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Ok so obviously I haven’t updated for a long time. That’s because I didn’t feel like it until I got to Anaheim, except the free internet in the hotel is just a cable from the wall, and there was only one. I had to use the free wireless from the hotel across the street, except it stopped working after a while. And then I had to go to China for two weeks, where WordPress is blocked. So I just  came back yesterday and I actually feel like updating. So yep.

So basically what I’ve been doing is before Anaheim reading lots of webcomics (probably at least 2000). Not much. Then I went to Anaheim because my sister had a national dance competition there. I didn’t even bother to go to Disney land, since after Great America all the rides are pretty pathetic in comparison.  The internet wasn’t working so I mainly just slept, played chess over the board, and played Warcraft. Not very exciting.  After I went to China* for two weeks. Let’s see. WordPress, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook were  all blocked and I had inconsistent access to Wikipedia. The air was incredibly humid, and mosquitoes were everywhere. I also missed the (total) solar eclipse that just passed over the city two days ago. The traffic is pretty ridiculous. Basically when you see the car ahead of you approaching you, you don’t slow down. You change lanes. Everybody tries to cut people. Ironically, this causes everybody to be slower. Also, horns are used to basically mean “hurry up,” “get out of my way,” or “wtf dude” so the streets are pretty noisy. There are plenty of one lane streets where pedestrians, bicycles, and cars go through the street in both directions, which is pretty dangerous and inefficient. Also, cars go on the bike lane. Seriously, what? Going to a crap ton of restaurants and eating exotic foods might sound fun, but it really isn’t. After several days of going to restaurants for dinner, you seriously start wanting to stop eating. Also, Chinese people tend to bring food to your plate which is inefficient for both people. And if you don’t want any more there’s really nothing you can do. But really, China was pretty not bad. A cousin had a PS2, so I got to beat Dark Alliance on hard mode, God of War 2, and Shadow of the Colossus. God of War 2** and Shadow of the Colossus*** are both pretty amazing games. I also got to finish Brave New World by Aldous Huxley which is pretty not bad. On the ride back to America with toothpicks sharp enough to prick my finger (I’ve been doing that since I mentioned it in some other post). So yay. I also watched Star Trek which was pretty ok but overall kinda meh. I guess I just don’t really like action movies in general. And the entire time I’ve been overstocking on chess opening theory****. I know I should really be studying tactics, strategy, positional play, and end game theory (which I’m really bad at; I guess I’m just too lazy to do all the calculations, and my intuition is not very good when making decisions. Also, it can be annoying if you have to do it without touching any of the pieces or the board). It’s probably because it’s the easiest to study without a teacher is is pretty interesting. And today I just ordered Dinosaur Comics T-shirts, so ha Jeffrey.  So anyway, that’s mainly what I’ve been doing recently.

*Pictures up on Facebook now
**A great game. Good at pretty much everything; level design, boss design, music, graphics, combat, etc.
***A great and very unique game. Basically it’s just 16 huge boss fights in a row, except it’s much better than it sounds. Also, it somehow manages to pull off a great story in maybe 5 minutes (at the beginning and end of the game).  Go read a review, or better yet, go play it.
****I need an opening repertoire for when I just begin playing in tournaments. I’ll be facing some weak players, so they don’t necessarily have to be the best. They should be be fun, though. Some things I am considering: queen’s gambit, Danish gambit, Evans gambit, Ponziani opening, etc. For black, I guess I’ll just always go e6 (QGD vs d4 and c4, French or French Sicilian vs e4).

In about 10 days I will be going to St. Louis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis,_Missouri) because my brother is going to college at WUSTL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_University_in_St._Louis, or maybe something people would be more interested in, http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/college/national-search), which is pretty awesome. Screw the Gateway Arch, I’m going straight to the art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Louis_Art_Museum) and science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis_Science_Center) museums.

And that’s pretty much it for now. Ok. No, no huge wall of crap, only a small wall of crap.

- Albert Zheng
Last posted or updated 8/9/09 10:22 pm

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Whee… Summer. No math or philosophy discussion topics this time. Just stuff about what I’ve been doing recently. Also, I mostly write blog posts over a long period of time. So when I say “now” I might not necessarily mean the same time as when I was typing other sections. Have fun trying to figure it all out. Have fun trying to have fun reading this. Also, have fun trying to have fun trying to have fun trying to have fun trying to have fun trying to have fun trying to have fun trying to have fun… reading this.

Last day of school description:

Period 1: Spanish 2
We watched Maya & Miguel. I kept on thinking about how good the episode would be for making Youtube Poop.

Period 2: English
You know when I said the entire movie was comic relief? Yeah, now I definitely think it is. I started signing, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.” in people’s yearbooks (including Woolbright’s yearbook). We took a class picture, but Michael didn’t want to. I normally can’t intentionally smile for pictures, but Michael was squirming around on the ground behind the group, so I was laughing the whole time. The entire day, people were taking pictures of themselves by sticking their cameras at themselves. Next you, just for fun I should carry around a sign saying, “I’m right behind you.” when people are taking pictures like that. Yay?

Period 3: Science
Last Ricksclass. D=. We watched Kid vs Kat. I also read the Hewitt book for what might be my last time. We never did get to that section on relativity. I didn’t finish reading it. Darn. Adam also told me to take a picture for him. I asked how to zoom out, forgetting I could step back. Then I refused to take pictures with anybody. Yeah.

Period 4: PE
Matthew found an alternate solution to my chess puzzle. Unfortunately, it’s not as interesting as what I previously thought the only one (which involves either one or two knight promotions, depending on where black goes) to a certain variation.

Period 5: Math
Turns out Jeffy forgot to list Pranay. Blah. I also signed Jeffy’s yearbook. I forgot to ask him if I could sign it again at Allan’s performance. Darn.

Period 6: History
Blah. Got my certificate and blah.

Period 7: Ricks
I went to his room right after school. I didn’t buy a yearbook, so I asked him to sign my promotion certificated instead. Gee, I should have given him a piece of binder paper (and then laminated it later). Ricks didn’t really have a choice but to be politically correct. I’d actually think it would be more meaningful if he just wrote about how much I sucked. There were also people who came in to the room and said, “Hi Mr. Richards!” Oh dear. Anyway, who’s up to visiting him next year and taking the tests again?

