feb28.2008

Dear ladies and gentlemen, esteemed audience, revered guests, idle wanderers,

Tonight's segment will diverge somewhat onto a more wordy tangent. As such, I will list the topics that I will be delving into before continuing on. Take it as a buffet, or a cocktail party. You may pick and choose the hors-d'oeuvre of your choice, and skip the topics that don't appeal to your particular interests.

I will be blogging about the following:
-coffeehouse
-me being an idiot
-post-cofeehouse
-thoughts thereafter
-recent happenings
-my current life and state
-final thoughts

Without further ado,

Coffeehouse.

Firstly, apologies if I don't elaborate in detail about certain parts. The post itself is already very long, so I had to try to keep things brief. Don't worry, for you are not forgotten.

Almost 11 PM, and here I am, home from my 3rd time going to RHHS's annual Coffeehouse. Every year, there is Coffeehouse, a night of acoustic acts, whether it be singing, instrumental performances, band repertoires, solos, dance, what have you. I've gone since I was in grade 9.

Oh the memories. I remember in grade 9, I didn't know anyone, and I still attended all the school events. Not so that I could indulge in the self-pleasure of having 'participated in a school event', but because I love music. Just like talent show, I came, picked a spot to sit by my lonesome, and engulf myself with what I was watching - the show. And although as years went by, I know more and more people, the experience is the same. The performers are just as amazing, talented, impressive, even intimidating to me. That's always been the same.

In any case, back on topic.

Among all the performances, there some of the most memorable ones were, in no particular order:
-Solomon's band - Autumn Leaves
-Nicholas singing Oasis - Importance of being Idle

It was nothing having to do with the players in Solomon's band that impressed me, although they're all very talented, but it was the song. It's a classic, but now I know why. The tune stuck in my head, as soon as I got home, I've already accustomed myself to two more versions. The more I listen to it, the more I love it. The chord progressions seem almost identical to "All the Things You Are", just a note. The song was a very memorable one, that I'll be sure to revisit in the future.

Nicholas... Wow. He sat behind me in math all of last semester, but never would I have thought that he had a voice like he does. It amazed me. Not to mention that having gotten to know him a bit, despite him being a new guy on the block, he's an incredibly nice guy. Don't know how else to really put it. Friendly and open-minded, now that I got to see him shine, I gotta say - lots of respect for him. I'm not sure if he'll ever know that, but hopefully I'll get the chance to let him know how much I respect him before he goes off to University.

Those were just two, but there were plenty of other amazing performances, such as:

-Danile and his beautiful R&B voice.
If I didn't know him and closed my eyes, I would have almost certainly mistaken him for a black guy with a rich smooth voice perfect for soulful R&B. He's all that, just not black.

-Hubert, Chris, Minha.
Wow. Great sound on the flute and the violin, not to mention the piano too. Most of all, the balance was really awesome! There were times when it was the violin's time to shine, and others, the flute. Really cool.

-Yoon and Zeyu.
Haha. Hilarious guys. Nuff said.

And mentions to all the other talented performers:
Wincy Sin
Josh and Co.
Sung !!! Chyah!
Jazz Choir
Dancers
Singers
The whole bunch.

Not to mention, of course...
Us. Gold Fever.

All in all, it was a great night. I've always loved Coffeehouse, and tonight was no exception. It was a great experience, and lots of fun. To those that didn't come to Coffeehouse... I wish you did. =D.

However, it's getting awfully late. So have a good night, ladies and gentlemen. If you read through all of that, I sincerely apologize for boring you to death and taking up your time and effort.

With that, stay tuned for:
-me being an idiot
-post-cofeehouse

Have a goodnight!
2imu

feb25.2008

Today in chemistry...

feb24.2008

Brain-tired from a gruesome four hour math contest, I am finally home, and sitting in front of my computer. The above image is one of Banksy's works (a British graffiti artist). I like his works, and his creativity. Check him out at:

Banksy

In any case, the math contest was another learning experience for me. Four hours. Five questions. I solved one - maybe two. I wasn't exactly surprised at it's level of difficulty, but I was disappointed that I wasn't able to fully solve a couple of them. For those who have any interest as to what the particular questions were:

1. There are ten cards with the number a on each, ten with b and then with c, where a, b and c are distinct. For every five cards, it is possible to add another five cards so that the sum of the numbers on these ten cards is 0. Prove that one of a, b or c equals 0.

