AUGUST 22, 2017

back to college, back to chemistry

Fractures:

Depression: Broken bone portion pressed inward; skull fractures.

Comminuted: Bone breaks into many fragments; common in the elderly.

Simple/Closed: Clean break, bone doesn’t penetrate skin.

Compression: Crushed bone; spinal fractures.

Compound/Open: Bone penetrates skin.

Greenstick: Bone breaks incompletely; common in children.

Impacted: Broken bone ends forced into each other; results of blocking a fall.

Pathological: Results of disease and degeneration of bone tissue.

Spiral: Ragged break as a result of twisting forces; common sports injury.

Hey guys, so I’m nearing the end of my senior year, and it’s been great so far! I accomplished my academic tasks efficiently and didn’t burn myself out, and I think the main contributor to my success as a student is my organization system. This system has been refined throughout my high school years, but I think now I’ve finally found the most effective methods.

Please remember that this isn’t the only organization system you can adopt; this is just the one that works the best for me, and I hope that by sharing it with you, you’ll gain a new perspective on how to stay organized as a high school student.

The first thing I wanna talk about is my notebook system, which I briefly mentioned in my Guide to Note-Taking.

My notebook system comprises three types of notebooks: the Everything Notebook, the subject notebook, and the revision notebook.

The Everything Notebook

The first stage is in-class notes. I only bring one notebook to school every day. I call it my Everything Notebook, and this is where I write down all of the notes I take in class. This way, I don’t have to lug around six notebooks where I’m only going to use a few pages in each of them that day.

Subject Notebooks

At the end of the day, I would revise my notes and compare them to the syllabus so I know where we are in the learning process. I would then transfer my class notes from my Everything Notebook to my different subject notebooks. This is stage two. I also start to jazz up my notes because I use the notes in my subject notebooks to study for tests.

In addition to my class notes, I include material from my teachers’ notes that they might not have elaborated on, as well as points in the syllabus (I’m currently taking A2) that were only glazed over briefly, or not at all, in some cases. (Note: this does not mean they completely skip a chapter or topic; it’s more like they missed a few bullet points that should be in my notes but aren’t. An example would be if we’re learning about phenol reactions and the teacher forgot to mention the use of FeCl3 as a test for phenol.)

Revision Notebooks

Stage three comes a little later, when exam week is just around the corner. Essentially, I rewrite and improve my notes from my five different subject notebooks into a single revision notebook or binder. (Recently, I’ve opted for a revision notebook because they’re lighter and easier to carry around.)

Because my teachers don’t always teach in the order of the syllabus, the first thing I do is organize my notes according to the syllabus. I would then fill in any other missing gaps in the material that hadn’t been filled in stage two.

When compiling material for my revision notebook, I use as many sources as possible: my own notes, my teachers’ notes, youtube videos, online sites, and my favorite, the mark scheme! I add in some answers from past papers (explanations only, so no calculations) mainly to secure marks. It’s safer to memorize definitions straight from the mark scheme than from the textbook or from handouts. I also do this to ease my memorization, especially for topics that require lengthy explanations. It’s a lot easier to remember the 6 points I need to explain the principles of NMRI than to remember everything in the four-page handout my teacher gave me.

Folders and binders are essential to organizing your papers. Some people keep a single accordion folder for all their papers, but for me it’s just too heavy to carry around all the time. The same goes for subject folders that are brought to school every day.

Instead, my binder/folder system comprises my Everything Folder and my subject binders.

The Everything Folder

The folder I carry with me to school every day is this A4 folder I got from Tokyu Hands. It has 5 pockets, one for each day of the week, so all the papers I receive on Monday will go behind the first divider, and so on.

Some people also keep blank papers in their folders; I don’t because my school has its own lined paper and graphing pads that I keep under my desk that I use if a teacher asks us to do an assignment on those papers. If I do work at home, I prefer to just use a plain A4 paper or a legal pad.

Subject Binders

At the end of the week, I’ll sort my papers into my subject binders. Sometimes I’ll keep some papers in the folder if I think I’ll be needing it the next week. This usually only applies to worksheets because all my teachers’ notes are available on Google Classroom, so I can access them even if I don’t physically have them.

