Exams, LSAT juku, and a brief reprieve

Dear journal/planner: July 31 to August 12 is exams, then August 18-20 is LSAT prep. Then I'm headed for the West Coast! I need more energy and motivation to overcome this lethargic heat...

(P.S. Too bad Waterloo isn't a snow land.)

Draft decks face off!

Today Alan and I faced each other with decks from our G9G and Coldsnap drafts. My G9G deck is one of the best I've made: it won all its single-player and multiplayer matches. It's Izzet-Gruul with a focus on combat tricks and card drawing. Alan's Coldsnap deck is a very aggressive deck that won most of its single-player games. It has an almost unfair allotment of snow cards and exploits that with 3 Skreds.

So, we faced off.

In the first game, Alan easily removed my defenders with 2 Skreds and a Surging Flame, winning the game quickly.

The second game was less one-sided. Alan got me down to 8 but I stabilized and eventually won.

The last game was very memorable. It started off like the first game, and soon I was down to 5. Alan was at 19. I had an idea worth 19 damage if it worked out, but it was risky. So I chose to pursue it.

Okay here's the game state.

Alan had 4 creatures in play:
Karplusan Wolverine, Zombie Musher, Stromgald Crusader, Orcish Bloodpainter (summoning sickness), two land untapped, and 1 card in his hand.

I also had 4 creatures:
Wee Dragonauts, Izzet Chronarch, Izzet Chronarch, Silhana Ledgewalker

So I decided to attack with all my creatures! I had 4 instants in my hand; these were key to the play: Gigadrowse, Schismotivate, Wildsize, Leap of Flame.

Alan declares blockers. He's at a comfortable 19, so Zombie Musher blocks one Izzet Chronarch. He blocked only one creature and didn't give his Crusader flying to block my Dragonauts. That sealed the game.

I cast all my instants, making my Wee Dragonauts 16/5 flying, trample, first strike. The unblocked Chronarch and Ledgewalker contribute to make 19 damage. Ultra! Ultra! Ultra!!!

Thank you H20

A storm has passed over, dropping the temperature a few degrees. Thank you water! Thwater.

Le stuck

I'm stuck on a new math problem. Alan's having problems recalling the solution to a previous problem. I hope we get them soon. On another note, Alan showed me a pic of some card from Time Spiral.

4 8 15 16 23 42

Some builds...

Dunno which class I'll be yet, but here are the work-in-progress builds anyway:

Fury/Arms warrior, Prot warrior

Discipline/Holy priest (contemplating whether to take Spirit of Redemption or Power Infusion..)

I remember school was better than this

I used to like school terms. My profs were great and courses were interesting. However this term sucks. I have no good profs, and the courses are either difficult and boring, or just boring. I'm usually much more motivated to learn.

Thankfully I'm looking forward to several courses next term: Social Psychology, Chaos and Fractals, and maybe even Primate Behaviour (aka Monkey Technology)...

So this term I'll try to weather through, survive, and then hopefully the dawn will come.

Hot

It's hot and humid. I can't seem to sleep, so why try? Yeah I gave up, so I'm sweltering in my room typing, trying to revive my blog. I miss those single room aircons in Japan. It could be 35 outside, but my bedroom would be a nice 23. I would buy one if we have them here... install it in my room...

(Listening to Escaflowne soundtrack.) Let's see, my next post will be list of goals for this term, and maybe a routine I should follow...

Until then, cha!

Quitting WoW and starting MtGO?

My WoW subscription ends this month and I'm supposed to get my ass back to work. This term has to be kick-ass in terms of grades, since I'm applying to law schools starting in the fall. No more gaming for Jason?

But there's MtGO! It's great for taking a break every now and then, since an average game of Magic takes only 10 to 20 minutes or so. So I'm thinking of replacing WoW with MtGO.

I haven't made an account though; I'm content for now playing newbs with 9th edition precons using the free trial. If others are willing to play some MtGO then I'm sure to sign up!

So... who's up for this?

Getting used to campus life

This term reminds me of my 1B term: summer at UW place. It was hot in 1B and will be hotter this time, since I'm on the top floor...

Let's see, what happened the first week?

I turned to the dark side and started playing WoW. So WoW was all I did except classes. My first Onyxia experience was disappointing: it took almost three hours and my raid group wiped on Onyxia Warders (which is shameful).

