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1/25/2010 Personal Update: Back from China

To see pictures with this post, see: China Post Trip Impressions

I am somewhere over the Sea of Okhotsk, off the coast of Russia, traveling at 33,200ft traveling back home from China. At home, it is 4:09 AM. In China, it’s 5:09PM. I was in China as part of an MIT class, 6.A53, Entrepreneurship and China. We traveled through Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guilin, Yangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. Along the way we visited companies, universities, and entrepreneurs. We also saw the sights of China and participated in the MAD 2010 Asia conference. It was a high paced tour of China’s customs and business.

Taken with Amod GPS Logger

The trip started on January 1st. to Shanghai. There were a lot of families traveling back home on the airplane. Shanghai is the world’s largest city, and it sprawls out since it is not contained by anything like Manhattan or Hong Kong. We took their $1.2 billion USD maglev ride. It was cool, but it did not really go too far. Also the maglev did not have good English. That was a recurring theme in China, even official tourist sites don't have good English.

We then got on their metro system. The system is all very new, all the stations look the same, and it is expanding with a line opening every month or so. This is so incredible. In the US a city is considered transit friendly if it opens a new line every decade!

On one day, we visited the Shanghai World Financial Center, one of the world’s tallest building. So apparently that title is very contentious with what counts as a building and what is included in the height count. Wikipedia says it is the third tallest building in the world, but the highest occupied floor, the highest height to roof, and the highest observation deck. We were their a day before the Burj Khalifa opened and took some of the title of highest occupied floor and highest height to roof.

There are signs for the expo everywhere. I really hope to get to go. I think it will be one of the last big ones as they are expensive with little direct benefit. We had an hour one morning, so we visited the construction site.

All of the buildings, including the subway, use this granite. I suppose it makes the building look fancy, but it is very annoying. It is everywhere in China, and I think it makes the buildings feel cool and inhospitable. The worst part is when it rains. Depending on how it is cut, it can be very slippery.

Where we were was a very wealthy area. It was a home for the newly wealthy Chinese to enjoy conspicuous consumption, American style. In addition, there were a lot of hawkers. You could could buy a fake Rolex only a few feet from a luxury store selling legitimate ones.

It was very cold when we were in China, around 0C. Due to an old law, buildings below the Yangtze River cannot have heaters. Almost all of the homes have these inefficient “air conditioners” which have electric heaters in them. Dorms rooms do not have heat. One school even requires students to go to another building for water or showers! Even the Chinese think this is a little too rustic. The classrooms have a little heat, but are still cold by American standards. The hallways are not heated as well. I've also seen this trend in the Caribbean.

It is very hard for a Chinese student to break out and stand out. Entrance to universities in China is by entrance exam, counting school skills only. They have to work very hard to get to the top-tier university in China. But once they get there, the road is still very long. Only a few can go to an American graduate school, let alone MIT. Even if they go to American grad school it is challenging to find a company willing to sponsor their work visa. But they do work very hard to learn science and engineering.

The students do not get much chance to work as a team or think creatively. Entrepreneurship in China in some senses is very strong; there seem to be millions of people selling stuff. However, entrepreneurship as a career path is not looked upon as high as a standard position in a large company. In addition, the infrastructure is not ready to support ventures who want to go for economies of scale and lead the industry, in the way that Silicone Valley ventures do. Part of this might just be the scale of business in China. The cost of labor is so low that firms can not really use technology to compete. In addition, failure is highly stigmatized, where as westerns know that one learns for failure.

One of these universities serves more meals in a minute than MIT does all night. It is also far lower cost. One meal is about $7 RMB, or 1 USD, while MIT struggles to make money off $7 USD meals. Granted, it looks like a prison cafeteria and the food is mass produced, but the cost is so much lower.

Cisco has set up an R&D center in China with about 1,500 people. They told us that they did that as a pre-condition for being able to sell to the Chinese government and state-owned telcos. It does look like they invested a lot of money into the center. The people we saw seemed to be doing testing – for operations and temperature. I got the feeling that the center does the testing and entry-level engineering, which Americans would find too boring. I suspect that these centers will be doing more and more. The Chinese are also very proud to be doing entry-level engineering work for an American firm. (no photos from this stop)

We visited two large factories, one produced bags and the other produced clothes. One had a city of about 12,000 people. Both worked for many well-known US brands side by side in different production lines. The label is responsible for the design, picking the fabric, and ensuring quality. The cost of the product to manufacture is about 1/5 of retail cost. The workers make a little more than $1,000 RMB a month (about $150 USD). Both companies were run by Hong Kong owners and managers. The company with the large city had a 300 room “hotel” for its managers.

These factories are successful because of the nearly endless stream of China’s 1.3 billion people into the city looking to take any job they can. Southern China at $1000 RMB/month is actually too expensive; many factories are moving up north where labor is only about $500 RMB/month. Remember the cost of living is far, far lower. From what we saw, the workers seemed OK with the work. They want to work more and earn overtime. For them it's better than the farm where they made nothing on plots the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. People's quality of life is improving, but for many, a comfortable life still has a long way to go.

I liked the town of Yungsho very much. It was a very outdoorsy-tourist town, like the Jersey Shore. That means that the town does not have big luxury hotels and stores, only moderate priced locally-operated stores. They said that before most of the visitors were western, not now it is 80% Chinese. The town exists for the wonderful landscape that you can see with rafting down the river in a Bamboo raft, or riding a bike.

We took a sleeper train from Guilin to Shenzhen. It was the first time I had taken a sleeper train, and I enjoyed the experience. China’s railroads have very little scenery around as you go by. The train station in Shanghai was very nice and big. I was surprised at how many people were in there. They also have more of a process where you wait in a waiting room and when you exit, you take a separate path. The trains were also all full, even the CRH (China Rail Highspeed). In the west the train system is used mostly by business travelers, and is far more expensive. In China, everyone travels by rail. The cost of a ticket, even for high-speed, is only a few US dollars.

When you cross the border into Hong Kong, it feels very different. It just seems cleaner and more modern, including the customs building. 95% of the signs are in English as well, and they use good English. The place has more history and they don’t use that granite tile everywhere. The trade-off is that the buildings are older and smaller. Our hotel room was very small. Over the border in Shenzhen we had four times the space for the same cost.

Over the trip, I read both Superfusion and China Inc. Both were written before the current recession. Superfusion’s thesis was that the United States and China’s economy have become, without much notice, intertwined and inseparable. An idea that I agree with, but can be described with far fewer words. I enjoyed China Inc. much more. It recounted this history of China and smoothly jumped from topic to topic on China's economic rise. It explained much of what I was saw and experienced for myself in China.

I believe that in the future, pure manufacturing and engineering jobs will continue to leave the country, much to the protest of unions whose artificially high wages and benefits will come crashing down. The US still has the lead in creative enterprises for now. As the Recession Generation article from Newsweek points out, the US will be faced with a world where credit may not be as easy as it was in 2008 and where more people are facing a comfortable standard of living around the world. However, I disagree with the assessment made in the article that hard work no longer pays off in America. We will have to continue to work hard, study science and engineering, and come to terms with the new way things are. Personally, I think that all of the hours I have put in have led to my admission to MIT and my selection to go on this trip. Entrepreneurship and advancement in a company are still tied to hard work. Americans cannot grow up and be entitled to a job. There is too much competition from worldwide.

