Journeying through Time

Hi Readers,

As one of my friends had his wedding this week in Chicago (congrats to SF and RZ!), I decided to take the entire week off to catch up with friends in the Chicago area. I flew into Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to meet up with one of my best friends, SB. We planned on taking a roadtrip through South Dakota and western Nebraska, before driving back to Chicago for the wedding. We saw a bunch of national parks and monuments and did cool things, including the minuteman missile silos, Mt. Rushmore, caving in the Black Hills, driving through herds of buffalo in Custer state park, and hiking at Scottsbluff. After I returned to Chicago, I attended the wedding with another one of my best friends, LB. We proceeded to hang out for the rest of the weekend. I am writing this post from the flight back to SF right now.

Hanging out with these friends, it is hard to believe that 2 years have already passed since I graduated from undergrad. It seems almost as if nothing has changed, and that I am in undergrad again. Time seems to be accelerating. Already, half of my twenties are gone. SB is moving to Canada, and LB may soon become engaged. As much as I would like to think that time is static and that I can continue doing what I've been doing, the reality is that I'm getting old and cannot keep doing this for much longer.

With every year that passes, time becomes more and more valuable. People say that the twenties are the golden years, a time to take risks, have fun, and be reckless. The twenties are the time when people are the most flexible with their life options. That should make it the golden time to try new things. Some people think the only thing worth trying out in the twenties are different people, but that is only one aspect of life. But it is easy to get stuck in a groove of doing the same things day in and day out. And then, before you know it, the thirties arrive, along with a whole new wave of expectations.

My biggest fear is to live life with regrets. When I reach thirty, I want to be able to look back and see that I lived it to the fullest. To do this, I must continue to learn how to use my biggest fear to overcome my other fears. Please, let me have the strength and foresight to do so.

FCDH

Alpha Waves

Hi Readers,

So I'm on a blogging spree tonight. I think I'm going to try and catch up on as many blogs as I humanly can before I fall asleep midway through a blog.

So this quarter, I'm taking a class on Diagnostic Devices here at Stanford. It involves a lab section where you actually get to use a lot of medical devices to try it out. For example, for the CT scan lab, we placed several objects and took CT scans of it. You get the picture.

This past week, what we did was called EEG, or electroencephalagram (spelling might be wrong). This involves placing electrodes on your head, and recording your brain waves as your are performing different tasks. The tasks that I had to do involve watching a picture as it flashed at a predetermined frequency, grinding my teeth and blinking my eyes while looking at a white screen, and closing my eyes and relaxing.

The last exercise, where I had to close my eyes and relax, is supposed to bring out the "Alpha" waves from your brain. This indicates the 3rd most active level of brain activity (after delta and theta waves), and the waves oscillate at around 10Hz. When I did the exercise, I could hear the lab manager say, "Whoa! Look at those massive Alpha waves! Those are humongous!" I would periodically open my eyes just so that I could see what the Alpha waves look like. He's right - they are gigantic in comparison to the beta waves that were recorded with the flashing image.

He also joked that I must have an Alpha personality, to which I merely shrugged my shoulders and gave him a smile. =)

In fact, my Alpha waves were apparently so strong that the comparative phase drift was small. Normally, natural non-event induced waves tend to phase drift over 360 degrees during a measurement. However, mine was so stable that they were complete confined to a 90 degree quadrant. The lab manager said that this is extremely rare, and that I would make a good function generator. He was joking, but he had a point - when they took the Fourier transform of my brain waves, the signal-to-noise ratio and the spurious-free dynamic range was quite substantial.

Now I wasn't really sure what that meant. Is that a good thing? Bad thing? Neither?

So I did a quick Google search about Alpha waves, and it came up with loads of goodies. Tidbits which I'm not sure that I should trust, but I thought I'd post about anyways. Apparently, having large Alpha waves indicates that you are a very stress-free person, and can come up with creative ideas and solutions to problems. It means that I can go from an alert stage to a relaxed stage very easily. All of these sound like me, and best of all - I'm now proven myself (somewhat) to be relatively stress-free most of the time! I'm wondering if an EEG taken 2-3 years ago would have shown the same thing. I think I'm a lot happier and relaxed now than I was during my undergrad.

Anyways, this post was just a random musing on the Alpha waves that they measured from my brain. I'm glad that my Alpha waves were so large, since it could mean that I am very stress-free. Hopefully I'll stay that way!