The elecs '07 are on campus this term, and I want to meet up! Hopefully I'll meet them soon...

I'm back!

To-do risuto

Add: I started using Google Calendar today. Much better than this list =P. Here's the feed.

'x' means done, while '-' means not 'x'.

Moving from apartment:
x clean room
x pack and move to aunt's house

Company:
x work evaluation
x work report evaluation
x application for pension plan lump-sum withdrawal
x farewell speech

Gifts/requested items:
x peanut butter for Silph
x Magic cards for Alan
x Aquarius for Bao
x iPod nano for sister
x high-end shaver for father
x electronic thermometer for mother
x Gundam modeling books for Paul

Visit:
x Chiba University
- Akina downhill
x Akihabara (electric town)

Misc.:
x cancel gym membership
x cancel cell phone

Auld Lang Syne's a playing

Work'll soon come to a close, and then I'll have about a week to boldly go where I haven't gone before. I'm scrapping the FAQ idea: it's too time-consuming! I tried a new Pokémon game involving playing as a kid transformed into a Pokémon. You get a Pokémon pal too -- I chose (read: choose you) Pikachu! Yeah, that didn't last long. Then I tried a Rockman RPG, but that failed as well. So I give up.

I'm welcoming suggestions for where I should travel to in my last week. Anyone know cool places/things to do around Tokyo? I'm sure some of you do. Yeah, the only conditions are that it's around Tokyo (< 2 hour train) and that it doesn't cost a fortune. =)

Oh yeah, the title of this post. Japanese stores have a habit of playing Auld Lang Syne when they're about to close, and I thought that it fits this time quite well.

Personality awareness

So there's this thing called the "Johari window." Basically you describe yourself using a few words from a set, let aquaintances describe you using the same set, then compare the results for some earth-shocking revelation.

And here's my Johari window -- fill it out if you have time! My Nohari window might be more fun though (thanks Wen for pointing this out) ;). If you're interested in this kind of thing like I am you can make one too, and I'll be sure to fill it out.

Add: The "bad" traits are in the Nohari.
Add: I see two glaring flaws: first, the provided vocabulary is inadequate (Ray pointed this out), especially in describing "bad" qualities; and second, people tend to be laudatory or at least anodyne on these things (note: this is kinda forced by the first flaw). I believe these flaws render this "window" unreliable for personality assessment. You might get a kick out of it though.

The complexities of queries

I had this thought while buying strawberries at the local supermarket. Don't ask me why. Wait -- actually that's somewhat relevant. Inspired by computability theories, I was pondering if I could separate the five W's and an H into complexity classes. While carrying the groceries home, I gave it some analysis. Let me proffer my findings.

Let's start with the "easiest" queries. 'Where' and 'when' seem to be the simplest class of questions. In effect, the two are the same thanks to modern physics' space-time. Given that the answer is known, all that is required to relay the info is a vector v=(x, y, z, time), provided with a reference point in space-time. Let's call this class of queries Q1.

Next is 'who' and 'what'. It's obvious that 'who' is just an application of 'what' to human beings. To see why these are of higher complexity than 'where' and 'when', imagine relaying the answer to the querier when you've found it. You would need to describe it. The object o you are describing has characteristics; you could describe them by c = c1, c2, c3, ... etc. This may seem to be of the same complexity as Q1, the only difference that v is of variable length. Yet c may conceivably be infinite or undefined. For example, the answer to the question "what is the meaning of x?" The answer may furthermore depend on the entity which posed the question. This delves into the area of philosophy regarding the nature of truth: is it absolute, subjective, or something else? This I'm afraid is beyond the scope of this post. Let's call this class Q2.

Separating the last two types of queries is hard. Is 'how' simpler than 'why?' I believe so. 'How' (excepting cases like "how come", which is a colloquial way of asking 'why') requests a list or sequence of events that effect an outcome. One could then see this as an extension of Q2: each component in c, the descriptor, would be answers to Q2 or Q1 queries. For example, c1 would contain the first 'event' that triggers the outcome referred to by the 'how' query. This c1 itself is an descriptor to the Q2 query "what is the first event?" In this sense 'how' could be seen as an extension of Q2. Let's call it Q2x.