I took over 5,300 photos and videos on this trip. Most are geotagged. They are on Flickr

--ThePlaz 15:49, 28 January 2010 (EST)

12/18/2009 Lesson Learned and Embracing Scholarship: End of the First Semester at MIT

It is the end of my first semester at MIT. I have not seen any of the grades yet - hopefully I will do well enough to pass. The physics final was a perfect bell shaped curve around 50%.

MIT is the first time that I really had to seriously study for a class. As such, I did not do as well as I have historically done. But that is why MIT has pass/no record for the first semester. For 8.01/Physics: Mechanics, I studied 40 hours for the final, 10 for 3.091/Solid State Chemistry, and 35 for 18.01/Single Variable Calculus. If I had worked during the year, it would have been less. But that intensive end of year studying made me realize some things:

It is very important to figure out how you learn best. I went to a one day presentation by Edward Tufte last month. He did not like how an aircraft manufacture mandated that they move to a paper-less system with the design of their new aircraft. He thinks that people can understand something much better when they are looking at something on a piece of paper. Also the process should not get in the way of the result.

I agree, and I realized that I have been sometimes putting the process ahead of learning stuff. I have talked at great length about Tablet PCs. Last year, I did all my class work on a tablet PC, and I talked positively about the experience. This year, I used a tablet in 8.01 and 3.091. I used paper for 18.01. I found that I learned stuff better in 18.01. When I really need to concentrate, I need to write on paper. There are no distractions, I can focus on what I am doing. For studying, I sat down with a large pack of paper and worked through problems.

In a history class, a computer is still great to type notes, and look up stuff. If you have a professor's slides it is nice to write on top of them during the lecture. A tablet is great for making small drawings quickly and digitally. Most people can type much faster than they can write, and writing seems to go slower on a tablet. Apple has shown that a tablet can make a nice mobile interface, if software has been designed for it, but I realize now there is a reason tablets have gone mainstream.

I bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500. It was expensive, but it is awesome! I can throw my entire notebook in it and it will quickly scan through. It has an ultrasonic overlap detector that is fairly good at detecting problems. Its scan quality of typed papers is excellent. It also OCRs typed text to make it searchable in Adobe Reader. Handwriting is still a challenge. When I started ThePlaz.com I would spend 10 hours putting notes online. By not labeling stuff and doing auto upload I could do it in 2 hours. Now it takes a minute or two.

You also have to pay attention in class. In high school, you could often not pay attention in class and look something up on the internet. At MIT, every minute matters. You also really need to be awake and paying attention in every class. Some mornings that is a challenge, but it will catch up to you.

When it comes time to study, it is so hard to get started. But when you get over the hump, and get started it is easier to stay focused. You also need to stay concentrating, one chat message tears you away and it takes a few minutes to get back into it. You also need to make sure you do not have anywhere to go. One of the biggest struggles in the semester was always having to be somewhere. You can make yourself very busy at MIT, but you need time to study. This was my mistake in this first semester. You need to clear your schedule for the next few hours and work.

For example, I would often go to review sessions or office hours simply because I felt like I should be doing something to study. The sessions, of course, would only be open for a certain length of time, so I would want to take advantage of it. But those session are generally helpful only when you come prepared with questions. Otherwise you just give the appearance of studying. Usually it is best to just lock yourself away in a quite area and study.

Having a clean desk is also important. One student on my floor has his desk in his room completely empty of stuff. He can focus on what he is working on. I always go out in the hall when I need to concentrate. Most recently, I found an old office in the Media Lab that has been vacant. I went in, spread my stuff out, and worked for 6 hours.

In the middle of the semester I felt like I did not learn much of anything; but after studying I felt that I mastered a lot of concepts at the end of the semester. Certainly not all of them (see physics exam final curve) I knew in the beginning of the year that classes were the part of MIT I least looked forward to. Now that I have proved to myself that I can do it, I feel like anything is possible. I knew that it was critical to learn these concepts because classes next semester will use them and will award letter grades. I may now decide to pursue an engineering major.

I can not decide what major to do. On one hand, Course 17/Political Science, is something I am interested and has the least requirements of any major, allowing me to explore more different things that MIT has to offer. The department has a single digit (<10) number of students per year. On the other hand, many people have urged me to take an engineering major. About a third of MIT students do Course 6/Computer Science, but I feel like I want a smaller, more individualized program. Course 3/Material Science would be something completely different. I now know that if I focus, I can do it, but will I be happy working on something like that? The analytical and problem solving skills that you learn there are applicable to anything. You feel that you can master anything.

Now don't get wrong, MIT is an awesome place. I have plenty that I would rather do than classes. As I talk about in the last update, I would rather be a grad student - free to work on projects.

The new Media Lab building, E14, is now open. Photos on Flickr. The building really really looks nice. The lab looks to have gained many more students - it hasn't - they are just more visible now. The grand opening is next year.

This January I will be in China with MIT, with the 6.A53 advising seminar. I am really happy to be going. As always, photos will be posted. For the last class, our advisor brought in Zach Anderson. Zach not only did the MBTA subway hack, but now works full time in a startup to make energy recovering shock absorbers. It is Popular Science's Invention of the Year. The project has caught the notice of military top brass as well as GM, since it can lower fuel costs by around 5-10%. Zach is an awesome role model.

Next semester, I pre-registered for 18.02/Multi-Variable Calculus, Phyiscs Electricity and Magnetism, 21F.403/German 3, and 21W.732/a writing class. I am also going to be a listener for STS.050/The History of MIT. I am also doing MAS.111/Introduction to Doing Research in Media Arts & Sciences which should not be much work.

I am doing German 3, because I got an internship at Deutsche Bahn this summer in the Touch&Travel department. Here is an article in English from 18 months ago http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleprint/3950/-1/1 It will be very challenging, due to the language, since I will be working with hardware, and programming for an enterprise. I knew German from my mom and can speak it at home fairly well. I lack, however, the business and technical vocab words. In addition, I've never really read or wrote German. I can read if I go very slowly and sound out the words. In addition, working with hardware is something that I've not done before. I've ordered an RFID kit and some books to start working with the stuff. I hope to replicate Zach's experiment and learn how to build a system which is Zach-proof. You can make stuff secure - if you really try hard. If you make some small mistakes, (like wireless WEP encryption) your stuff is, as Ars Technica puts it, crap-o. Mobile is also a very interesting space. I am excited to be working internationally, for a transit company, on mobile products after my freshman year.

One of the things I realized at MIT is how hard it is to do things when you start from scratch. At the Media Lab, we work with technology that is at least 3-4 years from the market. We don't know how something will actually work, we must make a good decision and hope that it will be good in 15 years. The Mifare system is a good example. When it was first designed in 1993, it was several years from its first implementation. Today, billions of rides have been granted using the cards, and there is no way to fix the broken system. I talk about this a lot on The Weekly Spin audio podcast.

