victorl.ai

Blog

Jan 15, 2016

Life Is Scary

Let’s make it unscary. I traveled in Nepal over Christmas this year. My sister travels a bunch at the end of every year. Early December, she asked me if I...

Dec 22, 2015

2016 Resolutions

2016 will be my year. I say that every year, and every year has been better than the previous one. And I will make every year better than the last....

Nov 8, 2015

Excelsior

My favourite movie is Silver Linings Playbook. It’s based off of the book of the same name. It’s about a man with mental illness who snaps one day. His personal...

Oct 18, 2015

Never Give Up

In Grade 11, my best friends and I competed in McMaster University’s Engineering and Physics Olympics. Our event was the Mechanical Transporter, and we were a team of 4: me,...

Sep 9, 2015

Be Yourself

I’ve never understood what people meant when they say, “be yourself”. Obviously I am being myself and still stuck, so how does being myself even more change anything? Also obviously,...

Jul 9, 2015

micromanaging is not managing

I’ve never really understood group projects. For me, school group projects always end up falling into 3 groups: I end up doing most of the work myself I end up...

May 30, 2015

read

This post on Reddit reminded me a lot about my own childhood. One thing I always remember about my childhood are books. I think the first book I’ve ever read...

Apr 26, 2015

Getting Better At Programming

I’m going to try and switch up my blogs with a bit more programming content nowadays, just because I don’t like posting about extremely controversial topics that generate so many...

Apr 8, 2015

The Value of You

I was going to write a post about how it seems like some of the most vocal advocates for mental health in schools today always seem to misinterpret the causes...

Mar 12, 2015

You Have a Limited Time to Say Sorry

If you’re like me, you make mistakes. A lot. If you’re REALLY like me (scary), you probably didn’t do a lot of apologizing when you were little. It was partially...

Feb 7, 2015

the poker dilemma

preface: I wrote the first half of this a month ago, left it in my drafts because I didn’t think it was relevant, and then I got first place in...

Jan 25, 2015

the final year

I hate the kind of finality that’s slowly creeping up. It’s a new year, 2015, so that means we’re entering our final years of university. And that’s frickin’ scary. There’s...

Dec 3, 2014

negativity is not welcome

I don’t understand people who are blatantly aggressive. Maybe it’s the culture of nerds or the culture of the technology industry or the culture of kids who haven’t grown up,...

Oct 5, 2014

challenge yourself

Life is hard. And if it isn’t hard, it can get really hard very easily. Should we shy away from the pains and go down the path of least resistance?...

Aug 28, 2014

everyone has the same dreams

We don’t have this discussion enough. Everyone really dreams about the same things. Everyone has the same ideals. Everyone wants the same things from the world. Everyone wants someone fair...

Aug 17, 2014

it's not okay

I know a guy who has really poor social skills, where sometimes it’ll be embarrassing and other times it’s unbearably awkward/rude/annoying to see. I’m not really close enough to give...

Jun 15, 2014

throwing money at it

Remove barriers between yourself and your target. Whenever you do something new and different, there’s always a hill or bump to get over in order to start doing it. The...

Jun 4, 2014

microsoft month one

Microsoft doesn’t seem to know how to cater to its audiences that well. I’ll be honest, I’m a huge fan of Microsoft. That’s why I applied and that’s why I...

Mar 30, 2014

Leading

I’m not a leader anymore. I used to love being in charge, telling people what to do, making people get things done. It felt nice to be able to be...

Mar 28, 2014

Seeing and Living

There’s been a lot of thought put into the idea of living, but not seeing. It already sounds very weird and like an attempt to be profound, but it makes...

Mar 14, 2014

Summer 2014

I’ll be in Microsoft working on Outlook this summer. :)

Feb 11, 2014

A New Class of Jokes

I remember back in the 12th grade, I was talking to a friend about how basically every single joke makes fun of someone in someway (like laughing at a mistake...

