Dustin Ho

In the month or so since I’ve posted (too many projects x.x), a few iterations of standard strategy for Zerg have occurred, and the one I’ve found to be most interesting is the rise of the Baneling as a dominant force in the early game. I thought I’d just share a few of the key moments of this trend here, as well as provide a build order for people to use and abuse =)

Youtube example: (Jump to 4:30 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDyYLkpmoS0) though the ZOTAC replays are better.

But first, a pretty picture of Banelings going boom. (source: liquipedia)

A few of the factors that have motivated the Baneling trend:

• Dimaga’s devastating Baneling/Speedling timing attack in the 4th ZOTAC Cup where he demolished every Terran player in the early rounds. Replays at the link.
• Inital success of FE speedling openings by players in patch 7 as an alternative to the standard Roach builds.
• The Roach -1 armor nerf of patch 8 - this sealed the deal. ZvZ instantly went from being a Roach dominated game into one where Zergling/Baneling has started to become common.

A quick review of the baneling:

• Cost is 25/25 per baneling, and morphed from a zergling. 
• Health is 30 and unarmored.
• Damage is 20 (+15 Light) in an AoE, and 80 against buildings

It’s pretty easy to see that baneling has the potential to cause TERRIBLE TERRIBLE damage against both clumps of light armor units (Zerglings, Zealots, Marines), clumps of harvesters (light armor), and buildings. It’s main weakness is it’s low raw hp and lack of mobility. We’ll exploit the lack of units in the early game to overcome it’s HP weakness with a speedling shield line in order to destroy 1) Supply Depots in order to prevent production of more T1 units and 2) Harvesters to give us a permanent edge in economy if we don’t win outright. Now that we’ve got the basics, lets jump into the build.

Zerg vs. Terran Baneling Bust BO

• 14 Pool
• 14 Extractor
• Kill drone production at 15.
• 15 Queen
• 17 Zergling - and then continue to pump Zerglings with every larvae
• First 100 gas - Upgrade Zergling Speed
• Next 50 gas - Baneling nest
• Morph 5-6 banelings when nest pops.
• At around 31, queue hatchery to their base, make banelings attack the supply depot at the choke, and rush zerglings in. Continue queueing up Zerglings into the base.

If all goes perfectly well, the banelings will take out both a Supply Depot as well as damage some the of units at the choke. The zerglings will run in and proceed to demolish the base.

So what can go wrong? Even if the Terran has amassed a large amount of T1 units, well placed banelings in the SCV line are more than adequate to secure you an advantage. The true counter to this build is simple: if the terran blocks off their choke with high HP buildings such as Barracks or Factories, there’s nothing you can do. You may be tempted to morph more banelings and try to break the wall, but it’s cost and time prohibitive. By the time you have massed enough banelings (remember your economy is significantly behind!) a smart Terran will have hellions to chew through your zerglings and kite the banelings! Make sure to scout ahead with your overlord and immediately transition off this build if you don’t see the telltale supply depots at the choke.

Note that this is a very “all-in” build. Either the attack goes successfully and your opponent is dead or completely crippled, or your attack is easily repelled and you’re very far behind in economy. Here’s a slight variation that is less committing, but still very effective, especially against Zerg and Protoss who didn’t block. I actually lost to a variant of this in the recent GosuCoaching tournament - very embarrassing!

Zerg vs. Zerg Baneling Harrass

• 14 Pool
• 14 Extractor
• Kill drone production at 15.
• 15 Queen
• 17 Zergling - and then continue to pump Zerglings with every larvae
• First 50 gas - Baneling nest
• Morph 3-4 banelings when nest pops.
• At around 26, move in with your force of zerglings/banelings.
• Depending on the situation, either proceed to pressure or transition to a standard opening line.

Your goals are to 1) Kill the enemy Queen and 2) Detonate as many banelings as possible in the worker line. Afterwards, the Drone count should look something like 15 to 8, and you can proceed with Roach build, or transition into fast Mutalisks in order to seal the game. 

Counters? That’s actually what I’ll be practicing on today - going to try a fast roach build and see how it plays out. I’ll share the results sometime soon =)

In the beta, probably the most interesting matchup for me has been ZvT - simply because of all the things you can “get away with” and the amount of mid-game push strategies employed by both sides. I’ve been trying out a variety of openings and unit comps and thought I’d share a few of the most successful I’ve found.

