The 2010 Vancouver Winter Games is finally coming to a close after two weeks of world-class competition. Despite the shaky start with the protests and the unfortunate death of the Georgian luger, plus the persistent weather problems (it was more like the Spring Olympics), it’s been a good Olympics games. Canada has done a good job as a host and also in the games. We didn’t exactly “own the podium” as the Americans and Germans have more medals in total, but Canada did win more gold medals than any other country this time. Canada’s 14 gold medals set the record for most gold medals won during a single Winter Olympics by any country. The total haul of 26 medals is also Canada’s best showing at any Olympics, summer or winter. Canada really came on strong during the last few days, capping it all off with a dramatic 3-2 overtime win over the USA in men’s hockey. Congratulations Canada!

Here are some of my other thoughts related to the 2010 Winter Games:

- The men’s hockey final was a great game. Canada got off to a 2-0 lead, but gotta gives props to the Americans for coming back and tying the game with 24 seconds to go. Sidney Crosby, who hasn’t done jack squat in the last couple of games, suddenly comes out nowhere and scores the OT winner. Talk about a dramatic game. Canadians will probably be talking about this game for a long time to come. After the win, people went out to celebrate where I lived, and I’m pretty sure it’s like this in many other parts of Canada. People honked their horns and were out waving Canadian flags. It was quite the moment.

- Even though the men’s hockey final was great, as a whole the most entertaining (and controversial) sport during the games was short-track speed-skating. This sport is like restrained roller-derby on ice. It was controversial from the get-go with the first men’s event where the three Korean skaters team-skated (against the rules supposedly) to the front but two of them fell down in the last turn, handing the silver and bronze to two Americans. Of course, there was the disqualification of the Korean women relay team in the finals, and the wild finish at men’s 500m where Canada somehow picked up two medals. I’ve watched speed-skating from previous Winter Games before, but I never knew it was this wild. Highly entertaining.

- Figure skating was pretty good to watch except for ice dancing, which was boring by comparison. They should really cut the compulsory dance from ice dancing. Pairs figure skating was great since China (my homeland) won the gold and silver because the two Chinese pairs were the only ones who didn’t go splat during the free skate. For men’s figure skating, Plushenko would have won if he jumped two quads, but he was a bit off during his free program. In women’s, Kim Yu-Na was untouchable and rightfully so. Joannie Rochette, despite her personal tragedy, put on two courageous performances to capture the bronze, although in the free program I think Mirai Nagasu should have gotten more points than Rochette.

- Most of the freestyle skiing and snowboarding events were pretty good. The snowboard and ski cross events in particular were pretty fun to watch, and Canada picked up a few medals from these events. Canada also won its first gold medal on home soil in the moguls which falls under free-style skiing. Overall, Canada has done pretty well over at Cypress despite the rain and fog and snow problems.

- On the other hand, Canada was completely shut out from alpine skiing which is pretty disappointing, especially given how Canadian skiers would have had more time on the course. Alpine skiing wasn’t bad to watch, especially with the number of spectacular wipe-outs on the Whistler course (yes, I realize watching skiing just for crashes is not very nice). Good thing nobody was really serious injured from the crashes. The downhill and super-G are probably the most entertaining events, since they were the fastest and most dangerous.

- As for the rest of the sports, long-track speed-skating was alright, although definitely not in the same leagues as short-track. Ski-jumping, cross-country skiing, biathlon, and sliding sports were not very exciting so I didn’t watch much of those. I did watch a bit of curling though. Kevin Martin’s rink played consistently and won the gold without too much drama. On the other hand, Cheryl Benard had the gold won but lost it on a really terrible shot, letting Sweden score 2 in the 10th end.

——————-

That my thought on the 2010 Winter Games. Despite living near Vancouver, I didn’t actually go to any of the events or even any of the celebration sites. I wanted to, but I had lots of homework to do during the Olympic break, and I’m not a fan of crowds either. There goes that once-in-a-lifetime experience. I did support the Games in spirit though . Maybe I’ll go buy a pair of those red mittens . Now that the Olympics are over, it’s time for me to go back to school.

For the rest of this post, I’m going to give my impressions on my school term so far. Break time is probably the best time to write these kinds of posts. I can’t believe it’s already been six weeks since the start of my final undergraduate school term. Just three more months until I graduate. For this term, I’m taking six courses, and here is what I think of each of them thus far.

Product Development Management
I’ll be honest: I took this course for the sole reason of getting a day off in my schedule. The course teaches about the engineering product development process and what’s involved. The marks mainly come from a big group project which my group has just started. Haven’t really done much on the project so far, but that’ll change over this break. Since there are no assignments or tests, the class is kind of relaxed, but I don’t know how long that’s going to last.

