Google I/O 2011 was an amazing experience! I was a total tourist and took pictures of nearly everything. Here is a list and some accompanying pictures of my highlights from this conference!
Posted on 5/05/2011 at 10:27pm UTC
Highlights from Google I/O 2011
Tags: google i/o, pictures
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Posted on 5/05/2011 at 02:06pm UTC
Restaurant Review: The Melting Pot
I don’t consider myself a ‘foodie’, but I like to eat and I like to criticize which provides perfect justification for a restaurant review blog post.
During the month of February, my boyfriend and I took a trip down to Buffalo. We live in Canada so upon crossing the border, there was excessive marveling at the restaurants the United States had to offer (alright, I admit, this was mostly done by me). Both my boyfriend and I have lived and worked in the United States before, and this was our first time back in 4 months. 4 months without Olive Garden, Denny’s and a legitimate Dollar Menu from McDonalds … could you imagine?!
That day, we went to the Walden Galleria in Buffalo. We were hungry but it was raining outside so we didn’t want to go far for food (also, the previous day, I made him drive about 30 minutes into town for the nearest Olive Garden. It was totally worth it.) The mall boasted many fancy, upscale restaurants: The Melting Pot, P.F. Changs, The Cheesecake Factory, Bravo Cucina and Bar Louie. We decided to go to the Melting Pot with the prospect of sharing one or two fondue dishes since we weren’t too hungry. Neither of us had ever been before … or so we thought.
Tags: boyfriend, food, restaurant, review, The Melting Pot
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Posted on 3/03/2011 at 05:01pm UTC
Why I’m Selling My Kindle
About 4 months ago, I was working in the States when I decided to buy a Kindle. I had a good amount of justification for this purchase and the main ones being:
- The Amazon Kindle is hard to come by in Canada as Amazon.ca and brick-and-mortar stores do not sell them. The only way to get your hands on one of these e-readers is to order it from Amazon.com and end up paying about 30% more after taxes, customs and duty fees. Not to mention, it was around Christmastime and the demand for the Kindle caused them to be back-ordered about 2 months. (Reading a thread on RedFlagDeals revealed people were excited to be ordering the Kindle in December and hoping to get it in time for Valentine’s Day. I assure you that we Canadians are not always this easily excitable.)
- The pretense that e-Books on Amazon would be cheaper than real, bounded books.
- The Kindle supports other types of documents, such as PDF format which appeals to me as a college student since many notes are offered in such format.
- E-books are the prime space-saving solution for someone who likes to buy a lot of books. I move around a lot and I always find myself packing a giant box full of books.
- The Kindle had a much better UX and feel to it than its competitors — Sony e-Readers, Kobo, Nook, etc.
I’ve owned the Amazon Kindle for a few months, used it fairly regularly and even recommended it to a few of my friends. Now I’m dumping it.
Tags: kindle, review
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Posted on 2/02/2011 at 02:48am UTC
What a relief.
I would hate to be a theorist in the early times. I bet you they could have never changed their views because everything they ever said was written in stone. What if some other theorist came along and said something that made the original theorist go, “oh damn, that makes sense”? If they ever wanted to refine their theories, they would have probably been chastized. Now they’re buried in the historical sections of technical textbooks and ever year, hundreds of scholars are instructed to point out errors in their hypotheses.
Good thing I’m not a theorist, just a student.
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Posted on 1/01/2011 at 02:11am UTC
A lesson often overlooked.
I was digging through my old e-mails to search up a quote with an accompanying story that I wanted to share with a friend. In my opinion, this is a very powerful piece so here it is:
A king directed his workers to go out to gather all the world’s knowledge.
They came back one year later with 23 volumes of pure facts.
The king said, ‘No! That’s too big! You must condense it!’
So his workers left and came back one year later with 1 volume of knowledge.
The king said, ‘No! Too big again! Condense it!’
So his workers left and came back one year later with a piece of paper.
The king read it and was finally satisfied.On the piece of paper read a single line: “This too shall pass”.
From an e-mail originally sent September 7, 2010 to a dear friend.
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Posted on 1/01/2011 at 02:00am UTC
Camp Hackathon Experience
Facebook is famous for many things and among them are the Hackathons they hold at the company. Many popular features were developed or upgraded during these 24-hour long coding sessions such as Facebook Video and Notes. Over the past few months, Facebook has been taking this all-nighter tradition to campuses across the U.S. and this weekend was its first ever international stop! Lucky for me, they held it at the University of Waterloo (I should mention that University of Toronto students were also invited.)
Over 200 students attended this event and it was a great experience. I decided to bring the following to help keep me sane for the 24-hour long coding session ahead (I have to admit I was excited to finally have a valid reason to stay up all night to code!):
- A very fluffy and very huggable pillow with a cow design
- 1 packet of Ricola, 2 packets of Halls and 1 packet of Fisherman’s Friend to soothe the sore throat I had been developing a few hours prior
- My 13.3″ ASUS laptop
- 20″ Dell monitor
- Wireless keyboard and mouse combo
- Altec Lansing headphones
- Amazon Kindle for Scrabble breaks
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Posted on 1/01/2011 at 06:17am UTC
What does it mean to be open-minded?
We all like to think that we are open-minded individuals. We like to think that we welcome other people’s opinions because that is how we would like to be treated. When someone brings up a point that we don’t necessarily agree on, we always like to have the chance to sway that person’s opinion because as human nature would have it, we hold our opinions close to us and we believe so dearly that we are right. But what happens when our contender refuses to accept our opinions? Perhaps we will find ourselves getting frustrated and blaming this on their ‘close-mindedness’. Perhaps we will find ourselves ‘agreeing to disagree’. But ask yourself this– have you ever found yourself in this situation, and in the end, compromising with the other person and changing your own opinion?
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Posted on 1/01/2011 at 04:59am UTC
Begin with the end in sight.
Another new project, and I’m “beginning with the end in sight.” The end is the vision of regularly written blog posts on a vast array of subjects of interest to me. Lately, I have been describing myself as self-aware, but I have also been wondering– how can you track your own growth and process? Hopefully, these blog posts and my tendency to constantly reread nearly all my written material will enable me to better understand myself as a growing and learning individual.
Of course, I do not mean to push away any potential readers. In fact, I welcome everyone to share their thoughts with me. One of my philosophies is to never be dismissive. I always make a conscious effort to never deem a topic unworthy for a discussion (in fact, I believe that most of us do this subconsciously on a daily basis. Perhaps I will elaborate on this further in a later blog post! /edit: Done!). With an open mind and an open ear, you can gain many new valuable perspectives that would have never otherwise crossed your mind. With that said, I appreciate feedback, comments, or even conversations/debates relating to what I post on this blog.
As with all my ambitions, I am excited for this to begin!
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