--ThePlaz 21:53, 18 December 2009 (EST)

10/11/2009 ThePlaz.com Update from MIT

My first semester is halfway over at MIT. My 3 hardest classes are 3.091 (Solid State Chemistry), 8.01 (Physics), 18.01 (Calculus). All 3 featured content that I also learned in high school, although at a far more difficult level. Physics forces you to work with derivatives and integrals to understand what's really going on. Calculus revolves around the proofs. If you are not perfectly clear on the rules of algebra, it's a real challenge. The work revolves around the edge cases which require you to really understand the material, not just memorize formulas. Chemistry is taught by a professor who is big into battery research, in fact he is fairly wealthy as a result. He gets really into his lectures too which makes it fun. You can watch them online

The first semester is pass/no record - which is a good because I still need to find the right amount of studying to do. I need to be better at memorizing what I am not interested in. I think I never properly focused the time on academics in high school. In Middle School, I had built up so much momentum that I coasted through the first part of high school, and in the second half, I was able to make it through thanks to grade inflation and cramming. I really need to get on top of things more. During the week, it's a challenge to get done everything I need for just these 3 classes - let alone get ahead. I've felt like I spend a few days really working to start being comfortable in one class and then I am behind in the others and it becomes a never ending cycle.

I am far more interested in my MAS.110 and 6.A53 classes, as well as my UROP. MAS.110 covers typographic design and how we interact and think about technology. It is an introduction to the Media Lab, part of the Media Lab freshman year program. 6.A53 only meets for a few hours each week and is fairly informal. One person owns a clothing store in New Jersey, and my advisor owns a [http:// rallypoint.info company making hi-tech gloves for the military]. In class, we are doing a basic introduction to China and we talk around business. Recently we have been planning for a business plan competition. I am wondering which is better - a business that grows agilely and uses rapid prototyping to get out in the market fast to test its ideas, and then finds funding ("bottom up") - or the slow and steady approach of building up relationships and team members for months before having a big launch ("top down").

I also have a UROP in the Media Lab, working on SocialSaver, a project to study if knowing what your friends are buying/doing will affect you. I created a mobile HTML menu (for iPhone), as well as UI and design for the group. It's great because I am working with 3 other undergraduates who have different skills in programming. Unlike the SeniorQuoter group study and Videre in Governor's School, everyone can program. In addition, there are so many parts that each person can work on a different part. One person is making a native iPhone app in Objective C, another is programming for Android in Java, and a third is working on the back end with Python in Django. My advisor, Kwan, manages the project and designs the interfaces to make all the parts work together. It's a really good experience to work on a highly-talented programming team. I'll post more about the project once it is public.

I also try and attend various talks and lectures. On Monday, I am going to Startup Bootcamp. Last week I went to a talk by the former mayor of Shanghai, and the week before that I listened to Noam Chomsky. I find these peripheral activities much more interesting than classes.

Geoov is done as well. You should be able to add your own geotagged photos on the map. My issue is always publicizing the sites. I need to do more to help that. I was also behind the Sprout contest on Facebook. For big brands, it shows the power of social networks to spread awareness without traditional advertising. For me, it shows what a big brand can accomplish just by putting its name on something; Tecker 911 was never even close to that level of popularity. Perhaps we should have been more adapting to the needs of our audience.

My Palm Pre has been very useful for the fast paced life at MIT. I can quickly check my schedule or look something up. I also use it a lot for talk; I went over by a few minutes last month! I am also getting to explore Boston. See my flickr photos. --ThePlaz 00:57, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

8/21/2009 ThePlaz.com Roundup Summer 2009 Edition

So the summer is coming to a close. I leave for MIT in about 48 hours. Let me tell you what went on this summer.

The first thing you may notice is that ThePlaz.com has a new look since July 12th! It's called Nuvola for the Nuvola icons it uses. I wanted to make the site easy to use and make it look less like Wikipedia. The first big change is that the dropdown menu is now "part of the site" instead of "part of the page". In addition, the subjects have big icons and a better looking and working drop down. The drop downs was one of the first things I programmed in 2006. Second, the sidebar is redesigned to make it easier. User actions are hidden unless they are needed. The edit button is big and yellow. I separated out page operations and site operations. I integrated the MediaWiki and Google search boxes. The third big improvement is the new footer which has lots of info about me. One column is my friendfeed which brings together my flickr, twitter, delicious, blog entries, etc. Once I publish this update, it will be on the list. The second column is my most recent 10 flickr sets. The third column has my sites that used to be in the header and some info about me. Finally, I spent several hours optimizing the site for quick loading on slow connections. It should work with Firefox, Opera, IE 7 and 8, and WebKit (Opera, Safari, Palm Pre). IE 6 works without drop downs. If you are using IE6, please do the internet a favor and upgrade. Read more about the Nuvola Skin

Geoov is a new prototype I created. I was frustrated that there was no way to get an overview of your geotagged photos on flickr. I did some investigation and I was able to use Google Maps's MarkerCluster in order to solve the problem of too many points on one page. As you zoom in, the clusters break up smaller and smaller until you read an individual photo. When you click on the pushpin, the photo appears. Check it out! Geoov only does my photos now, and make sure you are running the latest version of your browser.

I got a Palm Pre!! photos I felt that I needed a smart phone in order to stay connected at MIT and because I am interested in mobile development. I like the Palm Pre because it seems like it is in middle of everything: business (keyboard, exchange) and personal (fun, graphical); open (hackable, homebrew) and usable (app store, Linux hidden); web programming (using JS and CSS) and native programming (stages, assistants); new (2 months old, not many apps) but liked by reviewers (not N800). I did get the Touchstone (it was on sale!) and the webOS programmers guide. I have a few ideas.....

All summer, I have been doing The Weekly Spin where my friends and I talk about the most interesting technology stories each week. I have advanced access to Microsoft Office 2010, and I've talked about my experiences with that, along with plenty of talk about the Palm Pre. We are still ranting about the cell phone industry and the music industry, and Gdovin is still talking Apple rumors, so don't worry. Subscribe to the weekly audio I hope that I can still do the show at MIT.

Tecker 911 has reached the end! We have shot and edited 100 episodes! Head to http://911.tecker.net to watch them all! I am so proud that we were able to reach our goal of 100 episodes. Thank you also to Gdovin, Reed, and Jordan for hanging in there. The last 40 episodes went especially quickly. Watch episode 100 for a look back at our history.

At the end of the summer, I have been traveling a lot. Not everything is online yet, but check out my most recent photos on Flickr including New York City, Ocean City, MD and Hershey Park. As and always, everything is geotagged! I also did a stone project in my backyard.

Next year, I will be at MIT! (Why MIT) I did get into the advising seminar I wanted. This January, I will be going to China to learn about entrepreneurship, in part on MIT's dime. I got into the dorm I wanted, Baker House. I will be in the Product Design FPOP next week. I don't know what I am doing or what I will post, but look for it here. I applied to be a blogger for the admissions office, so my next post may be on there. Finally, I still plan on doing the Media Lab Freshman Year program. I am so excited to go up there.

--ThePlaz 09:10, 21 August 2009 (EDT)

6/9/2009 ThePlaz Roundup

I've graduated from high school! (pictures on flickr) It has not really sunk in yet; it just feels like a normal summer vacation. I am sad to be leaving my friends behind. In addition, I tried out to give the commencement speech, but Chris Denny won. You can read my speech online.

Our Senior Prank was regarded as the best ever. Even the Principal joined in. Watch the YouTube video

Up until the last minute, I was involved with Haverford High School. With 3 other students, I wrote a new technology policy draft and presented it to the superintendent. I have an opinion/editorial in the school newspaper, The Fordian. I hear that the school is using my policy as a base for changes next year, and that they are currently planning a 3-month test period. Plans, however, are not finalized. The best part, however, was to pass on a tradition of activism to the 3 other students. I am also staying in touch on the new TV studio.

I did my Senior Project on Electronic Voting Machine Insecurity. Check out the very extensive 26-page paper and the PowerPoint presentation. I covered this topic from almost every angle and found that constant vigilance is needed to protect this fragile system.

