My second WinJS app is now in the store.
This one’s for 8.1 only!
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Author Archives: Minsang Kim
Do a local backup of OneNote notebooks on SkyDrive
Before I begin, it’s probably worth mentioning while I’m a Microsoft employee, this is a personal blog.
You might have noticed that OneNote notebooks stored on SkyDrive or SkyDrive Pro tends to sync down to your computer as “Internet Shortcut”. It’s basically a short cut to the URL somewhere on skydrive.com.
Well that’s fine, until you have this problem: you have a personal requirement to always have local copies of cloud-backed services! You can easily accomplish this (for any file-based cloud syncing service, like Dropbox) by having your sync folder added to your Document Library, and having File History back these up to an external drive. However, backing up a shortcut to URL isn’t really that useful.
Here’s what you can do. Open OneNote 2013, go to File, Options, then Save & Backup.
Click on Backup Folder in the list, and click on Modify. Change the folder to be a folder that you’re backing up (My Documents\OneNote Backup is a good place).
To initiate a backup, click on [Back Up All Notebooks Now]. Optionally, change the frequency of your backups.
That’s it. I guess the only downside is that if you never open OneNote, backups won’t be initiated.
Release of Dominion Shuffler, Dominion deck randomizer app for Windows 8 / RT
http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/app/dominion-shuffler/2c95e635-bd65-4878-9e8c-ab2db19ab16f
This was actually released to the store about a month ago, I just forgot to put up an entry for it.
It was yet another weekend project that took slightly longer than a weekend.
This was written in WinJS. I used my Surface RT and my desktop computer as test platform, but I’m sure it scales well to various screen resolutions based on my experience with the simulator.
A trip to: Full Tilt Ice Cream in Ballard
I saw a few videos on YouTube of people playing Tetris Grand Master 2 and Pop’n Music at Full Tilt Ice Cream in Ballard, WA. So I decided to go there to check it out today.
Left: MvC2, right: Neo Geo MVS with Metal Slug games (and others)
When I walked in, I saw a Ms. Pac Man cabinet, and the two machines pictured above. Walk in a bit, and there’s about 10 pinball machines. I have no interest in these, however…
Completely Useless Rhythm Game Trivia: Extravaganza
Here’s some useless trivia for Pump It Up.
Pump It Up, a DDR clone by Korean company Andamiro, was released in October 1999. Couple months later in December, Andamiro released a 2nd version, Pump It Up: The 2nd Dance Floor. The sequel contained a hidden song called Extravaganza.
Here’s how to access it:
- On the machine, get a S-Rank on song Hate (Korean title: 싫어) 100 times. Full combo gives you an S-Rank.
- When #1 is done, a hidden song Koul will appear in 2nd stage. S-rank this song 100 times.
- Extravaganza will now appear in 4th stage.
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. Not many people knew at the time that PIU2 had hidden songs at all – I didn’t either. At the time, it was considered to be the hardest song on Pump It Up! That is, of course, until 3rd Stage (OBG) came out in May of 2000.
Anyways, here’s the actual trivia for Extravaganza: it’s a complete rip off.
State of Rhythm Games in Seattle Gameworks
After several months in Canada, I’m back in Seattle. I searched a lot to find out how Gameworks has changed since last year, but I found nothing, so here’s a post after a visit so people can find their way through search engines. This post is about Gameworks in downtown Seattle, WA.
- Gameworks has DJMAX Technika 3, running in perfect condition. It’s connected to the web, and accepts IC cards. It’s 4 credits, which works out to be about 50 cents – an amazing deal considering places like SVGL charge $1. The volume level is average, and it’s not helped by the fact that Taiko and pop’n are right near it. But you can always work around it by using headphones.
- They also sell Technika 3 IC cards at the counter. They had 5 different designs. They don’t actually have it at the cashier, so just ask them and they’ll bring it up for you. It’s $6 + tax.
- pop’n music FEVER (14) is running. The buttons are in very good condition, and the screen is okay (although slightly CRT-morphed) Last year, the buttons were complete crap, but according to people at pnwbemani.net it’s been fixed a couple months ago. It’s 8 credits, which is about $1. It’s also a couple meters away from Technika 3 and speakers are really loud, so it’s easy to hear.
