Author: Ed Pham

Tourney Report – National Qualifiers

So yeah… I do have a somewhat nerdy part of me. That being I play Magic: the Gathering. Here’s a report of a tournament I did, which was submitted to the Starkington Post (and maybe Star City Games, but probably won’t do it). It was a qualifier to play in U.S. Nationals. But a big part of it is, what would you do if you were in a situation where you’re against your friend in the final round to go to Nationals. Knowing who I was… Would you play it out or would you concede? That was my dilemma.

Continue reading Tourney Report – National Qualifiers

Text to Regex Generator

So on my blogroll, Jason Kottke posted this link: http://txt2re.com/. What is it? For those of you that don’t know, it’s a text to regular expression generator. What the heck is a regular expression? It’s basically a way to match a certain string (or sub-string) or text. It could be anything from looking for punctuations, certain patterns, words, and so forth. I have to admit, regular expressions (or regex) can be fairly tricky sometimes, but it’s definitely a great tool, especially in the computational field. So what is this generator suppose to do? You type in a string of text, then you proceed to select the text you want to search for with your expression by clicking on the links below those letters or words. At the very end, the generator spits out a piece of code that you can use to help find that string. Continue reading Text to Regex Generator

Racial Comments

This week seemed to be one of those weeks where I managed to see random racial comments get thrown out, either on the internet or in person. Not exactly sure why, but I felt this calling to talk about it briefly. You probably heard Alexandra Wallace’s comments with regards to Asians at UCLA. Not sure what really prompted it (though I’ve heard random rumors here and there), but it seems rather idiotic to do so in such a public forum like YouTube and while at a university where nearly 40% of the student population is Asian. Though, I’m not going to completely deny that everything she said was false, but regardless, I’m pretty sure wasn’t smart. I can understand if she’s was trying to be humorous or be comedic (though awkward to do it), but it doesn’t seem like it was the intent of her rant. I will admit though that death threats by others weren’t really warranted either. To inform and educate would have been far better than to try to run her out and let her maintain that stereotype. Continue reading Racial Comments

Buses

I take the bus over to UW from Bellevue whenever I need to go to campus. It saves me money, gas, and car maintenance in the long run.

Whenever I’m on a bus, there’s feels like this unwritten and unspoken code for where to sit. If at all possible, unless they’re a friend of yours, create as much space between you and everyone on the bus. For example, you’re sitting alone on the bus and someone else comes on. That person can sit anywhere they want… Except for the spots adjacent to you. If a spot opens up on a crowded bus that creates space between you and the person next to you, take it immediately. Basically create space between you and the rest of the riders on the bus.

However, every so often, you get that one person that chooses to sit next to you, even though there’s a ton of other seats that would give the both of you a lot if space. As a result, you’re squeezed up against to the window, subtly holding your nose to not breathe in the the weird smell coming from their jacket. A spot opens up to create some space between you and them, yet they still choose to sit right next to you. You wait… And wait… And wait… Still not moving. Still taking in that smell from them. They finally get off on some stop and you can breathe a sigh of relief.

Today was one of those days… Not awkward at all.

How One Church Handled Westboro’s Protests Against Them

Westboro Baptist Church goes around, protesting, putting up signs like “God hates homosexuals”, “God hates this”, “God hates that”. It’s pretty dumb. Well, this time, they go protesting three churches because of the churches’ belief that God loves everyone, which He does. So how does one church respond? You can read it here. (Thanks again to Josiah)

(Note: While, I might be a Christian, I’m not in support of the message Westboro brings to the world. I could go on a rant about their hateful message, but judging them is pretty much as hypocritical as them judging people for their sexual orientation, beliefs, etc.)

Playing Against an Old Team

So I’ve played in the city soccer recreational leagues for about four years now. And in those four years, I’ve played against two of my old teams. It’s been pretty mixed in terms of experiences.

When I first started playing in the leagues, I had joined up with one team as a keeper with a few friends. However, we eventually left to start our own team since we’d be interested in doing so for quite a while. That summer we jumped up divisions after dominating in our first season and I played that old team. I made a number of friends on that team, so despite the competitiveness and ferocity during the games, it was relatively friendly (minus the drama in one game after I kicked off a player from the team and them joining that old team). It was overall fun during that rivalry. Heck, even some of them are on the current team today. Continue reading Playing Against an Old Team