All of the OneNote Notebooks from 12th Grade are now online. Unfortunately, they only works in Internet Explorer and Opera, because of the method I use. (Come on Microsoft!)

I got a new desktop! My old desktop, an Inspiron 600m from 8th Grade was no longer able to chug through Facebook JavaScript. In addition, because I will be going away soon, I needed my own high powered desktop to be able to edit HD video and manage all of my files. I purchased a new Dell Inspiron 537 desktop. It has an Intel Q9400 2.66GHz Quad-Core processor and 4GB of RAM. I bought 2 20" Dell displays and a dual DVI ATI graphics card to handle them. I installed Windows 7 RC 64-bit. It was all about $1000, and well worth it! Pictures on Flickr.

Next year, I will be at MIT! (Why MIT) I've already signed up for the housing lottery, taken an essay placement test, and put down 5 options for an advising seminar. I most want to get into 6.A53 Entrepreneurship and China since you learn about global entrepreneurship and get to take a 1 month trip to China for $1000. I am also interested in learning more about the electric grid (6.A54), operations research (15.A03), and designing consumer electronics at the Media Lab (MAS.A19). Finally, I may get the opportunity to have Walter Bender, the director of the OLPC UI "Sugar", as my adviser in Games, Puzzlers, and Other Things to Think With (MAS.A12).

Remember, I am on The Weekly Spin where my friends and I talk about the most interesting technology stories each week. Subscribe to the weekly audio

I will be going to New York City tomorrow, look for (geotagged) pictures! Meanwhile, look for pictures from Dorney Park, and my families' Prius taken apart to clean.

Lastly, I am planning on redesigning the CSS drop down menu for ThePlaz.com. It was one of the first things I coded 4 years ago. It works on some browsers, but breaks on others. I can do better.

-ThePlaz 22:05, 9 June 2009 (EDT)

5/19/2009 ThePlaz.com Roundup

Boy has it been a long time since I last updated this. There is so much to cover that I avoid starting to blog, which only leads to more stuff to cover....

After much thought, I have decided to attend MIT as an undergraduate. See Why MIT for my reasoning.

My second choice was to attend Drexel in their Information Science program, were I received a full tuition scholarship. Penn State had a nice program which was very similar. In addition, I was accepted at their honors college. However, University Park was a bit too remote for me. Temple also gave me full tuition and honors program, but I am not a fan of Northeast Philadelphia and the program did not stand out. I had originally wanted to go to Northeastern, also in Boston, but it would have cost me twice as much as any other option.

I am really looking forward to moving to Cambridge this fall and being among the top 1,000 or so seniors interested in using technology to improve people's lives. I have no clue what to major in (which is interesting because I have always thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do). At MIT, you don't have to pick your major until later, and a major is not too big of a deal. Finally, MIT made me a financial offer tied for first with two other schools.

I am excited for the opportunity MIT provides. I am planning on being part of the Media Lab's Freshman Year Program. The Media Lab is widely recognized as a leading innovator in new technology and user interface design. I am also interested in Political Science and a few other things. We will see. For housing I am going for Baker, Simmons, and German House in that order.

SocialView released 2 new products since I last wrote. ForumsPlace is an attempt to build a new community site and 4Change is a petitions app for Facebook. I think 4Change is promising because it uses the social power of Facebook to spread.

I did get a GPS receiver for the holidays and I took it on a few trips with me. It is a bit of a pain to run and merge the photos with location data, but it is worth it! I am planning on doing a Tecker 911 episode (#85) on it. You can see that in a few months....

I posted a lot of photos to Flickr recently, since I traveled a lot. I went to Boston twice. Once to visit Northeastern, and a month later to visit MIT for CPW. Over spring break my family went to the Caribbean on the Caribbean Princess. I also went to the Met, the Philadelphia Opera, and National Train Day at 30th Street Station. On most of these trips I took my geotagger. More than half of my 23,000 photos are geotagged; you can see my Flickr map. I don't like the way the new Flickr mapping system work since it does not make it easy to discover locations....

Tecker 911 hit a slowdown because Premiere Pro CS4 did not work very well. I have posted up to episode 74 at 911.tecker.net. Today we filmed up to episode 86. Hopefully things will get going again and we can get up to 100 episodes before college starts. Our goal is to finish with 100 episodes.

Recently, I created a Hell's Kitchen spoof and I posted a short film I made when I was 10. I just got a new Canon Vixia HF100. It produces really nice looking HD video provided you have enough light. My friend got a Nikon D90 which is capable, once you figure it out, of taking some really good photographs, like this one.

You may notice that ThePlaz.com homepage has been redesigned. Check out the new "FriendFeed" section which pulls together my activity on the web from 13 different places including Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Status Updates, Delicious, and many others. This will replace many sidebar widgets and hopefully speed up the site by reducing the amount of JavaScript code. I also moved the site to a new host which is a lot more expensive but does support Memcached.

Remember, I am tagging interesting sites with Delicious. I joined The Weekly Spin where my friends and I talk about the most interesting technology stories each week. Subscribe to the weekly audio

Material from the 1st semester of 12th Grade is now online. I found a way to export OneNote notebooks to the web which preserves its appearance. Unfortunately, it only works in Internet Explorer and Opera. However, it is now very easy to upload stuff; it used to take me hours to do a class.

Hopefully I will post more often in the future. -ThePlaz 23:42, 19 May 2009 (EDT)

12/17/2008 State of ThePlaz (Michael Plasmeier)

12th Grade is almost half over. This year has certainly been less work than previous years. I am enjoying my final year in high school with about half the workload of previous years.

I've been using my tablet to take notes in school. Before the year started, I detailed my experiences in The Quest for the Perfect Notetaking Medium, an essay I wrote for College Applications. It has certainly allowed me to be more organized while spending far less time organizing. Also, being in front of a computer allows me to accomplish tasks when I think of them, not at home. It makes the day feel like it lasts longer. As for notes on ThePlaz.com, I am now more aware of copyright concerns and I am developing my strategy for posting this years notes.

This also means I am deep into college applications. I have applied at about 5 or 6 schools. I am looking for a large university in an urban environment with an information science program. I would also like a minor in business. My final decision will come down to a decision between a number of alternative paths I am looking into. Financial concerns will also play a large part into choosing a school.

For the holidays, I have asked for a GPS tagger for a digital camera. I hope to look more into geotagging in the future. I have not found an application that can give you an overview of all of your geotagged photos......

Tecker 911 is up to 60 episodes online. I have about 7 which I have edited but are giving me a lot of trouble to render (or finalize). Also, we filmed 7 more last weekend. In the meantime you can enjoy: 60: Cell Phone Internet, 59: Digital Camera Workflow, 58: Firefox 3, and more on our website! We are hoping to make it to 100 episodes by the end of the school year.

With SocialView we are working on 2 new products. I need to dedicate more time for this. After working on the outsourced GridView rearrange feature I need to find the passion for continuing to do interesting projects. I am finding it is hard to do a full day of school and homework and then come home and work.

I am also using Delicious to "micro-blog" sites I find interesting. Subscribe to that RSS feed! or watch the sidebar on every page.

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 18:55, 17 December 2008 (EST)

9/14/2008 State of ThePlaz (Michael Plasmeier)

Hey everyone! It's been 2 and a half months since I last wrote and much has happened since then! For one of those months I was at the the Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence in Information, Society & Technology at Drexel. While I was there I had lots of fun spending time with technical minded people. (Photos on Flickr) I wrote an article on what I learned there I lead a team which created Videre, a proof of concept for how to improve online gradebooks. Check out the demo!

The month after Gov School, I had off. I relaxed at home and more importantly launched the GridView arrange feature! It was very long awaited, unfortunately. This was cool because it was the longest, largest, most expensive project I had ever designed and led. Watch a 3 minute demo on YouTube I am very proud of the design and the integration challenges we overcame.

Tecker 911 is up to 51 episodes online with 9 more coming in a few days (they are uploading as I type). Meanwhile enjoy: 51: Podcasting, 50: Taking a Break, 49: TiVo, 48: OLPC, 47: PayPal Security Key, 46: Bookmooch, and more on our website!

On ThePlaz.com, I added my work from PreCalc (and there is a lot of it), AP Micro Econ and a few things I did in Biology. For 11th Grade, I only uploaded the notes from structured courses. Less structured courses I did not bother with, and I tried not to upload worksheets and teacher's papers.

I also wrote Laptops for Students and E-Note Taking over the summer which gives some of my experience using laptops in school, and I am branching off The Quest for the Perfect Notetaking Medium as a College Application essay.

In the last 2 weeks, I have started 12th Grade. This quarter, I am taking Entrepreneurship, English 12, Business Law, and Calculus. I have also started applying to colleges. I have look at more than 130 colleges and I have developed 3 "paths" I can follow. What I like best right now is an Information Science program at a school that keeps you in the real world like Drexel and Northeastern. A second choice is a more academically rigorous, less "practical" Computer Science program at a prestigious liberal arts school. A third choice is a school which is more geared for entrepreneurship. I would also like to minor in business.

SeniorQuoter 2.0beta2 was released yesterday. Beta2 fixes almost 95% of the outstanding bugs in version 2.0. Check it out!

At school this year, I am the CTO this year at the publications office. I am also a senior host at H-Vision which is further evolving this year.

I am also using Delicious now and I am tagging and commenting pages I find interesting. Subscribe to that RSS feed! or watch the sidebar on every page.

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 22:20, 14 September 2008 (EDT)

6/30/2008 Personal Message

Hey everyone! I am in the Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence in Information, Society & Technology at Drexel now for 5 weeks. It's great to be around people with the same passion for technology. It's a diverse group - about half have some programming experience. I'm the only PHP expert and the only one who knew about version control systems. Still they have a lot of creative ideas and good input for fleshing out ideas. It looks like our ITP will be a reboot of SeniorQuoter making it modular and building a voting system (favorite song, class couple, prom song, etc).

We are also very close to launching new features for GridView! It's going to be very cool! It's been in the works for many months now!

I finished uploading my notes for American Studies. PreCalc is next. I don't think I will do any others. I know Physics still says "coming soon" even though that class ended 6 months ago.....

Tecker 911 is up to 52 episodes edited and 60 filmed. I just have to release more!

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 21:37, 30 June 2008 (EDT)

5/18/2008 Personal Message

Hey everyone! I think I just went through the hardest months of my life. I was taking 4 major classes in school (the maximum) and I just took 3 AP exams (US History, Psychology, and Micro Econ)

In the meantime, I've been very busy with GridView. Things are shaping up with 876,340 users, and some cool features in the works.

I also have a month of school left! And I don't think I ever said that I was accepted into Pennsylvania Governor's Schools of Excellence in Information, Society & Technology. It's a 5 week residence program at Drexel University. Since I am looking closely at the iSchool at Drexel (it is at the top of my list) for colleges, this is like a 5-week free trial. According to one graduate of the person I talked to, it was the best thing in her life (above regular college too).

With all of this hectic things, I've neglected Tecker 911, SeniorQuoter and posting stuff to this site. All I managed to put up was my projects, if that. I haven't added any scanned papers in the last 3 months.

I am also active in school events. I was the media manager for Locks of Love which is tomorrow and I ran the TV operations for Mr. Haverford with a crew of 4-5.

Recent Flickr photos include: the 2008 BLAST (after-prom), Mr. Haverford 2008, Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination, thousands of photos from my Spring Break trip out West to the natural sights, and the addition on my house is done. See all

Also, I bought a new tablet pc! It's a Fujitsu T4220. It's a perfect blend of performance, portability, and since I bought a refurb at 60% of the list price, a good value too. It's running Microsoft Vista, which has new features for tablets (and is not all that bad!). It's only got 1GB of RAM, but I haven't noticed that at all! I was all ready to buy an upgrade, but I'm waiting now. I really like taking notes in OneNote (and that will make it easier to update this site) Also, since I am using Outlook with the Connector for MSN, I get my email (even sent mail), calender, contacts, and tasks synced online and on my 2 computers. It's very nice! I have an unboxing video I need to find the time to put together.

Plus, my family signed up for the Verizon FiOS triple play. I am waiting for the 15/2MBS internet, but I am not looking forward to getting rid of my HD DirecTivo! (sorry Tivo- it was really great when it came out)

PS Hi Mr. Siegerman!

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 23:36, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

2/28/2008 Personal Update

Hey everyone! It has been 2 months since I last wrote an update.

The Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study has been over for a month and we shipped SeniorQuoter 2.0beta1. Visit the SeniorQuoter site for all the details, screenshots, downloads, and ways you can help. Version 2 adds an administration interface. We are only 20 bugs away from releasing version 2.0, so please see how you can help.

Tecker 911 is coming along nicely. We have 44 episodes done and edited with the last 7 in HD (not out yet). The last few that were released are: Episode 33: Portable Apps, Episode 32: Web Hosting, and Episode 31: Flickr

And you can join in the discussion on education reform on Ms. Ward's blog and Arthus Erea's Amateur Learning post.

The second semester started at my school. This brings AP Psychology, AP Micro Econ, and Biology, along with more of American Studies and English 11. Scanned work from PreCalc is being added slowly, and the first half of notes from American Studies is now up.

Also I recently wrote an article for the yearbook Greystones about technology.

Recent Flickr photos include: the Prom Expo at my school, my trip to Drexel University, and the new school near my house. See all

Oh, I am getting an addition put on my house. Check out the photos as they come in

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 22:36, 28 February 2008 (EST)

1/6/2008 Personal Message

Happy new year!

GridView, my app for Facebook is at 490,000 users! Growth this month was slow because I did not launch any features during December. GridView lets you add all your friends profile pics to you Facebook profile for you and your profile visitors to see.

I also moved GridView to a dedicated server (for which I am paying $100/month)! This lets it run without running up thousands of dollars of (mt) overage charges! Server utilization seems to peak around 80%!

I also brought on a partner to GridView, by selling him a minority piece of GridView. He works in advertising at a major social network and should help me focus on features and make GridView profitable. Speaking of that, I am currently working on a major change to GridView. Lots of you said it world be nice if you could move your friends around... Plus I found some much better mosaic code and I hope to drastically improve the user experience for Mosaics.

Our Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study has only a few weeks left. We are working on the SeniorQuoter admin site which is coming together nicely. Photos and Screenshots on Flickr

I also finished my Governor's School Application. That was enough writing about me for a few months. Also, an essay on the power of Wikis. However, I will now have a leg up for the college application process. Where do I want to go? I don't know. I do have a few top choices.

Also, Tecker 911 will be filming new episodes in HD. We have 37 episodes done and edited. The last few that were released are: Episode 27: Notebook Cards, Episode 26: Words: The Latin Dictionary, and Episode 25: Behind the Scenes

Oh, I also just posted my research paper I did on the Patriot Act in 8th Grade.

All for now!

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 21:04, 6 January 2008 (EST)

12/4/2007 Personal Message

Hey everyone! Welcome to December!

I've been more focused on my code projects, that I am not going to upload my work from 11th Grade this year. Maybe I'll get someone else to do it, or do it eventually.

GridView, my app for Facebook 420,000 THOUSAND users with about 50,000 users every day!!!!! It's growing at about 10,000 new users every 24 hours. GridView lets you add all your friends profile pics to you Facebook profile for you and your profile visitors to see.

GridView recently launched GridView Mosaics, which lets you make a photo mosaic of your profile picture with your friends as tiles. Recently, I improved the quality of the Mosaics to contain 4 times the tiles, showing 4 times the detail. Unfortunately this takes up a lot of server resources, I've almost outgrown (mt)'s (gs) system. Looks like it's soon time to move to a dedicated server!

Also, GridView recently started to sell, through QOOP, products containing your GridView Mosaic. Check them out! The products are as follows:

• Mugs from $11.99
• Mousepads from $10.99
• Luggage Tags from $7.49
• MyCards from $9.99/pack
• Magnets from $5.99
• Stickers from $4.99
• Keychains from $4.99
• Greeting Cards from $.99
• Postcards from $.99

GridView is reported by Adonomics, a 3rd party Facebook analytics system, to have a valuation of $203,462! I am currently in talks to bring a partner on board to help grow GridView and turn it profitable. If you have ideas about that, contact me (see below)!

Our Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study is nearing the halfway point. Tomorrow, we are finishing up databases, and we plan to start working on SeniorQuoter next week. For more information and student work samples, see this post on the SeniorQuoter site.

School is going OK for me. I am increasingly interested in what goes on around the classes. This month is my campaign to end the draconian "Classrooms of the Past" technology policies. I am also looking at running a desktop background contest. I hope to do this next year for my senior project, so that I may dedicate the time to do it properly. Properly meaning set up a comprehensive website, selecting a judging committee and writing the contest rules.

Also, new Tecker 911s are out! The last 3 episodes are: Episode 24: Windows Movie Maker, Episode 23: Wikipedia Reliability, and Episode 22: Firefox Add-Ons Editing is going slow, but Reed, a new member is helping me to speed it along. I trained him this weekend, so hopefully he can turn them out faster. In the upcoming year, I hope to delegate more and more of the Tecker 911 tasks to younger members. We now have a half-a-year lead time between filming and releasing episodes!

I am also working with a start-up on a new, secret project. It will be very cool! It addition, I am mentoring a student on a new Firefox extension to be distributed through ThePlaz.com Networks.

All for now! (Isn't that enough!)

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 17:33, 4 December 2007 (EST)

10/6/2007 Personal Message

Hey everyone! 11th Grade is about 1/8th over. I haven't posted any of my non-typed work online. It looks like I won't have the time for that this year. May be I'll get someone else to do it, or do it eventually.

GridView, my app for Facebook I wrote on the last day of 10th Grade in about 5 hours now has over 250,000 THOUSAND users with a current growth rate of about 5,000 new users every day'!!!!! GridView lets you add all your friends profile pics to you Facebook profile for you and your profile visitors to see. I was totally blown away by the popularity. We're also rolling out GridView Mosaic, which creates a photo mosaic of your profile picture, with your friend's profile photos making up the tiles. I am rolling this out to users as fast as I can; I'm having some scalability issues now.

Tecker 911 just had a booth at Haverford Township Day. We were selling DVDs of the first 25 episodes, and raising local awareness for the show. We also hosted a live technology question and answer session. 7 people asked their tech questions to us. You can catch Episode 30, some time in the the future. Meanwhile, you can catch photos of our booth and Haverford Township Day 2007 on Flickr.

20 episodes of Tecker 911 are out. Check out the Tecker 911 website.

My Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study starts in about a month. I've planned out the first 25 days so far, the part where I teach PHP and MySQL. I'm excited. Potential participants, remember to file your paperwork! SeniorQuoter is being used by our school this year, and is already reducing the work load on the yearbook department. Plus, I recived word that at least one other school is using SeniorQuoter to ease the collection of their senior quotes.

My new computer is really sweet! It's a HP Pavilion Media Center m8100y with 4GB RAM, a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor, and a 22" monitor. We got it all for less then $USD 1,400 (+tax) after getting $480 in discounts! It really runs fast. The only time I maxed out the processor is when encoding h.264 video for iPods. Otherwise, the hard drive is the bottle neck for the computer.

Dictionary Robot, my tool to help you look up a bunch of words at once is stalled. GridView took off, school started, and I am working on a secret project for someone who is paying cash for me to code for them. Because I need cash, I have to work on that at this time, at the expense of working on some of my other stuff.

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Theplaz 18:21, 6 October 2007 (EDT)

8/10/2007 Personal Message

Hey everyone! I've been busy this summer working on web projects. Let me give you an update!

GridView, my app for Facebook I wrote on the last day of 10th Grade in about 5 hours now has over 26 THOUSAND users with a current growth rate of about 1,5000 new users every day'!!!!! GridView lets you add all your friends profile pics to you Facebook profile for you and your profile visitors to see. I was totally blown away by the popularity. We've had some stability issues over the last week, and it was overwhelming my old server, so I had to move ThePlaz.com to a new server from (mt)mediatemple. I haven't yet been able to re-enable Memcached a magic program which vastly improves the speed of MediaWiki, the software that runs ThePlaz.com and Wikipedia. So my apologizes if the site seems slow while I sort this out.

Also, speaking of ThePlaz.com, Chemistry and IAG 3H work is now online. That brings to an end 10th Grade uploading. Looking ahead to next year, I got my 11th Grade schedule. It's going to have to be changed to include my Dynamic Website Building Instruction and Practical Experience Group Study which will take place 2nd Quarter, 1st Block next school year. I'm so excited for that!

Tecker 911 is slowly releasing episodes. 16 are out already with like equal that number in the can. I'll try to speed up the release schedule. Meanwhile, enjoy Episode 16: RSS, Episode 15: Destroying Stuff!, and Episode 14: Ubuntu.

My family is getting a new computer! It's a HP Pavilion Media Center m8100y with 4GB RAM, a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor, and a 22" monitor. We got it all for less then $USD 1,400 (+tax) after getting $480 in discounts! This should speed up Tecker 911 production by giving me a star system to edit on.

Teckcasts[1] is a new podcast channel on iTunes which combines the best of w3life[2], Tecker 911[3] and our friends at sjTechZone[4]. Subscribe if you like to hear about Technology. You can find me on Teckcasts on Tecker 911 and also Leetspeek[5] where I am a regular guest offering my kinda-weekly rants about the technology industry.

Over the summer I visited Cornell University in Ithaca, along with Niagara Falls in Canada. Pictures are on flickr and can be seen in the 'Random Pictures' sidebar on ThePlaz.com. All of my pictures (over 8,000) along with most content on ThePlaz.com, is freely reusable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

Dictionary Robot, my tool to help you look up a bunch of words at once is roughly complete. I still need to smooth out output and add extra features. Look for it to open in a few weeks. It has been a great lesson in 'hacking' (more like adopting - a mash-up) a program to do what you want.

So, I'm looking forward to another great year, not only on ThePlaz.com, but on the entire family of ThePlaz.com web services. Thanks for visiting!

Personal Updates are still available as an RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThePlazPersonalUpdates Or you can get an email whenever I update this

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 13:27, 10 August 2007 (EDT)

6/19/2007 Personal Message

Hey everyone! Happy summer! Just got out of 10th Grade and this gives me lots of time to work on some cool new web projects!!

I wrote my first app for Facebook, called GridView. GridView lets you add the photos of all of your friends to your Facebook profile. Add it to your Facebook!

Tecker is currently (for the past month) getting some AJAX features. This is the first time I'm using AJAX so it's a big pain to implement. Look for updates on the Tecker Blog.

I am also kinda working on the robotics club website. I just don't have enough time!

Uploads for IAG 3H and Chemistry are currently a bit behind. I hope to be all caught up, and to get those organized soon.

I forgot to announce my Dropdowns for MediaWiki were recently updated. They now support pop-overs, have smaller, cleaner code, and have some cosmetic changes.

There are now over 8,000 of my photos on Flickr. All are freely reusable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. You can also see 3 random photos on every ThePlaz.com page on the sidebar.

I am also working on a new project, Dictionary Robot. Dictionary Robot will take a bunch of words you throw it and look them all up in the dictionary. It will be very handy when you have a long list of vocab words to look up.

You can still listen to the music I like to listen to while I'm working for free at Pandora, an online radio station. Pandora has categorized each song in over 140 categories and offers very good recommendations.

Personal Updates are still available as an RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThePlazPersonalUpdates Or you can get an email whenever I update this

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 10:36, 19 June 2007 (EDT)

5/20/2007 Personal Message

Just got back from Monty Madness with our robotics club. We came in 8th in the seeding rounds and wnet up againts alience #1 in the semifinals. The first time we beat them 140 to 23, the highest score at the competition. But #1's defense was too much for us, and they eliminated us.

I also got to ride a Segway with founder's Dean Kamen's brother or cousin (sorry, I forget) (he looked just like Dean). It feels really weird. You only need to shift your balance, not lean, to move. It was hard to get the hang of, because you want to pull back to stop, but you only need to shift your balance (or just even think "stop")

I now have about 5,000 of my photos on Flickr. All are freely reusable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. I have also added a script which displays 3 random photos from my collection each time a page on ThePlaz.com loads. For some reason, it is only showing the ones from the cruse I took. I must find out why it is only showing these.

I took the AP Macro Econ exam. Two of the the three open ended question were about things I wasn't too sure about. All of the practice questions I had seen seemed to be more based on stuff I was more sure of. I confused the discount and federal funds rate, and international economics always make my head spin. On both practice tests I took I got 50 out of 60 on the multiple choice section. Hopefully I got the same. 60 questions always make you tired and cranky, but I answered them as best as I could. I think I got either a 4 or a 5. Hopefully I got a 5, but I don't know how this test breaks down in regards to scoring.

Also, I just re-discovered Pandora, a personal online music station. This is the station I'm listening to now. Pandora has categorized each song in over 140 categories and offers very good recommendations.

Happy May

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 20:25, 20 May 2007 (EDT)

5/7/2007 Personal Message

I recently installed Memcached on ThePlaz.com wiki. I'm seeing a massive speed increase in page generation times. The homepage use to take 50 seconds to load, other pages generated in about 10 seconds. This was unacceptable. Now with Memcached I see about 4 seconds the first time a page is generated and then about a second for subsequent page loads. This big increase is because Memcached stores common database (MySQL) queries on the server and can retrieve them much faster then the database. Hopefully this will make ThePlaz.com more usable.

I purchased a Flickr pro account a month ago and have uploaded over 3,000 photos so far from my back collection. All are freely reusable under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. I have also added a script which displays 3 random photos from my collection each time a page on ThePlaz.com loads.

More Tecker 911 episodes should be out soon. Meanwhile enjoy Episode 10: LAN Party and Episode 11: Windows Vista.

Tecker [6] now has email alerts. Sign up at the social question and answer service for technology. A brand new addition to Tecker is coming soon (it even has it's own domain!)

Version 1.3 of SeniorQuoter [7] is now out. We added character limits and terms and conditions. Check it out, it's open-source GPL software from ThePlaz.

Happy spring!

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--ThePlaz 19:33, 7 May 2007 (EDT)

3/30/2007 Personal Message - Spring Break

I'm witting this in a hotel in Miami. On Sunday I will leave for a Western Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Valor. It's 76F outside and sunny. This is going to be a fun trip. I'll post pictures when I get back. Have fun on your spring break wherever it is. Havertown is still lots of fun and I know some of my friends are in Europe.

We (Team 484) didn't do so well in Annapolis at the regional. We came in 26th out of about 55 teams. We weren't picked for the finals, but were last in the "dog pond." See more at Team 484#Annapolis Regional.

The Drexel robotics regional is ongoing now. I was only there for the set up and practice day, but we did very well that day. We were the first to be inspected and all practices went very well.

Tecker 911 Episode 9: MLA Formatting is out and features my MLA Template. More episodes are in the can, and are coming soon.

Everything going well. I'll ve back in a week with pictures. Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 17:59, 30 March 2007 (EDT)

3/13/2007 Personal Update

ThePlaz.com's traffic has been growing. We now receive about ~1,400 visits and ~4,000 page views a week. 80% of that is from Google. MediaWiki reports 71,943 page views, and 6,021 edits on Special:Statistics.

Tecker (http://tecker.net) the social question and answer service aimed at tech users is continuing to do really well. We are expanding slowly; we have about 60 users now. We just added advertisements to Tecker and Tecker 911, both network and featured (direct, no network). As always stay tuned at our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/. We are just putting finishing touches on the page with recent answers.

The Tecker derivative, Conflicter (http://conflicter.org) is not doing well. Conflicter is a place for frank discussions on global issues. I finally opened it to the public, but no one knows about it. Maybe activity will pick up.

Tecker 911, the video technology help webcast is coming along nicely. The first 8 episodes are up at http://911.tecker.net and have been aired on Channel 11 in Haverford Township. 7 more episodes are in the can, I need to edit 5 of them. Each one takes approximately 2-3 hours to edit, so it always takes a while.

The first semester classes are all up online and organized at ThePlaz.com. I'm a month into 2nd semester and online postings are really behind. I am also working on posting some other things, which were not required for school.

Last time I wrote, the build season for our FIRST robotics club, Team 484 started recently. Now it's over. After putting in about 4 nights a week for 6 weeks our robot is done and shipped. The Chesapeake Regional competition is this weekend. We leave tomorrow for it. I will try and get pictures and a report up when I come back.

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 20:32, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Personal Updates are now available as an RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ThePlazPersonalUpdates

1/10/2007 Personal Message

Jeeze. It's really been a while. Two months instead of the normal one month intervals. I had a good holiday break, and got lots done. In the past two months, we recorded 15,000 page views and added about 1,000 pieces of content. See MediaWiki.

Tecker (http://tecker.net) the social question and answer service aimed at tech users is doing really well. We are expanding small, we have about 50 users now. We were featured on net@nite episode 8. net@nite is a weekly call-in show about new technology websites ("Web 2.0") hosted by TechTV's Leo Laporte. net@nite is part of the TWiT podcast network. The TWiT podcast was recently rated as #9 on TIME's top podcast list [8]. As always stay tuned at our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/.