Each of these binders have sections inside them:

Physics: 1 for handouts, notes, and tests, 1 for Paper 4 (Theory), 1 for Paper 5 (Practical Planning). I included extra tabs to mark the different topics in the handouts section.

Chemistry: same as Physics.

Economics: 1 for Paper 3 (MCQ), 1 for Paper 4 (Case Study and Essay). A lot of my Economics material is online, though.

English: 1 for Paper 3 (Text and Discourse analysis), and 2 for Paper 4 (Language Topics, which includes 1 for Child Language Acquisition, 1 for World Englishes). Past papers, handouts, and notes all go under their respective topics.

Mathematics: I just keep everything together because I never revise math and just constantly do past papers.

This makes it easier for me to revise each subject because I can just take one binder with me instead of a messy folder with everything just shoved in there.

I keep a magazine file for each of my A-Level subjects (English and Mathematics are combined). All my textbooks, revision guides, and subject notebooks are kept here, so if I need to revise one subject, that’s the magazine file I’ll take out.

These magazine files prevent any small things (like my book of flashcards) from being shoved to the back of my bookshelf, or materials from different subjects from getting mixed up.

In my senior year, I mostly plan using this app called Edo Agenda. It syncs across all my devices for free and has all the features I need: a to do list to organize tasks, monthly and weekly calendars to organize events, a journal to organize notes and memos.

I used to bullet journal regularly, but it takes too much time during weekdays, so now I just bullet journal for the therapeutic effects it gives me, and I use an app for organizing tasks and events. Sometimes at the end of each week, I’ll transfer my tasks to my bullet journal and then decorate the page, but again, this is just for its therapy.

Organizing your school supplies is just as important as organizing your papers and notes. With a more organized backpack and pencil case, you won’t waste time looking for your things at the bottom of an abyss.

Pencil Case

I don’t find it necessary to bring so much stationery to school unless I plan on making notes at school (usually during revision week).

Backpack

Because we’re already in the revision term, I don’t really carry a lot of things in my everyday backpack, just the following:

Pencil case

Everything Notebook

Everything Folder

Revision notebook

Kindle

Phone

Wallet

Earphones

Calculator

Speaker

Drinking bottle

A pouch with things like a hairbrush, pads, and lip balm

And that’s all for now! I hope this post will help you organize your school life (if you haven’t already) or at least provide some useful insights on some ways to stay organized as a high school student.

When algorithms surprise us

Machine learning algorithms are not like other computer programs. In the usual sort of programming, a human programmer tells the computer exactly what to do. In machine learning, the human programmer merely gives the algorithm the problem to be solved, and through trial-and-error the algorithm has to figure out how to solve it.

This often works really well - machine learning algorithms are widely used for facial recognition, language translation, financial modeling, image recognition, and ad delivery. If you’ve been online today, you’ve probably interacted with a machine learning algorithm.

But it doesn’t always work well. Sometimes the programmer will think the algorithm is doing really well, only to look closer and discover it’s solved an entirely different problem from the one the programmer intended. For example, I looked earlier at an image recognition algorithm that was supposed to recognize sheep but learned to recognize grass instead, and kept labeling empty green fields as containing sheep.

When machine learning algorithms solve problems in unexpected ways, programmers find them, okay yes, annoying sometimes, but often purely delightful.

So delightful, in fact, that in 2018 a group of researchers wrote a fascinating paper that collected dozens of anecdotes that “elicited surprise and wonder from the researchers studying them”. The paper is well worth reading, as are the original references, but here are several of my favorite examples.

Bending the rules to win

First, there’s a long tradition of using simulated creatures to study how different forms of locomotion might have evolved, or to come up with new ways for robots to walk.

Why walk when you can flop? In one example, a simulated robot was supposed to evolve to travel as quickly as possible. But rather than evolve legs, it simply assembled itself into a tall tower, then fell over. Some of these robots even learned to turn their falling motion into a somersault, adding extra distance.

[Image: Robot is simply a tower that falls over.]