Period 8: Blah
Later I went to my brother’s high school graduation. Hurray. Congratulations to him. That said, I couldn’t hear anything the speakers said, and sitting on a metal bench for a long time is never fun. It looked pretty cool when everybody threw up their hats, though. =D. As usual Mission had 20-something valedictorians. I heard starting from next year, Mission will stop counting student ranks. Yay. Seems like there are tons of changes in class of 2013 (USAJMO, no required SAT2s, and now this). This one is probably good. You have to factor in that all the teachers have different difficulties, and the fact that you aren’t even in the top 10% any more if you have 1 (or was it 2?) Bs is pretty ridiculous. After, we went to a restaurant (it was already 8:00 by then, and you guys were all at the party). My brother’s suggestion for the restaurant? Make the edge of the plates slightly more curved to retain the heat better. Oh dang. Yeah, I guess more things should be designed by engineers.

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Thursday, I went with Kevin, Tristan, Lucy, Vivian, Maggie and Elaine to watch Up. I pick up Vivian and Maggie and go to Lucy’s house, but then find that Kevin will be going to the theater himself. And since they were already standing in a corner, instead of hiding in a corner I hid behind a tree. Then Elaine comes and it turns out Tristan either told his address incorrectly or it was misrecorded. So then 6 of us drive to the movie theater. I had to look at something, and since I was surrounded by people on all sides except for my left, I stared outside the window until we were there. Then Kevin arrived and we all watched the movie (2-d version). I said something about touching about something sticky, and Kevin very predictably made a that’s what she said joke. In the theater, we saw Stephen (of course, we all promptly lost the game). The movie itself:

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILER-ISH STUFF. If you want to avoid it, skip the following paragraph:

Thumbs up
Overall a very entertaining and good movie. More than once, we all burst out laughing. You just have to love the mechanical hounds and their quirks. Unfortunately, the first few minutes weren’t that sad for me, since every mention of Up on the Internet, the people also add in what happens in the beginning and how sad it was. So that was kind of ruined. The main character ends up abandoning his dreams and living a new life; I think this theme is already pretty well covered by Disney and others. I wasn’t that moved by the message, although there is no denying that it showed it in a new an entertaining manner. Personally, I found it inferior to Wall-E, which although couldn’t use dialogue very much, was still extremely entertaining and touching. Overall though, Up is a great movie.

So then we finished the movie. Kevin said he might need a ride home, so while Kevin waited as I called my mom outside Outback, everybody else went in to the mall. It would take about 20 minutes for my mom to arrive, so we could follow them around in the mall for a while. Unfortunately, they were already gone. We had to guess which way they turned.

My logic:
Gamestop! Let’s go left!
Kevin’s logic:
People always go right. Since the majority of people are right-handed it gives them a sense of safety.

Even worse, Kevin was right (although we still didn’t find the group). I still deem my logic superior. Obviously being right handed in the corridor to the right will make you safer, even though the one on the left is symmetrical in shape (and even if it weren’t, it still would make practically no difference).

So after random wandering and going in a small circle, we arrived back at where we started. Kevin’s mom was also there, so he left. I wandered aimlessly until I got picked up also. Yay?

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On the topic of movies, two other ones I saw recently were Fiddler on the Roof and National Treasure.

Fiddler on the Roof:
Thumbs up
An entertaining (albeit old) movie. The songs are pretty catchy (but yes, you will look stupid if you start humming the matchmaker song). The script was good, and while watching it, I felt there was meaning all over the place. However, I’m not sure what the message is supposed to be; mostly the entire time the movie is just contradicting itself over and over. After watching, you feel it was a profound movie, but can’t pinpoint why or what you gained or learned from the movie. A strange movie. Still a good movie to watch if you have Netflix or something.

National Treasure:
Thumbs down
I have to admit I didn’t see the end of the movie (we were watching this in history class). However it ends, I feel it’s a pretty bad movie. Instead of attempting to have any meaning, it just goes for pure action and entertainment. Problem is, it’s not good at that, either. The entire story line is pretty skewed and Dan Brown-esque, and most of the time you’ll be wondering how it makes sense. The action is stereotypical, uncreative, and unentertaining. And I don’t think I’d like the barely existent message whether the guy finds the treasure or not. Well, the world isn’t black and white, so I guess it’s pretty hard to actually send meaningful messages about life. But still, I was pretty unimpressed by this.
Also, it misquoted Thomas Edison. It said, “I haven’t failed, I’ve found 2000 ways that don’t work.” Of course, everybody started yelling.
Some reviews from people who are actually qualified:
“National Treasure is so silly that the Monty Python version could use the same screenplay, line for line.” – Roger Ebert
“People run. Things blow up. Sometimes, just to add another layer of nuance, people run away as things blow up.” – Stephen Witty

Another very noteworthy movie is Grave of the Fireflies. I actually saw it a while ago. It is the most moving movie yet. If after watching it you didn’t cry/want to cry/feel very sad you either didn’t understand it or are an emotionless android. The ending is surprisingly good. Unlike Fiddler on the Roof, which leaves you confused and unsatisfied, the end of Grave of the Fireflies is amazingly touching and actually makes a lot of sense. A must see and instant classic.

Is anybody going to watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince when it comes out? The only thing I remember about the 5th movie was that there are lots of fireworks and that everybody was saying that Cho Chang was not hot enough. Hm.

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Allan’s performance. Ok, I should really say, 3Am’s performance. Anyway, yay and good job. First thing I see when I come in is Jeffy with a haircut. Oh dang, that’s funny. Jeffy with a haircut. (I’ve lost all desire I might have had to run my hands through his hair). Asian parents were saying pretty stereotypical criticisms of the band. Like this (in Chinese, of course):

“[xxx] is kinda handsome.”
“[xxxx] is a bit skinny”
etc., etc.

After a while seeing other people buy frozen yogurt, I decided it wouldn’t count as gluttony if I got a little too. By pure luck skill, while I was paying I saw I purchased 4.2 ounces. I promptly pointed at the screen and started laughing. The salesman thought I was pointing at the change (which he actually did enter incorrectly; it was supposed to be 18. 24 and he put .24). Later, I wandered around and people played with my chess set. I saw two little boys (I don’t know if one of them was Allan’s little brother; I hope not) spit at each other. Ew? I later donated some money. Andrew suggested I take some money from the basket. And then when the salesman wasn’t there he told me to grab some sprinkles. 1. Stealing is bad 2. Mochi is better than sprinkles. I think the singer had a few mistakes. It wouldn’t have been as noticeable of everybody in the band hadn’t started raising their eyebrows/wincing/eye rolling/sighing/announcing their mistakes between the songs/nudging each other/verbally abusing each other/stabbing themselves/etc. I unfortunately had to leave early to come where I am right now.

