Kelvin Chan

Last Tuesday I went to San Francisco to go to the new California Academy of Sciences. Despite visiting during the middle of the week, the place was packed! There must have been at least a dozen elementary school field trips there. For most of the morning the entire museum was flooded with little third graders yelling and screaming. There were also some kids from private schools who had to wear uniforms and had to do homework. Suckers! haha.
Fortunately, the mayhem died down as they left soon after lunch. Now I finally had time to explore what the museum and see everything they have on exhibit. One of the most interesting exhibits was the aquarium in the basement. The aquarium was huge and had several large tanks with sharks and sting rays along with a lot of other coral reef natives. In addition, there were dozens of smaller tanks with other fish which were very interesting in their own way. There were things from tiny frogs to camoflauged sea life which would be hard to see in an actual coral reef.
On the ground level, there was a large exhibit on global warming. Since I just took an entire class learning about it, I passed through the place pretty quickly. On the sides were two huge spheres. One of them was a plantarium showing a huge IMAX-size presentation on the universe. The other one was a simulated rain forest, complete with hot and humid temperatures. Inside, birds and butterflies flew around free as they could be considering they were in a 200ft sphere. Also, numerous lizards such as geckos and iguanas were in cages. Some of these reptiles ranged from the bizarre to the vibrant.
Finally, there was the green living roof. The entire roof was a giant garden planted with native flowers and reminded me of teletubby land. The entire building was beautifully designed. There was a focus on energy conservation. There were numerous skylights and rainwater was captured after it flowed past the layer of soil. Surrounding the edge of the building were new types of solar panels. Each cell was round and probably designed to be more efficient than the giant square panels on the roofs of many houses.

Overall, the entire visit was an enjoyable experience. Although it was rather expensive ($20 for students), it’s definitely one museum people should visit at least once.

While I was happily enjoying my dinner at the DC, my happiness turned into frustration when I ate into a plate of fish and shrimp pasta in which they forgot to fillet the damn fish. Just then inspiration struck.

I got a brilliant idea for an awesome website.

I want to create a Yelp like database comparing different food at the dining commons at various schools. Then I’ll allow users to entering in their opinions about the various entrees they ate (txt message, email, web from, whatever). This way, they’ll be able to compare amongst different schools and see which school has the best dining commons. Another added benefit is that by knowing the ratings of entrees beforehand, people will know what food to eat and what to avoid like the plague.

Problem is, sadly, is that I have no clue how to even create such a website. I’m guessing I’ll need a CMS like drupal or joomla and limit registration to people with school emails. But beyond that I don’t know where to begin. Can anyone offer any assistance?

Originally uploaded by kcchan1

I nearly cracked up when I saw the description of this cookie at Starbucks. Apparently they don’t know their nuts. Also, why do they charge $1.50 for a regular size cookie?

I don’t usually do these little internet questionnaires where they want me to put my life story online, but a friend of mine (and you know who you are) insisted that I do one so here it is:

1. I’m generally a pretty good listener. Sometimes it might seem like I’m trying to take over a conversation, but that’s just because I want to learn more about you and what you have to say.

2. I’m usually calm person. I can keep my cool during tense or nervous situations. Unfortunately, I suck at trying to calm other people down.

3. I used to be a really talkative person. Teachers had a hard time getting me to shut up. I recall one time when a sub constantly yelled my name at everyone just to get the class to be quiet, even when I wasn’t uttering a single syllable.

4. I don’t like taking pictures of people (especially myself). I think people spend too much time looking at one another and never get the see the real world around us.

5. I like cutesy things. If you want proof just look at my room at home.

6. I’m not religious. Anyone who tries getting me to believe in something might as well give up because it’s not going to work. That being said, I respect people of faith and accept that everyone can believe in whatever they want.

7. I daydream quite a bit. Sometimes I get so into it I lose my sense of reality.

8. I like rooting for the underdog. Whether is in sports or buying stuff I like supporting
the guy in second.

9. I don’t like spending money on myself. Unless it’s something I desperately need (i.e. food, books, and computer components) I generally don’t buy things even if I have the cash to do so.

10. I listen to talk radio and podcasts quite often. I like finding more about the things going on around the world as well as topics I have interest in and getting multiple views on a single story.

11. I’ve hated baseball ever since that incident in elementary school involving me, a metal bat and a substitute P.E. teacher.

12. I’m not a good programmer. I lack the patience to try to create then bug fix it for the next week and a half. Instead I’m more of a script kiddie who likes to assemble stuff and make things work the way I like.

13. As a semi-professional web designer, the look and feel of a website is crucial to me. If a site is ugly or unusable I general leave even if there’s good content on it.

14. To this day, I still like watching classic cartoons. Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night I turn on my iPod and watch a couple of episodes of Animaniacs or Bugs Bunny.

15. I don’t like candy. With the exception of chocolate, I don’t eat many sweets.

16. I don’t have very many friends. I’m generally pretty close with the friends I do have though. After all, it’s all about quality and not quantity right?

17. I like getting things done in a timely manner. When I’m doing stuff I generally don’t procrastinate or anything until it’s done.

18. Efficiency is both my strength and my weakness. I like streamlining tasks so that it’s easier to manage. However, sometimes I get so sidetracked at trying to make things efficient I lose sight of my initial intention to get it done in the first place.

19. I’m really organized. By that I don’t mean that messy organized where I’m the only person who knows where anything is. If I had to talk someone else through to getting something of mine they should be able to do it pretty easily.

20. I’m a visual learner. Even though I can learn things conceptually by just reading about it, I like being able to see how things are done before I actually do it.

21. I like explaining complicated things to people who know nothing about it. I find it a nice little challenge trying to describe certain things for people to better understand.

22. I hate people who pretend they know everything when in fact they don’t. Even worse are those people who refuse to accept that they’re wrong even though that I’ve proven that they’re full of crap.

23. I like trying new things, albeit at my own terms. I tend to shy away when others want me to do something I’m not comfortable with doing because I don’t know how.

24. I hate being disappointed. When I expect something I rather have that person at least try to get it done rather than giving up.

25. I’m pretty good around kids. Even if they don’t know me they don’t usually get scared and shy away when they see me.

I didn’t notice this until now, but it looks like Toupadakis couldn’t be bothered to write his own syllabus for my Chem 2B class. The Word document still has Enderle’s Chem 2A attributes written on it. OK, I’m sure everyone does this all the time because they’re all lazy, but this was worth a bit of a laugh since I’ve been studying for the last couple of hours. Well, back to trying to learn all of this crap we never learned in lecture.

See for yourself