Math's adventures

I’ve recently gotten back into playing more guitar. Here’s a video from a couple months ago of me player Hero by Family of the Year.

Currently working on the following songs (which might get recorded in the coming weeks if everything goes well):

- Neon by John Mayer - The Middle by Jimmy Eat World - Bat Country by Avenged Sevenfold (longer term project) - Sweet Child O Mine by Guns N’ Roses (hopefully I can finally master the solo)

Even more climbing pictures! 

This time from a trip early in july, right before I left for Seattle. This is in Kamouraska, QC. Probably one of my favorite climbing areas so far (with Smith Rock, of course)

The rock was amazing, there are plenty of routes one next to another and the hike to the crag is very short (~20minutes). Oh and the view is pretty sweet.

Once again, a photo of me climbing in Val-David earlier this year.

This climb is called “Craque de Fesses” (V4) which is french for “Ass crack”. It’s a crack formed from two boulders leaning one against the other and it felt impossible the first time I tried it 2 years ago. I went back this year and was suprised at how easy it felt compared to back then.

It’s probably my favorite or second favorite send so far (I’m debating between this and Bricklayer in Gold Bar)

While I’m waiting to start my new job, I happen to have a lot of free time. I’ve been using most of this time to play video games i hadn’t had the time to play in the last couple years (Fallout 4, Civ 5 and a bunch of other games), but I’m also using this time to improve as a Software Engineer. 

I spent a couple weeks learning technologies that I will be using at work, or stuff that I’ve heard mentioned in the past, without knowing what it was. I also spent some time going back on HackerRank to see how much I’ve improved in the past couple years.

One problem in particular, I remember struggling with during my first year of University, the matrix rotation problem. It’s pretty simple, you are given a matrix and you have to rotate it anti-clockwise a certain number of times. I never managed to completely pass all test cases back then (some timeouts and some sizes of matrixes were giving me a hard time). 

I saw the problem in my list of unsolved problems and decided to give it another go last week. Turns out it was actually really simple! All I did was figure out how to convert the matrix index into a 1D index, increment that the correct number of times for the number of required rotations and then convert that index back into the 2D index.

While solving this, i thought of so many different ways to do it that I never thought about when I tried it back then. Sometimes when you can’t figure out something, it’s a good idea to take a break (maybe not as long as I did) and come back to it with a fresh perspective. I guess the 3 years of extra experience also helped..

A couple pictures from one of our days climbing in Val-David, QC last spring.

Wow, I just realised I haven’t posted in a while. (a couple years to be exact)

Here are a couple pictures from my last trip to Whistler, BC.

We’ve been collecting beer caps for a few months now and had a decent amount. During christmas break we decided to actually do something with them.

We started out by finding Polyester Resin and building a mold out of PVC and measuring to make sure it could fit a few beer caps. We made as many molds as possible that were a bit thicker than the desired coaster thickness.

Once we had enough, we mixed the polyester resin and poured about 1/4″ into the molds. And the we moved the metal plates with the resin to an area that had better ventilation and waited for an hour for it to thicken a bit.

We layed down the beer caps on top of the resin in the molds and poured more resin on top (enough to make sure the beer caps were completely inside the resin). 

24 hours later, we came back and realised we had no idea how to unmold these things. So we went with a blowtorch and heated the metal until we could see an airbubble form between the coaster and the metal and pulled them off the sheet.

We then proceeded to sanding and making sure no rough edges were left and here’s the final result!

This weekend I went to Vancouver to visit a friend :) We ended up going to Stanley Park, Canada Place and playing board games with friends from last summer. 

Later that night, I went to Sam’s place (a friend from poly who’s interning in Vancouver, rightmost on the picture) and we had some food and beer before we joined a bunch of other microsoft interns to go out in Vancouver.

This weekend, we decided to stay in Seattle and relax. On friday night we hosted a small party (that turned into more than 20 people in our house with a few beers). 

