06Apr
I must admit I’ve been very busy since the beginning of this year, and I’ve overlooked this blog. I guess part of it has to do with my lack of ideas on what to write about, so during this time of inactivity, I’ve come up with some great topics that I’ll be writing about these upcoming months.
So what have I been working on lately?
- Botball Robotics: The season started off in end of February and ends with a competition on April 19th. We’ve went through the whole brainstorming and building process and now we’re focusing on the programming. As I’ve mentioned before, we’re using a language derived from C to program. The language itself is considerably powerful in our case but I must say robotics programming is like no other software programming. When we do web development or software development on the computer, we just compile/save and refresh the application to see if it works. However, the most redundant part and annoying part about robotics programming is that you have to constantly reset the 10′ by 8′ game board, running all over the room, only after one trial. Imagine doing this hundred or probably thousands of times. But this year is different than last year. I’m come to enjoy working with other programmers. It’s so much easier to split up the tasks, rather than having one-man-do-it-all.
I’m keeping my hopes high for first place, but regardless of what place we get, I’ll still post the results here :P.
- Google Lunar X Prize R&D Challenge: The whole team worked very hard on this and I think our hard work payed off! We earned second place. We were asked to design a rover that would travel the moon. The challenge is indeed inspired from the Google Lunar X Prize Challenge, except in this case, we’re just designing the robot, not building them.
- Work: I’ve had a chance to continue developing products with a startup in New York. We’re working with the MyBB platform, so I had made several enhancements to the software that I may release in the future.
- USACO: Mgccl’s blog post led me to this competition. I thought since the training course was free and quite interesting, I’d give it a shot. I’ve completed two assignments in C but it’s been a real pain, especially dealing with pointers and strings. Everytime something compiles wrong, it makes me want to use Java more… Supposedly, if you do well in the compeitions held by USACO, you can move on to the International Olympiad in Informatics which is considered the field goal for high school students in computer science… I don’t see myself there any time soon though.
- Course Selection: Speaking of Java, it was course selection week a few weeks ago at my school. I’ve decided on what I want to take next year. The AP classes I’ll be taking are AP Computer Science, AP US History, and AP Calculus AB. It’s really two AP classes for me because APCS isn’t that much of a challenge for me. The other three regular classes will be English 3, Biology, and Spanish 3. They’re basically required by colleges as must-take courses. There is no way in the world I’ll be taking an AP English class, and don’t even mention biological sciences — I hate them.
- WordPress: I’ve been back on track, working closely with WordPress, especially after the 2.5 release. I’ve reworked our robotics team website. Everything is now powered by WordPress. In the summer, I’ll be enhancing this site with some custom WordPress plugin ideas I have.
Topics: advance placement, AP, apcs, botball, C, google, java, MyBB, programming, robotics, school, USACO, web development
02Sep
Within the first week of school, I’ve been flooded with homework, especially AP homework. Stupid teacher had me up at four doing homework… None of my classes are interesting at all.
However, school stuff aside, I actually had fun playing poker last night. I also got a chance to play the Wii. It’s awesome. 
And just a little update on the new version of my blog I’m working on. I have the design coded and everything. Right now I’m waiting for the release of Wordpress 2.3 (sometime in Sepetember), so I can take advantage of the new tagging system. It’ll be fun!
Topics: advance placement, AP, Blog Updates, homework, school, tagging, wordpress 2.3
28Aug
First day of school today! It was actually a disaster this morning when I went to get my schedule. Because I didn’t get my ID and my schedule over the summer, I had to do it on the first day of school. The school staff didn’t even come out until the first period went on. About 200 students just stood there in front of the school bank doing nothing for an hour.
Anyways… got my schedule:
- English 2 Honors … Indian teacher with accent
- PE 2
- Algebra 2 … bad teacher
- AP World History
- Spanish 2
- Chemistry
Not exactly the best arrangement of order, but I’ll see how that go later on.
Topics: advance placement, algebra, AP, chemistry, english, physical education, school, spanish, world history
24Aug
Long time no see. I’ve returned from Taiwan! I’m still in the process of getting everything back in order including some RSBANDB stuff, school stuff, and lots of email.
First off, sorry about the pictures XD. I couldn’t get them uploaded for some weird reason, but here are the official ones not taken by me. Please also do take a look at this video. It’s awesome.