Also - must say http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=115102 is a very pretty good article, but I feel it still fails to do the match justice (the replay is here: (http://omploader.org/vM3Q0MQ watch it! A commented youtube version is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs6Ljkyd7io but I feel like there’s a lot of little things KHB does that makes downloading the replay worth it.) It completely changed my view of the infestor in this matchup and showed that FE v Terran seems to work (even on Steppes, which I think is the smallest map).

Early Strategy:

• Fast Expand at 14. I haven’t seen a Terran who can stop it, even on the smallest map, without the Zerg making a very obvious mistake. Your pool is going to want to come immediately afterwards, and then comes a delicate balance of zerglings/power econ/and spine crawlers to ward off the first attack.
• Early game should be Zerglings/Banelings with speed upgrade and burrow to hold of the +1 M&M Timing attack. You can also use the banelings to break his wall and rush in speedlings if you suspect fast-tech.

Mid-game

• Around this time is when your FE kicks in hard, as long as you held off wave 1. You have the freedom to choose the flow of the game with your extra income and there’s two endgames you can aim for.
• One is to transition to a few mutas if you see a hellion build, but don’t stick with them as a mass viking strategy can dominate it. The key is making a few for scouting and make him transition away from hellions to vikings without a slowdown to your build.
• Second is Roach/Hydra, especially if he’s still pushing bio. Keeping a few banelings around is still good though, as they tend to make T paranoid and waste scans. Speedlings are still required, especially if tanks are incoming.
• On every unit comp, go fast infestors. You need to get them out quickly in T2 to store up energy. Why? Fungal. Creep. Is. Overpowered. 6 seconds of snare and sick damage. Absolutely melts bio, and is the perfect counter to a Thor build.

End-game.

• If you went for the Spire, start pumping Brood Lords. These guys are sick. Once their damage ramps up, it’s equivalent to 200dph. Yeah. Ridiculous. Make sure you have Hydra/Corruptor backup if you encounter mass vikings, and Infestors for Thor/Marine counter.
• If you went roach/hydra, your endgame is fully upgraded Ultralisks. Slams through a bio line, but you need solid amounts of hydras to ward of the air. Infestors are again key for holding shit still and mind-controlling anything annoying.

Tips:

• Scout! Overlord sac to keep ahead of his tech. An overlord is 100 minerals - he’s using 200+ minerals on EVERY scan.
• Map control! Burrowed zerglings at expansion points, overlord spread and vomit for even more control (until he makes vikings - PULL as soon as you see that starport up). Burrow Banelings along unit paths - keep him on edge, try to make him waste scans (There’s no real detection for T until T3 Ravens, and again each scan is 200+ minerals). 
• Make a queen spawn a creep tumor and then leapfrog tumors all across the map. This is something that should be done whenever you have a free moment of attention.
• Mind-control goes on their most crucial units. Ravens and Thors are a great use, but don’t be afraid to mc vikings if AA is getting hairy.
• Spam fungal creep. SPAM. FUNGAL. CREEP.
• For your FE, he might try to build a bunker next to it while the sight range is low. Don’t be afraid to PULL ALL DRONES. 
• Wall up with spine crawlers, especially if you see double/triple rax. Make sure your ramp is fully blocked, or else a hellion rush will incinerate all your drones before you can blink. You don’t want this to happen to you. I learned this the hard way (and so did KHB in that replay).
• Similarly, one or two spore towers in each drone line will save you vs banshee harrass. Make sure to upgrade a overseer in case you see double-starport cloak strategy.
• Upgrades are critical - I’ve been experimenting with double evolution chamber in T2 and it seems worth it, especially once your econ gets rolling.
• Expand often. Especially in the T3 transition, when you pretty much have full map control and tons of minerals to spare. Gas is going to be your limiting factor for the rest of the game.

That’s it! More and more waves of SC2 Beta are coming out - hope this helps and look forward to seeing more of you online =D

StarCraft II Beta - Patch 3 (version 0.5.0.14219B)

Balance Changes

• TERRAN
  • Engineering Bay
    • Infantry Armor: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Infantry Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
  • Armory
    • Vehicle Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Vehicle Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Ship Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
    • Ship Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
• PROTOSS
  • Zealot
    • The maximum shield capacity of this unit has been decreased from 60 to 50.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the Infestor’s Neural Parasite ability could cause Reapers to lose the ability to move.
• Fixed an issue that could use an incorrect HDR format on some ATI cards.
• Fixed a crash that could happen on some ATI cards.

