Monthly Archives: June 2010

Leaving for Philmont… Goodbye for two weeks

Posted by Robert Ying at 5:00 pm on June 24, 2010

I’m leaving for Philmont in less than 12 hours. It’ll be one of two things: An exciting and adventurous trip in the mountains, or a miserable 60-mile hike in the rain. There’s an obvious better option there, but who knows if it’ll actually happen. Likelihood is a mix of the two, (un)fortunately.

I’ll be in New Mexico very soon… without any internet access or electronics (excluding a flashlight or three), and likely very tired. The plane flight’s departure time necessitates that we leave SJ at around 3:45AM, a rather ridiculous time to wake up; therefore, I’ll probably just stay up until then. We’re going to be flying for 4 hours – much fun, si?

I’m apparently required to keep a “journal” about the trip, which will be written in bad cursive and worse print… Since I will be unable to decipher it, I’ll just scan the paper and upload it for you guys to read.

Two weeks.
Eight people
Five tents
Too many mountains

hasta la vista

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June 24, 2010

Categories:

News

Almost Philmont… and Cypress

Posted by Robert Ying at 7:54 am on June 22, 2010

These past weeks I’ve been interning at Cypress and learning a ton of stuff, mostly to do with laser optics and the associated waveform physics. Working in the lab is fun, of course, and a good experience for the future.

Of course, when I get really really bored (rarely ever happens), I pull out a … video game (xD). Lately I’ve been playing TF2 again, as people came back to the servers.

I was also bored enough to learn how to play “River Flows In You”. The below mp3 is the second time I’ve played it.

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Download

Philmont’s coming up soon as well, I’m leaving at 3:45AM Friday (annoyingly early). It should be a fun 14 days, lots of hiking and other activities (black powder?). Unfortunately, it cuts in the middle of my internship time, which is a pretty major annoyance. Hopefully I’ll be able to make up the work later.

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June 22, 2010

Categories:

News, random

Internship

Posted by Robert Ying at 11:25 am on June 15, 2010

I’ve been (and will be for the rest of the summer) interning at Cypress Semiconductor. So far, I haven’t been doing too much, mostly studying optical physics and reading patents or papers. They did nicely give me my own cubicle, and an ID card and everything =). Today, I went and turned in the work permit for FUHSD. Its quite annoying, since they require your SSN, and I don’t have that memorized at all.

Today I’ll probably be learning how to run a beam scan on a VCSEL or two, so it should be quite interesting =).

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June 15, 2010

Categories:

News

Tags:

cypress, internship

Pens

Posted by Robert Ying at 6:28 pm on June 8, 2010

I was digging around for pens this afternoon and found (gasp) a fountain pen! Sure, it was a cheap Pilot Plumix, but I had forgotten how my handwriting was forced to improve when using a fountain pen… its pretty crazy actually.

Unlike most normal pens (rollerballs and ballpoints), fountain pens utilize capillary action to move the ink to the paper. This is facilitated by an interesting looking nib, but it creates a nice, smooth line. The characteristic ink marks of a fountain pen are recognized by many as “calligraphy”, as in the time modern “calligraphy” was the norm, dip pens and fountain pens were the most common.

These are the parts of a normal fountain pen:

As you can see, its not quite what you’re probably used to.

A pen-to-pen comparison:

It’ll be what I’m writing my APUSH notes and such with, and hopefully will last some time (until I get a better one!)

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June 8, 2010

Categories:

random

robo.hack

Posted by Robert Ying at 6:05 pm on June 4, 2010

The game robo.hack is the result of the last month’s worth of coding by myself, Karthik Viswanthan, and Virup Gubba. It is based on nethack, and should be relatively easy to learn.

System Requirements

The following are required for installation:

Java Runtime Environment Version 1.60+
Minimum of 2 MB space for game itself and about 100 MB including JDK
Preferred 200 MB

Installation Instructions

Robo.hack can be run by clicking on the executable jar file with the aforementioned system requirements.

How to Play

Robo.hack’s controls are completely outlined on the title screen. Use the arrow keys to move and the q, w, e, a, s, d, z, and c to attack (eight different directions means eight keys, centered at s). The inventory and player status can be toggled using the ‘i’ and ‘p’ keys respectively. Once toggled, the up/down arrow buttons should be pressed to target the correct item or skill. Subsequently, hit enter to either add a skill point or use an item. To untoggle, use the escape or delete key, or press the enable key again.

Following the title screen, the player will be prompted for a profession. Pick the one of your choice by hitting the respective key.

Now just explore throughout the world and try to beat all the levels. Monsters will attack you on the way. They will drop various items and weapons for you to use on your journey. As you continue to fight, you’ll gain experience and skill points, which you can use to power up your abilities. Think wisely. Play wisely. Good luck!

Hopefully you won’t see this screen on your journey.

You can download the game here:
robo.hack.zip

robo.hack is released under the GPL v3, source available soon!