Till next post!
-FCDH

How I Fell for Linux

Hi Readers,

So I've recently made the complete transition from the Windows OS to the Ubuntu Linux OS. After being fed the Windows propaganda for most of my life, I've finally taken the Linux plunge. It all started more than a year ago, when I first installed a Ubuntu guest machine on Virtualbox, running on a Windows host.  Sure, that brief tryst only lasted 2 days until I gave up (mostly because I couldn't ever figure out how to get the screen resolution to work and actually show something on the screen). But it put a seed of curiosity in my mind, about the weird malleability that Linux offers. Then about 3 months ago, my Win7 began to act up. It would occasionally fail to wake up from sleep. Then it progressed to taking 10+ minutes to start up and shut off. I began to hate using my computer, because everything would take so long. Eventually I just got so fed up with it that I decided to reinstall the entire OS. But I thought: what about dual-booting Win7 with Ubuntu, just to try it out? I've thought about using Linux for awhile but never made the concerted effort to do it; it was as good of a chance as any.

So I reinstalled my OSes by dual-booting my Win7 and Linux, which was an adventure all in itself. (Creating all the bootable USB sticks were already an adventure enough). Then the true fun began. I quickly noticed that Ubuntu was faster than Win7 in a lot of regards, such as startup, or waking up from sleep. It was also much more reliable. It never had "blue screen" moments, and it would never fail to wake up or go to sleep, whereas Windows did sometimes. Eventually I drifted towards Linux, so much so that the only time I would use Win7 was to use either Mathematica, Matlab, Word, or Powerpoint. The Linux terminal began to feel really exciting to use, when I started experimenting with using the terminal to control my files. About 2 months in, Win7 began to act up again. It would fail to wake up from sleep, forcing me to power it off manually. And then the past week, it completely crashed. I couldn't get it to start in any mode (normal, safe, or recovery). What's worse, it crashed during one of my homework simulation sessions, so not only did I lose everything I was working on, but I couldn't even redo it because I couldn't access the Mathematica program on my Windows.

In a fit of rage, I wiped the entire HD clean, and told myself that the next installation I do will be completely and only Ubuntu, with Win7 running on Virtualbox in my Linux host. Or so I thought. Turns out, Virtualbox can't install virtual OS'es from bootable USB sticks - only from CDs. I tried mounting the .iso image on a virtual drive and loading that into Virtualbox, with no success. So in another fit of rage, I decided to put the thoughts of Win7 aside, and to focus on getting my finals stuff done first before tinkering some more.

And then Wine for Ubuntu popped up on my radar (because who can keep procrastination away?). This awesome program (actually more like a platform) is a Windows emulator for Windows applications and programs to function on the Linux OS. I had previously used a program called PlayonLinux, which is a no-frills attached derivative of Wine, to run Spotify on Linux. I clicked (someone dubiously) on my Mathematica setup.exe file, and voila - it successfully installed it. I wrote some basic Mathematica code and pressed compile, and out popped a beautiful graph of f[x]=x^2. Of course, the actual course was a smidge harder than that, involving extracting an .iso file and using the "sudo chmod -x" command to change the permissions of the file.

It's hard to describe the sheer satisfaction that emanated from me when I saw that graph pop up. The rest of the night I had a huge smile on my face. Yes, nerds ftw.

My next project? Getting Matlab to install successfully on Linux. So far Wine has failed with a cryptic message about being unable to find a file called dir.exe, which I am assuming is an incompatibility issue. But I've seen some clues online that it may be possible, so I will attempt it and hope it works.

But so far I love Ubuntu. It's absolutely awesome. =D

Cheers till next time!

-FCDH

On Blogging

Hi Readers,

I noticed that this post is my 100th post! WOW! When I started blogging a year and a half ago, I did not expect to reach this point. I thought I would have dropped it by now, to join my pile of half-completed projects (some of which are to get buff, a host of programming projects, and other random shiznit). Instead, it's been a refreshing outlet, one that I treated as an extension of myself. Therefore, in this post, I will talk about my views on the practice of blogging.

For all the aspiring bloggers, there are probably several issues that you will encounter.

1. Time

unless you are uber-dedicated to your blog, there will be times when you forget about your blog, or simply cannot find the time to write a new entry. But it's fine! If you are just writing for your own pleasure, then there is no agenda and no schedule. You are simply blogging to express your thoughts and opinions. It's like hanging out with friends - you'll inevitably have periods of time when you say, "I need a break from this person for a little bit." But you'll always come back to it. Looking back a year or two afterward, you'll be shocked at how much you have written over that time period, or even how innovative some posts were.