Yet another buff for terran, nerf for protoss, aaaaand nothing new for Zerg. Checking the upgrade times on Terran, I’m surprised Blizz decided to make Terran upgrades 190/220/250 in the first place, seeing as how Zerg and Protoss are both 140/180/200. Still not sure about their rationale to have a +20s on them anyways… but who am I to question the patch.

It’s interesting to see that these patches are such small balance changes though - gives me high hopes that the game will be released on time.

Oh and in other news, Shrews/I are #1 in our Bronze league division, woohoo. We’re not TOTAL scrubs anymore. Beating up Bronze is getting too easy, here’s hoping we get moved to Silver soon. This is, of course, assuming I stop losing to warp ray rush - it seems to be the new cool thing to do as Protoss when they see that roach warren go down. Every match I played today has been against Protoss - and every loss (or close win) was because of early warp rays T_T”

Epic Dual Planetary Fortress Rush lolololol. Skip to 4:10 if you just want to see the match.

Seems like a good BO - Shrews is trying it out. The idea is to have your M&Ms show up at their doorstep the moment your upgrades finish. I think it’s a solid opening for T, but as he mentions, banelings are pretty much hard counter to mass bio.

Source: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=114168&currentpage=2

On February 22 2010 23:30 Fallen wrote:

This is my TvZ timing push.. its quite simple ^^

10 supply
11 rax
13 refinery
15 orbital command
~1-2 marine to fend off fast lings
16 supply
17 engineering bay/reactor on first rax
18 rax #2
20 rax #3
21 upgrade weapon damage in engineering bay
22 supply
25 Tech lab on rax #2
30 reactor on rax #3


so by 7:30 +1 damage finishes, you have a control of about 25-30 units and you attack move teh zerg base! by 8 minute you’ll have the marine +10 hp buff researched as well and about 35-40 units. You make marauders from the tech lab barrack, and always double marines from the reactors ones.

Always have a supply depot queued as this build is supply intensive. Always use the mule when you get 50 mana. If you macro well, you’ll have an endless stream of marine/marauder coming to support your push.

This beat mass roaches/mass lings/hydras/fast expand and whatever teh zergs have thrown at it so far. The only threat to this build is banelings/lings. If you play smart, you should be able to fend that off pretty easily as well.

You have to stay inside your walls until you get one or both marines upgrade done.

I’ll add replays when I wake up later, not sure where I can host them.

heres a replay against #1 in platinum division 6 edit: took out the replay as it seems theres a virus on that upload site =( sorry guys

http://www.starcraft2.com/launcher/patch-notes.htm

Beta Patch 1 came out last night and the full notes are linked above. Comments are below in italics.

