Schiggy

Whoa super blog redesign. Just switched over to the newer "layout" style for Blogger...something which I apparently neglected for a really long time. I actually tried to go back to see an older post and noticed there was no such link available to see previous posts. That's when I realized that I really should have tried to update the layout a long time ago. There's also way more room in the actual blog body now so I don't need to shrink/crop images so much just to post them here. Overall I'm pretty happy with this layout. It's a bit spartan, but at least it's easier to work with than before.

It's a bit sad to see that I have basically made the same number of posts in this blog over my undergrad stint as I did in grade 12 alone, but it seemed that I didn't really have too much motivation to post in the blog. In any case, I'll consider that finally revamping the blog makes up for some of that apathy. I think the fact that I even update at all is a testament to how I'm really using it as a sort of "public diary bank" to store random memories of mine in case I feel like perusing them again the future. In a silly recent happening, it seems I was getting quite a few hits to the blog via a post I made a while back due to the post title (now changed). I only noticed when the Photobucket-hosted images I placed in that post were gaining an unnaturally high number of views. Oh internet... you never cease to amaze me.

Finished with biomedical toxicology undergraduate...four years in the bank, with another possible four more years to come...? Probably the thing I enjoyed most about the university years were the times I was able to stay in residence downtown. Being able to walk around the city and to class without needing to bother with a 4 hour daily commute is rather refreshing. Being able to walk to the local store or fast food place without driving is nice too. Over those years I started to dabble more in cooking and baking (still not proficient though), extended my creative proclivities from iSketch into sites like Sporcle and BPT, and have expanded my anime repertoire. Wow that sounds geeky, but in any case, I think these are the main things that I actually bothered to make some blog posts about during these years.

Lastly, after discovering the Pages gadget thingy I decided to go ahead and make a page for the quizzes I create in Sporcle so I don't need to stuff the end of my blog posts with tons of links as I was doing before. Go ahead and check them out, if you please :) Don't mind the tons of Pokémon quizzes since I kind of got into a frenzy due to playing Pokémon Soul Silver again, but I assure you if you try them that I've tried to make them as refined and enjoyable as possible. >_>

I'm very surprised and flattered that I somehow have three quizzes voted as Editor's Choice. Of course, that's nothing compared to the seasoned Sporcle quiz creators, but it's good enough for me~ I was especially lucky with the latest quiz, Name the Theme - Symbols. I took some time over two days to gather the images and arrange them together, and then posted it shortly after completion. In an unfortunate stroke of timing, just as the quiz was getting its first plays, someone decided to enlist the aid of a second duplicate account and post about 10 quizzes in a row in the same category as my quiz, and thus effectively shoving it out of the Newly Created Quizzes list. (You're normally only allowed to post 7 quizzes/month, to be fair to others.) In a sudden turn, the new editor for the category decided to post my quiz as an Editor's Choice, awarding it with great visibility, (and the credit of being approved by an editor) and so more people were able to try it.

From my observations, the initial phase in the Newly Created Quizzes is really the only way your quiz can garner any notice and possibly become well-played. Normally once your quiz is off the list, it'll only ever be seen if someone happens to search for it or some key terms related to it. If you managed to attract enough plays, it might remain on the Most Played or Highly Rated lists for a while. There's also the Editor's Choice list which has very high visibility, but how long it stays depends on how often the editor posts quizzes up. Usually when Sporcle editors or well-known quiz creators post a new quiz, their quizzes stay visible for a long time. Essentially it's like a positive feedback loop - if you get a lot of plays, your quiz will likely continue to get a lot of plays and thus stay even longer in high visiblity. If your quiz doesn't get enough attention early on, it'll take some luck to get it back on the radar. And that's along the lines of what happened to me. I wish they'd really extend the Newly Created Quizzes list (a scroll bar would be an easy fix) since with so many quizzes being created, it's very easy for quizzes to be overlooked and buried for a long time.

EDIT: Haha wow, just after I made this rant, I go onto Sporcle and find they went and added a way to see a much longer version of all the lists, including Recent Additions. Kudos, Sporcle.

On another note, finally got that terrible desktop computer fixed up with a new hard drive. Some combination of the hard drive being really old and a bunch of other things led the computer into the most ultimate start-up infinite loop ever, where it would continually loop upon start-up, not even letting me into Safe Mode. Let's just hope it manages to run more like a normal computer now, although I'm not keeping my hopes up too high.

Future plans - a trip to Florida with friends in June, for some serious theme park action. Looking forward to it very much~

And yes, check out this webcomic if you haven't already - hilarity is sure to ensue.
Axe Cop

IL NOSTRO MONDO STVPIDO

Somehow this week has managed to be the culmination of almost everything that I initially feared could go wrong with taking public transit during winter. Compared to this, the fiasco on Friday could be a mere passable event.

