The following block of text is from Mark, an intelligent, philosophical friend of mine:

One thing that suddenly struck me several years ago is this: ALL negative emotions all stem from one single one: fear.

Grief comes from having lost something or someone, and the fear that you know they will never come back.

Hatred comes from when someone does something bad to you, that you fear can never be fixed.

Envy comes from someone else having something you want, and the fear that you will never be able to get it yourself.

Jealousy comes from the fear that someone that you love will leave you.

When there’s no fear, there’s no negativity. If you have a partner that you trust implicitly, there’s no fear of them leaving, hence no need for jealousy.

Today marked the end of the fall semester, as the last final exam was written earlier in the afternoon. I had kept myself busy for a prolonged period of time, with quite a lot on my plate. Some professors were either disorganized or lacking in proper approaches to delivering content, meaning that I had to be self-reliant.

That said, it is not necessarily a bad thing because people working in computer science often find it needful to acquire new knowledge on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis.

Finally, iOS 16.2 got installed on my phone. This means I have one more collaboration tool (Freeform, only available on Mac, iPad, and iPhone — not yet on an Android device nor in a web browser), can sing along with millions of songs (Apple Music Sing), have my iCloud data better protected (end-to-end encryption expanded to 23 data categories) ¹, but can only receive files from Everyone through AirDrop for a 10-minute window, after which it automatically reverts to Contacts Only.

AirDrop now allows a 10-minute window for file transfer between strangers

Some fun facts about me: I can read analog clocks. I can use rotary phones. I can read printed maps. I can repair broken cassette tapes and duplicate them as well. However, I can’t drive at ease without Apple CarPlay. And I pin my faith on Google Maps, even for the grocery stores I’ve frequented hundreds of times. 🙂

Just sold my Nintendo Switch and games since I’ve been too busy with schoolwork to game. The ladies didn’t check my stuff but sent money my way outright. I let them go even though the money wasn’t really getting to me (due to a rare but huge delay in eTransfer).

I’m not encouraging this practice by any means but just wanted to say this is so Canadian. 🤣

Done the last big-ass assignments and all the necessary ¹ labs. Now it’s time for a little unwinding: swapping tires, sending out Christmas cards, shopping groceries, etc. The first final will hit us December 12th, so I’m not really going to gear down.

While I was burying myself in the fifth and last assignment of data structures and algorithms, Alexa streamed this song, making me want to pogo in the face of the deadline.

Hooray for this new babe: iPhone 14 Pro Max (512 GB, silver)!

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After nearly 4.5 years, my iPhone Xs Max (512GB, gold) is on the verge of a breakdown. A maximum battery capacity of 74%, smashed back glass, and constantly degrading performance have led to this belated upgrade. Why the word “belated”? I used to snap up the latest iPhone model on an annual or biennial basis, thanks to the iPhone Upgrade Program. Since the onset of the pandemic, however, my interest in buying a new iPhone has plunged. It’s not that the new iPhones are unexciting but that smartphones as a whole are no longer my focus of attention.

Last night I published the post below.

You might have wondered why Olivia Rodrigo’s songs crossed my mind.

Here’s the reason:

DriveTest Clinton

DriveTest Check-in

Temporary G Licence

I PASSED THE G ROAD TEST TODAY AND BECAME A FULLY LICENSED DRIVER!

✌️🎉

I don’t mean to brag, but I passed each of the G1 (in Burlington), G2 (in Brantford), and G (in Clinton) tests on my first attempt, thanks to the wonderful instructors I had: Miki (based in Hamilton, ON, for the G2) and Sid (based in London, ON, for the G). I prepared for my G1 written test alone on the plane.

A man making two burgers at midnight is undoubtedly loving and caring, as long as you don’t mind him eating both.

I guess I have brought my blog up to code. Now the new version is ready.

One of the biggest changes is that this site is totally static, thanks to Blot.im. This means this site no longer needs a database, which is required by dynamic blogging platforms like WordPress. What’s the point of having no databases? Simply put, the site loads much faster, and the file system is simpler and more maintainable.

WordPress was my go-to blogging engine in the past 16 years. It’s probably the friendliest solution to both mobile bloggers and non-web-savvy beginners. But over years it has become insufferably cumbersome and sophisticated, to the point where I had to submit a few tickets for bug fixes along with their recent routine updates. The last straw was their most recent update that has corrupted the highly customized child theme I’ve used for about 4.5 years. It’s high time for a change.

After days of painstaking research, I tried and soon gave up on Jekyll, Pelican, and Hugo, among others. For someone heavily relying on mobile devices, or rather the iPhone and the iPad, they are fair-to-middling at best, far from amazeballs.

Having done all the midterms and major assignments, I think it’s time for a good sleep and maybe a brief getaway. It’s reading week anyways. Before doing those, however, I think I should update this page a little bit.

Pressures have been mounting since late July, when I last updated this Now page. Finding a nice place to stay turned out to be far more distressing than I had imagined. Fortunately I have sorted it out. Academically I guess I’m more focused than 90 percent of my classmates. The amount of time I’ve spent on each assignment or lab is significant as I’m striving for perfection. I may finish writing code in two hours and spend the next three days debugging and identifying potential issues.

Both the song and the album have come to the first place in Replay ’22.

18 days toward the end of the summer semester, I finally got vaccinated against COVID-19. Despite being late to the party, I turned up in the end. Many thanks to my friends who were up for some pep talks and checking in.

With lots of errands to run, August will be hectic: getting my car fixed, finding a new dwelling place near the campus, receiving a second jab followed by a few days’ good rest, planning on the move, packing and unpacking, prepping the new place, etc.

A Telegram Screenshot

I’ve been receiving these “not gonna make my day” types of messages from time to time. Well, I’m sorry that their daughter had to experience this. But at the same time please be aware that some people with Asperger’s are also harassing LGBT+ individuals in a blatantly rude manner. More importantly, some autistic people are members of the LGBT+ community themselves. The overlap between the two identities does exist.

When texting people or posting a status on social media, we often write the word and as & (ampersand) for convenience. But does Python handle and and & the same way?

str1 = "Apple"  
a = ("p" in str1) & ("l" in str1)  
b = "p" in str1 and "l" in str1  
print(a == b)  
print(a is b)  

OUTPUT  
True  
True  

Many Python learners consider addition and increment to be similar or even the same, like a = a + 1 is basically the same as a += 1. Here are some examples to show you that they’re actually not — when “addition” is actually “concatenation.”

To start off, let’s use the increment operator += to add a name to a roster:

Victoria Day marks the start of summer, but it’s been three weeks into this (un)surprisingly hectic summer session. Two full courses (four half courses) are rendering me so deep in my books that I’ve got very little time to socialize with people, virtually or in real life. Quizzes and assignments are weekly. Zoom meetings are biweekly. Midterms are around the corner. Intellectual stimulation literally happens every single day.

I might be less active on social media than I used to. But please don’t worry. I’m not swamped with work, at least not at this point. LOL. Usually I’m just too absorbed in what I’m doing to take heed of people and things around me.

I came across an apparently simple yet intriguing coding problem:

Given a non-negative integer 𝑥, compute and return the square root of 𝑥.

Since the return type is an integer, the decimal digits are truncated, and only the integer part of the result is returned.

Note: You are not allowed to use any built-in exponent function or operator, such as pow(x, 0.5) or x ** 0.5.

LMAO… If you look up the word “unsearchable” in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, you’ll find both given examples of the word are pertinent to Chinese social media censorship.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary