Fri and Sat happenings
Before I begin, I'd like to let you know that the DC Perspectives link on the right isn't fully functional as yet. For the time being, it's just been inundated with randomly generated dummy text. Not trying to teach myself classic Latin literature or anything, but I've only just collected all of the photos that I think will be interesting to put in there, It comes to about 15 MB, so I desperately need to find a way to reduce the quality a notch. I'm considering making a collage or something similar. The thing should be up by next week since my scholastic year ends this Thursday. Grade 12 complete, yahoo!
Yesterday, Friday, was one of the most eventful days of my year. Mr Langston, my counsellor, cordially informed me that I would be an unsuitable candidate for this year's valedictorian. This news didn't quite come to me as a surprise considering the level of participation I had had within the school. I tried pushing my academic performance to see how far I could go, but that didn't seem to work either. If you're even remotely interested, you can read my nomination statement here. I put in a lot of time and effort into this essay simply because it feels so good to talk about yourself for paragraphs on end and actually have someone read it.
I spent the rest of the day begging people to sign my yearbook. I'm trying mighty hard to follow pursuit since signing yearbooks seems to be the norm of the season. Mr. Janz, my English teacher, was all too pleased to sign my yearbook. He even shook hands with me and wished me the best of the luck, which is all doubly cool. He, being an English teacher, used some creative similes to describe my personality — I will keep to myself for the sake of brevity.
During lunch, Mrs. Birsan (Physics teacher) and I talked at length about the IB Programme at NWSS and how things could be improved. I quite modestly informed her that she doesn't give her students enough homework. I also suggested to her to take in double-starred problems for marks, but I said that only after carefully scrutinizing the horizon for spying grade 11's who looked ready to splinter my skull.
I think Mrs. Birsan thought it to be a splendid idea.
Our conversation was presided by Kelly Lu, an old IB graduate from our school. It took him almost by surprise when I came right in front of him and exclaimed "Hi Kelly!" It was like having a grade 10 stranger appear in front of me suddenly and yell "Hi Rajesh!" as if he had known me for years. Our conversation moved from IB to exams to Waterloo to engineering to jobs to real-estate to careers and finally PHP. It then ended with him giving me his card and asking me to email him my resume. Call that networking.
I found myself having to confront many girls that day for reasons I fail to understand. Well, if it were commonplace girls, there wouldn't have been any particular problems, but the girls I had to talk to were IB heroins who always somehow manage to give me the jitters. After expelling what seemed like a couple liters of sweat, I managed to get a few jobs done and a few requests served. It was quite the mental workout talking to them, trust me.
The evening was spent rushing a practice Physics provincial and watching Madagascar on pirated DVD. The night was spent writing a three page yearbook entry for Adrian — an activity that managed to consume an entire hour of my precious sleeping time.
We're going camping for a single night this Friday to Saltspring Island. So I found myself shopping this afternoon for a heavy-duty backpack, a comfy sleeping bag, and a pair of photo-chromatic lenses. The optician was a good marketer and so we ended up purchasing a new gun-metal frame for me as well. I think gun metal will go well with the tuxedo on graduation day.
I came back home and rejected my University of Toronto offer, and my stomach churned in anguish. I looked out my open window. The clouds hung low, the sky looked overcast. It was mildly raining. There was nothing poetic about it. Nothing at all.
My new testbed
Latex2PNG for PHP works!
$$ \frac{a_b}{c_d} $$
If I wanted to insert a math equation, I would type something like this: \$\$ \frac{a_b}{c_d} \$\$ Okay, This is just too cool. If I wanted to insert even more cool math code:
$$ x+y = z$$
$$ z+a = b$$
$$\therefore x+y+a=b$$
Some geek math code:
$$\sum_{k=1}^nk=n(n+1)/2$$Cool, I can even incorporate PHP code within my documents. Like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 |
<?php
|
What's more, I can also include chemical equations! For example:
$$\frac{1}{2}\,Cu^{2+}\,+\,OH^{-}\,\rightarrow\,\frac{1}{2}\,Cu(OH)_{2}$1.2$Latex2PNG is a PHP port of my brother's latex2png, originally written in LISP. The algorithm is the same, even if nasty, what with all the hard-coded LaTeX markup. The only difference I guess is the ability to pass the scaling factor within the equation itself. You can also "escape" from latex2png mode by escaping the dollar signs with back-slashes. I haven't cared to implement inline equations. I don't use them anyway. Note that the script uses some file-system functions, notably copy and unlink. Do not contact me if a few dear files of yours begin to disappear from your hard-drive.
You'll need PHP5 for the file_put_contents() function (which you can get from PEAR::Compat anyway).
Grab the source (while it's hot) here.
New Homepage
John Burroughs said: "I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see."
Well, well. Aren't we happy to see each other again? Gosh, hasn't it been nearly a year and a quarter since I shut down my old blog? And thanks for remembering that I had asked you to check back in June. It is quite flattering, needless to say.
I've been possessed by a troubling question all through last week. DID WE EVEN HAVE AN APRIL AND A MAY THIS YEAR ?!? Seems that after March 31st, it all-of-a-sudden became June 1st. April was full of studying and revision, and May was full of exam sittings. Hopefully, this month will be more relaxed and a lot less packed.
Yeah, I had to sit fifteen exams and altogether, it was some twenty five hours of feverish exam writing. At the end of it all, I was almost on the throes of intellectual disfigurement. Some non-vital statistics I compiled for you:
03-May-05 : Mathematical Methods SL P1 — 100% DONE! 04-May-05 : Mathematical Methods SL P2 — 100% DONE! 04-May-05 : Chemistry HL P1 — 100% DONE! 04-May-05 : Chemistry HL P2 — 100% DONE! 05-May-05 : Chemistry HL P3 — 100% DONE! 05-May-05 : English A1 HL P1 — 100% DONE! 09-May-05 : English A1 HL P2 — 100% DONE! 10-May-05 : History of Europe HL P1 — 100% DONE! 10-May-05 : History of Europe HL P2 — 100% DONE! 11-May-05 : History of Europe HL P3 — 100% DONE! 18-May-05 : French B SL P1 — 100% DONE! 18-May-05 : French B SL P2 — 100% DONE! 19-May-05 : Physics HL P1 — 100% DONE! 19-May-05 : Physics HL P2 — 100% DONE! 20-May-05 : Physics HL P3 — 100% DONE!
On May 4th, my you-know-what had become as flat as a concrete plasterboard after nearly five and a quarter hours of exam writing. I couldn't think clearly for hours! All the suppleness I had carefully brought together over the years vanished, much to my dismay, in just a day. Wasn't fun at all, I tell you.
—
So yes, welcome to my new corner of the web. Here you will find much of what I find to be important to me and others.
There are going to be several pages in here and lots of stuff to mostly sit back and read; you'll need to find your way mostly. I'll come up with a site map page soon. I'm myself unsure of which things are where. Woe be to those who are organizational maestros (I've come across quite a few in the last half hour.)
I love this new vanilla design. I'll be building on it slowly as time passes. Most pages are rather clean and XHTML compliant. All beautification is done with external CSS stylesheets, and most pages should load up quickly. You won't find too many images and the colors are chosen to be easy-on-the-eye and readable from any computer (even handhelds).
Here are some things that might interest you:
- The links on the right.
- My writings and essays.
- My opinions on contemporary issues.
- Some new ideas that I come up with often.
- My contact information.
- About me, my philosophy and my status.