Power System Analysis 2
This is a continuation from the power systems analysis course I took last term. It’s also taught by the same professor as before, and he is a pretty decent instructor. For this term, we are learning more about transmission lines, symmetrical components, and power flow analysis. The material thus far hasn’t been too hard, and the first midterm was pretty easy. Hopefully this trend will continue throughout the course .

Power Systems Topics
Another power systems course, but this course doesn’t really focus on any particular topic. Instead, we have lectures on various power system-related topics, from renewable energy to wall plug in residential houses. There are also guest lectures on power-related topics. The main component is research project, which takes some time to prepare but in this case, I think it’s better than having a final. I am always partial to courses where I don’t have to pay too much attention to the material… yeah, I’m terrible.

Power Systems Protection
My final power systems course for the term, this course is about power protection equipment and strategies. Power systems protection is an important field in power engineering, and I think this course provides some useful practical knowledge. Unfortunately, this course is taught in a single three hour session in late afternoon one day every week. The schedule makes it hard to pay attention, especially during the second half of each lecture. After about two hours of lecture on the same subject, my mind just starts to wander. I probably should pay more attention though since there is a midterm and final for this course.

Engineering Economics
A required course for all students in my department, engineering econ is mostly about number crunching and deciphering questions. From what I’ve seen so far, the math isn’t hard (formula sheet and calculator functions allowed), but understanding the questions and properly using the formulas are trickier. The midterm was a little long, but not hard. I think I’ll be okay if I don’t slack off too much.

4th Year Engineering Project
Continued from last term, I’m still working with a professor on some power systems simulations program. Haven’t gotten much results yet, but I’m working on it.

So that’s all I have to say about my school term. I’m hoping things will go well for the remainder of the term. I still haven’t heard from any of the grad schools I’ve applied to, but hopefully things will go well on that end too.

Engineering Law and Ethics
My Grade: 82%
A non-technical but nonetheless important course for engineering students, this courses talks about law and ethics in engineering so we learn how to keep ourselves out of trouble. The class consisted of lectures on various law and ethic topics delivered by the instructors and guests, and almost all of the evaluation was done online. It’s definitely an important course, but just not all that interesting to me. At least I made an effort to attend all the lectures though (unlike half of my classmates). To be honest though, I didn’t put too much effort into this course, and as a result this is my worst course mark for the term. Interestingly, I didn’t too well on quiz on law, but I aced the quiz on ethics. I guess this means I’m ethical but not lawful ;).

Power System Analysis
My Grade: 95%
The bread-and-butter course for a power engineer wannabe like me. This was a basic power systems analysis on three phase transmission systems, focusing on short-circuit calculations on symmetrical faults, power-circle diagrams, and some transmission line modeling. It is a course that requires a fair bit of math and circuit theory background, but it actually wasn’t that “computationally intensive” compared to many other technical courses I have taken due to the use of a lot of simplifications and conventions. I suppose if the conventions and simplifications weren’t used then calculating stuff by hand would take forever. The professor for this course was pretty good and gave useful notes, and there were no surprises in any of the exams. Overall I didn’t this course to be too difficult, and hopefully it’ll be the same for my next power systems analysis course.

Power System Optimization
My Grade: 93%
A power systems elective course, this course is basically a course about mathematical optimization but applied to the topic of power systems. During the course we learned about linear programming methods like simplex and non-linear methods such as steepest descent and Newton’s. Instead of a final, we were required to do a final project which I initially wasn’t happy with, but thankfully the project turned out to be fairly easy. Overall I found this to be a decent course. I found the material to be alright and the prof was a nice guy, but to be honest the course didn’t cover that much material. At least I got my credits and a good mark, so can’t really complain too much.

Discrete Structures and Algorithms
My Grade: 91%
A technical elective that I took to fill up credits, Discrete Structures and Algorithms turned out to be an interesting and somewhat challenging course. This is more of a computer-engineering course that covers various facets of discrete math including graph theory, writing math proofs, algorithmic complexity, and summations. I liked this course because it’s a course that makes you think, but on the other hand this is why I found this course to be more difficult than my other courses. During the same term I was going to the math competition club, and taking this course definitely helped. For example, I finally understand what “proof by induction” means lol, which is really sad considering that I’ve been participating in math contests since my first year of middle school.