Why jump when you can can-can? Another set of simulated robots were supposed to evolve into a form that could jump. But the programmer had originally defined jumping height as the height of the tallest block so - once again - the robots evolved to be very tall. The programmer tried to solve this by defining jumping height as the height of the block that was originally the *lowest*. In response, the robot developed a long skinny leg that it could kick high into the air in a sort of robot can-can. 

[Image: Tall robot flinging a leg into the air instead of jumping]

Hacking the Matrix for superpowers

Potential energy is not the only energy source these simulated robots learned to exploit. It turns out that, like in real life, if an energy source is available, something will evolve to use it.

Floating-point rounding errors as an energy source: In one simulation, robots learned that small rounding errors in the math that calculated forces meant that they got a tiny bit of extra energy with motion. They learned to twitch rapidly, generating lots of free energy that they could harness. The programmer noticed the problem when the robots started swimming extraordinarily fast.

Harvesting energy from crashing into the floor: Another simulation had some problems with its collision detection math that robots learned to use. If they managed to glitch themselves into the floor (they first learned to manipulate time to make this possible), the collision detection would realize they weren’t supposed to be in the floor and would shoot them upward. The robots learned to vibrate rapidly against the floor, colliding repeatedly with it to generate extra energy.

[Image: robot moving by vibrating into the floor]

Clap to fly: In another simulation, jumping bots learned to harness a different collision-detection bug that would propel them high into the air every time they crashed two of their own body parts together. Commercial flight would look a lot different if this worked in real life.

Discovering secret moves: Computer game-playing algorithms are really good at discovering the kind of Matrix glitches that humans usually learn to exploit for speed-running. An algorithm playing the old Atari game Q*bert discovered a previously-unknown bug where it could perform a very specific series of moves at the end of one level and instead of moving to the next level, all the platforms would begin blinking rapidly and the player would start accumulating huge numbers of points. 

A Doom-playing algorithm also figured out a special combination of movements that would stop enemies from firing fireballs - but it only works in the algorithm’s hallucinated dream-version of Doom. Delightfully, you can play the dream-version here

[Image: Q*bert player is accumulating a suspicious number of points, considering that it’s not doing much of anything]

Shooting the moon: In one of the more chilling examples, there was an algorithm that was supposed to figure out how to apply a minimum force to a plane landing on an aircraft carrier. Instead, it discovered that if it applied a *huge* force, it would overflow the program’s memory and would register instead as a very *small* force. The pilot would die but, hey, perfect score.

Destructive problem-solving

Something as apparently benign as a list-sorting algorithm could also solve problems in rather innocently sinister ways.

Well, it’s not unsorted: For example, there was an algorithm that was supposed to sort a list of numbers. Instead, it learned to delete the list, so that it was no longer technically unsorted.

Solving the Kobayashi Maru test: Another algorithm was supposed to minimize the difference between its own answers and the correct answers. It found where the answers were stored and deleted them, so it would get a perfect score.

How to win at tic-tac-toe: In another beautiful example, in 1997 some programmers built algorithms that could play tic-tac-toe remotely against each other on an infinitely large board. One programmer, rather than designing their algorithm’s strategy, let it evolve its own approach. Surprisingly, the algorithm suddenly began winning all its games. It turned out that the algorithm’s strategy was to place its move very, very far away, so that when its opponent’s computer tried to simulate the new greatly-expanded board, the huge gameboard would cause it to run out of memory and crash, forfeiting the game.

In conclusion

When machine learning solves problems, it can come up with solutions that range from clever to downright uncanny. 

Biological evolution works this way, too - as any biologist will tell you, living organisms find the strangest solutions to problems, and the strangest energy sources to exploit. Sometimes I think the surest sign that we’re not living in a computer simulation is that if we were, some microbe would have learned to exploit its flaws.

So as programmers we have to be very very careful that our algorithms are solving the problems that we meant for them to solve, not exploiting shortcuts. If there’s another, easier route toward solving a given problem, machine learning will likely find it. 

Fortunately for us, “kill all humans” is really really hard. If “bake an unbelievably delicious cake” also solves the problem and is easier than “kill all humans”, then machine learning will go with cake.

