School sucks

There is so much going on in my life lately, yet I don't have any time to blog about it in detail because of school work.

- SwordAngel

Laplace transform and transfer function problem

The above image is a circuit for which I'm supposed to find the transfer function V[2](s)/V[1](s).
Can I use current division after Laplace transform?

- SwordAngel

斷編殘簡

前幾天吃早飯，媽問我幹嘛整天垂頭喪氣、木口木面、不挺起胸膛的時候，我實在哭笑不得。原來媽做了五十多年人、養了我二十多年，還不知道我是一個普通的男
性，更不知道一個像我這麼普通的男性，要挺起胸膛是要原因、要理由、要動力的。而我的原因、理由、和動力，在五年前中學畢業後已經漸漸遠離我、從我的視線
遛走，三年前升大學時更加消失得無影無蹤，差不多音訊全無；直至一年前從我另一位同學口中得知，「她」好像去了McGill讀護士，還把頭髮從原來的棕色
染成金色了。現在剩下的，只有她在我腦海裡的一副開始蒙糊的笑容、一片應該是清脆、天真的嬌笑聲、一本中學畢業年冊、還有一堆零
碎的、殘缺不全的回憶。她應該曾經有過一些仍帶着稚氣的小動作，只不過我連那些都不大記得了。看到這裡，各位讀者一定想我繼續說我跟「她」那段要不是刻骨銘心，便是天真爛漫的愛情。很抱歉，我要令大家失望了，因為…

我跟她根本就沒有開始過。

沒錯，我就跟一些男生一樣，靜靜地從遠處留意着意中人的一舉一動、一顰一笑，跟電影和小說的情節沒什麼兩樣；我以為男生會這樣做而不採取實際行動，都離不開四個原因：

1. 自卑；覺得自己是癩蛤蟆想吃天鵝肉。
2. 外來壓力，情勢不允許（例如父母之命）。
3. 根本不是認真的；那個女生好像蠻有趣而已（「看看再說吧…」）。
4. 自尊心作祟。

我自問每一次對女生產生興趣，都或多或少因這四個理由而沒做什麼。不過中學五年級最後這一次，卻有點不同；不同在什麼地方，當初連我自己都不知道。直至最近，我坐在電腦前發呆，才突然想起：『我怕了。』

我怕什麼？我不是怕被她拒絕；更不是怕最後被她耍（因為一來我肯定她不是這樣的人，二來我的自卑感令我自私地覺得能夠被意中人耍已算幸事）。我怕的，是對
她做成任何的傷害。回顧從前對幾位女生做過任何的表態，沒有一次成功，也沒有一次開開心心地完結。從來只會令她們覺得尷尬，甚至覺得憤怒，以至討厭我起
來；繼續在學校見面只會令她們徒增煩擾。所以越後來我越儘量在學期尾才跟她們說什麼；這樣做就算尷尬也不會很久；暑假一到，大家不見面，便有時間冷靜下
來。

到中五最後一次，我決定什麼都不說。

我想她現在連有過我這個同學也不記得了。

- SwordAngel

午夜夢徊

有什麼比夢魘更可怕，更令人痛苦？那就是一段太美好的回憶。夢魘，你一覺醒來，不去想它，那就行了。一段太美好的回憶，卻揮不去、抹不掉；而你卻覺悟到不可能時光倒流、回到「那時候」，因而痛苦萬分。你可曾想過把它忘了？你卻忘不了，更捨不得忘記它。

今晚我又想起「她」了。不知道她現在生活是否快樂、讀書是否順利、有沒有偶爾跟我一樣想起中學的事情而睡不着。

- SwordAngel

Sleepless

What's more frightening, more painful than a nightmare? It is a memory
that is too pleasant, too beautiful. A nightmare, you can wake up to
it, don't think about it, and that's the end of the story. A memory
that is too beautiful, however, you can neither ignore it, nor erase
it; but you realize that you cannot turn back time, that you cannot
return to "that moment"; and the very same realization is like a
gruesome hand always trying to squeeze your heart to a halt, over and
over again.
Have you ever considered forgetting that memory? But you can neither
forget, nor give it up.

Tonight I have been thinking about "her" again. I wonder if she is
living happily; if her studies are going smoothly; if she, like I, thinks
about life in high school and becomes sleepless from time to time.

- SwordAngel

A Simple Guide to Student Mystification

Invisible Context Switching

Invisible context switching is more or less a passive technique, in
that you don't need to consciously apply it. It can happen simply as a
result of the transfer of information from the human thinking process
to physical communication (be it writing, speaking, typing... heck,
maybe even sign language). The outline of invisible context switching
is as follows:

1. Start with an medium to large topic; we call it the supertopic T;
2. Go from T to two subtopics T1 and T2; T1 and T2 may be examples
   or situations related to T. The differences between T1 and T2 are
   little bits in their context;
3. Start talking about T1 then, as you finish talking about T1, do not use a conclusion sentence or anything that hints the end of T1;
4. Go immediately to T2. Again, do not use any introductory sentence or anything that hints the beginning of T2;
5. Once you are done with T2, conclude T also and do not mention any difference between T1 and T2.

