Earlier this year, I ran the Warrior Dash in New York to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It was definitely a ton of fun, and I’m glad I did it. I wrote a summary of it for the Physical Fitness Community Blog, one of the many community blogs part of the Stack Exchange network.
You can read all about my Warrior Dash adventure by visiting the link below:
Have you ever had that creepy feeling when you go to the gym and you catch someone glancing at you in the mirror? Have you ever noticed how professional poker players were sunglasses? Have you ever secretly given a cue to someone with your eyes? What about when people roll their eyes or look away in shame? Our eyes make over about two to four movements a second and over 100,000 movements per day. We rely on our eyes so much but are often unaware of its activity. It is often said that the eyes are the windows to the souls. At the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), eye tracking research is providing windows into how people think about tasks and goals.
This was a paper I wrote for the Science Writing course I took at RIT in Spring 2004 which was taught by Lisa Hermsen. I discussed the differences between the popular perception and actual scientific reality of nanotechnology.
Imagine if we could create robots the size of ants. Imagine if we could create robots so small that we could not see them. Imagine if these tiny robots took over the world. What if they could interface with humans? This seems to be the theme of nanotechnology but only in popular culture. In reality, nanotechnology actually refers to technological developments on a very, very small scale. Nanotechnology is one of the newest and youngest fields compared to other sciences. There is such a gigantic potential for nanotechnology that we have not even touched upon yet. Unfortunately, nanotechnology is very often confused between reality and fantasy. Its use in popular culture is so misused that the difference between fact and fiction is not crystal clear. Read the rest of this entry
The following is a review of the musical Five Guys Named Moe that was performed at Geva Theater in Rochester, NY in the Summer 2006 season. I wrote this for a theater class I was taking in school.
An all-time greatest hit of Geva Theater, Five Guys Named Moe is back on stage for its 10th anniversary. Pamela Hunt directs the Clarke Peters musical with choreography from Mercedes Ellington. The basic plot revolves around Nomax, a guy whose woman left him for broke. Out of his radio pop five guys named Moe who then proceed to console Nomax on the topic of love. The moment we see Nomax and all the various incarnations of Moe, we instantly develop a love for their charming personalities and the life they bring to the stage through Louis Jordan’s music, song, and dance. Read the rest of this entry
“I made a choice once to live a life of responsibility. Who am I? I’m Spider-Man, given a job to do. And I’m Peter Parker, and I too have a job.”
These are the words spoken by Peter Parker during the introduction to Spider-Man 2. They capture the nature that is both Peter Parker and Spider-Man. At first glance, Peter does not seem like a superhero at all. He is like the rest of us – a regular citizen trying to live a life of balance. Spider-Man differs in that he swings around the city and saves people. His life is definitively like any other superhero’s life. The problem with these two identities is that neither one lives independently of the other. Peter Parker often finds it difficult to fit Spider-Man into his normal life. Whereas most other superheroes lead separate lives from their alter egos, Peter Parker cannot find a way to balance his two identities. This conflict, however, creates one of the most human individuals in the superhero realm. Read the rest of this entry
The process of science writing can almost be described as a science itself. Science writing is essentially transforming information from high-level researchers and scientists to the average folks of society. Our lives are affected by science every day. Our future lies in the hands of scientists, engineers, and researchers. We need to read about what is going on in the world of science. Before we can even read about science, someone has to write about it. The purpose of science writing is to bring science to people’s lives, educate them about it, and make them understand what the science represents. To meet this goal in the best way, there are specific criteria that a writer should follow in order to produce “good” science writing.
This is a blog post I wrote for the Stack Exchange Fitness blog that I had mentioned regarding why I chose martial arts for fitness a few days ago. I’m cross-posting it here for archival reasons, but I suggest looking at the Fitness and Nutrition Stack Exchange and getting involved with the community (especially the chat and blog) for a wealth of information, resources, and links.
I’m a nerd. I’ve always been one since I was a kid. I never grasped the rules of sports that other kids just seemed to innately understand. I lacked coordination, strength, and speed which resulted in me being picked almost always last for any kind of team sport. That was a regular experience for me since early elementary school all throughout the end of high school.
This is a paper I wrote about the artificial intelligence in the game Hitman: Blood Money developed by IO Interactive and published by Eidos Interactive. I wrote this back in May 2007 for my “AI for Interactive Envrionments” course taught by Jessica Bayliss in the Rochester Institute of Technology Computer Science Department.
Hitman: Blood Money is the fourth video game in the Hitman series where the player is tasked to carry out assassinations without being caught. The player assumes the identity of Agent 47 (simply referred to 47), a genetically engineered male clone designed to be the perfect soldier. 47 was created in a secret laboratory and possesses the DNA of several dangerous criminals along with an extra 47th chromosome (as opposed to the normal count of 46 chromosomes that people have). While an extra chromosome usually leads to defects in real life, 47 is granted extra speed, stamina, strength, and intelligence in the game’s fictional world. 47 was trained to be the perfect assassin from an early age, and no other clone or project has come close to the success of that is him. He eventually escaped the facility that he was created in and soon became a hired assassin.
“Why isn’t anyone doing palm trees?”
The teacher’s tone carried a tone of frustration through the air. She almost said it as if she was angry at them.
A bunch of New England second grade kids sat silently in a classroom. Most of them probably had never even seen a palm tree before. Their minds were confined to the likenesses of great oaks, sweet maples, and tall pines. Even better, these kids were inner-city Boston kids. Not many choices for trees when you don’t have that many to look at.
Their drawings decorated the room. Their trees were all the basic brown tree stump and cloudy green mass for leaves. Add a blue sky and green ground and that’s all there is. Almost no one drew any seasonal trees. No fall colors, no dead winters. They were all variations on spring.
