101 in 1001

Another resolution, the 101 in 1001, basically 101 tasks to be completed in 1001 days. I'll come back to this and cross things off as I do them.

Start date: Jan 13th, 2010
End date: Oct 9th, 2012

Completed so far: 30 out of 101
In progress: 11 out of 101

1. Get an interesting job Buck Institute
2. Learn Python CS188 Spring 2011
3. Learn more about web design (PHP) In progress
4. Learn Javascript In Progress
5. Work at a big biotech company
6. Program/Code something for fun
7. Take a dance class Lindy Hop, Feb 2011
8. Take a singing class Spring 2010, Music 20a
9. Apply to grad school In progress
10. Live on my own Mission in SF
11. Take a more involved photography class
12. Learn Japanese
13. Learn Latin
14. Take an art/drawing class
15. Get promoted at a job
16. Get an A in a Bio class
17. Go to Magic Castle at night
18. Spend a day at the beach
19. Learn a cool magic trick
20. Learn how to snowboard toeside and hillside
21. Take a long walk on the beach at night
22. Attend a wedding
23. Attend a formal dinner party
24. Go to a black-tie event
25. Go to a rave Etd.LOVE 2011
26. Get a pedicure
27. Get a massage
28. Go to a club Mel's bday
29. Get my hair done for a special event
30. Go to a New Years' Eve party
31. Have a picnic Bluegrass Festival 2011
32. Donate my clothes Buffalo Exchange
33. Donate money to a charity Heifer International
34. Host a party Apt party March 2011
35. Go to a Big Game (Stanford vs. Cal) Fall 2010
36. Meet Orson Scott Card
37. Take pictures of street style in Berkeley 9-20-10, Looks on Campus for collegefashion.net
38. Take studio pictures
39. Cook a meal for someone
40. See the Phantom of the Opera Las Vegas, Jan 2011
41. Watch another musical
42. Watch Cirque du Soleil
43. Go to a professional tennis match
44. Go to a concert Voxtrot, 5-28-10
45. Ask for a guy's phone number
46. Go on a blind date
47. Go on a double date
48. Buy a drink for someone Thalassa, 3-11-10
49. Fall in love
50. Kiss in the rain
51. Pierce my ears completed, June 2010
52. Dye my hair a different color
53. Get a cat
54. Get a dog
55. Finish my current journal
56. Send someone a letter sent two letters, 3-24-10
57. Work out regularly for 3 months completed Core Conditioning, 5-6-10
58. Be able to run a mile easily
59. Be able to do 20 pushups easily
60. Get a super comfortable bed
61. Bring a friend home for the holidays
62. Visit my grandparents April 2011
63. Make a foreign friend
64. Decorate my room
65. Learn how to use a steamer in progress
66. Get a blunt haircut
67. Go on a trip with friends (that doesn't involve a competition) Las Vegas, 2011
68. Fly first class
69. Travel to Europe
70. Travel to Japan
71. Go to Vegas Jan 2011
72. Go to New York City August 2010
73. Travel with only one other person (that isn't family)
74. Take a road trip Reno Winter 2010
75. Drive somewhere far (few hours) Tahoe 2011
76. Go back to Toronto
77. Go to World Championships for Rubik's Cube
78. Get a sub-20 average for 3x3 18.56s avg at Stanford Winter 2010!
79. Get a sub-30 average for one-hand
80. Go to a Rubik's Cube competition in another country
81. Write a short story
82. Write a good fanfiction
83. Buy a designer handbag
84. Read the Silmarillion in progress
85. Buy another lens for my camera Tamron 17-50mm
86. Shoot a photoshoot for a magazine
87. Finish a drawing 5-3-10, History of Middle Earth project
88. Go to SF to take pictures 7-18-10, DJ Smoke photoshoot
89. Learn how to knit
90. Learn how to sew clothes
91. Learn a new pen trick
92. Shoot a wedding
93. Reread LOTR trilogy
94. Paint something on a canvas
95. Blog more regularly (once every 2 weeks)
96. Learn how to play the guitar In progress
97. Buy a piece of art
98. Have a photoshoot with another photographer Caliber assignments
99. Read a book for fun In progress, The Black Swan
100. Buy flowers for someone
101. Learn to cook an exotic dish

On asking questions

You've probably all encountered those questions that are repeatedly asked over and over, to the point where, as much as you appreciate the concern of the asker, annoy you to death because it's the 10th time someone has asked and you've given the same boring answer every time. Usually these questions are some form of "How are you?", but in a more attentive way, like "How have you been?" or "What are you doing during break?" or "How is [insert name of school here]?"

