Warm Spring

We are having one of the warmest spring in many years. But in HKUST, not much has changed. It is still foggy and misty up here as usual, just like a small kindom far from the other part of HK. Every spring, students who don't live on campus always have exciting stories about traveling to school by bus, for example, sudden turn without clear view of surrounding.
My dad took me back to his hometown, the country side in Canton. It is not the traditional type of poor area. More than half of the residents in this area have moved to the cities, like Shenzhen. Those who stay are old people or women and children. We visited some village which has a great reputation for being rich since the Open policy just introduced. We were invited to some houses, or mansions in this village. I used to think that the rich don't care about education but this time I met some boys from the rich family and they might be the exceptions. Unfortunately I didn't have chance to study them. I wanted a reason to love this town which always make me feel terrible and seperated. I was so excited to find sb. that I can comunicate with. But my dad seemed very unhappy about making these new friends and I gave up trying to love this place.
My aunt was very nice to me this time because my family built a new house for them. Well, you may say there is no link between being sympa and having a new house... My cousins are as lazy and impolite as usual. He poured some boiling water on my mum's feet by accident. Usually you won't be mad because of that but you will if they don't apologize or do sth. My cousin stayed in the same old position as if nothing happened. My uncle was sick and it is hard for him to do hard work. But his two GOOD sons just looked at him when he tried to lift something heavy up. I won't look down upon them if they are just different from us. But they are not decent or well educated and they are so lazy and not caring. I still remember my cousin borrowing money from my parents many times and never ever said thank you, let alone returning. I know my parents won't take them even if she insists, but it is good to at least express her appreciation. I can tell you more like that. I found it hard to respect somebody like that. They are not rich, but my parents can support them by giving them money(a lot), by finding their sons jobs. No one is perfect but there are basic stuffs for one to qualified to deserve these helps. I guess they will never understand and can not change their position by their own hands. They are POOR people who don't know how to respect others and themselves. Again they left me with disappointment. I thought after my younger cousin got into college like me and the older one got a good job, they would gradually learnt... I was wrong.
Here is a weird thing, I alwasys define family not bond to blood but relationship, love. What if I have a very bad dad?(assumption) Can I deny having a dad like that? Is it moral to do so? My dad loves his hometown very much even though I found people there are not worth loving that much. But it is different, because it is hard for him to discover the shortcomings when he's deeply, emotionaly involved. In fact I wanted to go back to my mum's hometown because my grandpa is sick. But once my dad's determined, nothing's gonna change his mind. I told them many times about going back to visit my grandpa. I think they should know what my idea no matter they agree with me or not.
It was hard to concentrate even though I brought my laptop back to dad's hometown. People there speak in such a loud voice that I was afraid they were having some fight when they talked. Maybe it is because in the old times, every house has a patio in the sitting room which gives way out for the sound waves. Generation after generation, they adopted that habit. Their children too speak in a loud voice and they were born and raised in the cities.
Generally the Spring Festival was okay. Good news is that I didn't argue with my dad, not even once! That night when he was not pleased, it happened that my mum stood by my side and I kept quiet. I felt calm and pleased whenever I thought of new cameras. So the problem went away silently. Mum praised me for dealing with this calmly when we were alone together.
Now I am back to school, find myself drowning with piles of work. I will post the photos I took these days later on my blog~~~
Happy new year to every one!

OpenGL

今天看了red book一点点，想自己写点，但是include library非常麻烦，单单要让program compile已经很痛苦了。没有挣扎干脆继续看看课本，惜只买到中文版，还要一边读一边翻译成英文
Every time after an action or frame, we need to call the function:
glFlush(); /glFinish();
--- to rienforce the system to refresh or execute the previous lines of program(functions) will ensure that the orders are excuted in some time(instead of forever)

for Polygons, to be valid, must fulfill:
simple polygon
convex
no holes inside

to model curves, we have a lot of small segment of straight lines to make the 'curve' looks smooth

enclose the functions of the vertice with glBegin() and glEnd()
example:
glBegin(GL_POLYGON);
glVertex2f(0.0, 0.0);
glVertex2f(0.0, 3.0);
glVertex2f(4.0, 3.0);
glVertex2f(6.0, 1.5);
glVertex2f(4.0, 0.0);
glEnd();

If replace the GL_POLYGON with GL_POINTS they will be five oints only.
there are some functions that we can use in between. Such as glColor(), glIndex(), glSecondaryColor(), glNormal(), glMaterial(), glFogCoord(), glTexCoord(), glMultiTexCoord(), glEdgeFlag(), glArrayElement(), glEvalCoord(), glEvaPoint() (to create coordinate), glCallList(), glCallLists

Here is a ineffiecient way to draw a circle:
#define PI 3.1415926535898
GLint circle_points = 100;
glBegin(GL_LINE_LOOP);
for (i = 0; i < circle_points; i++ ){
angle = 2*PI/circle_points;
glVertex2f(cos(angle), sin(angle));
}
glEnd();

Healthier?