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Once my brother let a friend borrow our N64. Then we lost it for at least half a year. He’s going to leave for college at the end of summer, so he (finally) got it back. I’ve been playing with the N64 recently. Mario Kart 64 is a great game to play with the family (certainly better than any of the “family games” Nintendo have been coming up with, like WiiSports, WiiPlay, and WiiFit); just today my brother, sister, my dad, and I were all playing it . My sister began playing Pokemon Snap again. You just go around and… take pictures of pokemon. As stupid as the concept sounds, it’s surprisingly fun. The way pictures are scored is actually objective, and it does take some skill to get good scores. I also started The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. In spite of the lack of modern graphics, sound, etc., it’s still the creepiest and darkest Zelda game to date. It’s amazing what game developers could do in the past with limited tools (yes, that’s you Chrono Trigger). The main villain, Majora, is pretty screwed up. As Wikipedia puts very nicely (or at least, the last time I read the article on Majora’s Mask characters), Ganon causes suffering as a means to obtaining power, while Majora uses power as a means to causing suffering. In Majoras Mask, the entire game takes place over 3 days. In 3 days, the moon crashes on to the earth and the world ends. You repeatedly go back in time to try to gather to tools to prevent the end of the world. This and everything else (from the soundtrack to the way you scream when you put on the masks) adds up to make a pretty dark feeling. Of course, then there’s the classic dungeon design, which Nintendo does very nicely. The dungeons and bosses are all very fun.

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Yes, I’ve been playing videogames. As you can probably tell, I haven’t really started self teaching myself yet. I’ll assume I leave myself 8 hours of sleep, 2.5 hours to eat meals, 1 hour to sleep during the day (yes, I know my sleep schedule is really screwed up; every time I attempted to take 15 minute naps during the school year, I woke up 2 hours later) and 3.5 hours to play videogames and/or generally waste time (3.5 hours to waste time – hm, that’s actually kinda hard). This leaves me 9 hours. At least one should be devoted to practicing the piano. Two hours doing math will pass pretty quickly, too. Hm, 6 hours left still. This is good. I guess about 1 hour playing chess. The rest will probably go to whatever I feel like learning, like reading philosophy or literature. I might dabble in sociology. Yeah.

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Today is Father’s Day. I did the same as I did for Mother’s Day (cook French toast). This time I managed to do it without melting a spatula. Heh.

Sometimes I suddenly feel tall (usually when there are no people around. I wonder why). Then I realize I’m short, and I feel really short. I also sometimes see people that I think look short. And then realize that I’m shorter than them. Whoopee.

I’ve forgotten the date already, and summer has barely started. Hm.

It’s already 8:10, and nobody up yet. Seriously, what?
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I need to get a new value system next year. Grades will actually matter a lot next year, and the workload will probably be even larger. Basically, I need to start working hard, not procrastinate, and generally pwn at school. Yes, this is pretty different from 8th grade. Well, I pulled off a pretty large attitude change this past year. I guess I’ll just have to do it in the opposite direction next year.

- Albert Zheng
Last posted or updated 6/21/09 5:42 pm

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This post isn’t as long. It only contains end of the year reflections. Nope, no math. Here is the discussion prompt: Can God create a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it?

The school year is ending (it already has for you guys, but I didn’t go to the promotion ceremony, so it’s not really official). Wow, what a great year. This was definitely the greatest year of my life so far. Thanks to all friends, people I know, people I don’t know, past scientists and artists, life, the universe, and everything else I haven’t mentioned for making my life awesome. I can’t even decide what I feel like at the end of the year. I’m not sure if I feel happy or sad; it feels like there’s a hole inside me, but… hm, it’s just weird. Oh wait, I just remembered what this feels like. It’s nostalgia. Am I the only one that doesn’t want the school year to end? I’d even go through 3SRP if I had to. Seriously. I’m not kidding. Well, I guess I should reflect on what happened this year. Here goes (by the way, I’m listening to the Super Mario Galaxy sound track as I write this, so this is probably affecting my mood; it’s pretty powerful and inspiring stuff, especially put in the context and general epicness of the game.):

Spanish 2:
Oh yeah, it exists.

English:
It exists, too. I guess it was actually ok. Made me lose some sleep, but it was actually kinda enjoyable (even though I didn’t really enjoy any of the assignments). It was great to brave the class with all my classmates. Yeah. By the way 64% on 2SRP. That’s a 16% improvement over last year.

Science:
Whee… Yay, this class was great. Learned a lot, had fun (from the learning itself), had fun going through with classmates, had fun doing the tests (they’re more fun than any other test you can find in school). It was great.

Engineering project:
Heh, this makes me feel a bit guilty. Next time, I’ll try to contribute more.
Earth Sciene Project:
Oh yeah, that. My topic was hurricanes. I learned nothing at all. Really. And then the meetings were just hiding in a corner (often quite literally), pretending I didn’t exist, and maybe complaining about how the internet was being stupid. Then the rest of the group decided to edit only themselves of the video and leave me in. But honestly, I’m glad I got accepted in to the group. I don’t know who else I’d work with in 3rd period. Sham? No, I don’t think so.

Wow, we learned a lot. I feel I know a bit more about everything (except a few topics; I guess I understood all the concepts better than I did before, but I didn’t really learn that much new knowledge). To be honest, my interest in science has lessened a bit since the beginning of the year (although it is in no way because of the class). It’s still cool stuff.

PE:
It exists. Um, yeah.

“Math”:
Haha. Ha. Ahaha. Thinking about it makes me want to laugh. Adjust your attitude, and you’ll be fine. You might even enjoy it. In math class, I got to know Jeffy, Charles and Michael a bit better (Charles is actually kinda ok. Well, maybe. My impession of him is better now that it was at the beginning of the school year), know Sham, Brian, and Gregory better (bad thing), and get a bit better at calculator Mario and Phoenix. I did also get impressions of the Other Side (we get to sit anywhere we want in Robinson; the room pro of the room. I probably never directly addressed any of them the whole year, but sitting in the same room kinda does that to you. The majority of what I here them say is probably about Jeffy. Seriously.