4th Year Engineering Project
My Grade: 93%
As a requirement for graduation, all students in my program are required to do a project supervised by faculty. During the course of the project we have to write a progress report and final report which is marked for both technical content and English competency. I did my project testing a power systems software package. The project wasn’t hard, but then again I wasn’t asked to do much. I’ve chosen to continue with this project into winter 2010, and hopefully I’ll get a good mark as well.

———————

That’s all for my courses in the fall 2009 term. My average for the term is 91% (weighed on credits) which is probably one of my lowest term averages ever, which is surprising given that this was the lightest course load I’ve had in my university career. I guess I must have slacked off too much with my two days per week course schedule, or maybe this was a side effect of doing 8 months of co-op before the school term. The reason is probably the former, plus the fact I had to put effort into applying to grad school. I can usually crunch through homework assignments and even exams without too much difficulty, but writing application essays and obtaining suitable references was hard work. I managed to complete all of my applications on time though, and all that’s left to do is cross my fingers and hope for the best.

It’s true that I only had classes on two days (great scheduling on my part :lol:), but I did go back to school on two other days of the week to work on my project and go to the gym. As always I didn’t lose any weight or appear to be any fitter than before, but I did get a little bit stronger. During the term I also returned to the Putnam math competition club for the first time in two years, and at the end of the term I actually wrote the ridiculously hard contest. I definitely didn’t win anything from the Putnam competition (at most got 3 questions out of 12), but at least I did better than I thought I would.

The next term, or should I say the current term, is (hopefully) my last term as an undergraduate, and I’m definitely going to work hard to end my undergrad career on a high note. May the Force be with me… and you too.

WordPress Tidbits

It’s been a week since I converted this website to WordPress. I have continued to play around with the website, changing some minor details here and there. The most significant change in terms of the design since a week ago is the addition of random backgrounds. I only have three backgrounds thus far, but more will be added to list as I accumulate more photos and artwork. Once I have enough backgrounds, I’ll modify the script so that different months of the year will have a different set of backgrounds so that this blog will always match up with the seasons. Other than the backgrounds, the top menus have been made semi-transparent, but that’s just a tiny change.

Moving on to features of the sites, I have installed a quicktags and smilies bar plug-in to the comment form, so visitors will have an easier formatting comments to their hearts’ content. Hopefully that will encourage some comments, as this site hasn’t received a non-spam comment for a while. I did have to try out a few quicktag/smilies plug-in before I found one that worked out of the box, but once I found the one it was smooth sailing from there.

For the most part, WordPress and all of plug-ins I’ve installed are well-behaved with the notable exception of WP-Postviews, which is used to keep track of how many times a post has been viewed. For some odd reason, WP-Postviews would only count hits from logged-in users (ex me) and not guests even when I set the plug-in to track everyone. The plug-in wouldn’t count anything when I set it to count only guests. After experimenting with the code, I discovered that the $post global variable within the counting function did not return the correct post ID number when a guest loaded a post. The original first few lines of process_postviews() is shown below:

### Function: Calculate Post Views
add_action('wp_head', 'process_postviews');
function process_postviews() {
global $user_ID, $post;
if(!wp_is_post_revision($post)) {
if(is_single() || is_page()) {
$id = intval($post->ID);
$views_options = get_option('views_options');
$post_views = get_post_custom($id);
$post_views = intval($post_views['views'][0]);

In order to get the plug-in to count guest hits, I had to switch to use $wp_query and extract the post ID from there. The modified function is shown below:

### Function: Calculate Post Views
add_action('wp_head', 'process_postviews');
function process_postviews() {
global $user_ID, $wp_query;
if(!wp_is_post_revision($wp_query->post)) {
if(is_single() || is_page()) {
$id = intval($wp_query->post->ID);
$views_options = get_option('views_options');
$post_views = get_post_custom($id);
$post_views = intval($post_views['views'][0]);

I don’t know the reason why the original function didn’t work on my website. I’m guessing it has something to do with the templates of the theme, but now that I have the plug-in working I’m too lazy to investigate.

Artwork

Below is my newest Photoshop artwork. I liked how the grassy knoll and dandelions turned out, but the two kids look like cardboard cutouts. Time to work on my people-drawing skills.

Happy New Year!

Another year has gone by, and along with it another decade as well. 2009 went really quickly for me. I spent eight months working as an intern and four months in school, and time just flashed by. 2010 will be a really important year for me. It will be the year when I finally earn my bachelors degree and (hopefully) it’ll also be the year when I start graduate school. It’ll be a busy year that’s for sure, but I think I’m ready for it. I wish all of you (the 5 random people who read this blog) a Happy 2010 and good luck in the new year. I’ll definitely need some of that luck too

The Console and the Controller

The Wii’s biggest selling point is its motion sensing controller called the Remote. After playing Wii Sports for two months, I think the Wii Remote is a decent controller. The motion-sensing isn’t that precise or accurate, but it gets your arm moving, and it’s kind of fun to pretend to play sports. While I like the Remote, the Nukchuk attachment could be better, mostly on the fact that there is wire connection between the Nukchuk and the Remote. The wire can get in the way during Wii Boxing (since I like to actually throw punches instead of just moving my wrists). It would be better if the Nukchuk was wireless.

As for the console itself, the Wii’s design is attractive with its white case and blue lights. Build quality seems to decent, even though I don’t really plan to test the console’s sturdiness. Setting up the console was pretty straight forward, and the only hiccup I ran into was setting up the Wii’s Wi-Fi connection, but that was the fault of my router rather than the Wii. I have the Internet Channel installed on my Wii, but I never use it.

Wii Sports

Since my family didn’t bother lining-up on Boxing Day, Wii Sports remains the only game in our library. As expected from a bundled game, Wii Sports makes very good use of the Remote in various fashions. Here are my impressions on each of Wii Sports’ five sports.

Tennis
Tennis along with Boxing are the best sports in Wii Sports. It’s mostly a reaction game with some elements of timing and swing control involved. Tennis is the first sport that I reached Pro status in, and it is usually the first sport I play after turning on the console. Despite beating the hardest CPU opponents Elisa and her partner several times, I still haven’t gotten to the point where I can consistently defeat them. I usually play Tennis until I win a match, and that sometimes takes several tries. I’m a bit sick of seeing Elisa’s team though. Why can’t Tennis rotate between different opponents with around the same skill level (like in Boxing)?

As for techniques in Tennis, I find it is bad to swing my arm like in real tennis. It’s better to just use short swings since you can react quicker. I’m not sure if I’m giving up swing control by making short swings, but I find it no matter what I do, sometimes the ball just clips the net and goes out. It never seems to happen to the CPUs though. As for strategies, dominating from the front court is the easiest way to beating the CPUs. If I can get the CPU to run left and right a couple times without hitting the ball out then I can probably put the CPUs away.

Baseball
Compared to Boxing and Tennis, Baseball isn’t quite as fun since it’s just batting + pitching practice. The design of Baseball makes it harder for the player immerse into the game. Baseball has been a mixed bag for me, since a few days ago I was stuck at about level 600 because I can’t hit worth a damn. The last game as my drought ended in a 0-0 tie where I lost a few experience points. However, today I blew open the CPU opponent 12-3 in the second winning and incited a Mercy Rule victory, and during the game I kept connecting with home runs. A week ago I wasn’t able to hit diddly squat. I guess the computer must have taken pity on me and made it easy.

There’s no real strategy to hitting other than trying to judge the pitch and hit it as hard and far as you can, but I’m bad at judging the pitch. I can tell if the pitch is coming too close to my Mii, but the Splitters always gets me. As for pitching, I eventually figured out the common sense strategy that it was best to pitch either really close or really far from the batter and never in the middle, but that was after the CPU hit a couple of home runs on me. I also found out how to do the fast pitches by flicking the wrist, but the pitching position seems to matter more than the speed when it comes to the CPU’s ability to hit my pitches.

Finally, Baseball is one of the sports in the game that actually hurts my arm, and that goes for both pitching and batting.

Bowling
Bowling is one of the two sports in Wii Sports that doesn’t get harder as you get more experience points. This is third sport for which I reached Pro status, but I was stuck at 900-ish for quite a while because I kept bowling about 150. My personal best is 244, and that was the only time I have ever reached over 200 in score. Wii Bowling isn’t really a great representation of real bowling, but the strategy for getting strikes is still to bowl hard and hit the gap between the 1 and 3 pins (since I’m right-handed). My strikes are pretty inconsistent, but it’s still much better than what I can do in real bowling :D. The last time I went bowling (which was a long time ago), I think I got around 70.

Golf
Golf is the other game that doesn’t get harder as you level up. Wii Golf is mostly about judging swing power plus a bit reading the winds (when hitting long) or the terrain (when putting). It’s definitely possible to birdie on the all the holes, but I fail to see how you can get an eagle or below on any of the holes without some holing it with an iron/driver/wedge. My best score on all three of the courses are -1, and the only hole that I sometime have trouble with the the last hole on the hard course. It’s so easy to crank it into the water on that hole. Golf is probably the least exciting sport in Wii Sports, and it’s probably the game that I play the least.