I am also creating a new derivative, Conflicter (http://conflicter.org). Conflicter is a place for frank discussions on global issues. This is being done in conjunction with my Cultures Project. The site has languished, but I will finish it eventually.

Tecker 911, the video technology help webcast is coming along nicly. The first 4 episodes are up at http://911.tecker.net and are starting to be aired on Channel 11 in Haverford Township. The show is coming along nicely, now I just need to find the time to edit three more episodes already filmed and edit the unboxing of my new cameraphone.

Speaking of busy, I am really swamped. End of the semester is comming up at the end of the year and that means all of the teachers are dumping work on us, finals to study for, and final projects to do. See my groups paper on Globalization. The World Cultures Portfolio also is a nightmare of work.

In addition, the build season for our FIRST robotics club, Team 484 started recently. That is three nights I week. Well, I guess I will make it.

PS. I don't know what happened to the photo section. I think it kinda died. Sorry. I think I will take it off the homepage now ;)

My friend (and Tecker partner), Michael Gdovin, has launched his business, w3life (http://w3life.com) and his personal website Gdovin.net (http://gdovin.net) two months ago. Not much has happened, but check it out.

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 22:39, 10 January 2007 (EST)

11/24/06 Update

Its been a while since I last updated this section. Happy Thanksgiving. In the last month, I have doubled the amount of content on this site to over 1,000 content pages. There have been around 30,000 pages views recorded by MediaWiki.

Today (Black Friday) I bought Photoshop Elements for half price. Now I need to figure out how to use it! Best Buy was busy!

My PHP project, Tecker (http://tecker.net) is is open to the public and doing well. I am still actively adding features; stay tuned at our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/. Tecker is a social question and answer service aimed at tech users.

I am also creating a new derivative, Conflicter (http://conflicter.org). Conflicter is a place for frank discussions on global issues. This is being done in conjunction with my Cultures Project.

Tecker 911, the video technology help webcast is coming along. I am done the intro, and we have filmed the first 3 episodes. Now I need to edit and post them to the website http://911.tecker.net. I am still developing a work flow to speed the process and correct the video colors. Stay tuned to the above site for more details and to subscribe.

My friend (and Tecker partner), Michael Gdovin, has launched his business, w3life (http://w3life.com) and his personal website Gdovin.net (http://gdovin.net). Check it out.

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 22:22, 24 November 2006 (EST)

10/22/06 Update

How's it going. I've joined Facebook and I'm addicted. Friend me! My PHP project, Tecker (http://tecker.net) is coming along well. It's a social question and answer service aimed at tech users. We'll be opening it up to the public on Halloween (October 31, 2006). Meanwhile, follow along in our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/.

My friend (and Tecker partner), Michael Gdovin, is launching his business, w3life (http://w3life.com) and his personal website Gdovin.net (http://gdovin.net) in the next few days.

I just finished with the PSATs. I think I did OK, but am glad it's over. I hope we won't be doing that muti-camera thing on H-Vision anymore. Plus, we got a better switcher on order.

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 12:41, 22 October 2006 (EDT)

10/3/2006 Update

I've been busy with 10th Grade! I have been posting literally everything. It's like 30-45 minutes extra work every night. I don't know if I can keep it up???? What do you think? Is this info helpful to you. Drop me a line (see below). I have been also been very busy developing my PHP project, Tecker http://tecker.net. It's a social question and answer service aimed at tech users. Follow along in our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/. I will keep you posted there. Tecker is coming along quite nicely. We'll start letting people in after Halloween.

Thanks everyone for you positive response to last Friday's H-Vision. I know the sound wasn't loud enough (this was the first week I didn't do sound), but I've talked to the lady in charge of that. It should be better next week. Speaking of next week, I'm anchoring again...so be sure to pay attention. Plus, I've got Sophomore homeroom photos video up. Unfortuntly, I don't know if I can post it online for privacy issues.

Robotics Club has started and I'm selling candy as a fund raiser. Stop by and see me if you want candy (for only a dollar).

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 18:29, 3 October 2006 (EDT)

9/13/2006 Back to School Update

I've been busy with 10th Grade! I have been posting literally everything. It's like 30-45 minutes extra work every night. I don't know if I can keep it up???? What do you think? Is this info helpful to you. Drop me a line (see below). I have been also been very busy reading my PHP book in preparation for Tecker http://tecker.net. Read our development blog at http://blog.tecker.net/. I will keep you posted there. More info to come soon.

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 22:28, September 13, 2006 (EDT)

8/29/2006 Back to School Update

Sorry, again, for the drought of updates to my site. I went about a month without making major changes and additions. I added 2 photo collections from my trip to Germany and worked a bit around the web. The new skin hit some road blocks and the project is postponed. If any CSS wizards can get the "NavLinks" div to display to the left of the logo on my beta site. The dropdowns still don't work in Internet Explorer, just get Firefox, and get yourself a better, safer browser. I am most likely not going to scan all my papers from my 9th Grade binders. I might still add some more pictures from my trip, especially my excursions to Paris and Berlin.

Well 10th Grade starts next week. I am almost done my summer reading. The Poisonwood Bible is looong and seems to go on fooorevverr!!!. I am getting my papers together, and getting ready to go back. My File:10th Grade Schedule.xls is now up online. And don't worry, I will be posting all the info right here at ThePlaz.com

Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 18:49, 29 August 2006 (EDT)

8/5/2006 Update

Sorry for the drought of updates to my site. I went about 2 months without making a change. Sorry. When school let out I worked on the site technically, adding the dropdowns (Now working in Firefox, still not working (yet) on Internet Explorer) After that I went to Germany for 5 weeks on vacation, and there was no internet access for most of the time I was there. Plus there were lots of other things that I was involved in. I just got back a few days ago, and I updated the site to MediaWiki 1.7.1 today.

Don't worry, I haven forgotten about the new skin. Check out my beta site to see how it is coming along. I don't know if I will scan all my papers from my 9th Grade binders. I might decide not to do all that. I might also decide to add some pictures from my trip, especially my excursions to Paris and Berlin. I am also planning to add some to Wikipedia. I already put up lots of photos already of the German Reichstag in Berlin to the Wikimedia Commons. (See all my contributions to the Commons here) So that's that. Tell me what you want to see. Leave Plaz a (public) message or send me a (private) e-mail.--Plaz 21:46, 5 August 2006 (EDT)

6/14/2006 End of the Year! Update

What a great year it has been. It was my first year in high school, and I was busy adjusting to that. I really grew as a person, and found out more about my role and position in life. This was also the year I launched my website, 4 months ago now, I guess! To all of my friends and peers at school, THANK YOU. And a special thank you to those who helped me work on group projects, and had their work posted here, an even bigger THANK YOU. Even though I might not have always listened to your suggestions, you made me realize that I must do so in the future.

So, as I go now to study for my Math final, I want to leave you with what I will be working on over the summer. I am going away for a month to visit my family, but I will still have time to work on this site. I will finally add those drop-down menus at the top of the page I have been working on for months. My more ambitious plan is to totally re-work the "skin" or look of the site, making it more whimsical, with rounded edges (in Firefox) and Nuvola icons. Something like what the Main Page currently looks like. I also plan on increasing traffic to my site. Thank you to everyone who helped me. --Plaz 19:11, 14 June 2006 (EDT)