• TERRAN
  • Viking
    • The armor value for this unit in Fighter Mode has decreased from 1 to 0.
    • The damage done by this unit in Fighter Mode has changed from 6 (+8 armored) to 10 (+4 armored).
    • Seems reasonable. They were losing 1v1 fights against mutalisks - this bumps their damage up over muta (10 base v 9 base).
  • Reaper
    • The damage done from D-8 Charges has decreased from 40 to 30.
    • The delay between attacks for D-8 Charges has decreased from 2.5 to 1.8.
    • Looks like they’re trying to weaken the reaper’s kiting power. I haven’t ever had much of a problem dealing with reapers with some good scouting, but this has been a big complaint in the forums.
  • Orbital Command
    • The build time for this upgrade has decreased from 50 to 35.
    • Flat out buff. Shrews likes this xP.
• PROTOSS
  • Observer
    • Gravitic Boosters: The cost of this research has decreased from 150 minerals and 150 vespene gas to 100 minerals and 100 vespene gas.
  • High Templar
    • Phase Shift: This ability has been removed from the game.
    • New ability: Feedback - Drains all energy from the target unit and causes damage equal to the amount of energy drained.
    • This is really interesting, taking out an ability that noone ever uses to make high templars a hard counter to units like the raven, who require energy to do anything useful, as well as some top-tier units with energy like BCs and Mothership.
  • Colossus
    • The building pathing radius for this unit has decreased from .75 to .5625.
  • Mothership
    • Vortex: The energy cost of this ability has increased from 75 to 100.
    • Vortex: The target radius of this ability has decreased from 3.0 to 2.5.
    • Temporal Rift: This ability has been removed from the game.
    • Wormhole Transit: This ability has been removed from the game.
    • New ability: Mass Recall - Teleports all of the player’s units in the target area to the Mothership.
    • Well, Motherships are killable now, yay. I like Mass Recall too - seems more like the old arbiter.
  • Nexus
    • Chrono Boost can no longer target allies.
  • Gateway
    • The build time of this building has increased from 50 to 65.
    • Guess this is supposed to make double-gate proxy a little harder.
• ZERG
  • Infestor
    • Fungal Growth: The damage done by this ability has decreased from 48 to 36.
    • Fungal Growth: This ability now prevents affected units from burrowing.
    • Neural Parasite: Functionality changed - The Infestor now channels this spell, which lasts 10 seconds or until the Infestor is destroyed. You can now target all units with this ability.
    • Woo - I can finally reasonably dominate SCVs.
    • Terran Infestation: The ability’s energy cost has reduced from 50 to 25 and Infested Terrans now spawn 1 at a time.
    • I still haven’t used Infested Terrans, but this might at least make me consider them.

In other news, I’m branching out in races TANKING MAH RATING, since I’m feeling pretty decent with Zerg basic BO and units. I’m going to at least get settled in with all the races before making a decision on which to play.

Just leaving some notes - someone as bad as me might find this interesting or (maybe) useful while playing the Starcraft 2 Beta. It should at least give someone a place to start off while playing Zerg and heading off to the Bronze League (awwwyeah). I think I’ll also try to write a build-order simulator to search for optimal builds given different utility functions when I have the time. Also keep in mind this lolnewb theorycraft. Helpful critique is gladly accepted though.

Key Ideas:

• You are larvae-constrained at the beginning of the game. Each larvae should be used ASAP.
• You are vespene-constrained early game. The extra minerals you get should be used for 1) Expansion and thereby more larvae, more vespene 2) Base defense 3) Zerglingslololol if you want to maintain pressure

On to the build:

Roach Rush BO

• 10 Overlord
• 13 Spawning Pool
• 14/15 Extractor (Basically whenever all your larvae are used up)
• 15 Overlord
• SP finishes, Queen, Roach Den, one pair of zerglings for scouting purposes
• Pump out Roaches

Edit: safer alternative on small maps, where you might see really early rush or proxy bases.

• 14 Extractor
• 14 Drone
• SP finishes, Queen, 2x Zergling

At this point, you should have 6 Roaches popping out. This will be enough against any early rush (though if I see double reactor barracks or triple stargate or something dumb, I’ll lay down a spine crawler or two to use up extra minerals) AND fast enough to send against a fast expand or fast tech for at least a little harassment.

If you think you can win the game from there, keep pumping out the roaches and zerglings when you don’t have enough gas.

If you can’t take them out and see some higher tier stuff that needs countering, upgrade to Lair and head to your mid-game, usually Roach/Muta or Roach/Hydra. you can probably look to expand at this point as well if they seem to be passive.

If you fail at taking them out and see shittons of low-tier units, pull back, get some spine crawlers up and get that baneling nest going. It’s what I’ve found to be most effective against large amounts of M&M early, though you’ll want Mutas eventually.

Win conditions/Goals for early game:

1. You’re safe and have a expansion, they dont. (Safe as in they’re not showing up at your base with void rays and all you have are roaches. Safe as in there’s not 20 M&Ms airdropped in your drone line)
2. You’re at a higher tech level, they don’t have an expansion, they don’t have the counter in place for your tech unit (Usually Mutalisks, esp. vs Protoss or Zerg)
3. You’ve just completely f*cked up their base.

Few additional notes:

• Do you have more minerals than you know what to do with? EXPAND
• Scoutscoutscoutscout. Sacrificing a zergling or even an overlord is worth it to see what you’re up against.
• Banelings will keep you alive v M&M
• Mutas early will wreck Protoss and Zerg who don’t see it coming. Though be careful of phoenixes or hydras.
• Hydralisks early is a flexbile option against Protoss/Zerg
• NYDUS WORMS ZOMG. Dumping Roaches or Banelings directly into their supply line can single-handedly win you the game.