Mailing list plug

If you enter your email, there will be cake!

first notes of school year, first notes for physics, and first breakdown ft. honors pre-calculus … starting junior year strong⛈

04.29.20—It has indeed been a hot minute.

I just watched a kid break down in the bookstore because his books for the semester totaled $600 and that’s the american university system in a nutshell

stats notebook index set up lookin hella fine

(11.23.2015)

10/09/2017

this week’s spread :)

Coding Masterpost

Hey buddies guess what??

I’ve brought you some awesome links that I have for learning how to code, computer science posts, and also various things about hacking. :p

CODING / COMPUTER SCIENCE

www.udemy.com

The best free and paid classes on the web. This is my go to site for learning something new.

app.pluralsight.com

$40 a month but the courses are top tier. You might find a free trial from microsoft dev essentials…

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Free MIT courses with video lectures, notes, and resources!!!

https://www.codecademy.com/learn

Perhaps the most famous site for learning how to code, this is must have for any aspiring computer scientist, web dev, or programmer. A smooth UI, dozens of courses, APIs, and fun quizzes if you decide to cough up a bit of money. $19 is crazy dirt cheap compared to some $200 courses out there on the web.

https://thenewboston.com/

Dubbed by its creator as the social network for programmers, TNB is a hotbed of hundreds of video tutorials for programming and computer science, as well as other disciplines like cooking.

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/codingground.htm

Another crazy important site for anyone serious about programming. You can find online terminals, IDEs, and tutorials for almost every popular language out there, from oCaml to lisp

http://codecombat.com/

Geared towards children, this is a good introudction to programming thinking and helps a younger audience get into the problem solving mindset.

http://www.codewars.com/dashboard

For users with some coding experience, codewars offers hundreds of challenges in various languages and help them build up their skills. Perfect for intermediate to master programmers.

https://www.codingame.com/start

This site is a bit geared towards new coders, it’s still fun and helps a ton in developing confidence.

http://jonisalonen.com/

Random blog that discusses some concepts regarding computer science. Worth a read if you’re ever lost and wanna just reflect on something.

http://howtonetwork.net/

https://www.howtonetwork.com/

Both the old and new sites are still up and provide their services for learning IT skills.

http://www.freeprogrammingresources.com/

RESOURCES FOR COMPILERS, DATABASES, FORUMS, and SO MUCH MORE TAKE A LOOK.

http://www.hloom.com/modern-resume-templates/

What good is a programmer if they can’t make a good resume to show off their skills? With these helpful templates you can impress your potential employer.

http://freecomputerbooks.com/

I haven’t used this so be cautious. Has a lot of ebooks.

http://i.imgur.com/i3jtrA0.jpg

Web development cheat sheet.

http://hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=626170

Awesome intro to programming with links to projects.

http://www.elithecomputerguy.com/

Eli has a blog and also videos for various things.

http://www.net130.com/ccie/tech/Sybex%20-%20Cisco%20CCIE%20Book.pdf

CCIE book. Not sure if it’s open source. I’ll remove this link if requested.

https://www.codeschool.com/

pay money, learn to code. seems legit.

http://www.python-forum.org/

A forum for Python usrers! There are only a few sections but there are enough posts on here so if you haev a question, it might have already been asked.

http://www.dreamincode.net/

Another sweet forum that covers multiple topics.

http://forums.devshed.com/

A really popular forum! Lots of languages and users, dozens of topics.

http://www.codingforums.com/

Another large forum, perfect for any use.

http://www.programmingforums.org/

A freaking large factory of forums you will never find the same post twice.

http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html

Lots of forums, jobs, and helpful resources all geared towards game development.

http://stackoverflow.com/

The most famous one imo. Be wary friend, don’t let your CS teacher find this in your browser history.

http://forum.codecall.net/

Resources, forums, tutorials, blow yourself out here.

https://openhatch.org/

Has some training missions and other stuff. Helps you find projects to work on.

https://codefights.com/

Put your skills to the test against AI or humans.

www.datacamp.com

Like big data? Well this site teaches you Python, the numpy library, and R.

https://www.edx.org/

Full of courses for anything.

http://www.exactas.org/modules/UpDownload/store_folder/1_-_COMPUTACION/Jonathan%20Bartlett%20-%20Programming%20From%20The%20Ground%20Up.pdf

handy book on progrmaming.

