Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Daily Scribble

Fail toys

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Every kids love toys. Now after I have grown up, the little kid inside me still love toys. Yet there are some toys are failed so badly that they become classics. I stumble upon Mike Mozart’s show on Youtube and I spent 2 hours watching every clips of the show. It’s just so funny that I couldn’t stop laughing. Sometimes, I wonder what’s in the mind of those toy designers. Do they did it on purpose or it merely an accident? Here are some of my most favorite failed toys.

Pooping Dog Barbie

Wolverine Inflatable Hammer

Disney Rad Repeating Tarzan

Batman water gun

Daily Scribble

Woodworking 101

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I am taking woodworking for beginner at Vancouver School Board. Today is the first day of eight lessons. At the end of the lessons, I will build a small table with a drawer. Before today’s class, I always thought how can can woodworking be? It seems quite easy to buy some piece of wood, cut them to the right size and then screw them together. I totally underestimate the depth of knowledge involved in woodworking. Even I don’t care about workmanship, decoration, artistic design and all those useless subjective aspects, there are still lots of thing I need to know in order to build a functional and sturdy table.

The first class covers some basic workshop safety, required by the school board for using the workshop. Then the instructor spent almost an hour teaching us different kinds of wood. I just realize soft wood is not always soft and hard wood is not always hard. Soft wood refers to wood from evergreen tree and hard wood refers to wood from deciduous trees. I saw many wood samples from pine, fir, spruce, cherry, to maple, birch, alder to oak, walnut and teak. I get a general understanding on how to pick good wood and why the good wood worth the more expensive price tag. I learn the difference between vertical cut and flat cut, rough lumber and finished lumber, construction grade and trim grade. I also learned that a 2×4 is not really 2″ by 4″, it only got 1.5″ x 3.5″.

The instructor shows us how to use the machines in the second half of the class. It is the first time I operate a sliding saw and cut my first piece of wood. Safety is very important in working with power tools. Always pay attention where your hands are and stay away from any moving parts. You don’t want to lose your fingers. I learned how to use mitre saws, table saws, jointer, planner and difference kinds of blades. I also learn three ways of making a join, pocket hole, dowel and biscuit. Too bad that the class is only 3 hours long, the instructor did not have time show us all the power tools. We will learn routers, other drills and saws in the advance class.

The instructor is very nice, he will take us out on a field trip to buy wood this Sunday. I still haven’t decide what kind of wood I want to use. I want to use the cheaper pine if I screw up my table or I can use a better looking cherry or birch if I want to display my work in the living room. Buying wood is not cheap, the material cost of the table is at least $50, it may be over $100 if I go for expensive wood like walnut or oak. Buying a MDF table from IKEA is cheaper than building your once.

I am looking forward to next class. Woodworking is quite rewarding since you can see your production born from nothing other than a pile of wood. I think all men should know some basic woodworking skill. Woodworking is a very manly activity You are not man enough if you don’t know how to work with wood.

Daily Scribble

Rain making

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Vancouver has a gloomy winter. We have almost non-stop rain fall from October till April. To make us more depressing, the unusual sunshine often come during the weekday when everyone is trapped inside the office. I have an idea that will make Vancouver winter more bearable. We can use rain making to shift sunshine from weekdays to weekends. The technology is rain making already available. In fact, China has been using rain making technique to control rain fall for decades. One of the best example of human triumph over the environment is how China control rain falls during the Beijing Olympics last year.

The principle of rain making is fairly simple. Spray silver iodide or dry ice into the atmosphere and water module will attract to the particles and form rain clouds. We can create rain clouds during the weekday to give us a sunny weekend. Silver iodide can spray from a plane or shoot up to sky using rockets. The Vancouver city government should consider rain making as a public service. We can save money by outsourcing the work to high school science project. Imagine if each high school student build a rain making rocket, there will be enough rocket to give us sunshine every weekend.