Boxing
We saved the best for last. Wii Boxing is easily the most exciting game in Wii Sports, and it can be a decent workout if you actually swing your arms (I do). At the beginning, I just swung away like a maniac because it was fun pummeling my opponents with ten hit combos. This stopped working at around Level 700 when CPU opponents begins to dodge, block and counter-punch. At the higher levels, Boxing is all about dodging and counter punching which is sort of like real-life boxing, but of course real-life boxing doesn’t have the slow-mo sequences. These days I just mostly dodge left and right and try to get a quick combo in when there’s an opening. I’m currently at about level 1400 and still haven’t faced the boxing champ Matt, but I have beaten Elisa (who is supposedly the boxer before Matt) three times with two KOs and one decision. I’m confident I can take Matt out.

While Wii Boxing is really fun, one big gripe I have about it is that the motion sensing. I’m not sure if I’m standing too close to the sensor bar, but a lot of times my punches just don’t register, or the system registers the incorrect punch. It’s really imprecise and can get pretty frustrating. For this reason I have trouble landing the head hooks which do a lot of damage, but I make do with body shots though. My favorite combo is left body jab/right body hook 1-2 combo since it’s the easiest to land and does a bit more damage than left-right body jabs.

Overall Impression

Overall, I thought the Wii and Wii Sports are quite fun as casual gaming. I’ve grown past my N64 days and haven’t played video games for a while, and the Wii was a nice re-introduction into gaming. Some might dismiss the motion sensing controller as a gimmick, but it’s a pretty good gimmick and it’s reasonably well implemented. The motion sensing could be more precise, but for casual fun it’s acceptable. For now, I’ll keep playing Wii Sports until I get Pro status in all five sports and then go for of the achievements in the training games. Eventually I’ll have to pick up some other games though, and at this point it’s most likely Wii Play (with the extra controller) or Wii Sports Resort (with the Motion-Plus attachment)

Since Wordpress didn’t have an automatic import tool for Xoops and that I wanted to keep as much of my old data as possible, I manually moved every article, download, and gallery picture from Xoops to Wordpress. By manual, I meant manually copying and pasting posts, uploading photos, and modifying the database via PHPMyAdmin. It’s boring and time consuming work, but I am used to doing this stuff. Compared to moving my data, installing Wordpress and plug-ins was pretty easy. I really like the fact that Wordpress has integrated a plug-in search into the admin panel. It makes finding and installing plug-ins so convenient. Compared to Xoops, Wordpress is simpler. There are definitely some areas where Xoops is stronger, but thus far I have found that Wordpress is meeting my needs for this website.

Anyways, this is more or less the completed website. I might add some small things here or there, but the look (modified from the understated but elegant “Piano Black” theme from mono-lab) is here to stay. Since the theme itself is primarily black and shades of gray, I will try to use bright backgrounds to liven up this place, and as a start I’ve employed a photo of some of the fuchsia in my family’s backyard. Anyways, hopefully all the changes will make this site more user friendly and attract more visitors.

Lastly, I hope everyone will have a happy holidays.

8XGZS7JQH6ZK

Before buying the new Canon, my family had been using a five-year-old, 4 megapixel Toshiba digital camera. The camera withstood all of our abuse and still works today, but it’s obviously pretty outdated. Compared to current point-and-shoots, our Toshiba was a clunker that lacked features and ate AA batteries like nothing. Four AA batteries didn’t last 100 shots with this camera, and the batteries made the camera somewhat unwieldy. Given the shortcomings of our old camera, my family made a few requirements for a new point-and-shoot:

- => 10 megapixels
- => 3x optical zoom
- light and easy to handle
- rechargeable batteries
- use SD memory cards
- anti-shake, auto-focus, and other modern amenities
- preferably =< $200 Cdn

My family only uses the camera for casual outings and maybe some close-up flower photos, so the requirements aren't really high or specific. Even if we wanted something other than a point-and-shoot, our price bracket limited us to that segment. Most of the requirements are met easily met by modern cameras. Due to our old camera's habit of consuming lots of AA batteries, we wanted a new camera that's rechargeable. Since our old camera uses SD cards, we wanted the new one to use the same format as well so we can still use the cards we have.

After doing a bit of online research, we found that Canon seems to be the best brand. Unfortunately Canon also carries a bit of a price premium over the other brands, so finding a 10 megapixel model for $200 wasn't easy. In the end the choice came down to two models: the SD1200IS or the SD890IS, both part of the Canon's Digital ELPH compact camera line. The SD1200IS was a little cheaper (at ~$200 vs ~$230 for the SD890IS), slightly more compact, and came in different colors, while the SD890IS had a better zoom lens (5x vs. 3x in the SD1200IS). In the end my family decided to get the camera with the better zoom and bought the SD890IS. Here are the specifications for the SD890IS.

Basic Specifications

The camera came in a nice green box that was easier to open. Inside the box were the camera, one rechargeable battery, the charger, video and USB cables, a couple of manuals, a software CD, a small capacity SD memory card, and the usual warranty information. The camera also came with a small flexible tripod as seen in the picture. When they said “mini” flexible tripod, they really meant the “mini” part, but despite the small size it’s a pretty cool little piece of equipment, and I’ve already used it to help shoot some timer shots.

The box. (Click to enlarge)

The contents. (Click to enlarge)

The contents laid out. (Click to enlarge)

The mini tripod. (Click to enlarge)

The camera is the typical silver grey and similar in size to other current compact cameras, which means it’s a lot lighter and smaller than the old clunker my family had been using. The shape is slightly curvy, but otherwise nothing really stands out as you can see from the picture below.

The camera. (Click to enlarge)

The back. (Click to enlarge)

The top. (Click to enlarge)

The SD890IS on the mini-tripod. (Click to enlarge)

Given that I’m the only technologically inclined person in the family, I got to play with the camera first. First thing I noticed about our new camera is how fast it starts; the old camera needs four seconds to start up, but this new Canon is ready to go in about a second. Compared to the old camera, the SD890IS is compact and easy to handle, but the controls took a bit getting used to (especially the “wheel”). Moving onto actual camera performance, after taking a few shots I found the auto-focus works reasonably well for photographing people and general scenes, but photographing flowers requires a switch to macro mode to get good results. Although taking close-up flower photos still take some work, it is a lot easier to do it with the SD890IS than the old camera. With the old camera I could take 10 pictures and they could be all blurry, but I can usually get the shot I want in five attempts with the new camera. I have yet to play with the more advanced settings within the camera, but overall the first impression is pretty good. Of course, I am comparing the SD890IS to a five-year-old camera, so it would be really bad if I wasn’t impressed.

To end this article, here are two photos I took with the new camera.

As mentioned above, the last 12 months was rather uneventful for my websites. There were no major down times or hacking incidents, although from time to time some bored soul will give this website a poke or two with some SQL injection attempts. In terms of additions and development, only the crabbing guide has seen significant additions because my crab-loving relatives have returned. I’ve also been adding content (at a rather slow pace) to this site, the badminton blog and the badminton portal, but otherwise these sites are still the same as before. In my last anniversary article I wrote that I was working on a new content-based website project, and unfortunately I’m still at the info collection stage. I’m not going to abandon the project, but it’ll probably be a long time before that website ever goes online especially given that next year is my graduating year from college.

To be honest, I really haven’t put too much effort into the tonyjiang.com websites last year. School and co-op work are some of the reasons, but the main reason is because I (re)started a personal blog and I invested a lot of effort into it. The blog is currently hosted on Blogger, and so I won’t mention the url here yet. In the blog I usually write about the anime and manga series I read and watch, and I also share personal artwork (which are also posted in the gallery). My efforts to promote my blog did pay off somewhat and it now averages 700 visitors and 1200 page loads per day. In case you are wondering, this is more traffic than all of the tonyjiang.com websites combined. On the downside, writing blog posts take up a fair bit of time, and despite the decent traffic the ad revenue have been dismal for my blog. Although a lot of my efforts have gone into the blog, I have no plans to abandon my other websites. The blog is only for anime, manga, artwork, and the odd personal quip. All of my other articles will be posted here.

Speaking of traffic and ad revenues, both of these measurements have grown slightly in the past year compared to 2007-2008. All of the tonyjiang.com websites combined for over 70,000 visitors, almost 150,000 page loads, and about $500 of revenue over the past year. This is up from 59,000 visitors, 130,000 page loads, and ~$425 ad revenue in 2007-2008. Not dramatic growth, but growth nonetheless. The traffic is seasonal in pattern, with the summer having significantly more visitors than the cold seasons, and this is because the majority of the traffic goes to the crabbing guide. Crabbing seasonal in nature, and therefore so is the traffic to my guide. Not too long ago, my websites also reached the milestone of 200,000 unique visitors. I know there are websites that get more than 200,000 visitors in a day, but for a group of personal websites 200,000 is not too shabby at all. In celebration I decided to give myself a pat on the back :-D.

