Posts

Trading Experiences #2

Recently, I experienced automation in trading. A friend I met through trading from Germany coded an automated 'bot' that scanned websites for good deals and would notify people when a profitable arbitrage was found. It would give the percentage/amount of profit, the exact details about the item and which tradebot it was on, the prices, etc. It could also find the lowest/highest float items on bots (usually desirable, overpaid for) and other kinds of rare items. This really struck me because all the work I used to have to do by visiting all the different sites and looking for these items could be automated in no time. It gave me a sense of how slow we were, compared to computers and programs. What would take us fifteen minutes, could be done in three seconds, with greater accuracy. Before, I had to open the thirty or so sites I had, and then look for specific items on them, spending ~30 seconds on each at best, usually around a minute - that would be a 'run'. The bot c

Coding Experiences #1

This week, I coded a program to find primes, given an integer to stop at. The program basically checks each new number for any divisors from the old list of primes, starting from 2 and going to the number / 2. By logging all the primes, many possibilities came up for future studies. For example, I logged the last digits of all the primes, and found that three and seven appeared more than one and nine. Along with coding that, another coding project I did was to calculate a problem for my brother. The problem asked for the amount of possible orientations of three dice such that the sums of the faces facing up was equal to the sums of the faces facing you. I brute-forced this, and got the answer, though a small typo of an 'e' to a 'c' messed me up pretty bad at the start.

西游记

我觉得西游记有很强的男比女更重要的感觉。第一,孙悟空他们都是男的。我觉得这个说明写这个故事的人觉得男的比女的强 - 根本没有一个女的陪唐僧去取经。第二,很多男的都有大于一个妇人。比如牛魔王,有两个妇人。第三,女的都打扮得漂漂亮亮的,老要在她们的夫人那儿哭着求他们帮忙 - 比如玉面公主被孙悟空吓了一下就去跟牛魔王哭去了。这说明写书的人觉得女的很弱,老要去找男的帮忙。我觉得从这个书上可以看出来以前和现在的不同。

西游记

我觉得西游记挺奇怪的。孙悟空他们应该是自己去取经的,但老要叫仙和菩萨帮忙。他们要打败蝎精的时候,试了好几次,都被蝎精打败了。他们只好去找菩萨,然后菩萨叫他们去找东天门的昴日星官。只有了他的帮助,才能打败蝎精。这可能是应为写这个书的人想要别的人觉得菩萨和天上的仙很厉害,连很强的精一下子就可以降。我觉得他也想要表达凡人有多弱 - 连孙悟空和猪八戒他们试了几次也打败不了蝎精。

China Harbor

Over the summer, I worked at China Harbor, a restaurant in Seattle. Every Saturday, I would go for a few hours. Through this experience, I learned a lot about what working at a restaurant was like. I saw the grimy floors in the kitchen, how some workers just ate from the plates of food that were being prepared (maybe they were being prepared for the workers, idk) and saw workers having to clean up after some customers pretty much demolished a table, making a huge mess - they were doing some thing where they took a wine glass, poured some kind of alcohol in it, and then placed a shot glass full of sake on top, balanced on two chopsticks. Then they would bang the table until the shot glass fell into the wine glass, and drink the whole thing. It made a lot of noise and really didn't seem smart. In general, I learned a lot about working at a restaurant, and it doesn't seem like something I want to pursue.

Chess Tutoring

Over the summer, I taught some chess lessons with the Orlov Chess Academy. Over a week, I interacted with a lot of kids, from 5 to 10 years old. What I think I learned from this experience is that teaching young kids requires a lot of patience. Half the time, they aren't listening, or they aren't understanding what you're saying. Then there were some that just didn't speak English - those were the hardest to talk to. I had to translate and teach both languages, as most people didn't speak Chinese. Combine that with the fact that most of them didn't listen to what I was saying, and it made teaching class a really frustrating experience - but it definitely helped me understand what teachers go through.

西游记

我最近读了西游记的一个部分,讲了虎力,鹿力,和羊力这几个人。我觉得他们这几个大仙在那儿特别坏。他们被封为国师后,就命令和尚给他们做苦活。唐僧他们实在看不下去,就去跟他们斗法。虎力,鹿力,和羊力不肯输,所以他们最后都死了。我觉得他们这种表现很傻 - 他们知道肯定斗不过孙悟空,为什么要去送死?奇怪的是,他们好像法力都挺强的,为什么这么容易就被杀了呢?我看羊力一下子就被油锅炸了,他真的没有更强的法力吗?孙悟空的法力也没那么强,也没被油锅炸。