By adding little details, the asker prides themselves on seemingly knowing what is up and happening in your life. In some ways this is pretty considerate, but if it goes wrong the conversation may go like this:

"So when are you going back to school?"
"Um... I graduated five years ago."
"So... how's work?"
"...I'm unemployed."
"Now would be a great time to travel!"
"I have no friends."

At this point you both feel extremely embarrassed and you have failed to be considerate about your friend. In my opinion, the reason most people ask these mundane questions (myself included) is that they do care (however little) about your life and wish for you to tell them something cool about it. Thus, keeping a few interesting stories at hand would make the encounter go a lot smoother.

Since I am not as fast-thinking in actual person-to-person interaction, I cannot come up with the eloquent prose you read on the blog in an instant. So when people ask me these questions my brain interprets it and I answer them literally. A second later I realize I probably should have said something more interesting. But doesn't "how" imply an adjective?

"How has your break been?"
"Good."
"How's Berkeley?"
"Hard."
"How are you giving me the lamest answers?"
"Dunno."

Maybe if they had said something like, "What is the most fun thing you did that was illegal in 48 states?" or "What is the coolest thing you bought exceeding $200?" I would have thought longer and come up with something more appealing. As such, I need to teach my brain to interpret questions like "How's school?" as "Tell me about that time you tried to study for a test but was interrupted by a slew of naked people."

Of course, these interpretations would vary with audience. With anyone older than the age of 30, "How's school?" would interpret into "Tell me your greatest academic achievement so I can go home and tell my kids and compare them to you."

So it is up to both the asker and the askee to make something more of general vague questions. As I proved above, the askee should think of some interesting stories beforehand. The asker, depending on how much facebook stalking they have done, may choose to ask more personal questions. This depends on the extent to which they want to reveal the level of their stalking. Such questions can range from "How do you have so many presents in Farmville?" to "Why is there a picture of you passed out with hieroglyphics on your face?" to "Why do your wall-to-walls with so-and-so go all the way back to 2005?"

Having said all this, I don't want you to get the wrong idea that I'm silently seething while you're making small talk about the weather. It'd just be nice if both parties deferred a little from generic question/answers, because we all know the answer to "How's home?" is "Sooo relaxing and sooo much food it's sooo awesome." Because you know what you get when you have an actual conversation that's not about how hard school is and how bored you are and what you ate for lunch? SECRETS.

2009 in pictures

Last year I recall attempting to write up some summarizing thing for my livejournal, going through important things that happened in each month. I think I was at maybe July before I got too lazy and stopped. This year, I will instead use pictures, and show one cool thing I did each month, proving that my life is interesting and fun and full of intrigue. Enjoy.

1. January

My first ever Exploratorium Rubik's Cube competition. Had been wanting to go to one for years, and finally got to! No world records were set, but I did "win" the Life Award with a result of awesome.

2. February

I went to see Wicked. I got to wear cool shoes. I knew all the songs. It was amazing.

3. March

This was a happy month although I don't quite remember what I was doing. Here is a green flower I got for free on St. Patrick's Day.

4. April

I had a McGangBang. lulz. It was quite good.

5. May

Not something cool I did per se, but they were putting in new windows, resulting in a hole in our wall for a day! All while I was studying for finals, great timing.

6. June

I met Sarah Dessen! She was one of my favorite authors in middle school/high school. Also bought my first book by her, which is also my favorite - This Lullaby.

7. July

Death Cab for Cutie at the Greek Theatre. Along with Ra Ra Riot and Andrew Bird. Got my tickets the day of, so cheap!

8. August

US Nationals at Stanford. In which I got two 17s solves! Fun weekend too :)

9. September

This was a busy month so I don't have anything specifically taken during it, but I was working on a production team for BARE magazine, culminating in this super fun photoshoot in October.

