I have kept up this blog for over a year, but recently I have decided to move to a professional blogging system, with more features:
[url=http://dasooopnazi.blogspot.com/]
My New Blog![/url]

I had the first meeting of my AoPS AIME class yesterday, and I enjoyed it very much!

Equations were never my strong point, but after practicing solving a lot of AIME problems, I found that they are a lot easier that I thought they would be. Thank you AoPS!

I woke up at eight today, had a small breakfast, and almost immediately had to drive to West Hollywood for an orthodontical appointment (a check-up for my retainers). After the appointment, I spent an hour in my math tutor's classroom, working on the LAMO by correspondence (I should have finished it a week ago, but I'm lazy ). Afterwards, I went to my grandma's apartment and helped move some furniture around.

When I got back from West Hollywood, I spent almost the rest of the day working on an English essay. This essay is very important for me - I need an 85% on it to get an A in English. However, I was never any good with essays, so all I finished after all that time was one paragraph of my rough draft.

I have a piano recital tomorrow, but with the English essay, I didn't have time to practice today. Needless to say, this is bad.

That's it for today. Bye!

Life for me is same old, same old. But that's not a very good blog entry now is it?

So let me go ahead and write what's happening, for anyone who cares:

• I started a forum game on PodDonkey, and now I deeply regret it. People are joining the PodDonkey forum now solely to play the game, and very few people go on any other parts of the forum (or other parts of the site for that matter).
• I got kicked really hard in karate on Friday and it still hurts. Ow.
• Summer starts soon!!
• I have to buy books for all of next year's classes. Counting all the APs, there are about 15 books, with a total price of around 150.
• And of course summer will be no picnic (though it may include them). I have to do summer work for my 4 AP/Honors classes - that's a lotta work!
• I also want to take an AoPS AIME Series class, so I won't bomb the AIME like I did this year. I get a free class, because I took an Independent Study course last summer.
• Just installed games on my new TI-89 Titanium (I lost my old TI-89 recently). To my dismay, very few games were Titanium-compatible. Fortunately, though, there's a series of patches I could use that made nearly all games compatible. Unfortunately though, TI-Explorer, my favorite TI file manager, still doesn't work.
• Gee I'm really starting to run out of topics here. Umm, well, I saw the Da Vinci Code yesterday, and it wasn't nearly as bad as the critics made it out to be. It wasn't that good either though - I wasn't a big fan of the book either.

Well, that concludes today's blog entry! Stay tuned tomorrow ... err... the day after ... err... next week ... err... *runs away*

And of course I promptly forget about my "daily" entries. I guess I'm not meant to be a blogger...

Anyways, lots of things have happened over the past few days: STAR testing, people spamming my forum, and lots of parties. But tell me: who on this forum/blog actually cares about that?? Nobody, of course.

So let's talk about something that (may) interest you - the 8th annual Los Angeles Mathematical Olympiad.

This is a math olympiad that is organized by a math tutor in the LA area. It's free, and there's a ton of prizes. This is my seventh year attending (I forgot about it one year).

Anyways, I have always thought the problems in this Olympiad to be rather hard, but this year, after the AIME and my AoPS Independent Study class, I found them be riduculously easy. I was the first person to get 100% in the 11th-12th grade division in the history of the Olympiad! Thank you AoPS!

For those interested in seeing the problems, I uploaded the problems and solutions: LAMO 2006 11th/12th grade Problems and Solutions!

In addition, all competitors recieved an "Olympiad by correspondence". This is an olympiad, kinda like the USAMTS but easier, in which you have a month to solve eight problems. Winners get prizes! And to be nice to the (very few) people who read my blog, I decided to post it here!
LAMO 2006 11th/12th grade Olympiad by Correspondence

Good luck!

I took the AP Calculus AB test yesterday. It had some difficult moments but compared to, say, the AIME or USAMO, it was a piece of cake.

Also, check out this site: www.meebo.com . It's an online IM client, sorta like a mix between Trillian and AIM Express, that lets you sign on to five different IM servers at once. Also includes features like chat logging. Very useful overall

And of course, if you haven't gone on www.PodDonkey.com you should. (Just had to say that.)

Today was a very busy day, because I was a performer in the Martial Arts Superfest. Basically, the Superfest is a huge annual martial arts show put on in the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Center by around ten different studios, including the one I'm in, representing a wide variety of martial arts styles.