2. Topics

This is my biggest block for blogging. One would think that, with all the topics under the sun to write about, that it would be easy to blog. NOT TRUE. When you sit down in front of the computer, with the blank screen in front of you, it is very challenging to hash out a topic right there and then to write about. You'll probably have to find inspiration throughout the day and record it down right away. Some people carry a note pad to scribble. Since I always have my cellphone on me, I have a draft of a text message that I use to record down all my ideas.

3. Privacy

This is linked to the important question of who you want your audience to be. If you want millions and billions of people to read your blog, you would probably choose different topics than if you want only your closest friends to read it. What links to your blog? Is it a visible but temporary Facebook status update or hidden in your info section but always accessible? You can let your privacy settings determine what you blog about, or let your blog topics determine how private you want to set your blog. Me personally, my thought process goes like this: "if they care enough to click on my blog link in the info section of my Facebook profile, then they probably want to know more about me." So I post personal stuff, but not too personal. But I NEVER let my parents or family read it.

In my opinion, is blogging worth it? Absolutely. I have lost count of the number of times that I've just sat back and browsed through my old blog entries. The most amazing part is to read it and think, "wow I can't believe I actually went through this." Writing the most recent post is always the hardest, and you'll always feel like the last post was better than the current one. But trust me, it's really worth it in the end. So give it a try!

-FCDH

To My Family

My blog is rife with criticisms of my family, so I'd like to take the time to acknowledge my gratefulness to my family, lest people start believing that my family has influenced me negatively. A few instances here and there cannot diminish the fact that my family loves me, and only wants what is best for me.

The Taiwan that I grew up in was a very strict society, where children my age were basically lumped together by their academic performance. It was a complete meritocracy, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Everybody was pressured to do well in school, and I was naturally not exempt from this. Everything was about success - either do it right, or don't do it at all. This motto was drilled into me since childhood, and I was only able to begin shedding it off during my first year of university.

I love my family for the discipline that they have brought me. In a time where individualistic desires and "stick-it-to-the-Man" thoughts have pervaded the thoughts of the new generation, discipline especially comes in handy. I love them for teaching me the ways of treating others as you want to be treated, because it has helped me immensely in building my network of friends and acquaintances.

Most of all, I love them for doing what they believe is right for me, even though it is always risky on their part. They punished me physically because it is the easiest way to instill discipline in a child, while taking the risk that I could grow up to hate them forever. They pushed me into my university and my major even though I wanted to do something else, because of the bright future that an ECE degree from Illinois has, even though it would put them $100,000 more into debt compared to a Canadian university. They fought with me over the issue of my sexuality, because it is a hard world out there for gay people, and they wanted me to avoid the hardships that will face me in the future.

Mom, Dad, and Jess, I appreciate everything you've done for me. My biggest wish for all of you now, is for you to stop worrying about me. You've made me into the person I am today, so that I can use the skills that you gave me to face the world on my own. It's time for you to live and enjoy your own lives, rather than helping me live mine.

It's the time to abandon rigidity and planning, for a little bit more spontaneity and discovery. Life is more enjoyable that way.

Love,

FCDH

10 Tips on Working Successfully

Since many have been asking me how I do everything so "well", here's a blog post dedicated to it. I don't particularly believe that I do things any better than anyone else or that I'm smarter than anybody else, but work ethics is very important in this. So here goes my list.

1. Understand the Course Material
I cannot stress this point enough. When subsequent material is dependent upon previous material, memorization will get you absolutely nowhere. To do this, I do two things: I (almost) never do homework with friends, and I never go to office hours. I grind through homeworks by myself, developing my own methods of thinking about concepts, in order to develop my own method of understanding. I don't like being forced to think about concepts from someone else's (often incompatible) understanding. I clarify remaining confusing concepts with the professor at the end of class. Even if I do badly on the homework, it's an incentive to revise my understanding for the tests, where grades matter more.

2. Plan ahead
At the beginning of each week (Saturday for me), write down every single assignment that is due that week, so there are no surprises. You'll see bottlenecks earlier, and (hopefully) get work done earlier.

3. Do NOT pull all-nighters
I've only pulled 2 complete all-nighters in my life, and one of them was in high-school. All-nighters are extremely counterproductive to learning and getting work done, because you become extremely tired the next day and can't focus, and it becomes a vicious cycle. With that said, I pull half-all-nighters (till 3ish am) daily to finish my work.

4. Aim for >6 sleep every day
This does not have to be a continuous block of sleep. I usually get 4-5 hours of sleep per night, and I make up the rest with naps during the day. I always nap 1-3 times a day, 1-2 hrs each time. Usually, whenever I feel extremely tired while doing work, I take a nap...because my work effectiveness essentially drops to zero during this time anyways. I never nap less than 30 minutes, and I try not to nap more than 2 hours.