Feb 9, 2014

Draw Your Own Conclusions

I recently found out that I hate giving advice. It’s fine when the advice is black and white. “Oh, you’re missing a } over here.” “That error comes up because...

Feb 3, 2014

passive learning

Do you sit down and let knowledge come to you? Or do you actively work to improve yourself? It’s a topic I’ve found very interesting over the last couple of...

Jan 24, 2014

am i being overworked?

Here’s something interesting. This term is actually extremely work-heavy. But I’m still finding time to go do other things like help out, and meet new clubs. It’s a bit strange...

Jan 22, 2014

almost too much

So it’s been 2 weeks. I think I’m already overworked. I thought I had a weekend to catch up but I was stuck on one assignment, and now multiple (>3)...

Jan 11, 2014

school again

First week of school over. Damn. This year is going to be insaneee. All of my teachers are awesomely chill. Not many immediate flaws, but I guess as I experience...

Jan 6, 2014

starting winter 2014

First day back at school. I have to remember for next term to not bring so much. I always end up bringing a car load and it takes way too...

Jan 4, 2014

don't worry, be happy

Let’s start 2014 on a happy note. I’m going to try to go 365 days without any of the previous baggage. This term, I’m going to go cold turkey on...

Dec 30, 2013

one year of music

Here are 90 of my favourite tracks I've found this year. I'm subscribed to 424 channels on Youtube, probably 400 of those post only music. Awesome. Electronica - 84 +...

Dec 28, 2013

walk

Do you know what I miss most about school? I miss walking. Living at home with my parents during my co-op term is so limiting. It’s so much easier than...

Dec 24, 2013

xtremely pivotal

I just finished a 4 month coop term at Xtreme/Pivotal Labs in Toronto, a mobile tech company. Here’s a short list of things I did: G2 driving license Bought a...

Dec 19, 2013

a lesson in racism and happiness

Sometimes, things just hit you like a brick. I was out with a friend for dinner after work. We said bye, and I hopped on another subway line to head...

Dec 14, 2013

500 downloads

A couple weeks ago I finally released my app to the Windows Phone app store. And then I got a bunch of emails telling me my app was going to...

Dec 4, 2013

read more

The last 4 months has been awesome for reading. I went straight into George Martin’s original series (you know, not just Game of Thrones), Wild Cards. Wild Cards is set...

Oct 24, 2013

Cold Showers

There’s a surprising amount of research into cold showers. It makes absolutely no sense to anyone who loves a hot shower, but there’s plenty of people backing it up. Ten...

Sep 27, 2013

More music

Small music dump. Enjoy! safely endangered

Aug 16, 2013

a year in retrospect

I spent about a year rewriting myself. I took a good hard look at my life because I realized that I was not the person that I wanted to be,...

Jul 19, 2013

it's the little things (and also the big things)

After you go after the big things in design, you go after the little ones. And you’ll notice the people/companies that succeed the most do the best with the little...

Jul 12, 2013

Get your shit together Microsoft

No one from Microsoft is ever going to read this but I’m going to vent for a little bit. Get your shit together Microsoft. You made a Windows Phone OS....

Jul 1, 2013

Happy Canada Day

whoo! holiday :) Here’s my weekly music update.

Jun 23, 2013

Xbox One and the Internet

I tend to think of myself as rather rational since I have nothing invested in the matter. I’m a PC gamer, my previous console was a PS2 that I last...

Jun 13, 2013

Face the challenges

This is one of my roughest school terms in my life. Last school term, I decided I had to lay off the gas pedal. I was still under depression, and...

May 22, 2013

Why this site exists.

Back a while ago, during my second interview ever, I was asked a pretty strange question – why did I have a website? The interviewer seemed to have an idea...

Apr 23, 2013

Pain

I hurt some people today. Everything was completely in my power to not allow this to happen, but I screwed up. On a ridiculous level even. Something that broke years...

