calblog

Sorry, this place has been dead for a long while. I just haven’t really thought about it and I don’t have a lot to say anymore. There’s been a long downward decline in my posting rate within the last few years and I know it. It’s probably because I’m not so emo about a girl anymore and don’t really have many feelings and interesting things to share. Blah… I haven’t really had any intention of going for anyone right now. I just don’t have the motivation because I don’t have any strong relationships with any girls that I’m actually attracted to. There’s only passing thoughts about some here and there. It kinda seems hopeless right now being the end of my schooling. I kinda thought that I would actually find someone during these last four years, even if it was for a little while. Yep, emo again. It’ll go away soon. I know that I’ll meet someone eventually. Even if it takes a while. I’ve been told that I was a catch… I just need to find someone to spend some time with because I’m sure that that’s what I need.

On the plus side, I’m graduating in a week. I’m pretty terrified by the fact that I’m going to done with school (for now). Hopefully I get a job quickly. I’m not sure whether I’m going to stay in San Diego or not. Well, where ever I am, hopefully I’ll have an income to start on all the projects that I want to do. I don’t really care for living luxuriously, I just want to live, have fun once in a while, and continue to learn on my own for a while. It’s not too much to ask for, but I know I have to work for it.

It’s been two weeks since the new quarter started for me. My classes aren’t too bad. In fact, this quarter is pretty relaxed since I have only one class that would be considered even remotely hard, which is my statistical mechanics class. My other classes shouldn’t be too hard since one conists of like six homework assignments and a term paper, and the other is ten relatively easy lab assignments and a simple final exam.  I’m also considering working on an independant project next quarter for the hell of it.  We’re still in the brainstorming stages right now, but we have until the end of second week of next quarter to get funding for it.  It should be a really fun and eye-opening project.  It’s possible that we need more people on it, but I’m not too sure yet because we haven’t even decided what we’re going to work on.  So, hopefully, expect something interesting in the near future.

Well, after about two years, I’ve decided to switch my web hosting from DreamHost to A Small Orange because it’s about one quarter the price and I wasn’t using the old host to the fullest exent. I think I’m going to start building the website from scratch again since I have a lot of free time right now. Hopefully, I can think of a good design. I’m going for something that’s simple, yet elegant, but that’s basically the holy grail of web design in most cases. So, I guess you should expect something new within a couple days or so provided that I find the motivation to do it.

Also, I’ve finished playing Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii a little while ago. I beat the game, but didn’t collect everything. It was a really good game overall. I’d say that it’s better than the Wind Waker. I can’t really say if it’s better than the Ocarina of Time because I haven’t played it in a pretty long time. The graphics are pretty nice, but have a couple rough edges in some places. I consider the Wind Waker to look better though. I loved the art style of that game and it was done just about perfectly. But overall, it’s one of the better games that I’ve played and I’d highly recommend it.

Well, I finished my last final today. That feeling of relief is definitely something that I look forward to basically every quarter. I’m not too sure about that thermodynamics final, but hopefully everyone did equally as bad. The other two were pretty good though since I knew the majority of stuff on them. Anyways, the only thing I need to do is to finish my electronics project. It’s all in working order right now, it only needs some polish and some extra stuff that isn’t absolutely necessary, but would be a great addition.

I’m heading home on Friday night probably and will be there for about 4 weeks. My brother got a Wii and Zelda. I’ll finally get some good gaming time, which has been really nonexistent for a long time now. I’m really looking forwards to some time off.

My guitar skills are improving at a slow pace, but I’m still far off from being good. They’re pretty decent right now. I’m trying to learn to play 1979 be the Smashing Pumpkins. It has a weird riff that’s pretty different to what I’m used to because it goes up and down the fretboard a lot. But that’s probably good since its making me be more versatile. I’m thinking of picking up a harmonica and learning to play that. Then I can buy one of those holders and play both guitar and harmonica simultaneously. It does seem kinda nerdy, but I think it would be pretty cool to able to do it. Plus I can substitute lead guitar for harmonica in some songs.

Alright then.

Friday was a pretty good day for me. Nothing special happened, but it was pretty stress free and was enjoyable for the most part. I got up at the usual time and went to my 9AM class where it was kind of interesting. It was about the quantum mechanics of molecular physics. Well, it may sound boring, but it was leaps and bounds more interesting than the usual stuff. Then I got some coffee and donuts and talked to this guy in my classes for a little while.

Afterwards, I went to take my spanish midterm, which I finished in about 25 minutes or so. It wasn’t too bad. Afterwards, I went to spanish class, where the teacher didn’t show up. So after about 15 minutes, we left. We went our separate ways and some of us saw him at Price center walking up the steps. He said that he just woke up, and decided that we didn’t need to meet up for class for the day since most people were gone.