That’s all I have to say for the 2008-2009 year in regards to tonyjiang.com. As mentioned before, the next year will be my last year as an undergraduate student, and I’ll be quite busy trying to make the grade and applying for grad school. Therefore, I don’t really foresee any major developments with these websites in the next 8 months or so. I’m thinking of moving my popular (in comparison to my other sites) personal blog on to a Wordpress installation on my paid web space, but I haven’t committed to anything yet. I’m also thinking of moving my websites to another webhost. The current host have been reliable and problem-free thus far, but the bandwidth limit and storage seems rather inadequate when compared to the plans offered by many other hosts at the same cost. The move will probably happen about a year from now though, since I have already extended my plan for another year. It’s not like I’m in any danger of hitting the limits though :lol:. Thanks for reading this article and hopefully I’ll still be around to write the 4th anniversary post for tonyjiang.com.

I started studying about three months before my exam date. Out of the three sections in the GRE general test, I was most concerned about the verbal section because it tests some pretty obscure vocabulary, and unfortunately I didn’t know many of the words. In my mind, the verbal section of the GRE was an annoying vocabulary test, and in order to get a high score, I really had to work on remembering those pesky words. In comparison to the verbal section, the quantitative and analytical sections were not nearly as intimidating. Being an engineering undergrad student, there’s no way I’d be scared of a quantitative section that tests only high school math. As for the analytical writing, the only issue that might come up is the time constraint, but otherwise I’m capable of writing coherent essays that, while probably not excellent, will do the job.

To build up my vocabulary and also just to practice for the GRE, I started out by borrowing a couple of books from the library. The three books I used throughout the duration of my studies were the Kaplan GRE book, the Kaplan Verbal workbook, and the Idiot’s Guide on Acing the GRE (the real titles might be slightly different). I didn’t have a particularly preference for the prep books; the three listed were the easiest to find, and they all the word lists that I so desperately needed to memorize. Between Kaplan and the Idiot’s guide, the former had more goodies such as practice tests on the CD, while the latter was better written and contains more useful strategies. In addition to the books, I also found a couple of GRE word lists and practice questions online.

With the material ready, I started building my vocabulary by reading through the word lists and try to memorize the words and definition. This is probably not the best strategy to learn words, but I was lazy (to a point) and was hoping that my memory wouldn’t fail me. So every day (or every other day) I would go through a section of the word list trying to memorize the definitions. I had a scrap piece of paper that I use to scribble the words and make sentences with them, but that was about it. No flashcards, no cool memory techniques, just straight-up cramming. In between going through the word lists I would do some practice questions just to see if I improved or not. Nearing my exam date, I started doing whole sections and then full length-practice tests, first the paper version and then the computer versions. As a last before-the-actual-exam evaluation, I downloaded ETS’ (the organization that prepares the GRE) PowerPrep software, which contains two full-length practice exams along with some question sets. PowerPrep is the closest thing to the computerized GRE without actually writing the exam, so it was pretty useful for gauging performance. On both of the practice exams I scored 800 on the quantitative and 660 on the verbal. 660 for the verbal is decent, but could be better. I also practiced the analytical writing as well. Since the essays can’t be marked by computers, I just wrote a few to see if I can finish in the allotted time.

After three months of studying, it was time for me to take the real GRE. I wasn’t nervous at all during the exam, since I know if I perform up to expectations then I’d be okay. The topics I received for the analytical writing sections were pretty straight forward, so I managed to get my essays done without too much difficulty. Up next was the quantitative section, which I plowed through without any problems. After that was the verbal section, and this verbal section seemed a bit harder than the ones from the PowerPrep software. There were quite a few answers that I wasn’t entirely sure of, so I just made educated guesses. The official exam was done after I completed the verbal, but I did the extra research quantitative section in hopes that GRE will give me back my exam fee (supposedly a number of participants will receive $250).

Three hours of grueling testing later, these are the scores I received:

Verbal – 720
Quantitative – 800
Analytical – 4.5 (out of 6)

Yes! Looks like my vocabulary cramming has paid off, although to be honest I didn’t really study all that hard. I merely spread the studying over a longer period time compared to my usual final exams. My actual exam performance was actually better than my practice results, and this could be the result of last-minute studying, dumb luck, or maybe I’m just clutch haha. My essay scores are pretty average, but they are not terrible. Overall, I think my GRE scores should be more than enough to meet the requirements of the grad programs that I’m interested in.