History:
History. It was ok, I guess. It was absurdly easy, but I still failed. I didn’t try… at all. Just now, Ms. Powers sent me this email about my history project (which is attached to the post for no real reason; it will probably end up getting removed later because of space issues):
“Hi Albert,

Excellent work here. Great choice of events and images/slide layout to accompany them.
Great recognition of the founding fathers building ideals based on the “mistakes” of Britain, of the imperfections of the first draft of the Constitution, and of the often unspoken yet still existent resentment between the N & S. For your conclusion, explain how it would be not beneficial to look at history from only one perspective (explain what you wrote).
Well done.

77/80

-Ms. Powers”
What she doesn’t know is that I started at 7:00 the morning it was due and worked literally to the last second. I had to leave for school before it even finished sending, so I was hoping pretty badly the internet didn’t crash. Final Project
I just threw together some random crap and hoped for the best. It worked here, but not for 2SRP. D’oh.

All in all, this year was great, and I feel never again in my life will I have an oppurtunity to live life the way I have this year. I’ve learned so much, thought about so many things, met new people, learned more about the people I already knew, etc. Life is just awesome for me. My grades will matter next year. And then after that, college, graduate school and a job until I either die or become pretty old. See, this is why I wish 8th grade would never end. Summer is coming; I guess I should be relieved. I guess it will be nice to be able to stude whatever I want. While all my classmates are at COSMOS and AMP, I’m going to run my own private summer camp. Hopefully, I’ll learn as much as I did this year. Eighth grade is OVER (deep sigh at precisely 6/16/09 8:52 PM Pacific Time). It was great, everybody. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

- Albert Zheng
Last posted or updated 6/16/09 8:54 PM

PS. This music is really really epic. Everybody should check out the game and the soundtrack (soundtrack can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=942802DEE373711A)
PPS. Yes, there are 69 songs. Now you should go listen to them. Every single one.
PPPS. This post was unedited and not proofread. Sorry.

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The not-written-at-school stuff:
Random – I’m not sure, but in chess, what’s the best response for black if after playing the French defense white develops one of his knights instead of playing d4?

Awards ceremony-
Hm, I got an award for an AMC 10 score > 90, and another one for AMC 10 score > 120. Although it’s ridiculous, I didn’t get one for the CML. I never took the 6th part, but I don’t know how or why. I got perfect scores on all the ones from one to five. The CML doesn’t even deserve to be called a math contest, seriously. The problems are shams. Maybe it would be better if you were given 36 minutes to solve all 36 problems (the current time limit is 3 hours to solve 36 problems).
About the teacher awards, I personally don’t think getting a crap ton is something to be that proud of, although I guess it depends on how you get there. Half the people got there by brainless hours of toil, crying whenever they get 95s instead of 100s, and their parents stressing and pushing them. But still, whether that’s you or not, good job. You tried harder than me and have a lot more self-discipline.

Video games-
Video games are art. There’s no way to argue against it. Video game design is an art in itself, but even if you just see it as the sum of its parts, it’s clearly art; there’s the graphic design, the story writing, the music, etc. I guess video games are both the most appreciated and most misunderstood forms of art (not to say I’m qualified in saying this, but this is just the impression I get). Are there video games there just because the creator thought (s)he could make money off of a concept (s)he had? Sure. Are there also video games out there that are true artistic expression. Definitely. (And it’s not as if this isn’t the same of other forms of art, too). Video game designers create entire universes, and often aren’t credited for it. Huge teams work together to create a form of art larger and more grand than anything else. Working in video game design (or on a video game in general; I don’t think there isn’t a job that wouldn’t be interesting, from story writing to programming to designing to sales) must be incredible; I really do aspire to video game designers.

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The was written entirely in school today. Yes. The entire thing. I transcribed it all from my notebook on to the computer. Last time, I changed the tense from when I wrote it, but I thought it would be better this time to leave it as is (now you get to listen to me talk to you from the past). Also, the periods are NOT part of a part-by-part analysis of the day, they’re when I wrote the stuff. Yes, I was blogging the whole day. Yes, it’s edited slightly. Yes, you can go read it now.

Period 2: English
I’m writing this while watching MSND.
The movie is terrible. Being left handed is annoying, the light is coming from the left, and my arm is blocking it. Anyway, as I was saying, the movie is terrible. I can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be in ancient Greece, the 19th century, the 18th century, or the Renaissance. Also, this: “Hey look, it’s a guy in a tuxedo! Athenian garments!” And then there’s Lysander wearing… a blanket. The language just seems awkward and out of place. The best comment I’ve heard about the movie so far is, “Oberon is hot.” (That was yesterday. I’m sure whoever said that was happy to see more half-naked men today). Puck is ridiculous (and as Jeffy very kindly points out, horny). Helena makes you want to slap her. She’s better comic relief than both Bottom and Puck combined, except she just frustrates you. Wait, what? The performances are ridiculous after the potion. The fairy kingdom sounds like a dystopia. Just watch the fairies cahnt, “Hail, mortal.” They either are being controlled by Titania or are secretly happy she loves an ass. Hm. Bottom’s transformation is stupid, absurd, and unconvincing at the same time. Even more absurd, Bottom lying on Titania. Seriously, is the entire movie supposed to be comic relief? It’s just really ridonculously silly.

Period 3: Science
Watching “Volcanoes of the West” in Rick while writing this.
Title page: pink text on a volcano. Yay?* Augh, more badly colored text. I know, I’m being a whiny retard, and I won’t fix anything by thinking these thoughts. I just feel like being a sadist right now (or at least writing down my sadistic thoughts. I can’t help thinking them, even I know they’re useless. I try not to be as sadistic as others, though =P). Ha, Daniel just whispered, “What the heck…” in to the microphone, thinking we couldn’t herar him. Haha, I can tell what music they’re using immediately**. Bad sign? Maybe I should pay attentin. I’m guessing I’ll fail the test. Woah, the computer just BSODed.

*Seriously, the text colors suck. They’re painful, hard to read, and distracting. The choices are terrible. Terrible, I say!
**Some of them are the Bramble Blast (from DK) remix in the Super Smash Brother Brawl Subspace Emissary, the background music for the SSBM/SSBB Hyrule Temple (yeah, that curséd course), the SSBB Pokémon Stadium music, and the SSBB title screen music.