HACKING

http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/

This is one of the BEST websites to learn about security and you can follow tutorials by real hackers and members of the IT field. With a strong community full of experienced authors, you will either flourish by using proper grammar or be mocked for asking “how do i hack gmail??”

www.hackerhighschool.org/home.html

PERFECT FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS INTERESTED IN CYBERSECURITY BUT HAVE NO IDEA WHERE TO START. I CANNOT STRESS HOW AWESOME THIS SITE IS.

allison.com

ANOTHER PERFECT SITE FOR LEARNING ANYTHING

http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/links-help-you-hacking-0162359/

Small collection of resources for educating yourself on internet security.

http://directory.umm.ac.id/Networking%20Manual/Networking%20For%20Dummies%207%20Ed%202004.pdf

A must read for anyone with a desire to get into IT

http://cli.learncodethehardway.org/book/

Crash course on Command line.

https://www.cybrary.it/

Great if you cannot afford pricy online classes. Instructors know what they are talking about and despite a few poor quality videos, you will be supplied with helpful resources and forums.

https://evilzone.org/

One of the better forums out there for learning. Delve into it at your own risk.

https://v3rmillion.net/

ROBLOX hacking, general exploits, or just normal discussions. Roblox helped put me on my path to coding and I love how every day, millions of kids are being taught the ability of coding thanks to its studio.

https://www.hackthissite.org/pages/index/index.php

Lessons, challenges, forums, and resources all bundled in a site to hone your pentest skills.

http://www.enigmagroup.org/

Like hackthissite, but with a different UI

https://www.hellboundhackers.org/

Read the above

https://pentest-tools.com/home

Free pentest tools. Don’t use it for anything wrong.

https://www.defcon.org/

Hehe..we are in defcon 4..

https://picoctf.com/learn

Capture the Flag learning site. Amazing imo.

http://overthewire.org/wargames/

Another war games site. You get various challenges that are fun to solve ^.^

http://hakipedia.com/index.php/Hakipedia

Wikipedia but for security.

http://smashthestack.org/

Wargames.

http://www.wablab.com/

Compete against IT pros. Git rekt code-bug

http://academy.ehacking.net/courses/computer-hacking-forensics-investigation/

Explore this site a bit.

https://www.ethicalhacker.net/features/book-reviews/the-basics-of-rootkits-leave-no-trace

The link kinda gives it away.

https://github.com/mrrrgn/simple-rootkit/blob/master/README.md

Fun little project.

http://www.fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials.html

Professional blog that has tutorials and highly detailed information.

https://www.corelan.be/index.php/2009/07/19/exploit-writing-tutorial-part-1-stack-based-overflows/

Ahh read the above please!

https://trailofbits.github.io/ctf/index.html

A CTF guide. Pretty well written and has slides. Awesome resources. What else can I say?

http://www.securitysift.com/windows-exploit-development-part-1-basics/

Another swell blog.

http://www.thegreycorner.com/2010/01/beginning-stack-based-buffer-overflow.html

Woa..another..awesome blog..there are too many to count!

http://www.flexhex.com/docs/howtos/hex-editing.phtml

Hey kid? Wanna learn how to hex edit like a b0ss?

https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-03/bh-us-03-willis-c/bh-us-03-willis.pdf

Nice little pdf for forensics.

www.greyhathacker.net

A blog that’s a bit dated but has useful information.

xeuhack.com

Dated but useful blog.

www.cybersecuritycourse.co

haven’t tried this yet but it has great reviews.

www.censys.io

Search engine for data scientists.

http://www.techexams.net/forums/off-topic/51719-best-security-websites.html

Best sites to learn from.

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/ebooks/

Awww yiss ebooks

http://bookboon.com/en/it-programming-ebooks

Might run into errors downloading books.

http://ebook-dl.com/

Full books that are virus free.

That’s all for now! Special thanks to everyone who suggested I make this!