10. October

Dressed up as Elphaba (minus the green) for Halloween! Then did some negative cube solving. (Check out Bugs Bunny's whiskers teehee)

11. November

Went to two back-to-back Rubik's Cube competitions, in which I started competing in one hand. After the 2nd competition Berkeley also killed Stanford in football.

12. December

Received my amazing gorgeous Nikon D90 body and started learning to take pictures. Expect better pictures next year!! Also, I think my hair length has come around full circle.

I have concluded that Tumblr...

..is for people who don't know HTML. Or can't format their blog entries (with or without HTML). Or need predefined formats for their entries. Or even just can't come up with their own material and need to "reblog" other people's.

Basically it is an awesome (or ridiculous) combination of Twitter/Blogger/Livejournal. And I say that with all the love/respect I have for it.

Say this blog of mine, "show me something pretty," was actually on Tumblr. There wouldn't ever be gaps and months of MIA-ness. In fact, posting would be so easy, it can be done 12938921 times a day. Observe -

Step 1: Login
(this one is actually kind of hard because the "Log in" link is smaller than the SIGN UP NOW part. Just shows how much Tumblr loves its users)


Step 2: Click something
You can choose from six options - Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio, Video. With the exception of Text, most of these categories assume a small text box for your "blog" post.



All you need is a URL and you have a blog post! So silly how people try and come up with actual articles.

The best part is the "Advanced Options" on the right. Like changing the HTML or the color or the font style or the... oh wait.

If you can't think of anything, no worries. Just click on this button. It's like an instant entry generator!


Step 3: Post!
Click the post button. And go back to step 1. Repeat. Forever.


So now you're probably wondering, where is my Tumblr? Yes, I did make one. Yes, I did use it. No, I don't know how often I'll continue to use it. No, I don't know if I'll become addicted to it... I titled my Tumblr "how to disappear." I have decided that it can be a clever and subtle message to Tumblr (instead of a reference to fanfiction) - disappear plz. Just kidding. No, really.

Let your imagination take root...

A couple of days ago I had been thinking about my life back in high school/middle school compared to my college life. What did I do all the time, cooped up in my house after school with limited transportation and at times limited internet access? (dial-up netzero, anyone still remember that?)

Managing my own forum, of course.

(I had a thing for something-spirit-something)

Eventually became co-admined with KP, who made the latest layout. We had almost 2000 members and was actually pretty active at one point (until we stopped checking it).

Should I be worried that I managed to login to my admin account with my current password? That means I've been using this password for ~5 years...

Also, from 8 Top-Paying Part-Time Jobs for College Students
1) Computer Lab Assistant (on-campus)
This is me at work reading about what an awesome job I have. Go me!

Happy Anniversary Blog!

Around a month late, but it's been a year! I renewed my redirect domain a few weeks ago. My first post here, as usual, was a shameless plug for Livejournal, on Oct 3rd, 2008.

One year later, I was obliviously eating sushi, unaware that I was missing our anniversary. Following the football game, in which we epic failed. Studying for something probably.

Haven't had any bright ideas for posts recently, but here's to another year of happy thoughts!


Happy clothes!


Happy animals!


This one's just funny.

RescueTime rescues time

So for the past week I've been using this handy time tracking tool called RescueTime. It basically keeps track of the time you spend on all your windows and categorizes them from -2 (very distracting) to +2 (very productive).

It's kinda fun. You can tell them you want to "get focused" for however many minutes, and they'll block all your "very distracting" sites.

(I have yet to actually use this feature. Like I'm going to let some program tell me what I can and can't do)

Then they give you detailed reports of how long you've been productive/unproductive.

More productive during the weekend - to be expected.

It also breaks it down by categories.

For some reason it doesn't realize how much TV I watch on my computer...

I kind of feel they should have a more forceful version. Maybe something that includes an angry pop-up that appears when you've spent too much money shopping online. Or a witty message that shows before they destroy my farm on Farmville. Or even automatic IM responses that will alienate all my buddies and prevent them from IMing me. Maybe it'll happen when I start setting time goals.

But the best part is, when your productivity becomes positive, you get this teeny tiny ribbon:

Huzzah! All that hard work and they couldn't even make the ribbon a little bigger. It'd be nice if it flashed and glittered a little too. Something else they should add to the more forceful version.