Looking back, the GRE was really just another hoop to jump through on the road to grad school. Now that I think about it, as annoying as the GRE was, it’s probably still one of the easier requirements to meet. The hardest part will be getting good references from my professors. Since I’ve been out on co-op for 8 months, I only really have two months to build up relationships with my fourth year profs before I have to ask them for references. Hopefully everything will go well and I’ll be in grad school somewhere in the fall of 2010.

Thanks for reading.

Continuing from my last reflections article, after surviving a tough first half of third year and a bout with ulcers, I spent last summer working at a local electric utilities company. Working at a utilities company sounded like a chance for me to apply the things I learned from all my circuit theory and electromagnetism classes, but it turned out I spent most of my time writing scripts. This co-op term also marks the first time I have ever been a part of a union, although I’m not sure what I got back for all the union dues I paid. The company, with about 400 employees at that particular location, was the largest office I have worked at up to that point, although I mostly stayed on my own floor and therefore didn’t see most of the other employees. With a large office, there were a correspondingly decent number of co-ops, and despite working in different departments and on different floors all the co-ops knew each other fairly well. Every second week some of us would go out to lunch together, and I even served as a guide for a couple of out-of-province co-ops and went on a crabbing trip with them. Despite being the de facto authority on crabbing on the internet, I failed to help my fellow co-ops catch any legal-sized crabs on that particular trip, but it was fun and it was a trip that I would never have been made on my own (I only go crabbing when friends and relatives want to go).

Other than interacting with fellow co-ops, there were plenty of other nice things about this co-op term. Even though there wasn’t a public snack cabinet like my first co-op employer, there was some free food everyday and there were quite a few free lunches and/or office parties with food. I did limit my intake of sweets and junk food so that I didn’t become even more overweight, but free lunches are always appreciated. I also went on a few company-sponsored tours to substations and generating stations, and those were definitely nice experiences. The last nice thing to mention is the location of the office: the building is situated in a downtown location and only three blocks or so from the waters, which meant that there were lots of places to go during lunch break. Since the company didn’t give co-ops gym memberships, I usually walked around after lunch in an effort to do some exercise.

Overall, my four months at the utility company was an enjoyable experience, mostly because the nice office environment and perks. I also ended up making more money than my second co-op term. More money is always appreciated, especially since I’m saving up for grad school. After the nice co-op term, I seriously considered going back with the company for my remaining terms, especially since utilities is an area I would prefer to go into for my career. In the end though I decided to go try something else instead since one of my main goals for participating in co-op is to explore the various industries, so for my remaining co-op terms I was going to try something new. But before the next co-op term there was a term of school that I had to get through first.

Just like the first term of my third year, I took six courses for my second term: five of them were technical courses while one was a “technology and society” course. The amount of lecture and lab time was similar to first term, and so was the effort required to complete the work and study for exams. One thing that was different though is that for the first time in my university career I had a four day schedule. That’s right. Despite having the same amount (or more) hours of lecture and lab time, I managed to squeeze all of my courses and lab sessions into four days, giving myself a break every Thursday. That extra day at home really helped since I had extra time to study, do assignments, and relax. I think I would have had a much tougher term if I had to go to school five days per week.

Other than my four day schedule, everything else about my academic life was similar to that of my first term of third year. There were some easy course, some hard course, some fun courses, and some really boring and confusing courses, but in the end I ended up with a decent average that was slightly above my average for the first term. Other than academics, I got a gym membership like I always do, although like always I don’t think I lost weight or gained muscle mass despite working out three days per week. I also joined the university badminton club to get even more exercise. While not a good badminton player like my father, I still consider myself to be fairly proficient at the sport, but that didn’t stop me from dropping the first seven games at the badminton club. After that I manage to turn things around and won most of my games afterwards, and at the end of the term I believe I had a .500 record. One thing I didn’t do this term was participating in the math contest club that I was part of in my first and second years. This was because the club met on Thursdays but I had Thursdays off, so I didn’t bother going to school just because of the free pizza. Maybe I’ll rejoin during my fourth year.

The last thing to mention for my school term is my co-op job search. Just like the previous school term, I managed to land half a dozen interviews including the university’s IT department, small local companies, and very large corporations. I had thought of going out of town for my last co-op term just to get a taste of what it is like to live on my own, but I ended up landing another local job (my current job) instead. The position was at a small branch office of a big semiconductor company, and I was signed up for two terms (8 months) which probably turned out to be a good thing given the tough economic times that followed. I haven’t worked in the semiconductor industry before so this was a good chance to experience something new, and even better my salary is higher than all of my previous co-op terms. Overall my job search during the school term went pretty smoothly since I secured my job after the first round of interviews, and this meant I can concentrate my efforts on academics for the rest of the term.