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Warren Shea

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Math 106 = formally Math 125 <= Math 136

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010 at 12:32 am

As I said in a previous post, I’m trying to re-learn Math 136 106 stuff. I spent 6 hours today studying Linear Algebra as if I were a UWaterloo student again and my assignment is due in 2 days (which it sorta is).

How nerdy is this? Tonight is one of the most fun nights I’ve had in weeks. I’m thoroughly enjoying re-learning, doing examples, doing simple arithmetic in my head, etc. for this course. I wanna keep going and going! I’ll probably be doing Math 106 all night tomorrow and all night Wednesday, assuming I get my ASP.NET tool done by Friday, maybe earlier (or maybe I can finish tomorrow…).

Again, I’m having a blast. If only I had this enthusiasm a decade ago…I guess it’s different, doing it for 1 day after 5 years and doing it everyday for 5 years (well, broken up by co-op terms which were effectively summer vacations). I’m so glad I challenged myself to this…what’s next? Relearning Abstract Data Types? Big O notation (which I should probably know…)? Polymorphism (and not the kind where a mage turns you into a sheep)? Recursion? Taylor Theorem? LOL I think I’m out of first year terms I sorta remember :P

Waterloo’s just been too long….

My mind really went to |absolute| mush the last 5 years. I played WoW (on Z’s account) for about 10-15 minutes yesterday. All the quickness at micro, the items/stats to look at, it’s still all too familiar. I bet I could pick up WoW today and play close to the same quality of gameplay as 8 months ago. The reflexes are just merged with my muscle memory in the brain….but again, it came with a terrible sacrifice. My brain function in all other aspects of life.

Durrrr….time to get back to werk werk!

And then Dexter S05 02 :D

Blogging about Blogging Part 6: I have nothing more to write about

Monday, October 4th, 2010 at 7:59 pm

Oops. I missed last month’s Blogging about Blogging. Wait, I’ve been blogging for about 8 months now so I’ve missed more than just one.

You know…I have a LOT of posts. Like, a pretty overwhelming amount. Granted, some of them aren’t real posts. Some of them are short, some of them are rants, some of them carry no real insight within them. But it’s still a lot of posts.

Regardless of how many of them are well written, I’d say that I do have some power over the written word. It may be weak but there must be something there. I don’t think I’d call myself a writer, that would probably be an insult to the world of writers. I guess the best description would be a blogger.

As I look back at everything I’ve written, my overall consistency, my resistance to burn out, I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve accomplished. The quality is not always there but there’s a lot of quantity. And I’m okay with that because for someone like me, I can’t do both. I’m not mentally trained to be able to focus and produce well written work frequently. It’s not my strength. But I really enjoy writing and blogging. I enjoy blogging just because so it doesn’t matter to me if I suck.

I quit WoW in Jan 2010. I also picked up blogging in mid-late Jan. With my addictive personality, it’s pretty obvious that I left one addiction for another. While I didn’t believe blogging would be an addiction, it has become one. But it’s more productive than WoW, at least my skills in the written word must be improving in some way…though my skills in the gamer word have deteriorated. i cant rite good nemore lulz. c wat i did thar?

But I don’t think blogging is a new thing to me entirely. When you get deeper down to my type of blogging, it’s more of a written compilation of my thoughts. Meaning, the method and thinking process has always been there. It’s just always been in my head but now, I’m basically just writing down the thoughts I have.

Blogging here really comes down to me being an introverted thinker. I relish being alone with my thoughts. My mind is generally always active, it’s always “on”, I’m always thinking about something. I absolutely love leaving work or walking to work with a development problem in my head…only to think about it for 10-20 minutes, and be ready to apply what I’ve thought about to the screen when I sit down. I think about anything and everything that interests me in any way. I also love to think when I’m lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. Though that does become a problem when you think about something stressful and your mind starts racing. /dislike that.

I don’t think anything I think or write is revolutionary. There’s insight here and there, I might get a laugh or a disapproving frown…but I still have consistent readers. Even if you skim a lot of it, the fact that you still come…surprises me. Maybe I update frequently and you just want something to read? Maybe I discuss things that aren’t generally spoken about and it’s nice to hear an honest or weird or insecure statement? Maybe sometimes you feel the same way as me…and you’re surprised I have the same thoughts? Maybe you’re completely shocked at how I think….but you want to read more?