Highlights of the week include:
● Almost being late for a midterm
● Being late for a lab session
● Being trapped on a VIVA bus for over three hours
● Almost missing Chinese New Year's Eve dinner
● The most hours ever spent studying on a public transit vehicle in a single week
● Writing a midterm for the worse course I have ever taken

Initially, I thought that the storm this week would be way more mild than last week, with less snowfall but a chance of freezing rain. As a lesson learned I immediately registered the Winter Storm Hotline into my cellphone. Sadly, the storm ended up being very wet and voluminous...

Wednesday morning provided a little scare as one of the ever fragile subway stations decided it would lose all power, grinding the whole line to a halt. However this is not all that unusual, and luckily that was the only interruption that morning. I normally arrive over an hour before the start time of the miderm, and I managed to arrive before the midterm started.

Later that day, there was an optional review session for the pharmacology course from 5-6. Initially I wasn't going to attend due to the professor being notorious for creating more confusion and havoc in her "clarifications", but in the end I stayed...for a reason best left unbiased by hindsight.

Because of this, upon reaching Finch station at 6:59pm, there ensued a great one hour wait in the snowstorm, by now at its peak. At least I had practice from last week. But the reason for the delay was that there was apparently some major series of accidents north along Yonge, causing a blockade immediately along the VIVA route. No buses arrived until an hour later, during which time amassed a sizable amount of snow on the platform, people in the station, and water in my shoes. Although during this time I was able to see flashes of lightning in the sky, which is apparently really rare during snowstorms.

Since the whole Finch/Yonge intersection was literally frozen in place, the bus driver headed up normally along Yonge, but reached an impasse at Clark station, where we too remained immobile for an hour. In addition to freaking about about having a lab the next day and a midterm on Friday, there was a man onboard who seemed to be suffering from a mental disorder which caused him to scream shrilly every now and then, effectively scaring the hell out of everyone on board.

There eventually formulated a plan to divert the bus through some residential streets and connecting to Bayview via John St., before turning back towards Richmond Hill Center. Awesome, let's inch along the road faster, please. Unfortunately, the plan, although with very good intentions I'm sure, involved driving into one-lane roads and over a very steep hill. This effectively amounted to being trapped in the bus for a further two hours.

During this time the atmosphere on the bus instead grew rather relaxed as we all accepted our fates in the blue-coloured tomb. Everyone grew accustomed to the random wailing of the aforementioned fellow. However, another dilemma was still present, which was that today was Chinese New Year's Eve. The tradition says that on Chinese New Year's Eve, you must dine together with your family in order to ensure good luck for the new year, a rule that my family adamantly abided by. It's either that or be cursed for the rest of the year or something. As it was currently about two hours from the end of the day, you can see why the frequency of stressful phone calls I received from home was increasing.

My father was previously stuck on the roads too but eventually reached Richmond Hill Center and we drove home. After spending about 5 minutes charging back and forth up the driveway which by now was covered in a foot of snow, our family had Chinese New Year's Eve dinner at 11:15pm.

The following day involved arriving late for the lab, rushing in short-breathed followed by a few other stragglers, but understandably we were still allowed to write the quiz normally administered at the beginning of the session and granted a zero if you were late.

Friday was a whole different dimension of stress. This involved the pharmacology midterm. However, this was no ordinary midterm. It was also no ordinary course. PCL201, up until last year, was effectively a bird course (well, as bird-course-y as life sci courses can go at UofT). This year, there was a new professor. And she decided to do things her way. This includes:

● Being excessively rude towards her students. She seems to view every reasonable request as a threat to her position or status, belitting us for wanting things that every other professor willingly provides.
● This includes lecture slides which she provides in a format which requires a magnifying glass to read without permanent damage to the eyes. When students made the request to change the format, or at least provide the Powerpoint so that the students could do it themselves, she outright refused.
● The lecture slides consist of cut and paste from what seems like Google Search images.
● She makes many, many mistakes during her lecture. She mixes up very important terms such as "hydrophobic" and "hydrophilic" which can totally change one's understanding of a concept, as well as mixing up drug names (Digoxin? Dioxin? Didroxin?).

Obviously the last straw came when marks were directly involved, as is always the case in UofT, it seems. The class average on the simple 10 question MC quizzes were dramatically low. They were the kind of quizzes that are simply supposed to "make you review" and allow you to get 10/10 on for almost every one. Most of the more adamant students appealed to the student council for pharmtox and they actually held a student meeting for the issue. Now that the midterm has passed, no doubt there will be an even greater source of enmity towards the professor.