Period 4.2: Lunch
Written during lunch (which I didn’t eat)
I’ve designed an anti-Allan shoe tying method that’s still easy to tie and untie. Just do your standard knot, but then tie the loops. Now he can’t untie your shoes by just pulling the ends. If he finds out what you’re doing, you can still just pull your leg away in the time it takes for him to untie the loops. Also, I’ve designed a way to not get hooded. Just wrap your hood around the front of your neck and grab it like a retard. Now you’re safe!

Period 1 – Bleh, apparently my face was bleeding. And then I got a paper cut. Yay.
Period 4 – Bleh. Kevin needs to stop.

I also got to see the anime incarnation of Jeffy. I didn’t really look at the face, I just immediately realized the hair was going the wrong way, and then started yelling and went away. But really, she’s gotten close enough to Jeffy to see his eyes are green (I was sitting right next to him on the bus to and from Great America, but still couldn’t tell whether they were green). How can she not know which way his hair goes?

This is also the philosophy discussion for the post, I guess:
You guys should see St. Anselm/Descartes’ proof that God exists. The argument is basically this: the concept of an entity with nothing greater possible/conceivable exists. If the actually entity doesn’t exist, then there could be a more perfect one: one that exists. Thus, by contradiction, God exists. No matter you position, this has some pretty serious consequences if there isn’t a hole in the logic (people have searched for one for centuries). There are also people who believe that you should believe in God by faith, and not search for an explanation. You can’t really have this position any more either. The only way you’d be able to be an atheist is if you hold the position that God may exist, but that he doesn’t deserve to be worshipped, which is pretty rare nowadays.

Period 5: “Math”
- Stop trying to read my notebook. Really.
- Written in 5th period (these events are all written as they happen, so the descriptions are really short and Twitter-esque)
- I almost certainly will be updating over the summer. There won’t be as much stuff to write about, and you (the readers) will have more time, so hopefully I’ll get tl;dr ed less often.
- Oh no, now there’s a class-wide debate over which MSND character is hottest (“Jeffrey, is Titania hot? Albert, is Titania hot? Do you think Demetrius or Oberon is hotter?”). Complete with donkey-humping-Titania role play by J-bert, of course.
- Jeffy says, “I talk in the third-person.” Hm.
- David just tried to beat up Michael for writing in his yearbook. By popular demand, David needs to calm down.
Kevin’s stick figures look like he uses a compass and ruler. It makes them lack that organic feel you get from the xkcd stick figures.

Period 6: History
Written during 6th period. Duh.
- Hey look, more people are talking about whether the MSND characters are hot!
- Huh what, Powers is getting laid off? Dang. She’s not the best teacher, but she’s not bad.

Haven’t had the time to write this earlier (I’ve been writing the whole day): 2SRP. It’s over. YES. I think I actually learned a lot and kinda enjoyed it, in spite of the extra hours of sleep debt caused by it. I’m definitely going to continue reading and doing philosophy. I think it’s pretty sily to no philosophize. It’s most important thing possible, ever. Seriously. No exaggeration at all.
My projected grade? Heh… I didn’t do my creative writing (-15%) and I did my non-fiction report as an essay (-15%). And I didn’t have a bibliography. I’m not sure how much that’s worth, but I’ll just assume 10% (-10%). Yeah, 40% down the drain. I can still get better than my 4QRA, at least. D’oh.

I’m going to start reteaching myself how to play the piano over the summer. It’s pretty funny, I enjoy music more now that I don’t have classes (althoughu to be fair, I enjoy everything and life in general more now). Practicing and playing will be for pleasure and not duty now, so I’ll probably end up practicing more than I did before, and be less stressed while doing it. Yay!

I’m catching senioritis, and I’m not even a senior. I don’t eve really work, and I’m under the impression that school is already over (and that school doesn’t matter). Hm.

Obligatory Math Section (inspired by a Mensa problem done in “math” class)
Today, we will solve the following problem:

“There are three cards. One has both sides saying 42, another has one side saying 24 and another saying 42, and the last card has sboth sides saying 56. A card is randomly chosen, and you see that the top side says 42. What is the probability that the bottom side is also 42?”

You know it can’t be the 56-56 card. If it is the 42-42 card, the bottom will be 42. If it is the 42-24 card, the bottom will be 24. So the answer is 1/2, right? Actually, no. The reason this is wrong is because you’re not fully taking in to account that you know the top side is 42.
Probability is the number of ways for success over the total number of ways. The total number of ways must be calculated knowing the top side is 42. Given this, there are three possibilities: the 42 is from the 42-24 card, the 42 is from the 42-42 card, or the 42 is from the other side of the 42-42 card.d Of these three, two of them are success (all but when is is from the 42-24). The probability is then . Good job.

Period 7: By the creek, before I get home
- Great, Lewis is screwing my backpack even as I write. Seriously, my backpack is already screwed up enough, don’t screw it up more.
- Hm, maybe I should get a scanner so I don’t have to manually transcrive this on to the computer later (and so I can actually show how I write this; a lot of the stuff is actually short sentences and then arrows point around the place)

Should I come to the promotion ceremony and/or party?

Ceremony disadvantges
- Buy ID card (I lost mine), even though it’s the end of the year
- Wait in line, stand forever
- Get picture taken
- Semi-formal dress
Ceremony advantages
- Uh… What am I supposed to put here?

Party disadvantages
- Buy ID
- Didn’t pay donation, might make me feel guilty (although technically, I can still go)
- Nothing to do
Party advantages
- Play Allan chess
- Food?

So yeah, help me decide.

- Albert Zheng
Last posted or updated 6/11/09, 4:29 pm

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Of Corners and Logs

It’s another blog post. And I actually had a time restraint while writing this one, so I apologize if the quality is not very good, I’m missing some good ideas that I had, etc. Anyway, the school description is back! Well, enjoy.

1. Cake Log
2. Log log
3. School Log 2
4. Poll Corner 2
5. Ethics Discussion Corner 2

Cake Log

- Black forest
- Fruit Tart
- Opera Cake
- Cranberry Tart (or at least, I think it was cranberry)
- Homemade cake stuff

A list of types of cake I’ve been eating recently, starting from the date of the last Rickstest (5/19, I think). I don’t normally eat this much cake, it’s just that recently there’s been special circumstances (that is, the Rickstest* and my sister’s birthday).

*Everybody knows to do well on a test, one must have a healthy and nutritious breakfast. So I ate some cake. But then to make it a more balanced meal, I ate two more types of cake.