I don’t know. All I know is that I really enjoy blogging. I enjoy thinking, I enjoy writing my thoughts. I do feel I’m already going into content repetition and my memory gets fuzzy after 200+ posts so you’ll have to forgive me if I write about exactly the same thing that I’ve already written.

I’m wondering what addiction will take me away from blogging? And when it does, how much will I continue to blog? I wonder when the point when “I have nothing more to write about” will come. I suppose it never truly will, not if I’m always thinking, but there must be some point where 9/10 posts are repeated posts.

Until next month everyone! I’m glad you’re here with me. This journey isn’t so lonely with you by my side.

Nuit Blanche 2010

Monday, October 4th, 2010 at 2:37 am

Left work around 2am…walked from Bloor and Bay to Bloor and Spadina, saw some of the things there. Then took the subway/streetcar to Dufferin and King, Liberty Village and hung out around there til 4:15ish….saw a few interesting things there.



I didn’t get a chance to find out what this was…looks like a graveyard >_<
there’s a girl doing dances or some erotic movements on a tire swing in the cage…or something


i have no idea what this is or what it does.


This was the better/best one I saw…people go in the center and there are sensors hooked up to fire around them. Sorry for the shaky camera, I was trying to predict where the fire was gonna come from based on their movements…but failed horribly. You can skip the first 12 seconds (nothing happens). And the maybe mute the volume, there’s some loud music…

Took a cab back to the annex at around 4:30 and walked to University and Bloor…to get some Tiny Tom Donuts.

At that point, it was about 5am…called it a night.

An early Christmas and an old memory…

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010 at 10:09 pm

I’m an online shopaholic. Well…sorta. Once a month or so, I go through phase of wanting to buy stuff. I’m a very materialistic person…

Materialistic describes a person who is markedly more concerned with material things (such as money and possessions) rather than spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values; an adherent of materialism. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialistic

Ouch. I’d like to say I’m also spiritual and intellectual as well….the cultural thing’s got me tho. I rarely care about that stuff. That definition of materialistic hurts.

Anyways, I’ve prepurchased quite a few things…while this month is slim, there’s quite a lot of stuff coming in November that I’m excited about.

DC Unlimited World of Warcraft: Series 6: forsaken Queen: Sylvanas Windrunner
Delivery Date: October 4 – October 13
Sylvanas

Beauty and the Beast: Diamond Edition Blu-ray
Release Date: October 5
Beauty and the Beast

DC Universe Online
November 2, 2010.
DCUONLINE

Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary Trilogy [Blu-ray]
November 5-November 18
BTTF

Edit: Scott Pilgrim Blu Ray
November 9

Gran Turismo 5 Collector’s Edition Gran Turismo 5 Collector’s Edition
November 16 – November 29
GT5

Batman Beyond: The Complete Series (Limited Edition)
December 6 – December 16
batman beyond

There are so many things to look forward to!
DCUOnline should be fun, GT5 will be nice, I need a game I can pick up and play quickly, not something long and addicting (like my FF13 Collector’s Edition)….again, I’m hoping I really don’t get addicted to the DCUOnline game. Stop me if it becomes noticeable! I’ve been looking forward to the Sylvanas toy ever since I saw it. It looks FREAKING AWESOME.

I think what I’m most excited about is…Back to the Future Blu Ray. I adore that movie, I’ve watched it so many times and I love so many aspects about it. The DeLorean of course but I think this might be the definitive movie that got me into sci-fi, time travel, time paradoxes, maybe even cars.

Man, thinking about this movie…I just totally resurfaced a super old memory.

magic couch

Okay, I doodled this really quick. The top left is a picture of a couch/chair…and to the right, what would happen if you took the cushion part out. You could rest the cushion on the back of the chair to create a kind of…well, it is what it is. So anyways, it was a regular chair….but when I was younger, I would take the cushion out…sit inside that chair part, and pretend I was driving a DeLorean. I’m young enough here that I’m fitting inside that small area, with my feet close to straight. So probably…I dunno, 4 or 6 or I dunno. The bottom image I drew was my “Time Circuits”, attached to the inner part of the couch, infront of me if I were sitting in the chair. A rectangular paper with 8 equal size slits. Between 2, I would put a stripe of paper with numbers on it…so I could move the strips around to get the destination year. I would set a time, go there, and imagine the world of that year (run around a bit), and then jump back in the machine. This is totally true, you can’t make stuff like this up :P It’s too embarrassing!