Edit:

• Your safest route for ZvZ is Roach/Hydra since Roaches counter zerglings and Hydras counter Mutas. This is going to be a macro game - you need to out-expand or mass enough units to kill his expansion. There is no middle ground.
• End-game Muta+Corruptors+BroodLords seems to be stronger than Ultralisks

I’ll edit this as I find things out. Also want to try out David Kim’s 13Hatch BO and I’ll post something about it when I dooooooooo.

I remember reading in high school about the intense regimen imposed on world-class Olympic athletes, of their sports doctors and nutritionists, of their medical tests and dietary restrictions, all to push their speed and edge just a bit farther. I read the article and wondered, why don’t the world class scientists, the genius thinkers, have the same devotion to their bodies? For every workout or vitamin that allowed a sprinter to shave off seconds off his time, should there not be something similar that would allow the professor to arrive at his theory, or the engineer his perfect design, a few hours faster? Now there are many complications with this analogy, the most obvious of which is how deep the understanding of the human brain needs to be than say a human lung for specific causes and effects to be found. There also exists the problem of how to measure cognitive capacity - how much more difficult it is to quantify intelligence, concentration, motivation. But there are studies nowadays that do try that, people that try to answer the question “How can we think better?”. I’m interested in benefiting from these work these people have done.

I am now, more than ever, in a position in life where I stand to take advantage of high cognitive performance, where the opportunities available to me demand my best focus and work. At this point I think I can invest sometime in the methods and mechanisms in which I can achieve this. Now, before everyone comes at me all in arms about illegal drugs and such, please be assured that I have not lost my morals nor general pansiness for trying new things. I WILL be thoroughly looking into the research of the methods and substances I try and I WONT be doing anything dangerous nor anything illegal. Now, for my own reflection and your general amusement, I will do my best to document in this blog what I try, how they’re supposed to work, and how they worked with me.

Now without further ado, I present round 1 of my experiment:

* Exercise and physical workout regimen recommended in Transcend by Ray Kurzweil
* Most basic nutritional supplements recommended by the above.
- Generic Multivitamin (Centrum Performance)
- Omega 3 supplement (1000mg EPA 350mg DHA)
* Caloric restriction (exact numbers depending on how much I decide to care)
* Piracetam 800mg - 20 minutes before each study session

Nothing too fancy yet. Will post later on the logic behind the steps in round 1.

It’s been busy from flying back, moving in, and other new semester things.

As soon as I was fairly settled though, it was off to the races on building my desktop with Jesse. She’s all done and ready to roar now so I’ll throw up her specs. And hopefully more posts will be incoming, this semester shouldn’t be terribly hard…

Hostname: Hitagi (picture on bottom for those of you unexposed to Senjougahara fascination)

Specs:

SILVERSTONE FT01-BW Black Aluminum ATX Mid Tower Uni-body Computer Case
ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920
CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 120mm SSO CPU Cooler
EVGA 896-P3-1255-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5” Internal HD
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W Power Supply
LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner
Windows 7 RTM (From Jesse, how come EEs get MSDNAA and CSs don’t D:)

Dell 2408WFP 24” Monitor and a ghetto Acer 20” (Which hopefully I can make it vertical sometime).

And for giggles I went with the IC Diamond 7 cooling compound (MADE WITH REAL DIAMONDS ZOMG. Got it at Chuan’s insistence that diamonds are a girl’s best friend).

Processor OCed to 3.36 Ghz, not sure if I want to push 3.8 (though a ton of people online have gotten 4+ on worse coolers than mine). Runs at 40C idle, and 65C under heavy load.

Pictures:

Close up picture: We did a decent job at cable hiding if we do say so ourselves. Fairly purty, and you can’t tell from the flash, but the LEDs on the Mobo make it look shiny in the dark.

Desk picture: Speaking of cabling, I never noticed that nightmare underneath my desk O.O The 20” on the side still sort of irks me - time to get an Ergotron mount and make it go vertical, perhaps?