Apr 16, 2013

Tires

I’ve always thought I was invincible. I still do. I read in the daily mail that the recently deceased Magaret Thatcher could work on just 4 hours of sleep a...

Apr 1, 2013

The N Word

thedeadhaji made an interesting post here about his fear of word nigger. I like the perspective, and the ensuing discussion, but I found it to be a bit too …...

Mar 21, 2013

A New Beginning

So, I disappeared for a few months. Listed some goals and then ran off. That’s okay, because I’ve been busy. This site got a facelift. I’m finally satisfied with the...

Dec 31, 2012

stuff to do

So many things I want to do, that it just seems impossible. Hopefully I will cross them all off before 2013 is over. Also, this means I have something physical...

Dec 5, 2012

a clockwork wtf

There's a huge difference between reading something for fun and reading something for study. At least for study, your thoughts are focused in the direction of the teachers' musings. They...

Nov 23, 2012

depression

What constitutes depression? Over several months, I lost everything. It was a massive snowball downwards. Nothing made sense anymore. Time blurred by, it's already been 3 months and back to...

Nov 12, 2012

on teamliquid attack

Awesome! I was a bit busy with school work a couple weeks ago, but I managed to watch the TeamLiquid Attack! episode with White-Ra. TeamLiquid Attack! is a Starcraft show...

Oct 25, 2012

CS241 MERL file linker

For an assignment in my CS241 class, we had to link two MERL files by hand. I didn't want to do this, but I didn't understand the concept of linking...

Oct 5, 2012

word scores

From the inspiration above, I decided to check out what words actually fit this definition. Sorry for the Comic Sans in the image, though. First, I'll define ``` python def...

Sep 22, 2012

data URL images

Here’s something cool. So, that looks like any image file, no? Actually, if you look at its source, it’s really just a big line of text. I can’t say I...

Sep 15, 2012

gaming professionalism

I really like gaming. There is something beautiful about immersing yourself completely in the game. Losing yourself completely in this reality, and escaping the physical world. It is the same...

Sep 8, 2012

coders' block

I’m working on my Poker game, and it’s always the same story. I always find that the hardest part is not the logic, but getting it playable. I seem to...

Aug 22, 2012

hey, i'm HTML5 valid!

Just fixed up some of my bad habits in HTML5, and now, I’m HTML5 valid! (according to validator.nu) Yay! :D

Aug 20, 2012

tetris basics

I don't know where this came from, but most of the time, it's true. You have to get worse before you get better. That applies for almost everything that's worth...

Aug 18, 2012

tetris

I recently achieved my 3 month goal of getting to level 95 in Tetris Friends Battle, so here's some Tetris. ^^ Tetris Tetris is played all around the world, with...

Aug 11, 2012

some cables feel really nice

I recently gained possession of a really nice pair of cables. 1/4” male to 1/4” male. Nothing special really, except the cable feels really nice. I have a pair of...

Aug 3, 2012

Dexpot

Workspaces are brilliant. I fell in love with them the first time I used Ubuntu, but I still preferred Windows. The problem? Windows doesn't have workspaces... by default. So I...

Jul 26, 2012

Dropbox

Dropbox just saved me weeks of pain, so here it goes. If the Dropbox introduction video doesn't convince you, here is my real world use of Dropbox. Case 1 I'm...

Jul 20, 2012

just go for it

When people ask for motivation, it’s really hard to give them a straight answer. I never had one myself. But recently, I’ve had some really bad problems that left me...

Jul 11, 2012

counterstrike & memories

Sometimes, the oddest of circumstances makes you remember things you did in the past, that somehow you forgot over the years. And most of the time, it puts a really...

Apr 14, 2012

first coding interview

I had an interview the other day that really shook me up. He asked me a question that really made me wonder how much I really knew about programming. I...

Feb 25, 2012

hello world

This is my first post. So, an obligatory def main(): print "Hello world!" if __name__ == "__main__": main() Thanks for visiting~

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