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Log Log

We have addition. We also have the opposite, subtraction. Similarly, we have multiplication (which you know is just repeated addition) and its opposite, division.  What you don’t know in algebra 1 is the opposite of exponents (repeated multiplication), or logarithms. In this short guide, you will learn the very very very basics of logarithms. Yeah.

In case you don’t know the online notation where there isn’t LaTeX, x^{y} means x to the power of y, and _{y} means y in subscript (like in chemistry, where the numbers in the compounds go beneath the letters). log is short for logarithm. Now, that explained, onward to logarithms:

Logarithms are defined as such:

If

Then

This is read as “the logarithm of z in base x is equal to y.” Logarithms can be hard to catch on at first, but come very naturally after you work with them a little. Here are some practice examples:

Write the following equations as logarithmic equations:

Do the opposite:

It’s definitely is awkward and painful at first, but said before, it gets more natural later. You can also evaluate logarithms. This done usually by memorization or calculators. At first, you may have to convert these equations in to equations in to exponential equations, but after some practice it is not necessary. Here are some examples:

<- This one is a bit harder

Yeah, well now you know what a logarithm is. I just realized in the middle of writing this that next year Algebra 1 people will be going to geometry, not Algebra 2, but just keep this stuff in the back of your head for a year or two. =P

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School Log 2

Time for a period by period description again. This will cover two days. I wrote this during history in the black notebook. That is a lot of choppy sentences. Anyway, I realized later that I had written some of it in the present tense, so I had to change that. And this time, un-interesting periods are left out.

5/26

Period 1 – Spanish 2 (Claymon)
I don’t really even pay attention any more, and my participation grade is plummeting (my participation grade usually has phases where sometimes it is good and then gets worse, gets good again, etc.). Before class, Michael was discussing a certain lame thing which I don’t really want to post online.

Period 2 – English (Woolbright)
The person who sits to my right entered the classroom crying. Not much else so say about second period.

Period 3 – Family Life (Ricks)
I said that hepatitis B and C had vaccines. Turns out only B has a vaccine. Not much to say here.

Period 4 – PE (Cartwright)
Everything I have to say is said in 5/27.

Period 4.2 – Lunch (Ricks)
I got to watch a presentation on the Academic Challenge club. Brain Tsui (or however you spell his last name) was there (Matthew, Wesley, maybe Allan, and I knew his younger brother in Weibel). Suddenly, everybody has become obssessed with Quiz Bowl, maybe because it’s a contest, and it’s not only for math or science. It was pretty funny, since they were teaching that if you’re not specific enough, they’ll prompt you and you won’t get a penalty. They explained that for that questino, you could have just said “Smith.” A few questions later, Adi shouted, “Smith.” Anyway, for the only math problem they gave (convert 1221 base three in to base 10), I got that the answer was 27 + 25. I shortly concluded that Hairuo was correct, and that the answer was 42. D’oh.

Period 5 – Algebra 2 (Robinson)
Charles suddenly burst out laughing. Five minutes later, his head was buried in his arms and he was crying. I have no idea what happened. I continued to sloppily do my classwork, as Brian, Sham, and Gregory joined Michael in a discussion about that certain lame thing which I don’t really want to post online.

Period 6 – US History (Powers)
We had Hottle as a substitute. See 5/27 for my opinion on that.

5/27

Period 4 – PE (Cartwright)
Dance. Bleh. I can feel the arms of the taller people strain as they try to turn. Heh, not intentional. I also usually just stand their and move in place if I have to. Yeah, that’s kinda intentional. I never thought I’d say this, but I can’t wait until we run cross countries.

Period 4.2 – Lunch (Ricks)
I saw the robotics team give a presentation. Incidentally, one presenter was called Rebecca, and another was called Raymond.  We were all pretty disappointed when the last person wasn’t called Adi. Also, I’m kinda disappointed that to be successful in robotics, you apparently have to be an insomniac.

Period 5 – Algebra Poo (Robinson)
Today was the trigonometry test, or as Jeffy calls it, the Mathematics Examination of the Introductory Trigonometry Variety. You don’t have to understand this, but some stuff happened when people got to number 11 (might not be worded correctly):

11. A ball is hit at 95 mph, 3 ft above the ground, and at 32 degrees. Write parametric equations.

Someone asked if the equations should be linear. She said yes, but then I remarked that that means the ball flies forever in to space. Leena then said that was because math makes/has no sense whatsoever and has no practical meaning in real life*. Michael said back that Leena just sucked at math. I kinda agreed, although I interpreted “sucked” as did not understand math as a subject. I later asked Robinson again, and then she said the motion was parabolic. D’oh. I didn’t bother to fix my answer.

*This is ridiculous much in the same way that saying that art sucks because it has no clear order and has no practical meaning is ridiculous. Except math actually has applications. D’oh.

Period 6 – US History (Powers)
We still had Hottle as a substitute. Hottle’s lecures are pseudo-quasi-semi-almos-kinda interesting-ish, although they’re usually hardly relevant. All in all, though, he’s a relatively awesome substitute teacher, and I guess he was an ok teacher when I had him last year for the first semester.

Period 7 – Math Club (Phair)
I had root beer floats, and you didn’t. Ha. Ha. Haha. Also, this time there aren’t 40 people here just for the floats. In other words, gluttony. Or rather, in another word, gluttony. After we ate, we played a civilization simulation (hosted by Lewis, of course). My empire of Alaska completely pwned all others. I sacrificed over 9000 population to advance Science, enabling me to build a portal gun. I formed a two pacts with Matthew: sacrifice half his population, and he get’s to use a portal to the moon. Sacrifice half of what’s left, and I give him food. Because so many people were being sacrificed for the good of Science, my technology became advanced enough to build massive nukes. I promptly nuked Antarctica (Aaron’s empire). As a last move, Aaron blew up the moon (Matthew’s empire). But then the almighty Eraser came, and my empire was annihilated.

I’m never going to go to the Hopkins math enrichment club ever again. It’s over. );

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Poll Corner 2

When writing blog posts, do you plan ideas beforehand, or do you just sit down and write?
- Yes
- No
- Other (explain)

For me, it’s yes.

If you were to name a band, what would you name it?

For me, it would obviously be Nasty Hat*. Fine, it kinda depends on what music the band plays, but oh well. Although, some names like Ulver are pretty all-encompassing.

*This first took a grapefruit half, ate it, then inverted the skin. Then I washed it and wore it as a hat (pomelo peels make really good hats, too =P). I named it a nasty hat. My brother later remarked that Nasty Hat would make a nice band name.