The remaining query is 'why.' Intuitively one can appreciate the difficulty of 'why' by comparing two oracles, one which can answer any of the above classes of queries, and one which answers 'why'. Which do you think is more intelligent? This shows that we humans in a sense respect the question 'why'. I believe that 'why' has supernatural connotations associated with it. An entity that could give 'why' answers in general would be viewed as a god. 'Why' also gives rise to questions for which even the existence of an answer is undeterminable. This contrasts with Q1 for example, since even if we don't know the answer to "where is x", we know that an answer exists.

What's ironic is that although past classes were each supersets of its prior class, the supernaturally difficult 'why' is not a superclass of Q2x but is simply unrelated. An oracle that answers 'why' cannot provide answers to even Q1 queries. "Why is the location of x?" No good, regardless of how it's phrased. 'Why' is in a superclass of its own; let's designate it W.

I posit a very coarse analogy of 'why' to the unsolvable problems in real complexity theory. The "hard but solvable" problems like the NP-complete ones could be Q2x or Q2.

So in essence, I find W ('why') to be in a realm of its own, and the class relationship Q2x ('how') > Q2 ('what', 'who') > Q1 ('where', 'when'). So... why did I chance upon this thought while buying strawberries? Too hard to answer, sorry. =P

Things to do before I leave

I'm compiling a list of things I should do before I leave. Suggestions are welcome. Here's what I've got so far.

• visit Mt. Haruna (Akina) of Initial D fame
• write a FAQ for a recently released Japanese game
• buy a pack of Japanese Magic cards
• buy a bottle of Aquarius
• buy some peanut butter
  

Kyoto pics

Here are pics of beautiful wintertime Kyoto. It may be cumbersome but by following this adventure log and this map you can get a good idea of what my adventure was like. The pics have timestamps that correspond with the appropriate log entry for easy searching.

The most memorable places were Kyoto University, where I interviewed a prof, the pristine Ginkakuji garden, the grand Kyoto station, and the serene night scenery. Also very memorable were my aching legs that bore me over 40 km that day.


10:20 - Kyoto station. I should have taken pics of the inside; it's really grand with a view like Terminal 3 of Pearson airport. There's also a large department store there with escalators arranged so that it looks like one really long escalator (ie. not overlaid on top of each other). Quite breathtaking.


10:55 - Nishi-honganji temple.


11:55 - Kiyomizu temple.


12:10 - Maiko girls on the way to Gion.


12:20 - Gion pool.


12:20 - Wish board at Gion. There is one that says, "Please let Mr. Asakawa meet a good person."


1:50 - Kyoto University. The construction sorta ruins the pic, but oh well. This building is the easily recognized clockwork tower, and the tree in front of it is the university's crest.


3:25 - A peculiar work of art at Ginkakuji.


3:25 - A beautiful spring/stream/waterfall in the Ginkakuji garden.


3:25 - The Ginkakuji itself.


5:00 - Kyoto Imperial Palace.

Hope this was enjoyable!

Japan pics from 2003

Here are nine select pics from my previous stay in Japan. Photos of Kyoto will come soon in a separate post :)



Let the pics form a 3x3 matrix:
(1,1) athletics festival at a primary school, Kanamachi, Tokyo
(1,2) precipice, Enoshima, Kamakura
(1,3) misty ravine, Okutama, Tokyo
(2,1) fishing lodge, Okutama
(2,2) view of harbor, Enoshima
(2,3) sunset, Enoshima
(3,1) precarious crossing in storm, Okutama (flooding claimed two lives that day)
(3,2) costume party, Harajuku, Tokyo
(3,3) preparing sushi rice, Mejiro, Tokyo

Happy hundredth post

Wahoo, 100th post! Now is there anything to blog about, hmm...

I began composing my work report today, cancelled my gym membership, and had a long conversation with my mother. What else... I watched Mai-Hime on TV today. It's okay but I see the production quality isn't on the same level as say Fullmetal Alchemist. Nothing sets it apart from other magic school-girl anime. I have numerous complaints: lack of memorable music, overly done fanservice, mediocre fight scenes, insubstantial character development (ok, I only watched one episode), narrow range of character expressions and finally predictable actions and outcomes.

There goes my aunt again

My aunt's notorious in our family for her spending habits. I went back to Tokyo on the weekend and found that she bought a $42,000 grand piano. What's more, it was an impulse purchase, made on the spot at some exhibition downtown. I suppose she has high hopes for my cousin, who is just 13 years old. Well, now he's one of the few kids in the world to get a brand new Bechstein grand piano for casual play.