I went to lab after that to work on my project. I’m making a device that will detect the color of an M&M and pass it on to a sorting device to sort it by its color. My lab partner and I got the sensor to work pretty well having built it from scratch. It’s pretty simple actually. We just have LEDs and and phototransistor. How it works is the photo transistor is in a tube (for our purposes is made of black electrical tape) and we have LEDs next to it (below the top of the tube) and measure the voltage from the light reflected off the object with each color, which in my case is red, blue, and green. The great thing about it is that we measured the voltages from each of the LED colors from each of the six M&M colors and we got voltages that we could differentiate from one another. So, it was pretty successful. Next up is to actually write the code for the microcontroller to actually determine the color and to do something with the information.

I really enjoy building stuff in the lab. It’s a really laid back environment. We haven’t had any lectures since the 7th week, but the TA’s and professor hang around there a lot. We actually have 5 people to help us with what we need who actually know what they’re talking about: 2 TAs, the prof, the prof’s son, and the head of the physics electronics shop. Plus, basically there’s no assigned lab times. So we can just show up as we please as long as we get the project done by friday on finals week. All that stuff combined with having my workbench in the back room with some hilarious guys, make being there pretty fun since we joke around with each other. We found this robotic arm in the lab and dubbed it the “pleasure arm.” I don’t know why, but it cracks me up just thinking about it.

Also today the Nintendo Wii comes out, but unfortunately, I’m not camping out to get one. Plus, I think it would be too distracting for a while and I don’t think it would get too much use since I’m too lazy to deal with the projector in my apartment and I don’t really want to contribute too much to the bulb burning out by playing an epic game like Zelda (70 hours of game play, supposedly).

Ah well, that’s it for tonight.

I’m running out of ideas for post titles for posts which have no specific topic. Anyways, I had a thermodynamics midterm today and I have to say that it was pretty hard. I couldn’t answer all of the questions. On the bright side, the class is curved and I could tell that everyone was having a hard time with it too since the vast majority of the class was still there at the end of the test.

I’m looking into buying a Fender Stratocaster that’s made in Mexico. New ones go for $400 and used ones go for about $250, but aren’t always available. I’m not sure what I’m going to do right now about it since I can’t really justify spending that much for a guitar with my budget. I can afford it however, actually probably 3 of them despite not working right now. I’ve also debated getting a Telecaster, but after doing my research, I’ve found that the strat is more forgiving to beginners than a tele. And the one I was is considered to be more versatile. So, I guess I’ve made my decision to which I’m going to get, but the decision to drop that amount hasn’t been made yet.

You know, I’ve been kinda longing for some form of companionship for a while. The feeling was somewhat dead for maybe since last year, but the feeling is starting to come back again. Yeah, loneliness is a horrible feeling. I have no idea how to meet girls. It seems like going up to some random girl and trying to court (for lack of a better term) her is a taboo thing for me to do. Basically I have no skill at all in that area and never acquired any of that charm or ability to flirt. Well, that’s to strangers. I’ve noticed moments when I was charming and flirty to some girls, although it led to nothing at all. I think the problem is just that I need to meet more girls. Enough so that I can at least spark the interest of one, which I can definitely do. I think I have a lot to offer. I’ve been told that I’m really sweet and I get compliments on my smile from time to time. (I’m not kidding.) I’m a pretty good listener, I’m good at remembering the details about people, I’m pretty good at reading people and a lot more I think. I have a pretty good intuition about most things and seem to make most things connect and make sense in my life. I think the thing that I’m looking for most in someone is that they are easy to talk to. There’s only a small handful of people that I’ve met and after knowing them a week, it seems like I’ve known them and have talked to them for years. They’re kinda rare though. Yeah, I know I have somewhat of a romanticized view of love and life. A hopeless romantic… Sigh…

Ah well, anyone is welcome to talk to me about things. I haven’t had a good, deep conversation with anyone for a while. I’m all ears, and I’ll try my best to give you my input too. So until next time, I bid you all adieu.

Yep, I’m still alive and well. I just haven’t felt like writing here for the last few months. I’ve been well and I’ve been thinking about things.