5. Prioritize homework order wisely
On weekends, when I know I'll procrastinate on whatever homework I am doing because I still have 3-4 days before the earliest one is due, I'll deliberately start working on the LAST homework first. I know I'll finish the first homework on the day before it's due regardless of whether I work on it beforehand or not, so by doing the last one first, I actually maximize my productivity during the week when things pop out of nowhere and threaten to overwhelm me.

6. Aim for large productive chunks of time
I isolate myself from all contact every single day for many hours at a time. With my headphones cycling through the youtube playlists I made myself, I shut the world out and focus on my work. Do NOT sit next to someone you know...I did so today and my work productivity was extremely poor. Techno, Radiohead, and Coldplay make great study music. If I have less than 1 hour of time to work continuously on stuff, I don't bother pulling out homework sets or lab reports - the hour is better spent on organizational stuff like emails or organizational duties. To achieve max productivity, you need to get into the "groove".

7. Do work in public spaces
At a public space like the computer labs, I become less inclined to check facebook, watch youtube videos, etc., because I don't really want other people to see my non-productiveness (I tend to get annoyed at non-productive people in computer labs because they take up computer space that more productive people could be using). So I concentrate extremely well in the computer labs...and that's where you'll find me, 4th floor of EH every single night, grinding away. I find this to be extremely powerful when combined with #6.

8. Make yourself comfortable wherever you're working
I take off my shoes, recline my seat as far back as possible, put on my comfy headphones, sip on my iced coffee, and generally retreat into my own cocoon when I work. Find what you need to work efficiently, and make sure it is there. Find a productive place to work, and stick with it.

9. Recognize that academic success (aka. good grades) require a lot of time
There's no secret shortcut to it. I don't think there's a single class that I'm taking which gives homeworks that take me less than 3 hours to finish. I usually camp at the computer lab for at least 6 hours every weeknight, and sometimes the number increases to 9 or 10. Which is why #8 is important.

10. Blow off steam at least once a week
Do something fun. Life will seem more bearable that way. Go party, get wasted, go work out, whatever makes you happy. The only thing I recommend against is computer games...don't do anything game that is related to a computer, because it quickly turns into an obsession (aka. time drain).

Next post: how to live a healthy life. =)

-FCDH

The Unbearable Lightness of Insubstantial Conversations

As most people know, I make my semi-permanent residence in the EWB office. I spend more time in the EWB office than I do at home, since it's where I can get the most amount of work done. There are, however, 2 significant disadvantages to the EWB office: the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and Alpha Omega Epsilon (AOE), the engineering sorority. Most EWB folks who have been in the office would agree with me on this. The "gossip girls", as I call them, are just simply so damn loud and obnoxious. The worst part: they're loud and obnoxious about the most insubstantial things.

Here is a small sample of the stupidest things that I've heard from across the dividing wall:

-"Hey have you guys seen this video called 'Two Girls, One Cup'? My boyfriend told me about it and how it's so funny and I wanna watch it." - followed by a bunch of gagging noises and "EEEEWWWW!!!"s.

-"Ok omg so I was at Joe's today, and this guy was like totally hitting on me, and he wanted, like, to give me a back massage, and i was like, well, like, no. But then he was like, rubbing my back, and i just, like, let him do it, cuz i was like so drunk."

-"What? What's this 'Windows Vista'?.... OH I didn't know something had come out after XP!"

I've heard them talk about: how they're so horny, which guys are so hot / ugly, how they are failing easy engineering intro classes, how so-and-so's a bitch, personal info about masturbation/orgasms/hookups/sexual positions. I always have to restrain myself from yelling retorts like "well you're not really good-looking so i'm not sure why he would hit on you. Now would you mind shutting up while we have our project meeting over here?"

The most ironic thing that I find, is that these organizations are supposed to be about showing that engineering girls are different from regular girls, and that they can do things that regular girls can't. But over my year-long daily observation, the only thing that they've done is to confirm every stereotype about ditzy brainless girls that I've ever heard/read/seen. I'm not kidding about the "every stereotype"...I've heard every possible brainless statement from across the wall. And not once have I heard anything I would classify as "substance".

What has today's society come to that we value insubstantial conversation more than substantial conversation? When there's more talk about ESPN or MTV or TMZ rather than CNN or BBC? There's something seriously wrong here. I fear for the future generation of America.

-FCDH