_____________________________________________

Ethics Discussion Corner 2

Contrary to popular belief, I did NOT rip off the previous topic from the AoPS Round Table. That was purely coincidental. I only ripped off THIS topic from the Round Table:

You are a doctor. A patient has a terminal illness (a disease that is generally fatal and has no cure), and wishes to be humanely killed. Should this be allowed?

Gee, this is a tough one. I guess it depends on how wisely the patient can spend his remaining time. If I had a terminal illness, I guess I wouldn’t want to be humanely killed but who knows, it’s not as if I have a terminal illness (that I know of, at least).

- Albert Zheng
Posted or last updated 5/27/09, 8:39

asdf

This is a weekend, so there isn’t as much to write about. And from now on, posts probably won’t be as long as the first one. Anyway, have fun reading this pentagonal blog entry.

1. Narcissism Corner 2
2. Redundancy Corner
3. Notebook
4. Dinner
5. Entertainment
6. Philosophy-ish Discussion Topic
7. Poll Corner
8. Pole Corner. Also, math.
9. Awesome Modern-ish Art Corner 2

Narcissism Corner 2

1. Chances are, I’ve said less perverted things than you, both online and offline
2. Chances are, my sister is more flexible than you.
3. Chances are, I’ve torrented less files than you.
4. Chances are, I ate cake today.

I’m actually trying to make the narcissism corner without being offensive. I’d never saying anything like, “Chances are, my IQ is higher than yours,” because that would be both false and offensive. Feel free to message me if you feel any of these are mean.

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Redundancy Corner

is a corner where I can be redundant. For now, it’s just a temporary idea/filler.

_____________________________________________

After a few days, I was surprised at the number of ideas I forgot, and how quickly I forgot them. From now on I’m going to carry around a notebook so I can jot stuff down whenever I feel like it.

The only clean notebooks that I could see in the house (and by that, I mean 10 seconds of searching) were a bright red on and a black one. I already have a neon-orange lunchbox, so carrying around a bright red notebook might be overkill. I went with the black one.

Help me think of excuses for carrying around a notebook. This one guy once said I always seemed to be busy on something, which was pretty far from the truth (I’m guessing that the last time he saw me, I was working an a challenge set). Both my siblings have already lunged at me wanting to see what’s inside (not much, actually).

____________________________________________

On Saturday, my family went to a restaurant for my sister’s birthday. It was a buffet where they play Happy Birthday over and over. Believe it or not, I’m not talking about Pacific Buffet. Anyway, we got to listen to them playing Happy Birthday over and over. They sang in a Chinese accent, so it sounded more like hippy buthday than happy birthday. When they finished, a guy passed by and said, “Yes! It’s over!” My sister got an IPod Nano. You can change songs by shaking it, which is ridiculously gimmicky. Oh yay, now you can change songs by shaking your entire arm instead of moving your thumb one inch! Apparently my brother (AP English) has to write a 10 page (double spaced) essay on Shakespeare. The topic he chose for himself was “An Analysis of how Hamlet is a Precursor to Existentialist Thought.” Woah.

____________________________________________

Speaking of which, I need to find better ways to entertain myself. When I was waiting at the restaurant, I grabbed the first thing I saw and started playing with it. This happened to be a toothpick. It’s a sharp, pointy thing -> you poke things with it. Since poking other people wouldn’t go too well, I started pricking my finger. That, and I just felt like feeling pain (no, I’m not emo. I just prick myself with toothpicks. But seriously, $5 that my life is happier than yours). Well, the point was too blunt, so it didn’t even hurt, and the point broke off. And then at church, the first thing I grabbed was a coffee straw. At first, I just bending it. Within 5 about minutes, I was chewing on it. Fail much?

____________________________________________

Discussion topic:
There are five workers on a railroad. They do not know a train is approaching, which will cause certain death if it hits them. However, you can change the path of the train to a different track, where there is only one worker. Do you change the path of the train? Explain.

___________________________________________

42.ning.com. What to say? First, if we were all hardcore Asians, we’d abandon it right now, or else illiL gets to say “Created online community where classmates can converse” on her college aps and stuff. Second, if I could record the chats, they’d be published a long time ago. For example, Nicholas Hoffman used the words Jeffy, Elaine, shove and the word that begins with “peni” and ends with “enis” all in the same sentence. Yeah, that’s not good. Also, on Sunday Jeffy, Elain, Nick, and illiL spent literally hours upon hours confessing their love to each other. And then right before Jeffy left, he said something along the lines of, “Ok, I hope nobody was being serious.” I had an ICWHATUDIDTHAR moment.  Fine, not really. But am I supposed to listen to several hours of my classmates telling how much they love each other and then think nothing of it? Remember, every time someone says “I love you” like that, there’s a person behind a computer screen, giggling. What a silly school meme. I mean, inside jokes are fun and stuff, but just try not to make a complex world even harder to understand. Hopkins people seem to be even more perverted than I thought they were, which is saying a LOT.

Why is everybody around me turning in to a pervert? I turned in desperation to Allan and said, “Allan, they haven’t brainwashed you, too, have they?” He cackled evilly and said, “That’s what she said!” I screamed, and I didn’t remember much beyond that. Wait, that story didn’t even make sense. Well, the point is, Allan has turned in to a pervert, too (along with Jeffy and many others).

___________________________________________

Poll Corner

Here are two polls. Say your answer in the comments and if you want, explain.

1. Do you think in words or images?
- I mostly think in words.
- I mostly think in images.
- I think in images of words.
- I often think in both words and images.
- Other (explain)

2. Are you more introverted or extroverted?
- I am more introverted.
- I am more extroverted.
- I am in between/not clearly one or the other.
- Other (explain)

__________________________________________

Pole Corner. Also, math.

Happy birthday, Allan.

If you’re in Algebra 1, I take it you are already familiar with what an exponential growth curve is. Now, try graphing the Fibonacci sequence (the input is what number the term is, and the output is the value. For example, for x = 4, the 4th fibonacci number is 3, so y = 3). Yep, you guessed it. It looks kinda like an exponential curve.

__________________________________________

Awesome Modern-ish Art Corner 2

Add these to the list:
- Charlie the Unicorn
- Waking Life (a movie)

- Albert Zheng
Last posted or updated 5/25/09, 7:25 pm

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Apparently WordPress does not have hide tags, which ruins some plans (I was planning on organizing and splitting up my posts, which will sometimes be pretty big/intimidating). Different sections of the post will be separated with a conspicuous line of underscores. Any suggestions for improving the format of these posts would be awesome.

