vortojn! :)

Mi iros al Somera Esperanto-Studado en Julio, kie renkontos kun multajn aliajn Esperantistojn! :D
Cxi tio estas ekscita! Kia mirinda! :D
Mi ne scias kiom gxi kostos, sed devas labori pli antaux la tago de la okazo.
Mi estas stud-instruisto (?) kaj helpas studentojn kun la Matematikoj.
Miaj semajne horoj dektri estas, sed mi laboras je ok dolaroj de horo.
La okazo okazos en Slovakia por ok tagoj, dum la 12a al 20a de Julio.

Mi acxetis kardo de "ISIC" por la okazo, cxar identa studento kardo internacia donos al mi profiton. :)
La okazo kostas malpli cxu vi estas studento aux ne.
Sed...
La kardo estis 25 dolaroj, sed havas multajn avantagxojn kiel diskontojn.

Mi amikoj cxi tie, en mi Kolegio, ne komprenas la belo de Esperanto, ne la uzo de kia fantasta lingvo.
Estas granda barakto por mi paroli en la mirinda uzoj de Esperanto kaj gxia celo grava.





Esperas ke miaj amikoj vidos la belo de Esperanto, kaj kunlaboros kun nin.

Mi estos Vegetarano cxar estos granda kauxzo, kaj estas grava en mia koro.



Mi devas lerni plu Esperanto, cxar skribas en Esperanto ne estas kiel facila tiel mi deziras.

Koran Dankon por legi! :)
Havu bonan tagon! ;)

Varme,

~James Dodon

Love, Math, History, and the war on Japanese has already begun...

Hello, karaj amikoj,

Kiel vi fartas? ;)

Lol, okay, I was speaking Esperanto, anywho, onto matters of BUSINESS!
(No not international business, but like, noo no no! Not small businesses either! Well, unless you consider each individual person to be their own small business, where they divide their own time into asset allocation, tax deductions and payment, and are their own advocate for their company and its relations to other companies, whether actual larger companies or other individuals as well. Which is an interesting way to view people, but isn't what I meant at this time presently)

*Ahem*, that was a mouthful! lol
Probably lost some of ye lily-livered folk, eh? xD

Let me say some things..
I am in my second semester of college.
The classes I am currently taking are Differential Equations, Object Oriented Programming, History of the Modern World, Japanese 102 business, and English 102 critical composition.

Yes, I am a very busy person haha :)
But it is all good work, all fun and whatnot. OOP is easy peasy, I was doing OOP before I even came to college, although I was never taught it nor really much about it.
I love OOP programming, it is so much fun, and lends the programmer a lot of organization and power.
I do wonder how it limits or is excessive in some respects based on what kind of programming you are trying to do with it, but that aside I find it to be wonderfully powerful and intellectually liberating.

I have started a job as a Math tutor in the Math Tutoring Center (math lab) at my school, and I am certain this is the greatest job of my life.
Seriously, I love math, love Calculus, and love helping people.
And I have all my math major buddies in here, what more could I ask for?
:)


In the meantime, since I took cis 101 last semester and we learned Perl, I decided to use it to build some websites and resources for my own personal reviewing sessions and for other students who wish  to have a source of information from a student's perspective and verbage.


I'll post a link here as it becomes more complete, right now I am still fleshing out the concepts, and since I don't know anything about file reading and writing in Perl I don't have a sophisticated manner of writing the actual content for the webpages. (They are stored in arrays at the very beginning of the document, not that there is anything wrong with this, but it makes the one document cumbersomely large.)

Apparently we will be doing some basic reading and writing to files in Java next week, which makes me very excited :P

That would be sweet for game making, or any sort of sophisticated application that I could desire to have made.





Oohhh ohh, don't get me started on language learning. @o@
I am going to have to wage all-out war on Japanese, since two days of the week I have to leave really early to go to OOP instead of Japanese (Long, dramatic, story short: they collide, and I go to OOP rather than Japanese)
Today was a duel-quiz day, and I did not do as good as I wanted to.
I simply didn't know some answers, and the others I wasn't certain if they were correct.

That is absolutely unacceptable.
I hate not doing excellent, I will not stand for it.
From here on out I pledge to devote so much time to Japanese study and mastery that I will find the tests laughably easy, and will get ahead of the course schedule.

On a side note, I am not sure how this fits in with my war declaration upon Japanese (class), I am learning Indonesian right now and Esperanto and a little French.
I should learn some Spanish too, but I don't know.
I think highschool kind of made me lose the passion that had for it.
Who knows?

Interestingly, I have friends who speak Indonesian, Japanese, and Spanish on campus out here.
But I do not have any French friends, alas.
But that is not such a big deal, I have a French speaking sister, and a Canadian French friend :P
(Both are awesome, although I am trying to learn France French lol)

One of my tutor friends, wait no two of them, speak Indonesian :D
That is going to be a whooolee lot of fun :)



Oh btw, I am writing this from my job, we are allowed to work or study a little if no-one needs help, but we are supposed to periodically parole and ask people if they need help.

I have a feeling that this post is becoming far too long...
Oh well, I'll add in images later :D





Things on my mind that make me uber excited, which I will most definitely (or likely) devote entire posts to in themselves:

->Sword Art Online, Perhaps the single greatest, most beautiful, anime I have ever seen
the execution, the characters and their actions, the emotions, everything is so beautiful and pure, the entire premise fills me with joy and a feeling of excitement, and  and and :)
Its hard to explain how and why I find it so beautiful, but perhaps if you watched it and if you share some of the same things that I value, you too will be moved by such a beautiful existence.)
It is akin to Accel World, where their souls became mature after continuous dives, where they spent years in-world, but only days outside.
That is spine-chillingly beautiful, and is extremely compelling.