Then saturday morning was supposed to be rock climbing. Unfortunately, at the time we went to bed saturday, that didn’t happen. And even less with some people’s (that I won’t name) hangover.

At the beach, we played Spike Ball (among other things) and it was really fun (once we understood exactly how to play and got “okay” at it)

And then this happened. While I was gone for a walk. That turned into a run to get in the picture (which I managed to do... in the back, behind everyone, but still in it!)

Then it was rock climbing time again (which isn’t anything special since we’re pretty much always rock climbing).

Sunday I had brunch with Chris for his birthday in Capitol Hill, it was really amazing! Then we went to the Chihuly Garden & Glass exposition.

Last weekend we went bouldering in Leavenworth! It was super fun (and really different from indoors) but also really frustrating when we couldn’t find some of the boulders that were on the guide book we bought. We just chilled next to a river going from one rock to another for a while.

On the way back, about an hour away from Leavenworth, we see a lot of traffic ahead. Turns out there had been an accident a few minutes earlier. Road is blocked for at least 2 hours, we’re in the middle of the mountains and there are no alternative routes. Time to turn around and head back to Leavenworth!

Meanwhile, sean and 3 other people had had the time to grab dinner and start heading back before we got back to Leavenworth. We too the other highway and ended up getting home around 10pm instead of 7-7:30.

Monday though, the famous mailbox trip! It was amazing! an easy hike for the first 4/5 and then it starts getting a bit more challenging at the end. We also got an awesome day which wasn’t too hot but not too cold either.

We took a bunch of photos, chilled at the top and then headed back!

Guess where I spent my sunday? 

That’s right, Seattle! We were supposed to go to an Ice cream festival, but when we got there, there was more than 1 hour wait for 3 ice cream trucks. We waited a bit in line and then decided to hop on the first bus we saw and hope it gets us somewhere interesting. Turns out it was stopping right next to Pike Place Market so that’s where we went (I know, so original).

Then we headed to Seattle’s great wheel and had diner at a restaurant under it. We headed back to capitol hill by randomly hopping on a bus and hoping it brings us to the right place. We ended up walking around and ending in the same spot as the Ice cream festival was, so we went back to check what it was like.

We ended up actually getting ice cream (5$ for a scoop... not really worth it) and it wasn’t even that good. Whatever, it was still fun :D And we saw some bubbles and I learned that it’s super hard to take good pictures of those!

Friday night. We HAD to celebrate the end of the first week!

We ended up going out to Capitol Hill, found a cheap restaurant and had a few beers (See first picture on how good Chris is to pour it and to know how sad Suhail was that he couldn’t drink)

Thend we saw a pool table in the restaurant. And we learned that you need to be 21 to play pool.. Which is odd. So we left and headed to another bar to meet friends from montreal (Unicorn bar or something)

Thursday was just another regular day at the office, but I actually managed to get stuff running, which was great news!

A little bit late for yesterday’s post, but it was late when we got home!

I met my mentor today (who’s also from Canada :D) and he seems really nice, so my team looks pretty awesome so far! 

New employee orientation today!

That means signing paperwork, meeting a ton of new people and getting my workspace setup! I’m working in Studio X and unfortunately my office doesn’t have any windows :( But my team looks awesome and so is my project :)

After I met my team, I had to get my workspace setup because all I got was a bunch of boxes :D In don’t have any windows in my office but I guess I can survive :) Then we had a small party with pizza, beer, mega jenga and a few other things :)

What happens when you let engineers play with fire? This.

We hosted a BBQ at our place today and we had no idea how to use a charcoal barbecue. Turns out it’s not as simple as a gas one where you basically don’t have anything to do except turn it on! But it does make some pretty epic photos!

We managed to get it working anyway and it was a lot of fun to see some of the foundry interns I hadn’t seen in months! (niko, suhail, ellery and peter) and some friends from poly!