I’m currently in the middle of fall quarter here. I’m taking my second quarter of quantum physics, thermodynamics, a class on digital electronics that focuses on microprocessors, and my last (hopefully) spanish class. I don’t especially dislike any of them. Thermodynamics is such a boring class and it’s hard to stay awake. Funny thing is that the professor seems like a nice, quiet, geekish guy, but he seems to be annoyed real easily. (Kinda like me, I suppose.) Last Thursday, someone came in the middle of class walked to the front table and dropped off his homework, then left. The professor was really annoyed, so he crumpled his homework and threw it into the trash. Later, there was a message on the website saying how homework should be turned in at the beginning of class, and how disrespectful and rude it is to walk in front of the lecture hall while he’s lecturing. I guess I kinda agree, but his response is kinda extreme. Quantum physics is pretty challenging. Most of the time, I get the homework assignment and look at the problems and I have no idea where to start. It’s kind of expected that you don’t even know how to start a lot of the problems since the professor says that he’s made the homework hard enough so that you probably won’t be able to start problems without some help from the TA or him or whatever. I’m really enjoying my electronics class and spanish classes though. My electronics class is extremely laid back. Homework and labs aren’t graded, just checked off for completion. It’s kind of a shame since I’m understanding mostly everything easily. Plus, it’s a project based class, so it’s five weeks of lecture and regular labs, then five weeks working on your project. There’s no final, but there is a midterm. Okay, that’s enough about school now.

I’ve been thinking a lot about life lately. I’m trying to figure out what’s important to me and what I want to do about it. I think one of the most important things in life is to be a good person, however cheesy it may sound. Be generous, caring, and kind amongst other things. The other important things would probably be relationships and learning/knowing things. That is, it’s important to be somewhat cultured and to know the world around you as much as you can. There’s a lot of other things, but I don’t want to list them out.

I’ve also been thinking about what’s wrong with the world. I really dislike the money-grubbing attitude that so many people have. A lot of people seem to be willing to make their lives dedicated to collecting the most money and objects as possible during their lifetime. I can’t ever picture myself like that. I can only imagine what they must think.

“I want to make two hundred thousand dollars a year by any means necessary. I want a house with seven bedrooms and bathrooms. One room for me, then one for my kid, then the other five are going to be used for all the expensive junk that I’m going to buy. Plus I have to buy a BMW 7-series car. Well actually, I need two of them. You know, one of them to drive on the weekends.”

When I was at home during the summer. My aunt was visiting me from Thailand and she was nagging me on why I’m not studying to become a doctor. I told her that I didn’t want to become a doctor and never did, then she probably brushed it off as a stupid reason. This brings me to another point. I don’t have much respect at all for those who become doctors only for the money. However, those who genuinely do it to because they want to help people are some of the prime examples of people, since they are willing to dedicate so much to that cause.

I figure that you don’t need a whole lot of money to be happy. You just need enough to have somewhere to live, to eat, to support your family, to have a few things you enjoy, and enough to not be really worried about money problems. I think most people are so obsessed with having material objects that they’ve lost sight of what life should be about. Just enjoy life and make happy those who make you happy while you can because whatever you do during life doesn’t matter when you die. Although, I do believe that you should try to make the world a better place in a way you can.

I’ll try to update more in the near future. Also, I’ll probably be making some changes soon since my calblog.be domain expires next month and I’ll probably be changing my webhost in January since I don’t want to pay a lot since I don’t utilize all the resources I have.

Well, on a whim, I bought a few books B&N a couple days ago. I got Survivor and Choke by Chuck Palahniuk and also The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. I’m already about two-thirds through Survivor already. It’s a pretty damn good book so far. It’s about a guy who hijacked a plane recounting his life story onto a black box, while the plane is slowly running out of fuel. He had the pilot drop off all the people on an island and had the pilot parachute out after taking the plane off. So, he’s alone, telling his story waiting for his death. It’s his own weird way to commit suicide. He is also the last surviving member of some sort of fundamentalist Christian cult that all had committed suicide. It’s pretty strange, but interesting as well. I’ll probably finish sometime tomorrow since I have 95 pages left. Kinda weird that the book’s page numbers and chapters go in descending order. Then after I’m done, I’ll start on Choke.

So on guitar, I’ve been learning yet another Radiohead song, which is I Might be Wrong. What makes it different than just about every other song I know that it doesn’t have any strumming parts, only plucking notes. It does have some chord arpeggios thought, but with some chords that I haven’t really used in songs like B#maj and A#maj7. Ah well, it’ll come with more practice.

I’ve been listening to Rilo Kiley lately. After a few listens to their albums, I can say that they produce some quality music. The music is rock, but with some folk and country undertones in some of their songs. It’s one of the few rock bands that have a female singer. They’re songs are pretty upbeat for the most part, but the lyrics are pretty much the opposite of that talking about some sad stuff at times. The new Thom Yorke album, The Eraser is also a piece of music that I’m currently enjoying. He’s Radiohead’s lead singer. The album is very electronic with some sparse guitar work. Since it’s kind of dry with the instrumentals, the vocals are more pronounced, which isn’t a bad thing. I think he is one of the greatest male singers around. Notable tracks on the album are Harrowdown Hill and the title track. Also, Black Holes and Revelations by Muse, is another great album. It’s an album that doesn’t take it self seriously, but it is really enjoyable. I’d say that Starlight and Knights of Cydonia are my favorite songs. Well, that’s all I have to say about music.