Since I have some time, let me give a little description of my day:

10:30AM PST - Left for the Civic Center
10:40 - Arrived at the Civic Center
10:45-12:15PM - Dress rehearsal
12:30PM-4:00 - In the holding room (which we had to share with another studio, so it was very crowded, especially around the TV )
2:00 - The show starts
3:00 - The long-awaited "lunch": a turkey sandwich from Subway.
4:00-4:30 - In the Green Room.
4:30-5:00 - We're on! (ours is the last studio to perform)
* I do my first performance, the "Football Thrower" form.
* Sprint back to the green room, take off white uniform, put on blue uniform, grab my sword, sprint back.
* Wait for the 8th performer for the sword form to get dressed. Some fifteen seconds of dead air.
* Finally decide to forget about him and just run in and do the sword form. Of course, he chooses this moment to finally get dressed.
* Spring to green room, take off blue uniform, put on black uniform, grab a staff, sprint back.
* Third performance: staff form
* Almost immediately after, I run back on stage and do a box form.
* Final performance is a sort of a scene, with like, acting. I got to have a bloody death. I may have overdone it though...
5:00 - Curtain call, much applause.
5:00-5:30 - After-party in the lobby, which I unfortunately missed, because I had to run all over the Civic Center helping a friend look for his brother.
5:30-6:00 - Chatted with Master Hurricane, a friend of my master's and a fifth-degree black belt.
6:00-6:15 - Helped my master pack stuff up.
6:15 - Finally got picked up.
6:30 - Got home.

So that's where the day went. At some points it was hectic backstage, some performers messed up, and I was nervous pretty much the whole time, but overall it was rewarding and very fun. Also, this was my first show of any kind (not counting piano recitals), so it was interesting to go backstage and stuff.

And that's it for today. Stay tuned for tomorrow's exciting blog entry! (which may not be tomorrow, or exciting, or indeed a blog entry at all ...)

Many of you have probably heard of the Google Da Vinci Code Quest, a web quest that involves solving 24 puzzles that grow progressively more difficult. In this entry I will describe my experiences with the Quest.

"But wait!" you say. "What's up with the title?" Well, we'll get to that in a sec.

Cut to yesterday. I was doing very well, having solved the first 23 puzzles and eagerly awaiting the last. (It should be noted that the first 10,000 people to solve all 24 puzzles will recieve a Da Vinci Code cryptex replica valued at 30 dollars.) Anyways, I then realized something: puzzles are posted daily at 1PM ET (10AM PST) for some reason. I have school at that time, of course, so this put me in a dillema.

However, both luckily and unluckily for me, I got sick yesterday evening, either from allergies or the cold (it's hard to tell sometimes).

I woke up the next day (today) very sick, but my parents made me go to school, because apparently I was not sick enough for an excused absence. Grudgingly I went to school, but during second period my runny nose became unbearable. During nutrition (10:30 PST) I went to the office and said I was sick. The office lady told me to call my parents. Calling them took 10 minutes (seriously!), because no-one was picking up. Finally I was able to contact my dad and got permission to go home.

However, here I ran into yet another dillema - I had no ride home. I finally walked home, found the computer on for some reason, and quickly solved the last puzzle. But of course I was too late: the puzzle was posted at 10:00, and I came home at 11:00. You do the math!

Anyways, it turned out that all ten thousand finalists had finished at around 10:15 PST - just fifteen minutes after the puzzle was posted. "How?!??!" you may ask.

The answer is simple: googlefact.blogspot.com . In this popular blog, which I only found out about a few days ago, and only used once, answers are posted within a few minutes of each puzzle going up. Now, I'm sure I'm not alone when I ask, "How is this legal???" And of course the response the blog owner gives of course just avoids the question by saying something along the lines of "only 4,500 - 7,500 people visit my blog every day, so there's still a couple thousand spots left!"

And here I am, with allergies (or a cold, i still don't know which!), having to make up several school assignments, and without my worthless 30 piece of movie merchandise.

The End.

I just remembered what a blog is supposed to be. It's supposed to be an online diary in which you bore viewers to death with your daily routine. (sorry bloggers ) And so, withour further ado, let me write what I did yesterday (I should have written this entry yesterday evening, but I didn't have time )

7:00 AM: I woke up.
8:00: Went to school.
8:30-10:10: First period - Calculus. I spent the period studing for science and playing cards. That's pretty much all I do in Calculus now that the AP test is over.
10:30-12:05 PM: Second period - Chemistry. We had a very easy group quiz today . I then spent the rest of the period studying for the Global Science STAR test and drawing caricatures of my lab group .
12:10 PM -12:50: Lunch. A bagel, as always.
12:50-2:25: Third period - P.E. Today we ran two miles, the most we have ever run. It was very hot today. I kept up a good pace for one and a half miles, but then I couldn't take it anymore, and had to stop for a bit before going on. For that reason I got 17:40, not a very good time.
3:30-5:30: Piano lessons.
5:30-7:30: Went on PodDonkey.
10:00: Went to bed.

And that's pretty much what I did yesterday. Yes, I have a boring life. Now let's see how long I can keep up these "daily" posts.

OK, get this: I lost my TI-89 calculator - and my AP Calc test is next week!!

I guess I'll have to go buy a new TI-89, maybe a Titanium this time. At least I made a backup this time.

In other news, I just learned that I can't make a fortune through Google ads...

And now... <drumroll>
The Puzzle of the Week!!
Click to reveal umm... the puzzle I guess...