Excuse any awkwardness or accidental inappropriateness. I’m working on it. Also, writing about my opinions on Family Life is pretty tricky (for me, at least).

This blog probably isn’t very entertaining at all to read right now. It will hopefully get better.

Also, I realize that the size of this post is scary. Don’t feel that you have to read it all. Here’s a table of contents for this post:

1. Narcissism Corner
2. My school day
3. Some thoughts
4. Modern Art
5. Birthdays
6. A simple math problem (should be solvable by Algebra 1 people, so don’t run away)

Narcissism Corner:

1. Chances are, I’ve been blogging for longer than you.
2. Chances are, my old blog had over 300,000 more views than your current one.

Speaking of which, it’s tradition for me to make the title of every single post “asdf.” Yeah, always.

_____________________________________________

Now for the typical period by period description of my day.

Period 1: Spanish 2 (Claymon)
Spanish class in general is somewhat dull. I’ve taken to just doodling all over my notebook rather than using it to actually take notes. Also, Claymon finally removed the toys. People were being perverted with them.

Period 2: English (Woolbright)
I ordered a book. Did we even make the goal? The funny thing is, if I hadn’t ordered a book but we were a thousand dollars away from the goal, I’d probably still get blamed. Also, I failed the grammar end of the year challenge. I was hurrying through because I didn’t know if I would have enough to take AR, which excuses my complete failure. Lastly, I failed a non-fiction book about penguins for AR (I was only half-way done through the book). What’s a creche, anyway?

Period 3: Science/Family Life (Ricks)
Yay, plenty of material here. Family life taught by Ricks is far better than Family Life taught by Anderson. Anderson just made us study the anatomy of the reproductive system, write an essay about how we were born, and listen about her children. Now we know the anatomy of the reproductive system; we can really apply this to our life, decisions, and attitude[/sarcasm]. That said, my discussion group is lame. We didn’t say a single thing to each other, and the girl in my group somehow came up with, “Boys murder and rape us.” Huh what? For the “Amy” topic, we didn’t get anywhere at all. When I asked Reid what he thought, he said that Amy should bring a gun. Seriously. And now, of course, to address some of  the individual complaints (all of these are misquoted, but I’ve hopefully retained the meanings) :

“Boys murder and rape girls”
Uh, I’m pretty sure I don’t do that, and most people in Hopkins don’t.

“Boys rank girls in how attractive they are.”
As far as I’m aware, no boys I know do this. Also, I found this particularly ironic, especially since just the other day a certain girl was ranking boys in how cute they were.

“Boys are clueless in picking up signs that girls like them”
I’m not going to say much about this beyond that our culture can be pretty screwed up and irrational sometimes. Also, I’ve actually thought about how to respond to this for a while, but in the end decided to barely scrape the topic. This actually happens a lot (that is, I think a lot about a casual sentence or post, but in the end decide it is best not to really respond to it).

“They degrade themselves.”
I’m not even sure whether a boy or girl said this, but it doesn’t really matter. Both genders do this all the time. What I’ll say is, if you think that saying that you suck is what being humble is about, then you’re wrong. Saying that you suck when you don’t (and trying to convince yourself that you do when you don’t) accomplishes nothing except for making others feel degraded, and if you manage to succeed, making yourself feel degraded (although in all honesty, most of the time it just makes you feel superior when other people contradict you, which is pretty ironic). The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis has a great passage about this same topic. I’m too lazy to fish out the exact passage, but basically, it’s ridiculous what some people think being humble is. You say you are sucky even though you know you aren’t. Then you feel proud that you were being humble. Then you tell yourself you suck for being proud. And by telling yourself you suck, obviously you’ve done the right thing, and now you’re proud again. This goes on in a never-ending, torturous spiral. The idea isn’t to convince yourself that you suck, it’s to not care.

“Boys make everything perverted.”
Some people might do this, but I’m innocent. I hope.

Period 4: PE (Cartwright)
Dance. Bleh.

Period 5: “Math” (Robinson)
Algebra poo. Bleh.

Period 6: History (Powers)
I’m usually asleep by 6th period, even though I probably get more sleep than most people. In other words, history. Bleh.

_____________________________________________

I might also be sharing some of my ponderings in this blog. I guess most people will just become confused, but oh well. So, here’s a thought: Can dream figures be conscious? Also, the next topic may be slightly touchy-ish, but I think people should probably discuss it more. Well, here it is:
Religion
Discuss, please. And in case I’m confusing everybody, I’ll say it: I’m Christian. Personally, I do believe in an afterlife. I’ve thought about it for a while, and I’m pretty convinced.

Honestly, I feel people are missing out on a lot by not studying philosophy. It was kinda confusing/frustrating at first, but now I’m pretty sure I understand what people mean when they say philosophy can be very self-gratifying.

____________________________________________

Here are some examples of modern (or at least modern-ish) art at its finest:

- Wesley’s blog
- Don Hertzfeldt’s works
- Calvin and Hobbes

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Tomorrow, it will be my younger sister and Mahima S.’s (or at least, I think it’s S.) birthdays. Happy early birthdays.

____________________________________________

Well, what’s a blog without math? I’ll try to post math that won’t scare everybody away. And don’t feel you have to be good at math to look at this blog or that you have to try these problems. The following should be solvable for Algebra 1 students. I had Algebra 1 last year though, so I might be completely wrong. Anyway, here’s the problem:

There exists rectangle with a certain side-length ratio such that the rectangle can be split in to a square and a smaller rectangle of the same side-length ratio. Find this ratio. (A graphic of the rectangle is given).
Hint: It’s not a neat number.

An example

- Albert Zheng
Posted or last updated 5/22/09, 4:18 PM

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Hello, and welcome to this blog. Before commenting, make sure to read the terms and agreements. Take note, this blog will be pretty different from the typical Hopkins one. The main highlight is that you should be commenting in your real name.

Any people who want to contribute are very welcome. People to proofread my posts would be very, very helpful.
Also, I’ve never actually advertised my blogs for more views. Yeah, well I’ve decided to screw that.

Well, thanks for noticing this blog, and happy reading!

- Albert Zheng
Posted or last updated 5/22/09, 4:08 pm