I was in class the other day and we were talking about Greece and one saying that really stands out was, “Know thyself.” It’s a piece of great advice that one should live by. It’s not easy and a lot of people don’t even attempt it, of which are basically walking, talking, empty shells of people. I can’t even say that I really, truly know who I am. I don’t think anyone really does, but you should at least and try to gain some understanding of oneself. This is kinda related to being yourself. How can someone be oneself when he doesn’t know who he really is. Heh, I know that I always say that you should be yourself, but it’s basically ingrained in my mind. I read it a lot when reading stuff on the internet, I hear it from my dad, and my uncle even told me it when I visited him a few weeks ago. It’s one of the things I always hold to myself. The other thing is to always have a thirst for knowledge and learn things. That’s why I’m in college anyways isn’t it. It kinda bothers me how I see so many people just memorize things and be parrots when it comes to classes instead of actually learning the material. This is probably why I hardly study too. I always go to class, and I actually learn the material as the class progresses. So, when it comes to midterms/finals, I only need to study about 2 hours or less usually.

Okay, I’m tired now, it’s 4:22 AM.

Well, here’s an update. Anyways, things are going hunky-dory for me right now for the most part. Summer school has started and it’s going fine for the most part. I have a bunch of projects and goals for this summer. I haven’t started much on them yet, but hopefully they’ll be underway soon.

My guitar playing is going fine at this point. I’ve slowed down with learning songs though. I’m doing scales more and more, which is basically a series of notes that exercises your fingers, usually played in rhythm with a metronome. My finger speed is getting kinda decent. Hopefully, I’ll be able to play more lead guitar roles soon. I have a whole lot to learn though still. I’m also pretty interested in learning to play piano, I don’t know if it would be a good idea to try to learn both at the same time though. Plus, it would be hard considering that I don’t have a piano, nor do I have the money to buy one.

Also, I’ve been reading a good amount of stuff lately about science and the value of it amongst other things. A large part of society has a distrust and aversion towards science I think. Many people say that science takes the beauty away from things, but I think it doesn’t. In fact, it adds to it. Just look at nature. It’s so incredibly complex and intricate. I think the symbiotic relationships between different organisms is especially interesting, like the clown fish/sea anemone or even man/dog. To think how everything evolved is simply mind blowing at points. Things like cellular respiration to full functioning multicellular organisms are just astonishing. Not many people see it this way I guess, and I think more people definitely should. I don’t like that there’s a lot of pseudo-science out there also. A lot of people believe in stupid things and nothing is stopping the spread of it. Things like that people actually believe that global warming isn’t happening, when in fact it is really happening. Or like in that retarded documentary, “What the Bleep is this?” They actually claim things like the crystalline of ice is affected by human emotions or that the Native Americans couldn’t see the Europeans come on their ships because they didn’t have any concept to what a ship was. There are people who twist the facts to fit their own agenda with things like this and people believe it and it just sucks.

Anyways, I was reading some stuff on space and the universe. I’ve known it before, but I gave myself another reality check about the size of it. Earth is a single planet that revolves around a single star, of which there are hundreds of billions in a galaxy, of which there are hundreds of billions in the universe, which comes out to a total of about 70 sextillion (7 x 10²²) stars, astronomers say. And if you look at this size of one of the largest known stars, VV Cephei. It’s about 1140 times larger than our sun in diameter and the sun is about 109 times the diameter of the earth, which equals huge. The scale of everything is just mind-blowingly huge. And here we are on our little blue speck, where all life we know has taken place. All the love, joy, tragedy, sadness, war, death, hate has existed on a tiny blue dot that’s drifting in space. Makes all of that stuff seem rather insignificant, doesn’t it?

Seems like nowadays that society just filled to the brim with ignorance, stupidity, fear, and greed. Ignorant people irritate me to no end. They just say the ignorant crap ever and I just want to say, “You sir, are a huge retard and you should be executed because you contribute nothing to the world.” Not knowing things like subjects you learn in school don’t make you ignorant, it’s not having things like a basic understanding of people, common sense, or not thinking of how you actions will affect others. A person could ace all their classes in school and still be an ignorant fool. A lot of these people also seem to be on their high horse thinking that they’re better than everyone else even they don’t know anything about how the world works and they don’t even acknowledge that a world exists outside of their immediate surroundings. Things like money, education, and possessions don’t make a person better than someone else. I think things like being humble, generous, kind, compassionate, considerate, caring, and selfless do make people better. Society doesn’t seem to reward these things much at all. Greedy, ignorant people seem to get the attention of people, and they seem to get the furthest nowadays.

Well, that’s all I have to rant about right now. It’s 4AM right now, I’m pretty tired.