These days though my timetable is full, I tried to keep going to the gym at least three times a week. I wanna stay healthy~~~ Even my mom managed to lose some weight and keep fit. I lost 1kg after the first two weeks. But probably because of the stressful comp211. My teammates made me nervous.
At the beginning of the semester, Rebecca and I had different courses or sections. Amazingly, now after all the swapping, adding and dropping, we have the same comp341, comp342, comp343 and huma200w!! Now we could do project for comp341, comp342 and huma200w together~~~ For comp341 OpenGL stuff, we planned to make either a set of Jazz drum or a small lovely area. I think that might be cool. But when I started to do the simple small program, it seemed very hard even for simple shapes~~~ Perhaps I am not familiar with the functions in the library. And I hate using MS Visual Studio to program and compile, so inconvenient. Daniel recommanded .NET but I am not a fan either. For comp343, following the instructions of labs everyone can feel the sense of achievement.
Yesterday I decided to take a day off and so I went shopping. I got sports wear. Though the size is not so right for me but it feels good. In that COLOR shopping mall, there are a lot of discounted items!!! But I have to save money for the SLDC that I wanna buy in this year. (Nikon D80) I got YINGZi's message and she asked me to call her back, unfortunately, she didn't give me her #. In the evening, I should have done my laundry and cleaned my room and had a good sleep. Instead I finished all the ep Daniel sent me earlier. I didn't make good use of my time. Norelle came and said she was really bored. But I didn't want to have a talk in the middle of my movie. I hoped she would notice that and leave. I should have thought of that--- if I don't explicitly tell her that it is not a good time to talk, she wont get it. So that delayed my finishing time. Later Amber came to borrow some cosmetic, I wanna talk with Amber in private, but there's no way to tell Norelle to leave. So she stayed in my room for some hours. Norelle is going to exchange too. To the UC! Heaven for her! I guess she might find a lot of attractive ABCs~~~
After the indulgence, I realized that I was behind schedule a lot. So today at this moment I am still in the lab. But the database schema stuck Daniel and I. He was like always--- desperate and anxious. I just told him to calm down but actually I was quite worried too. You know you cant really work when you are not calm. I hope I can get more things done tomorrow.
P.S. should I put on my suit for interview? Still struggling~~~

new semester

The new semester has begun and as usual I didn't have much work done in the first week. But I know this semester I'm gonna be really busy. For the exchange program, Warwick U accepted me and a professor from there is gonna give me a short interview next Tue. I should have asked Rebecca to drop down Warwick U in her list. Now she's going to Minnesota. If we find ourselves some guys in the host school to form a group we can do FYP there which is a bit unlikely to happen... I am still thinking of coming back to do it with her. Bad news, GRE will be taken on June 9th. It is too rush for me. I applied for internship in CCTV too. I heard that the priority is for locals. But I guess not too many students would like to go there, after all the environment is not attractive. My dad is worried about my future. He asked me why did I choose internship over GRE. I told him that if I apply for PG study in the UK, I don't have to take anything like GRE. So he thinks it acceptable but he added in the end, for field like media the US is still the very good choice.
I've turned in the declaration form of minor in liberal studies. After this semester I will earn enough for it.
Huma099F moral philosophy
Huma200Q Gothic Imagination in Literature and film
Huma200T Classical Chinese Drama: Text and Performance
Huma200W Contenporary Architecture
Sosc127 International Law
Sosc134 Sino-US relation
it is a pity that I cannot choose Huma230 this semester because it is not on the list of LS.
So this semester I will have 4 comp course if lucky---i'm still on the waiting list of comp231.
comp211 software engineering
comp341 computer graphics
comp343 multimedia computing
comp231 database management system/comp342 introduction to computer music