 ->Accel World
  Know that I saw Accel World before SAO, and it is also exemplarily beautiful, and has a lot in common with SAO.
  However SAO is purer than even Accel World, and is more relatable to me in many ways.
  One thing that Accel World has that SAO could of had would be the time-slowdown I mentioned in the prior paragraph
  However, SAO has a real virtual world with even more meanings and lines blurred betwixt the real and the virtual than Accel World does, (well in some ways, in reality they both are equally real and amazing, perhaps I merely think what I do because I prefer SAO to Accel World, Accel World being geared towards fighting more than anything else possible in such a virtual reality)

I am tempted to go into Bio-engineering just to see if I can bring this possibility, this beautiful and powerful possibility, into our present reality as soon as we can manage the advancements.
I have a feeling it will come within 100 ~ 200 years, but I don't think I will live that long, sadly.
(well, 100-200 years.. I mean, 100 is kind of the limit.. lol)


->Occulus Rift
  this is the closest thing we have to NerveGear or BurstLinkers in modern life, and it is going to be awesome.
  Not quite the same, not nearly close enough I think, but still awe-striking.
  Think of beautiful virtual worlds and landscapes, all rendered in 3d?
  With head-tracking? :DDDD
  *dies of happiness*
  It will be interesting to see if Second Life gets integration with it or not, and what applications it sees.


There is a lot more I could talk about, but mehh..
I'll save it for another day :)

Thanks for reading! :>

Rock on, and keep your head high, your ambitions ambitious, and your work ethic strong!

~James

Hope, Dreams, Magic, Delusions...

Interesting it is...

The very act of scheduling our days is representative of the human's innate struggle for control over his or her own destiny, in the face of all that nature opposes, in the face of futility.

Scheduling our time and thinking that things will go our way is a very human thing to do, and is a noble, albeit misguided, endeavour indeed.
On a smaller scale, it symbolizes humanities larger struggle for control and mastery of ourselves and our fates against the greater cosmos and even death itself, things beyond control.

I think how much you schedule and how much you stick to your schedule, how hard you actually work for those things you purport to desire, really says a lot about who you are and who you are becoming.
Those who keep their plans and work hard towards them, adapting as changes make their elusive and heinous presences known, are the ones who will triumph against the still-lurking catastrophes of the dark.

It is easy to think that relaxing and not being so strict with yourself is what you are "supposed to do", but there is no such thing.
There is what you "want to do", what "you need to do", and what "you need to do to get what you want".

Trading the harder-to-reach desires for cheap, bastardized Kentucky Fried chicken pick-me-up desires is a horrendous idea, especially on a regular basis.
Habitually going for the unhealthy mental and personal nourishment will hinder your advancements in this world and as a human being.

Self-analysis, self-progression, and self-discipline are very important things to grasp and initiate in regularly.
They help you hone your skills and talents, your personality, and your desire and ability to create new things and get new talents.

Hmm..
If I had to break down the important aspects of your public and private life I would say..

Private:
Self-study,
Extending your hobbies and talents,
Honing your skills,
Creating media and sharing knowledge,
Caring for your family, friends, society, the world
Consuming media that challenges you and stimulates your mind
Exercising,
Experiencing the beautiful world we live in: the internet isn't the be-all end-all
Making sure your wife and children are loved and know it,
(not with gifts per se, but by spending time with them and being affectionate)
(They are not a "chore", their value to you and relationship with you are have as much value as what you achieve in this life, for they too define who you are.)

The one's you love and the things you love define who you are as much as the things you do and the things you don't.
The way you care for them, the way you think of them and act upon those thoughts, the very way that you grow or reduce your relationship with them, all of these are precious and should be treasured for what they are.
You hold a special privilege and place in their hearts and lives, and their love for you should be matched by your kindness and love in kind.


Professional:
Never do something that is against your better judgement or morals
Don't create enemies, this is a somewhat big world, but it get's smaller when $ and hate is involved
Seek a career that will help you develop as a master of your trade, one that will challenge you and make you uncomfortable with the amount of responsibility that you will have: this will help you grow.
(Don't do this if you cannot handle it yet, that will end regrettably)
Network and make connections, but be professional
(Again, the world may be big but the niches you find will be interconnected, and the general opinion of you is extremely important.)
Speaking of which, your appearance is of utmost importance
Look sharp, confident, and bold: and act accordingly too!

Need I say it? Don't date a coworker, it is not recommended..
Don't let yourself become complacent or stagnant, always look for better opportunities and ways to improve your lot and stake.


----------

----------

Hmmm...
I feel like all above really has no place on my blog, but whatevs...
I felt like writing that anyway :)

Interestingly, since I recently have been thinking so much about inter-cultural exchanges and correspondences I have been intrigued by certain choices of words I use in this blog, and find myself wondering if any foreigners who read this will have trouble if English is their second or third language?

For instance, I said "whatevs" instead of "whatever", which is slang I suppose.
And I earlier used regrettably in a way I've myself never seen it before used.
Also, I keep using contractions, and lots and lots of commas.
As well as emphasis on "lots" by repeating it twice.

English is a very explicit language, unlike Japanese or Chinese.
It means that there is a lot of information in our sentences, but also a lot of power.
But even with this detail, interpretations and meanings can be lost even between two English speakers.

Lol, Ironic really.



Anyway, this isn't really much of a blog post, since I haven't written about myself.
More of a "I should post something, so I will write about whatever comes to mind..."

Okay,
I will, but for sanity's sake I will make a new post for it so this one doesn't get overtly large.

Thanks for reading! :)

Sincere via,

~James