The Mandelbrot set

I'm doing a project on this flamboyant set for PMATH 370. It's interesting and yields eye candy when the numbers are crunched. I'll put up a link to my project website once it's done! Update: here it is!

So it's 11:10 pm now. Alan comes in and says "I will take a shower sir." I counter with "see you tomorrow!"

Behold: the thing that reads a lot!

Lately, I've been watching Gilmore Girls to get re-acquainted with my feminine side. I've discovered that I can relate to the show on many levels. Its protagonist Rory reminds me of myself before I got my first computer. Like her, I was "the thing that reads a lot," consuming both fiction and non-fiction, novels and magazines, scientific journals and poetry. Actually, not much poetry, but hey, the point is I read a lot. Nowadays I don't read much save course material (shamefully not much of that either) and the news every week or so.

I have to start reading more, especially since I'm set for law school. So starting Christmas break I'm going to read lots. Rory's collection will be a good place to start.

Choices

Choice is a great thing to have. The liberty to make decisions is often taken for granted in our society. Yet choice can also be as a burden, a pressure on one's shoulders. When I'm presented with difficult choices, like most people I tend to weigh the pros and cons of each choice:

So the game today is Pick Your Ideal Law School, and on the table I have two great universities from Canada and the HYSCCN clique from the south. I haven't been accepted to many places yet so I'm being a little preemptive. Oh well.

Toronto
Pro: reputation, Bay St. placements, faculty
Con: weather, "competitiveness"

UBC
Pro: location, curriculum, and there's a rez with tatami flooring
Con: it's far away, biglaw placement

Harvard
Pro: reputation, students, faculty, NY placements
Con: lots of US history (this goes for all US schools though), cost (this too)

Yale
Pro: reputation, reputation, faculty, students
Con: low chance of getting in, cost

Stanford
Pro: campus, students
Con: cost

Columbia
Pro: NY placements
Con: cost

Chicago
Pro: don't know much about Chicago actually
Con:

NYU
Pro: New York
Con: New York

This goes to show I have much research to do before I can start deciding.

End of term draft

During a break from studying I drafted Time Spiral online with Alan. Unfortunately we both lost, but when I tested my new G/W token deck against five of Alan's draft decks, it performed 2-0, 2-0, 2-1, 2-0, and 2-0. So it's surprisingly good -- and it recovers from bad hands gracefully. Its main weakness is evasion creatures, but it features cards like Aether Web in the sideboard to recover.

Oh and this is the first time I've used my sideboard to great effect! So here's the decklist.

17 Lands
11 Forest
6 Plains

15 Creatures
1 Durkwood Baloth
1 Greenseeker
2 Herd Gnarr
1 Savage Thallid
1 Spike Feeder
1 Sporesower Thallid
1 Thallid Germinator
2 Thallid Shell-Dweller
1 Amrou Seekers
1 Castle Raptors
2 Icatian Crier
1 Outrider en-Kor

8 Other spells
1 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1 Tromp the Domains
1 Strength in Numbers
1 Thrill of the Hunt
1 Fortify
1 Griffin Guide
1 Pentarch Ward
1 Temporal Isolation

Cards of note in my sideboard are Chronosavant, Pull from Eternity, Primal Forcemage, Phantom Wurm, Havenwood Wurm and Aether Web.

The deck's main strength is its synergy: Outrider/Shell-Dweller, tokens/Fortify, tokens/Tromp, tokens/Strength in Numbers, Icatian Crier/Herd Gnarr, Thallids/Herd Gnarr, tokens/Primal Forcemage, and so on are game-winning combos. Herd Gnarr became 14/14 flying trample once, and Tromp and Fortify have each made a life total drop below -18.

Yet Alan's decks weren't pushovers -- not even close. If he has time he may post his decklists for all to see: some contain a questionable number of bombs...

It's that time of the term again

Finals. I usually love finals: it's free time if one has been somewhat diligent throughout the term. Except I haven't. So this is going to be an arduous battle.

Darn law school applications.

Alan's Birthday Draft Decklist

Drafting hasn't been fun for me since Coldsnap was released. But today's draft was very fulfilling -- I drafted a "suspendful", interactive deck; it's fun to play. I should test it against my old decks...

16 Lands
9 Island
7 Mountain

14 Creatures
1 Giant Oyster
1 Stormcloud Djinn
2 Coral Trickster
1 Slipstream Serpent
2 Spiketail Drakeling
1 Brine Elemental
1 Viscerid Deepwalker
1 Errant Ephemeron
1 Crookclaw Transmuter
1 Greater Gargadon
1 Keldon Halberdier
1 Firemaw Kavu

10 Other spells
1 Fire Whip
1 Sudden Shock
1 Ignite Memories
1 Word of Seizing
2 Orcish Cannonade
1 Grapeshot
1 Clockspinning
1 Snapback
1 Foriysian Totem

Back to Blogging

Now that I'm done with applications and most of my midterms, it's time to return to blogging and visiting blogs regularly!

I've spent the past few weeks working on admissions essays for each law school. It's been a long, demotivating process at times, but ultimately it was a rewarding journey of self-discovery. Surprisingly, my midterms have been pretty stellar throughout this period. Maybe I can grab a 95% average this term? O.o

Tentative priest build

14/0/47

Month of applications

October is the month for applications to Ontario law schools. I'm thinking of applying to U of T, and maybe UBC and some U.S. law schools. Hmm, I need to think of some stuff to put on my essays and I hope my LSAT score turns out good.

For now, it's time to catch up on a lot of school work!...

Unofficial Transcript

Let's see what I've done over the last four years. It's been mostly school and Japan.

I came to Waterloo in Fall 2002 majoring in PC & video games with a minor in dining out.

Snes 106: Introduction to Final Fantasy 6, Mario RPG and Zelda
Plaza 120: Plaza restaurants
WC3 101: Introductory Warcraft III
WC3 100: Warcraft III: Single player, Multiplayer, and Mods (double credit)

I'm cutting out a few terms because I'm lazy.

In 2B I changed my major to World of Warcraft and took a couple electives.

Wow 102: Introduction to World of Warcraft
Wow 134: Class selection (to which the answer is "Paladin")
Wow 138: Why Stormrage is Down: Semi-Real Analysis
Drift 135: Introduction to Driving sideways
Draft 136: Drafting in Racing games and Magic: the Gathering

I took another school term right after to get interviews for Epson.

Winter 2005

Dungeon 235: Introduction to Instances
Econ 239: Gold farming and Inflation
Raid 330: An Overview of Raiding
Group 336: Introductory Group Theory
Drift 486: Advanced sideways driving in PGR2
Pld 389: The Third Life

Then I went to Japan for a year.

Spring 2006
Pld 399: Being Immune
Guild 340: Militis Justica
Raid 454: Molten Core, Zul'Gurub and Ahn'Qiraj
Draft 380: Online drafting
Magic 338: Magic's rules and interesting cards
Socio 250: Badminton, Bubble Tea and Card games

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...