As of yesterday, over 50 people had dropped the course. Which makes one sarcastically wonder what retake % this course will receive at the end of this semester.

Luckily on a much lighter note, tomorrow is the day of the VGL concert in Toronto! Hooray. As well, I just bought Our Dumb World today which is written by The Onion, and it is basically the best book in the world on the world.

On a more grave note, there is an organic chem midterm next week. Owch.

Winter Storm Warning

Scenario: Must get down to campus for 11:00am Scientific Terminology class

7:00am
- Wake up

7:45am
- CP24 announces that there are no delays for subway routes

8:00am
- Get a ride to Scarborough Town Center

8:30am
- Radio reports that UofT Mississauga campus is closed

9:00am
- Arrive at Scarborough Town Center
- RT is delayed; wait in packed RT platform

9:30am
- Arrive at Kennedy station

10:15am
- Arrive at Spadina station

10:30am
- Arrive on campus
- Get internet access
- Discover that UofT St. George campus is closing at 11am

10:45am
- Finished sobbing
- Depart for home

11:25am
- Arrive at Finch station
- Wait 25 mins for VIVA Blue

12:15pm
- Arrive at Richmond Hill Center
- Wait 20 mins for VIVA Purple

1:00pm
- Arrive at Enterprise
- Walk down to Unionville station
- Wait 10 mins for Kennedy bus

1:30pm
- Arrive home

1:45pm
- Type whiny post
- Cry about lost time and tokens

COX

The following was inspired by those poems I saw while taking the TTC.

Fragments

.......Poetry is
............taking English sentences and
.breaking them into
....................fragments

GER PICK-UP

So right now is way past the time when you realize university isn't fun. The first sets of midterms have already passed, and the next set starts soon. I have a biology writing report which demands you stuff information found in a ten-page scientific article into three single-sided double-spaced pages. An astronomy project expects me to be able to fully identify constellations in the sky...we are in Toronto, and it seems the professor hasn't noticed the little quirks about Toronto's sky, which is that there are no stars, only smog.

Earlier this month someone had a seizure during a phys chem lecture, which obviously caused a big clamor. Right after that I went to astronomy, and someone shouted "Call a doctor!" after the guy beside her "fell unconsious" and dropped the bottle he was holding. Personally, it just looked like he fell asleep, not unconscious...

In regards to commuting, I have sadly witnessed a sharp increase of subway beggars, who jump to and fro between subway cars pushing their Tim Hortons cup into your face as they pass while you're sleeping. I guess it is very effective as all the people around you have already been concentrated into a small area for you.

Also recently, the revelations about finding high levels of lead in products is really confusing to me. A few months ago everyone was happy with their toy cars and building blocks, and then suddenly everything has too much lead in it. It's as if quality testing just realized "Holy crap, we forgot to test for lead" and then found out everything had a lot of lead. I wonder if this was like when we found out that saturated fats were bad, and that everything actually had saturated fats.

This month is also Nintendo freebie month. They sent me a spiffy pack of DS Lite styluses a long while ago for my Brain Age 2 purchase. They're also sending out some Wii Remote jackets for people who actually still have problems not treating the remotes like a javelin.



However the change in publishers for Nintendo Power I do not like as much, as they no longer give you the option to choose a free gift when you resubscribe to the magazine, only a barebones website which forces you to get a player's guide you really don't need.

Also, contemplating SSBB:



This is what happens when I wait too long to post.

Doing Jap

Man, weirdest RT ride ever. The two people to my left were avidly chatting with sign language, the lady sitting across from me had these huge scratches along her chest and one huge red mark down her face, and the old man sitting to my right kept twitching. Worse 15 mins ever.

In other words, second year is hardcore.

Japanese-style

First day of commuting...and to think I complained about riding on a school bus for forty minutes in high school. Investing four hours a day to staring at the floor of a public transportation vehicle doesn't sound particularly appealing but the excitement of going downtown to learn is quite...well, not effective. The adaptation phase begins.

Expirty

Today I took a crazy adventure with public transportation. In one outing I experienced for the first time YRT busing, VIVA busing, and TTC busing. (Having only previously taken TTC streetcars and subways) Yes...somehow I haven't taken the YRT until now. I learned that:

1) VIVA Purple doesn't go straight (realized once the Hwy 7 bus whizzed by)

2) You pay when you get OFF a TTC bus?

Recently I've been playing Rune Factory, although getting it was hard as its existence in Canada was very vague and uncertain until recently, even though it was apparently everywhere in the US and they didn't know what to do with all of them. I finally found it by asking an EB rep in the store. (They hid them in the storeroom and didn't feel like displaying a single game box)

Anyhoo, my favourite character so far is the pastor, Wesley.



No doubt he bathes with holy water as well.