Oblig. Hitagi picture

I’m reminded of Ghost in the Shell SAC ep01 when reading this article - In the episode, there was a sensitive report that the Prime Minister had encrypted and printed out on paper and I thought “wtf, doesn’t he have a flash drive in that day and age?”.

Good read for anyone interested in launching a startup (whether you want funding to come through YC or not).

I can’t believe we’re at the halfway point of the Summer already. It feels like I just got here last week. =X So I felt like typing up some of the random notes I took from lectures here (they’re usually in a Moleskine Jeff gave me like… ages ago. I finally found a worthy use for it) so they’ll be in a more… permanant form. You know, just in case I get thrown in a pool or something. Not that that’s a fairly common occurence, but I felt that I should give an example. Right, so on to the notes:

* Trust breeds trust. Transparency reduces leaks, builds community.

* When two people are in conflict, first thing to do is to make sure you have the same information.
Generally, smart people given the same information make the same decision. (notable exception are “religious” beliefs - deep seated perspectives)

* Don’t claim to know everything. Killing a great idea early is incredibly easy to do. Ideas are incredibly fragile. Nurture them. Don’t be so quick to close the loop - even bad ideas can lead you on the path to a good one.

* When you see a problem, fix it! Or develop the solution to a stage where others can fix it themselves.

* We often underestimate the importance of giving credit to other people, to thanking other people.

* It’s impossible for a rule to be so well defined that it handles all the corner cases. Use your best judgement, not rules.

* Show humility - ask people when you don’t know the right answer. You’ll be better off.

* When a situation makes you say “I’m afraid of embarrassing myself.” - its a sign for a great opportunity. You’ll be doing plenty of embarrassing things in life - get used to it.

* Having fun is a sign of peak efficiency - it indicates a task that is challenging, but is within your capability. Look for things that feel fun!

I absolutely love my Waterfield bag - but recently had the desire to trade it in for a more mobile model (oh Chrome… you tempt my heart so even though you lack an external easy-access pocket). My 20 minute bike rides every day are normally a hard-fought battle to keep the bag balanced on my back. No longer! A key feature of Timbuk2 and Chrome bags are the third-leg/stabilizer strap/thingy that hooks the other side of the messenger bag to the strap. $10 at http://www.amazon.com/Lewis-N-Clark-Luggage-Strap/dp/B00004SR9P/ref=pd_sbs_a_4 gives me the next best thing. Evidently it’s pretty successful at what it’s supposed to do - hook two luggage bags together, but it’s been really great at stabilizing my Waterfield while I’m on my bike. I’ve been thinking of sowing it on - but let’s give it another week or so shall we. Anyhow yeah - for $10 the thing works great.

It’s been a whirlwind of things ever since I’ve gotten here and I must say the most interesting times I’ve had are not concerning work nor places I’ve seen, but the people I meet. I think I’ve connected with more people in the past month than I have since the beginning of college (beginning of TAMS might still be ahead in the game though), thanks to the insane amount of friendly interns at work, Ouyang and his program at UCSF, and JJ/Paul with their chums at Berkeley. It hasn’t always been easy (I find that looking for the correct dials to turn my weirdness levels to is always a challenge for non-engineering crowds), but it’s certainly been fun.

There’s a key difference between forming a connection and just making an acquaintance - we’re talking about that kind of friendship that is kind of weird on Facebook, because you aren’t /really/ friend-friends and you aren’t just brief acquaintences either so it feels sort of awkward (at least for me it does - the large majority of my friends on Facebook fall in one of the previous two categories =X). However I feel that that sort of thing is exactly the tipping point for casual social interaction - you spend just enough time spent talking and/or doing stuff (say, a weekend? how very convenient) such that there exists enough common ground that it’s not terribly awkward to get to know the other party further. You have a chance to break past that initial outer persona that you’re stuck with as an acquaintance and get to see just a bit of what that person is, you know, /normally/ like.

And the truly exciting part for me is that everyone I connect with is so interesting. And I’m not talking about the superficial personas, but the core of the person - their values, their drive, their goal. As soon as a certain level of comfort is reached between two people - this artifical wall that we put up comes down and I am just overwhelmed by who they are. It’s a rush I don’t usually get to experience often - and as a closet extrovert it’s rather enjoyable.