I remember specifically traveling to the prehistoric era frequently. At the time, dinosaurs had also been a huge interest of mine. So I would travel to that era, see a dinosaur attacking and jump back in the machine and GTFOutta there. I also had my (nerf / cap) guns to protect myself. And my force fields. You gotta have those…as long as there’s enough energy that it doesn’t run out, or you’re screwed.

I really have/had an active imagination and I was always strong with arts and crafts…doing stuff like this. I created this awesome Cyclops visor as well out of gold foil paper and red/blue or red/green 3-d glasses I’d accumulated. I would take the red out of the glasses and put it in the visor…it looked awesome…and it was like seeing the world the way Cyclops would see it (all tinted red)…I know that was Grade 6 (when I made the visor). I was so kool back then </sarcasm>

Ah, the couch memory was quite a fun surprise writing this post. How completely insane my parents must have thought I was. I was always in my own little world…my imagination was something great back then. It’s still with me but it’s more practical, realistic. Back then, I was totally out there…unhindered by the weight of responsibility and society, purely imaginative, original, and border-lining the edge of reality that would be impossible to do now.

The last 3 sh!tty days…

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010 at 5:27 am

Okay…so the .NET thing I started developing 2 months ago is almost due…so I’ve had to put in a few extra hours lately.
On Thursday, I did 10:30am-1:30am…15 hour day.
Friday…1:30pm-1:00am….11.5 hour day.
Saturday 6pm-2:00am….8 hour day.

Now, I didn’t really mind Thursday night, that was more by choice. I got into the developing groove and didn’t want to leave.

Friday, I had a release that was supposed to start at 11pm and finish by 12am. It started around 12am and finished at 1am. Now I was kinda pissed for this one because I had to miss a friend’s birthday event which was at a bar right across the street from where I live. My other friend, who was at that birthday thing, was walking home and I ended up meeting him at 1am, just as my release/conference call was ending. But yeah, saw one friend, hung out with him til 2-3ish…so the night was okay.

Today, came in at 6pm to work on my .NET tool…had a release that was, ideally, supposed to finish at around 10:30pm. Sh!t happened cuz the CMS I was using is f*cking garbage…I ended up finishing my release at around 2am. I don’t often mind working on off hours for releases but today was also Nuit Blanche, which happens once a year and it happens in downtown Toronto. I usually hang out with my friends til 2 or 3am or w/e. But because I got off work (on a Saturday!!) at 2am, I missed it all. F*cking sucks balls. You know, I don’t get mad too often but I was absolutely hating sh!t today. Anyways…I still walked around downtown Toronto from 2am to 5am…so 3 hours wasn’t bad. My feet were killing by the end so I guess I saw enough.

Really pissed that I had to miss 2 social events because of work, 2 days in a row. F*cking ridiculous.

And to top it all off, I come home and one of my monitors, 19″, isn’t displaying properly. It was fine when I left, at like, 6pm…I come back 8 hours later and I can barely read anything. I’m using it now but the color is all F*ed up. Which means….deal with it or…new 24″ Widescreen. Then I would have 2×24″ Widescreens O_O that’d be pretty nice….but what am I, made of money?! Not sure if I can tolerate the color difference. Also, I’d have to get the exact same 24″ widescreen monitor or my OCD wouldn’t be pleased. Hah, like it’s a separate entity.

Anyways, as soon as I got home, around 2am…the night got better. I went out, saw some kool nuit blanche stuff, had some of those tim tom donuts or w/e…I ate like, 20 of them out of 24….I’m at home and everything’s better. I did make really good progress on my ASP.NET tool too the last 3 days so I’m happy for that. Tomorrow’s all about relaxing my ass off. Which kinda sucks cuz it’s 5:30, I still plan to do some reading tonight, meaning tomorrow’s gonna be awfully short. I’ll have to make the most of it. Argh…still kinda angry, maybe I should read tomorrow…and just sleep and get this terrible day over with.

/rant & nerd rage