Now I need to actually start on my AP assignments, which are due in two days. It also sucks to not have your new schedule because your out on vacation… grr…
Topics: advance placement, AP, botball, competition, Hawaii, pictures, robotics, rsbandb, Taiwan, vacation
24Jun
You’ve probably been wondering why I haven’t updated my blog even when it’s summer… but here’s what I’ve been up to.
- Doing some client work - writing a pretty big plugin for MyBB
- Playing around with Ajax/Ahah - whatever you want to call it
- Diving into CakePHP - awesome framework. This thing will make my coding life so much easier
- Working on a new layout for this site. Yup, it’s my first attempt at designing one. Don’t expect too much though. It’s a very simple layout
I like simplicity anyways
- I just ordered a new keyboard. It’s the Microsoft Ergo Keyboard 4000. It just get here soon. Can’t wait for it.
But here’s what I really should be doing but I’m not 
- Do my AP World History summer assignment
- Programming robots
- Creating my portfolio
This is actually the first summer where I’ve actually attempted to accomplish my goals. I don’t see this progress continuing once I go on vacation to Taiwan.
Topics: AHAH, AJAX, AP, CakePHP, coding, homework, keyboard, layout, MyBB, portfolio, programming, robotics, Tech, web development
14May
I know it’s been a long time since I updated. After the all the robotics competition, I just had a lot of projects and the AP Chinese exam to handle. So far, I have two final projects left and I’ve already took the AP Chinese exam. The exam was great (never thought I would say that), I’m pretty sure I’ll score a five. As for the projects, I have a very idiotic Spanish project which involves tons of “summary pages” and essays — not fun. The other project is for my Physics class. I’ll be making a mousetrap car. I already have some ideas, but I just need to stop procrastinating.
I wanted to post about this last week but didn’t have time. I got a new mouse! I got the Logitech MX Revolution. 55 bucks but it’s well worth the money. Now my fingers don’t hurt when I click. I also love the configurations I can do with it.The only thing that sucks is the battery power. There’s no sleep mode either, so I always have to remember to turn it off.
Meanwhile, I’m still planning for the summer plans including the July Hawaii trip. Since I’m part of a “team”, I’m suppose to work with a bunch of pain in the butt parents and hypocritical team members. These people are the stupidest hypocrites ever…
Anyways, other than the usual school work, I’ve been doing some labor for Shane and MQ. It’s also ants season here so after this I’m going to go kill some ants!
Topics: advance placement, ants, AP, Hawaii, Life, Logitech, mouse, opinion, review, spanish
28Apr
It’s been awhile since I updated here, primarily because of my busy school work. Since the last post, I’ve been working almost every hour on programming the robots, and the hard work paid off at the competition. Our team came in fifth overall and received a first place trophy for first place documentation. We also received several other awards including best sportsmanship, best onsite presentation, and double-elimination round finalist. ABC also made a coverage on the regional event.
We plan on moving on to the International Botball Tournament in Hawaii in July. So right now we are busy with mainly two things. Preparing for the Hawaii trip and rebuilding our robots. Our main problem right now is with funds. Going to Hawaii would cost us around $7000 for a group of seven. Right now, we are looking for any sponsors, but we seem to have no luck. Our last resort would have to be getting our hands dirty fund raising ourselves by selling hot dogs or whatever. At the tournament, we saw so many great ideas. In order to win, we must completely redo our strategy.
Besides the busy robotics stuff, I’m also preparing for an AP Chinese exam that’s coming up in two weeks. I haven’t even touched the study material so far. Also, I’m upgrading my Ubuntu machine to Feisty Fawn and I plan on configuring it as a LAMP server so I can get my feet back on web developing. After typing all this, I just realized how busy I am XD .
Topics: AP, chinese, competition, robotics, tournament, ubuntu, victory
14Mar
March is scheduling month at my school. I’m going to be a sophomore next year (yay!). Here are the classes I plan on taking.
- English 2 Accelerated
- Algebra 2
- Chemistry
- AP World History
- Physical Education
- Spanish 2
Unfortunately, I have no electives. It should be really interesting taking my first AP class. Interestingly, I’ll be taking my first AP exam this May, the AP Chinese Exam. I still need to study a bit more for that, but I think I can get a 4 at least. Besides AP World History, I might be taking the AP Computer Science A exam next year self-studying.
Lately, I’ve been really busy with Robotics meetings. We’re attending the Botball Northern CA competition in April. If we do win, we get to go to Nationals in Hawaii over the summer! I’m the programmer for both the two teams from my school.
Topics: AP, botball, chinese, computer science, robotics, schedule