—-

Now I realize this all sounds unbelievably fruity and if I just met you also comes off as veeeery odd, but in the end you’ll find out I’m plenty odd and had an unbelievable amount of thinking time on the Caltrain with my DS batteries out (knew I should’ve packed that charger) so take it how you will.

Or just ignore the whole thing and just pretend I say “hey, it was great fun meeting so many different people - and if we get the chance I’d like to hang out again sometime”. That would be fine too.

Cheers!

Went with Ouyang to go see Paul/JJ in Berkeley the past weekend. I’ve been getting pretty bad at updating this - everything has been rather busy =X So to be time efficient, random thoughts!

* Berkeley was great fun - felt like Austin with better weather (though it was 80 and Paul would say “oh my god it’s so hot”). About the same number of trees, building heights in about the same proportion, but there was definitely more asians and some more hobos.
* We met a ton of people. At first we thought it was just because JJ/Paul are just that sociable but they explained that most of them are from the same high school and as soon as they met one… they met all the rest. Plano:TAMS::MontaVista::Berkeley!
* It’s a small (asian) world - I met a few friends’s friends’s friends O.o
* To reduce confusion, introduce the girl that you’ll be massaging as your girlfriend, hmm JJ? That way Ouyang and I don’t have to stare at you oddly and wonder if people at Berkeley randomly massage people =O.
* Speaking of that sort of thing - I have nothing but respect for Danica, she took Paul’s “paulisms” in stride in an amazing fashion. Good for you Paul xP
* It was good to see that JJ/Paul haven’t changed that much. Paul is still Paul and JJ is still JJ (except noone calls him that. not enough Johns I suppose) =).
* I’m in a love-hate relationship with the public transportation here. It’s very convenient until you have to transfer. There must be 5 different public transport systems in this area and only a few are compatible with each other. But it gets me around so I suppose I can’t complain.
* Beating an Elmo pinata senseless was fun in some sort of primal way. As well was stuffing a Spanish-speaking Tickle Me Elmo in a bag and watching him squirm. Actually… that was just creepy.

All-in-all, it was pretty fun! I’m definitely looking forward to going back up sometime xP

More Pictures from Ouyang

http://www.facebook.com/davidouyang?ref=ts#/album.php?aid=2307746&id=23926208&ref=mf

I’m Feeling Lucky Google Condoms!

One of members on my team also volunteers for the Computer History Museum as a docent in his free time and was kind enough to show us around!

Babbage Difference Engine #2 - veeeerry cool. Can calculate 7th order polynomials at a fairly decent rate! The story behind is rather amazing as well - Babbage designed the whole thing in the 19th century and drew up the specs but it wasn’t until 20 years ago that someone actually bothered to check out his design (wiki it for more info). We got to see a demonstration of it work and the precision of 8000? or so moving parts was simply beautiful.

A Enigma machine.

One of the original hard drives. Holds 10 MBs!

One of the original Google servers. Evidently the data center Larry and Sergey used billed them by the square footage of space, not the amount of power they drew, so they stuffed as many cpus as they could into a single rack (if you look closely you can tell it’s sagging xP).

Old school Kernighan and Ritchie

Original Windows! and a copy of Carmen Sandiego

A calcuator watch! Without the watch. (Just for you Chuan)

There was a ton of other nifty things there that I didn’t bother to take a picture of (Deep Blue, a prototype mouse, old Apple machines to name a few). I was also amazed at the stuff from my lifetime (Sony Playstation, the Palm Pilot) that can be counted as computer history (this industry moves so fast! obsolete is like 5 years). But yeah, very cool! Definitely recommend dropping by if you’re in the Bay area.

From Arun!

I try to apply this to my day to day life - mostly the asking question part since often the “know more than the person who brought it up” part is a bit hard xP

Very clever. But pretty easy to do for free as he points out!

So I need to learn how to ride bicycles in like… lanes and stuff. Recommended by Google.

