Speeches

So I am practicing speeches for Academic Decathlon by recording myself imitating other famous speeches, and I couldn't find the words for Nick Selby's speech - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98nNpzE6gIs - for the Georgia Tech freshman convocation. I transcribed them here (This is not the full speech - just the epic part) :

We chose Georgia Tech, because we want to do the impossible. And this school is equipped with the resources and faculty to help us do just that. And so in the words of Sir Isaac Newton, "if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Georgia Tech is proud of its many traditions, but the one I find most exciting is our tradition of excellence. Our mission as students is not to follow in the footsteps of the astronauts, Nobel prize laureates, and president who graduated before us, but to exceed their footsteps, crush the giants on whom we stand. We here are all such innovative people. So I am telling you (nod), "if you want to change the world, you're at Georgia Tech; you can do that. If you want to build the Ironman suit, you're at Georgia Tech; you can do that. If you want to play theme music at your convocation speech like a badass, we're at Georgia Tech; we can do that. I am doing that! Congratulations on your acceptance, and brace yourselves for a helluva ride on your way to becoming a helluva engineer.





Grandmaster of Memory

I have a new app out. It is "Grandmaster of Memory". Although it's not finished, you can use it to test your associations of playing cards to images and numbers to images. More functions will be added. You can download it on the app page in the description on the right. Thank you!

Avatar: The Last Airbender Question: I wanted to post this on TV tropes, but I don't want to get an account. Instead of surrendering when the fire nation launches a counter-strike on their submarines, why don't earth-benders try to tunnel their way off the island? In fact, in preparation for the invasion, why don't Toph and other earth-benders create a tunnel system under the island to use to raid or to create a giant sinkhole during the eclipse?

Acceptance.

I got accepted into the Cockrell School of Engineering at UT Austin.

Blogger

Blogger is new to me. I'm apart of the technology generation, but when I got this blog in 2011, I didn't care to learn the technicalities and nuances of Blogger. All of it is overwhelming. So I can see this site from the perspective of older people. I really don't like Blogger right now, but I guess there are so many other mediums to work through that I have to learn one anyway. I'm going to continue using this, and I will get better. So you can expect to see improvements in this blog in the near future. Thank you for reading this.

Asking the Right Questions

Are there right questions? Are there wrong questions? I'm not going to talk about the ethicality of certain questions, but there are questions that have answers and questions that don't have answers. When I began working on java programming, I searched for months on end through Google, Bing, Ask, and about every search engine, "how to create a calculator that knows PEMDAS." One of my goals is to create the most intuitive, powerful calculator on the Android Market, and knowing how to create this PEMDAS calculator was one of the first steps. However, my efforts were fruitless in asking this question. So I tried to solve my problems through brute force. And in doing so, I began to ask other questions, like, "how do I separate operator data - +,-,*,/- from numbers." How do I take a user input that's "8*9*1/4+3" and output "21"? And I came to realize from more searches that what I was looking for is an "expression parser". So if you have been programming and get stuck, try re-wording your question. Look at it from a different angle. Good luck!

Android

I realized that there is no link to my android applications on this blog. Haha, apps were the entire reason I started this. Anyway, so far I have built simple things like calculators and vocabulary quizzes. They can be found here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Time+Active.

College

It is difficult to apply to colleges. The amount of time and thought that went into my applications was as much as the time it takes to take care of your schoolwork. I am applying to California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Texas at Austin. In the near future, I hope to be an intern at Google. But let's focus, let's keep moving forward no matter who accepts us.