- guitarfreaks & drummania is still running 11th/10th mix. The screen on guitarfreaks is very blurry, and the drums are in typical “abused” condition (i.e., the symbals don’t register 100%). The effectors knobs on guitars are, of course, missing.
- Dancemaniax is moved to upstairs where Technika 3 is. I can’t comment on sensor quality but I think it works as intended
- Taiko was also moved, placed between Technika and Dancemaniax. The drums are abused by hell by children playing it, so don’t expect much. I forgot which version it is, but if I had to guess it’s between 6~8 (2005~2006 era) because it was playing Anpanman as default selection, and most people don’t know how to switch songs (or how to even hit blue notes – I’ve seen people hit the plastic side of the drum really hard, that can’t be good for the machine)
- There are still a bunch of DDR machines downstairs in a room. I saw X2 and Extreme, and there are other versions as well. I wouldn’t expect the panels to be in good quality, since it’s Gameworks.
Courses I have taken in Waterloo as Computer Engineering major, and some comments.
I just wanted to comment on every single course I’ve taken so far in Computer Engineering. I’ve been asked by some people – a few in high school coming into ECE, and a few friends not in ECE, regarding how I feel about my university career.
Note that the ECE curriculum has drastically changed since 2010, so don’t expect the identical courses in this order. There were a lot of shuffling the order of the courses for the first two years, introduction of new courses in 1A 1B, and ECE 100 has been split into two.
Also note that for 1A-3B, unless I say a course is an elective, it’s a mandatory course for CE.
Some background information:
I went to high school in BC, hence my bitterness toward Ontario-centric curriculum.
All my co-op positions have been in software. I never had a single EE job.
I don’t plan on going to grad school, for now (because if I wanted to, I would have done the 6-year accelerated program at Waterloo).
1A (Fall 2007)
1A was an easy term if we’re talking about just courses here. I wasn’t sure how much I was supposed to study in university, so for my first set of midterms, I studied for weeks. It paid off, but I don’t think I ever put that much effort into midterms (or any other exams) ever again.
CHE 102, Chem for Engineers
This is the easiest course I’ve ever taken, ever. I learned most of the material in grade 11 chemistry (not even grade 12). Midterm and final were purely multiple choice, so that was quick and simple.
ECE 150, Fund. of Programming
The course should have been easy, but I didn’t put much time into the actual course material and relied on my prior knowledge for exams. The assignments were time-consuming (to 1st year standards) but doable. This course was taught with C#, which is not really common in uwaterloo – ECE and perhaps SE were the only departments that teach C# to first year students. I still believe that they should have taught us C in 1st year, because CE students will hardly ever use C# in their courses. Although, many people listed C# on resume for the first couple years, and it was probably useful and enjoyable for few.
GENE 167, Intro. to Methods of ECE
This has nothing to do with methods of ECE, it’s a generic “introduction to professional engineering” course, a required course the sake of being accredited as a proper engineering program. It had heavy focus on information specific to P. Eng. in Ontario. The course was marked based on something like two “mock work term reports”, and multiple choice quizzes regarding what we read about engineering practice, such as ethics and law. We also had some sessions to help us do resumes and interviews during the first term.
Side note: although I knew I was going into a co-op program, I was not aware that I have to do co-op in my second term. This means that during the third week of school, I had to apply for jobs, and do interviews right after. I assumed that co-op starts in second or third year like in many other Canadian universities, and I thought that not getting a co-op job means you just try again in later terms… oh boy I was wrong.
MATH 115, Linear Algebra
I had a hard time with this course, while the majority of the class did not. I found out after midterms that linear algebra is taught in Ontario’s high school in grade 12. In BC, it is not – not even basic matrix multiplication. Although, only the basic material up to the midterm is prior knowledge for Ontario students, so after the midterm, it was hell for everyone.
MATH 117, Calculus 1
Repeat of grade 12 calculus with some proofs thrown in. I don’t remember much about this course, other than the moment during the midterm when I forgot some trig identity and failed to present a proof for some other trig identity.
PHYS 115, Mechanics
This course is notorious for Oktoberfest – the hardest midterm in 1A. The material taught in class is not too advanced when compared to high school physics (classical mechanics), but the midterm was like a physics competition. For example, here’s a wooden block on a surface with friction, attached to another block with some spring, hanging from a frictionless pulley, what is the velocity of the first block?… you get the idea.