However, one boy took his teacher’s words seriously. He secretly began drawing a palm tree planted on a sandy, hilly island. He drew a tan line and then colored the round shape in. He took up his brown crayon and began drawing the outline for the tree, coloring it in as he finished. He began to draw pointy leaves for the palm tree growing out in various directions and colored those in when he was done. He even drew some coconuts to add to the scene. However, he was disappointed. He felt empty on the inside, almost shameful that he made it just because his teacher complained about the lack of variety. He didn’t feel proud of it and didn’t want to show it to anyone.
With a green crayon in hand, the same color as the leaves, he began to color over the sand. He scribbled furiously over the ground, growing grass over the arid landscape, reshaping the land, adding vegetation where there was none. He took his brown crayon and thickened the tree stump, making it straighter than the curvy palm he once made, and also enveloping the coconuts he had drawn. With a darker green, the color of forests, he drew an enormous cloudy figure around the original palm trees and just covered everything up.
He still did not feel proud of what he had done, but he thought it looked better than the palm tree. And it was still hung on the wall in the forest of all the other kids’ drawings. The teacher never said anything else about the trees. Either she gave up on them or just let them be. Maybe both. Maybe neither. No one else ever saw that boy’s original drawing that day, but that didn’t matter. All he cared about was whether he made the right choice or not.
When I was attending Boston Latin School for my education from 7th grade to 12th grade, there was a literary magazine, called The Register, that would come out twice a year, once during the winter season and again later in the spring. I have a little collection of all the ones published when I was there less the first one available to me. I did not pick that one up because I didn’t know know what it is and didn’t have much interest in it. That day I borrowed one from a friend to pass the time on the bus ride home. The Register contained all different sorts of short stories, prose, poems, and art. I enjoyed it greatly. I then changed my mind about The Register. I looked forward to their releases every year to see the things that people were writing.
When 9th grade rolled around, I tried my hand at “writing” poems. I had no formal or informal training on how to write anything except for five-paragraph essays for my English classes. Nevertheless, I gave it a try. After playing with words, stumbling with structures and breaks, figuring where to put what lines where to convey what I wanted, after pages and pages of writing and scribbling and arrows, I wrote something that was five lines long. It was crap (not that I really thought so at the time). The feel of the “poem” was probably more overgeneralized than cryptic, and it didn’t really have that much meaning underneath the words. My “poem” was published on its own page with a fading greyscale picture underneath it. I was happy that it was published so I kept trying to write more things and seeing what came out.
I abandoned my little bound notebook that I used to brainstorm and piece things together out of phrases and words. Anything that poured out of my mind would be written down and revised and revised. I submitted a whole bunch of things (a lot of them really bad too). Most were rejected, but there were always a few that managed to get in. I also noticed that as I got older, the worse the writing in The Register seemed to get. My writing was never good to begin with, but all the pieces in The Register revolved around some teen angst issue. You read one of them, and you’ve read them all. I wanted to change things, so in my junior year I joined the editorial staff.
Joining the editorial staff, as it turned out, proved to be a lackluster effort. I was among the small group of people that had to read over 200 submissions and rate each one on a scale of 1-5. There were very few submissions that I liked. Nearly everything I read was just the same thing over and over. There were only a few that were “different” that broke up the monotony of reading each piece. I was on the staff for only two or three publications. The whole process was just very tiring and tedious. The worst part of it was that every single submission was crap. Everything was awful. The “best” ones were published, and the magazine was still crap.
There was one particular one I recall very well that was (very well) written by a friend. It was the top-rated one, and it definitely deserved to be. The only reason why it wasn’t published was because it contained a school stabbing, and that didn’t go over so well with the faculty advisor. One of my other friends reads and writes a lot; he knows what makes good writing and what doesn’t. He knows techniques, words, structure. He’s submitted crappy things that have made it to publication that were intended as jokes or mockeries of the literary magazine. He wrote a poem for an English assignment five minutes before class and ended up submitting it. It was published along with corresponding artwork to help convey the meaning (which also really bothers me too when the editors do that). I even submitted a stupid rhyming poem (cryptically about video games and their evolution and future), and it made to publication. That was for the last issue when I was in high school, at which point I was glad I had quit the staff.
I understood what kind of “standards” these people were looking for and the stuff that everyone was submitting. I didn’t want any part of it. Things were originally creative when I was in the seventh grade. They were imaginative. They were worlds that people had created and shared with the rest of the world. Eventually, subject matter evolved into smaller worlds. The nature of these pieces became more personal, more introverted, more mundane, less creative, and a lot less imaginative. These people needed to learn how to write. It was as if they were basing their writing on what was previously published in The Register (which was deemed to be good). Rather taking courses or finding resources on how to write, everyone would just imitate what was written before. It became like a pandemic disease because everyone was doing it. The only writing class that is offered at Boston Latin School is the Advanced Placement English Language and Composition. Other than that, these kids are on their own, and they won’t get far if all they’re looking at are recently published Register editions.
My sister has even made submissions to The Register as a joke. She wrote about a thing about an egg and her physics project in about five minutes and submitted it at the last minute. Lo and behold, it was published. She also tells me that it’s only getting worse and worse. People are either very teen angst in their pieces, or they just write about their grandma and her cooking. It’s all extremely overdone and tired. The editorial staff might as well just start taking things off of people’s LiveJournals. The school newspaper has been just the same. The writing was good writing my first year, but totally plunged down the toilet drain when I graduated.
The point is that people need to learn how to write, and write well. That isn’t to say that they shouldn’t give up writing altogether. Improvement doesn’t come like a pack of instant Ramen noodles. It takes time, learning, critiquing, mentoring, and patience before someone develops skill, style, and understanding.