2. Can it happen that lcm(1,2,...,n) = 2008 x lcm(1,2,...,m) for some positive integers m and n? (lcm(a,b,...,x) means the least common multiple of a,b,...,x.)

3. In triangle ABC, angle A=90º. M is the midpoint of BC and H is the foot of the altitude from A to BC. The line passing through M and perpendicular to AC meets the circumcircle of triangle AMC again at P. If BP intersects AH at K, prove that AK=HK.

4. No matter how two copies of a convex polygon are placed inside a square, they always have a common point. Prove that no matter how three copies of the same polygon are placed inside this square, they also have a common point.

5. We may permute the rows and may permute the columns of the table below. How many different tables can we generate?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
7 1 2 3 4 5 6
6 7 1 2 3 4 5
5 6 7 1 2 3 4
4 5 6 7 1 2 3
3 4 5 6 7 1 2
2 3 4 5 6 7 1

And those are the questions.

In any case, I'll close with something new that I came across yesterday. Actually, Terry showed it to him, so it's courtesy of him. It's called Anaheim Machines, where a man by the name of Ivan Sanchez creates 3D models of various Gundams. It's incredibly, incredibly, ridiculous. Ridiculously amazing, that is.

Check out his work at:

Anaheim Machines

feb22.2008_part02

Reach, the ManToss. I'm no ManToss, but I'm getting there. Represent!

Time for another Starcraft rant... hmm where do I even begin..

Firstly, more Hamachi games were played tonight (typical Friday night). Ambrose, Michael and I played around a bit, and then the Coreans came on. Moo challenged me to play him, so once again, I head into the only player that matches up as Protoss against me. I get little PvP practice, not to mention that any game of Starcraft feels a bit intense to me. Up until this point, we have been 2-1 (the first time we played, we 1-1'ed, and another time, I beat him with a dual gate zealot rush).

So he seemed pretty determined to want to play me, so I jumped right in. What to do, what to do? He didn't want to play on LT, and he suggested Luna, so I figured why not. The map's a bit bigger, but makes little difference. I knew what I was going to do. Instead of dragging the game into a macro war, I decided to seal it with a triple gate zealot build. Him tending to lean towards tech builds in PvP, this was the right build to trump that.

It was all over in a little over four minutes. I noticed his building placement, so I decided to pylon prison his dragoon. Not the first time, but certainly slick.















Yeah. Like that. Trapped his goon, and.. zealots went for the probes. The pylon prison was sort of irrelevant, but it was cool. In any case, that's how that one went down.

At the beginning of the next game, I was trying to decide whether or not to do the same build again. It was LT this time, as opposed to Luna, so I opted for a 2 gate zealot build, less strain on the economy. This time, a bit more wary than before, he posed a zealot and probe on his ramp. In a stroke of.. intuition, I brought 2 probes with my initial zealot, and.. the game proceeded to be just like the previous one, except a little bit less in my favour than before. In any case, this game also ended in about five minutes. 2 - 0. That was that.

More importantly, then, Ryan Jung came on. And.. after some fussing, I decided to play him 1v1. In the beginning, it felt like a typical PvZ. I fast expanded, and in response he double expanded. One moment of pure pimp that I recall now was that when my scouting probe was poking around his base, I was trying to see what lair tech he was going to. He put down a Hydralisk Den, and that was that. What I didn't know was that in his natural was his actual focus: a Spire. But his ramp was cleverly guarded with two zerglings, and my probe was chased headfirst into the deathtrap, so no Spire-intel for me. Fortunately, Stargate was still a part of my build, and he eventually contained me with Mutalisks, Scourges, Lurkers, Hydralisks and Zerglings. Supply-wise we were exactly matched, but him containing me, he expo'ed alot. Needless to say, he was going to win eventually, but unfortunately, he disconnected dropped. Poor guy. The game was his no doubt.

I, however, still feel proud that I put up as good a fight as I was ever going to. I played well, and the outcome is irrelevant. However, after the game, from bwchart, it came to my attention that:

He has a.
Ridiculous.
APM.
Of.
300.

That's amazing. Terry Cho already told me about him and his gosu skills, but now I guess I got to see things first hand. Good experience. I respect him alot. GG Ryan.

In summary, tonight was a very successful night for me. Well-executed games vs Moo, and a good effort against Ryan. No worries, I'll get there, and I'll show that Chinese people can play just as well as Coreans =D. Or at least, I'm going to be ManToss among us group of players.

That's enough Starcraft ranting. If you read all the way until here, I hope it was not a disappointing read. In any case, I will close as usual with a random picture. This one is not a sandwich, but it's still cool.













Savior, the Maestro

feb22.2008_part01

French Class With Alex Tse


Voila. The first comic of the day. Most people probably wouldn't find it funny, unless they know Alex Tse, but oh well. Enjoy.

Anyways,

Today went by pretty quick. In the morning, I had a tape test in music, except I did it live. Nervous as heck, but I... owned it. That made me pretty happy. The rest of the day was uneventful, until 3:30. There was the Hoops for Heart 3on3 basketball fund-raiser, and we had some fun. It was a fun experience, and I found that I wasn't as fat and unfit as I thought I might've been. It was fun.

In any case, tonight will just be another Friday night. Do some homework, play some Starcraft. The weekend will be eventful though. Tournament of Towns math contest at UofT Sunday. Hope that goes well..

That's enough for now. I might post again tonight. Till then, byEE.

2imu

feb21.2008_part02

It's still fairly early, so I figured that I would just go ahead and start posting stuff. Where do I begin..

Well, if you're not already aware, my name is Zimu Zhu. I'm sure introductions tend to include things such as personal facts, my hobbies, likes, dislikes, etc, but I'm sure I don't have to go into that. If you don't know, I'm sure my posts will more than likely fill you in.

In any case,

Time for a little rant.

These few days have not been very good for me. In fact, I feel as if I'm entering a period of.. a slump. Desperation, discouragement, not to mention spell-check dependent and emotionally vulnerable. From a math contest screw-up, to suddenly realizing my incredibly time-restrained state in terms of university preparation, since I want to head to America. There can only be one way to describe my state right now:














Poor 이성은. But that's enough negativity. After all, no one likes a pessimist.

On the topic of Starcraft ( Yes. Starcraft is a topic that I will be visiting on a very frequent basis. ), the RHHS Starcraft scene is becoming fairly vibrant. A few weeks ago, things have moved from channel firewall on battle.net to a new-found home: [rH]server. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we have adopted Hamachi, a program that connects multiple computers into a LAN connection. Finally, more more latency issues.

From a modest few of me, Terry Cheung (tc_), Mike Weng (bigaboo) and Ambrose Lee (Whyzguy), the server is now populated by more than a dozen people, some Chinese, some Korean. In the circle now are:

The Non-Koreans:
Zimu Zhu - 2imu - Protoss
Alex Bedley - aeoliant - Random
Michael Weng - bigaboo - Zerg
Terry Cheung - tc_ - Terran/Protoss
Ambrose Lee - Whyzguy - Terran
Hubert Fan - HUBB - Terran/Zerg

The Koreans:
John Lee - Random
Moo Kim - Protoss
Jason Lee - ???
Terry Cho - Terran
Stanley Moon - ???
Ryan Jung - Terran

And things are pretty active. Soon, there will probably be some sort of nation war among us in the near future - the Chinese vs the Koreans. We're sure to lose, but we'll see. Who knows, they might end up just like 이성은. Or not. Obviously, Mike's the only Zerg. Bring it home, Savior =O. Games usually are played on the weekend.













wtf?!

That's enough about Starcraft. In fact, that's enough random mumbling for one go.

To finish off, check out this video. There's really no point, except that it's a demonstration of awesome graphics. Linked by Ambrose Lee:

Watch Me

Have a g'nite,
2imu

feb21.2008_part01

this is the first post.

. . .

hopefully in the near future, i can begin to slowly, but steadily, fill this blog with random goods. it may include any and everything, from music, to pictures, to deep sentimental reflections, or link dumps, or rants, etc. anything goes. just take it as a 2imu dump site, cool? for now...