If you do it right during the lecture, no student will realize that you
left a context gap for them to fill in and they will only think they
are stupid or something when they review (if at all) at home. The
resulting confusion is spectacular if one thing that works in T1 fails
to work in T2 simply because of the difference in context. Usually, you
do not have to consciously avoid using conclusion and introductory
sentences at steps 3 and 4. You either skip them because you think the
difference in context to be irrelevant or you simply forget to use them
due to the difference in speed between the generation of ideas in your
brain and putting those very same ideas in words or sentences in speech
or writing. Since the skill is more or less passive, it is quite
difficult to master because you can hardly "practice" for it. It is
rather something that professors develop unconsciously with experience.

- SwordAngel

How NOT to Spend a Winter Break

1. Writing software requirements and specifications documents for an
   unpaid project when the new year countdown and fireworks are about to
   start;
2. Evaluating software solutions when domain knowledge is lacking;
3. Installing and configuring a MySQL database daemon from scratch;
4. Forcing yourself to read technical documentation for the task mentioned in item 3;
5. Playing Single Player games of Diablo II Expansion with EXTREME
   cheating (maphacking, character and item editing, mpq modding, etc.)
6. Going through 3 Hong Kong TV drama series, triathlon style;
7. Buidling a Bandai Master Grade 1/100 kit of Freedom Gundam;
8. Checking Google News every 5 to 30 minutes to check the latest figures of a natural disaster;
9. Playing chess against the computer;
10. Cleaning up your hard drive just to fit more anime, pr0n, and a Linux partition;
11. Installing Linux when you don't even know how to install and configure the wireless network card in Linux;
12. Reading other people's blogs;
13. Blogging.

- SwordAngel

A Simple Guide to Student Mystification

University
professors are very busy people. More often than not, they have a
second job or a research to do besides their teaching job. So how do
they survive the tight schedule that the two jobs impose on them? A key
element is to make students as confused and hopeless as possible, to
the point that students give up on the idea of extracting coherent
and useful information from the  professor. In the following week,
I will discuss some of the top techniques employed to that effect.
Note: some of the techniques work best when the professor has a decoy
(a.k.a. a tutor).

Recursive Jargon Recognition

A
simple technique. It consists of the use of jargon that normally only
people already "in the loop" can understand off hand. For example, when
teaching an Information System Security (ISS) course, the professor can
cleverly seed acronyms from the ISS field in his notes without ever
pointing them to their respective definitions. The notes would look
completely intelligible and coherent to an ISS expert, but
incomprehensible for students who don't already know the stuff. For
increased effect, repeatedly use terms that are really not so
important, such as "PTR RR" for "PoinTeR Resource Record", in order to
make students believe it is actually important and waste time figuring
out what they mean. This technique is analogous to, yet more powerful
and more subtle than the Latin-salting ("in camera", "inter alia", etc.) that you find in law-related documents.

Next issue: Invisible Context Switching

- SwordAngel

P.S.
If the previous post appears as scrambled random characters, try
setting your browser to display in Western (Windows-1252) or Chinese
Traditional (Big5) character encoding.

天堂的武功之謎

經過反覆探索和求證，我可以肯定天堂此遊戲跟金庸名著「天龍八部」有莫大關聯。理由如下：

秦紅棉乃黑暗妖精之祖師

『驀地里當當兩聲響，秦紅棉雙刀齊出，快如飄風般近前，向她（刀白鳳）急砍兩刀。這「十字斬」是她成名絕技，不知有多少江湖好漢曾喪在她修羅雙刀這毒招之下。』　－　天龍八部第八章：虎嘯龍吟

這不是雙刀edoryu，卻是什麼？

『秦紅棉接連射出三枝毒箭。她這短箭形狀和木婉清所發的一模一樣，手法卻高明得多，三枝箭分射左右中三個方位，教對方絕難閃避。』

袖中短箭跟飛刀異曲同工，加上短箭上有毒，可以肯定這功夫跟黑妖的是同一路，只不過秦紅棉使用得比一般Dep伺服的玩家高明多了。

段譽的六脈神劍和北冥神功

六脈神劍源於一陽指。一陽指本身沒多大用處，就像普通e-bolt，替人點穴抓癢而已（你看一堆死騎打架時怎麼用e-bolt把想逃的敵人點穴就知道）。六脈神劍卻大大不同。它威力無比，一招可以隔空置人死地，跟Destroy或魔攻250的e-bolt沒什麼兩樣。

北冥神功則無疑是正統的Mana Drain，只不過到了遊戲裡面變得沒用而已。

寫到這裡，我已經開始胡思亂想、胡說八道、胡言亂語了。天堂跟天龍八部的其他關聯，就請讀者自己探索吧。

- 劍仙（SwordAngel）

Mood forecast

Sat, Dec 11th	Sun, Dec 12th	Mon, Dec 13th	Tue, Dec 14th

GRID.ORG: Call for team members

Attention: Concordia University students and Lineage players

I
would like to invite you to join the Concordia University team on
GRID.ORG. For those of you who don't already know what GRID.ORG is, it
is an organization that hosts non-profit scientific researches that
require enormous computing power. They provide the platform to
distribute tasks to hundreds of thousands of volunteer computer users
in the world, who use the idling processing power of their computers to
make contributions to science. There is already an existing Concordia
University team and I'm a member of it. For information, browse to GRID.ORG and the page of Concordia University team.

I
don't know if there is already a Lineage team, but I think it would be
cool to show the world that we are not just gamers. Perhaps we should
form a US Lineage Depardieu Server team.

- SwordAngel