Rain making has no environment concerns, since rain eventually will falls without human innervation. The total amount of rain fall does not change over a long period of time, we are just making it rain at a more convenient time. The first step is to control rain falls, the next step is to find ways to control temperatures. If we can make rains fall on Friday at 4-5C on Friday in Vancouver, then Saturday would be the perfect ski day with sunshine and soft powder snow in Whistler.

Daily Scribble

My PMP exam study plan

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My company starting to put more emphasis in project management. They try to avoid having the employees to work insane overtime, having forever slipping the project schedule and most important of all, minimize the risk of the project. They even start a new project management career leader in addition to the normal technical and management career leader. Project Management Professional (PMP) is the credential for project managers, it’s very common in construction, utilities and software industries. It is relatively new to semi-conductor industry and it is slowly getting acceptance. It would be an asset for me to have the PMP credential.

The PMP exam has 200 MC question and it is 4 hours long. There are expensive preparation course out there to help you pass the exam. In my opinion those prep course are a waste of money, unless they are paid by my company. I am expert of writing open exams. I have aced in TOEFL, SAT, GRE, GMAT, P.Eng exam The PMP exam is not that difficult compare to other open exams. Probably about the same level as the P.Eng practice exams on legal and ethics. The official PMP textbook is really boring and the content very confusing. Reading it is a waste of time because you won’t remember a thing. There are lots of prep books out there. I am using the one written by Andy Crowe, but I think any the prep books can get the job done. Studying the prep books won’t teach you much about project management, but it can help you pass the exam.

I applied the PMP exam last year and I have been procrastinating to schedule my exam date. My application is about to expire, so I finally schedule my exam on the last available date. It gives me only one month to prepare for my exam. There are 10 knowledge area in PMP exam. I have to study 3 chapters per week. It took me 2-3 hours to study one chapter. The work load is not too bad, I only have to study a few hours every other day. The prep book comes with a mock exam and a 1 week trial for an online exam database. I will save the mock exam and the exam database access until the last week. I think my study schedule is pretty good. I don’t want to span my study over a long period of time, since I may forget what I learned a few months ago. A one month study plan is just about right.

Daily Scribble

How to write a good history essay

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Pat is taking a course in Canadian history and has to hand in a final essay. She has read all the textbook and all the reference papers, but she still have no clue how to write a good essay. She summarized all points from different historians, but she could not figure out how to meet the essay requirement, assess and contrasts the points from those historians.

I think writing an history essay is just like writing a philosophy paper, probably all undergrad level academic papers come from the same mold. For a history essay, first you give a brief summary of the historical event, what had happened and what is the result. Then you quote different historians to offer different explanations on why it happened and what is the consequences of the result. Usually the easy way out is pick the perspective from the historian you like, cite some minor events to backup his theory, and cite some other minor events to go against other theories. At the end of the essay, you conclude by saying historian A is right, historian B and C are wrong, and that’s it. I know nothing about the Riel Revolution, but after reading just Pat’s summary, I manage to BS an outline for an A grade essay (I think).

The historical event in the essay is about some European and native Indian mix-blood decedents rebel against the Canadian federal government seizing their land and the Hudson Bay Company (HBC) has a monopoly in fur trade. At the end the federal government gave in and respect their properties rights. Historian A uses Marxism theory, the revolution is a typical class struggle. The government and the HBC are capitalist exploiting poor rural farmers and hunters. Historian B claims there are two groups of mix-blood decedents, those mixed with English and those mixed with French. The revolution is just the extension of the England-France war with the French mix-blood rebel against government while the English mix-blood wants to assimilate with the government. Historian C gives a toned down version of Historian A’s view, instead of claiming class different is the problem, he claims cultural different causes the problem. Historian D does not offer any theory, he just record some anecdote of certain English mix-blood family. It really does not matter which theory you choose to defense, I am sure you can find reference in D’s material to support or against any of A,B,C’s view points.

I think besides becoming a philosopher, I also have the potential to become a historian. Writing history essay seems pretty easy, it’s like ordering fast food, combo A + B + C. First pick a historical event, then pick a social theory and link them up by citing minor events. You just need to claim your theory is better than any other theory in explaining why the event happened and twist some facts to make them fit your theory.