Good c++ early reference

What a long day. Very tiring but very exciting! Got to campus around 8 and went through a ton of training presentations and HR hoops, the highlight of which was a short (and humorous!) speech by this guy welcoming us to Google. Finished all the presentations around 5, and I got to meet my manager (this guy) and my computer (named azaka <3 and decked out with a quad core and 30” monitor). Both he and the team seemed really energetic and happy to see me and I got my first assignment - yay. Doesn’t seem like I’ll have much time to get on it this week though - my calendar is full of workshops and training sessions ><”

Quick Thoughts:

• I don’t like my badge picture. I think I look confused. Which I was. (The lady took the picture 3..2..1……….*click* so the delay perplexed me)
• The food is every bit as amazing as everyone says
• Being surrounded by amazingly smart people makes me feel: excited! So much to learn! So many geeks to absorb brainpower from nehaha
• Being surrounded by amazingly smart people makes me feel: kinda lost. Gotta work harder omgomgomg
• Previous statement partially comes from sitting at the table with the MIT kids at lunch
• Every employee I met seemed really nice!
• And many seemed really laid back (Wii by the microkitchen anyone?)
• The 150 feet rule (Noone should be more than 150 feet away from food) seems to directly relate to the Google 15 (think college 15 but more delicious)
• Gonna try biking to work to prevent this ^

Pro:

• Dropped my laptop temperature noticeably
• Quiet (My laptop fan is louder)
• $20 from Fry’s (Which I find has a different vibe than the one in Plano - there’s a lot of cowboy imagery/statues to be down-to-earth? whereas the Plano one seems more glossy and professional - kind of ironic)
• Props up the laptop so I have to sit straight

Cons:

• Props up the laptop so I have to sit straight
• Could use some more rubber pads down under to keep the laptop stable. Or maybe my laptop is just shaped weird.

Dad in front of the Google Android/Cupcake

The room of:

Dustin Ho
2250 Latham St, Apt 58
Mountain View, CA 94040

Seems like a smart way to raise smart kids

Nomnomnom Double-Double Animal Style. Pretty good - and probably the best “fast-food” burger I’ve had.

Very nifty technology from Google. Has exactly what I want - realtime/persistent/multiparty conversations

So my manager-to-be made a video!

From Arun’s Twitter. Easy to identify good services, hard to identify “killer” services

Bell Labs explains their strategy for solving Netflix’s collaborative filtering problem.

Interesting idea - I’ll probably contact the Austin guy and see what he has planned.

Interesting language learning methods - can be applied to most long tasks as well

Nifty article that I missed

There’s some reaaaally nifty desks out there.

Validatio

Since Google annouced their new Search Options Panel today, my manager, Patrick, was kind enough to shoot me an email and tell me that I’ll be working on enhancing and adding new features to the search options. Definitely gives me something to look forward to! The ability to filter your results is an interesting new idea for Google search, and I can imagine how even more complex filters could prove to be very handy way to get at information.

Looking for an apartment in the area has taken awhile, but I think I’ve found a great place with an interesting roommate - so I’m hoping all that turns out well…

Now if I can just get done with finals, I can start brushing up on Javascript and C++ so I don’t embarrass myself there xP

Flexibility and unconventional strategy are necessary tools for underdogs, no matter if it’s in basketball games, wars, or business. If you want to win be prepared to do odd things, “wrong” things, unexpected things.

Fairly interesting. It does seem like much of like is delaying short-term for long-term satisfaction. I think I would’ve been able to wait out the marshmallow, not because of any real self-control,…

“characterized by complex, atypical rhythmic structures (including irregular stopping and starting), angular melodies, and dissonant chords” - interesting, ill have to give some of them a shot.

I’ve gotten quite lazy with maintaining my Wordpress blog, so I’m thinking of giving this Tumblr thing a shot. Seems easier to maintain/customize than running my own Wordpress and it looks like I can try making a custom theme and some doodads to brush up on my Javascript so I don’t embarrass myself at Google =X

Anyhow, my goal is to put up a more “serious” blog than my previous attempts and keep the random things I find to my Twitter.

Things I’ll put on here:

• Thoughts I have that are longer than a paragraph
• My links from Delicious, which means links that I believe have some real substance and I may consult again in the future. I’ll try to put down commentary for each of these as well.

Things I won’t put on here:

• Anything Twitter-able
• ^ includes “lol” links

So yeah - my goal will be one post/2 days which may be kind of sketchy considering finals are next week, but let’s just count next week as a freebie and try to stick with the plan after that.

Great example of how widespread Wikipedia’s userbase is, and how easy it is to misplace trust in information on the internet.

Don’t blame the economy for your failures. Successful companies are those that provide quality service and treat customers with respect.