Injustice (2006)

It's funny, but I even forgot this existed until someone showed it to me... I don't stand behind everything I said then (but mostly... it IS true), but since it'll probably show up as the first result when searching by my name, and also since the sound's pretty messed up in it (heh, I filmed it with my camera that didn't have voice input, and then recorded the sound using sound recorder :D), I guess I'll write the verses here and hope for the best (that is, that you won't take what I said too... personal). It was made for a contest organized by Citizens for Global Solutions.

So, this is the video (it did get into the finals!):

Note: You might need to download and install Windows Media Player plugin / add-on to play inline Windows Media Player files. In my browser (Firefox) this doesn't show controls, although I've enabled them... sorry. The trick would be to maximize the window by double-clicking, and then scroll up to turn volume to max... Controls work in Internet Explorer, so you could use that!

Also: I added this sound file I recorded tonight to this page... You can only listen to it if controls work in your browser...

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And the poem:

Injustice

by Adina Stoica

We fight for rights: the right to speak, the right to learn, the right to choose;
Each day we feel betrayed by others--
We ask for social justice for ourselves, we never think of others.
We never care that we're denying them the basic rights we love so much...
We think we're masters of the world: as such
We do not give a damn on what they lose.

'Bipeds in suits, that's what you are, it's all about what you achieve.
Intelligence for you is finding ways to waste our futures fast;
You kill, destroy, and do not care whether the Earth survives your generation;
You steal our rights to have our planet clean, that's what you are: you thief!
You call yourself a human? Well, we are humans too... We're just
Humans today that have no suits: humans tomorrow without chance--
We're praying for salvation...'

'We are your children, we're children of the world, and children of this Earth,
We seek the rights your generation is denying us from birth:
The right to a clean Earth, no litter on the street,
The right to a clean air, no matter where we breathe,
The right to have green forests, the right to have a pet,
Radiation-free homes, and... the right to get fat..'

Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, we'd better think of others,
Should think about poor children, believe that they are ours!
Be careful what we're doing, be selfless with the Earth,
More resources we're wasting, their future's getting worse!
More forests we are cutting, less oxygen emitted,
More factories we're building, more cars we're using,
Less air to breathe, and we all need it!
More animals we're killing, less smiles on children's faces,
Experiments with atoms, mean cancer in most cases--
More resources we waste, the more they're losing...

All things we hurt? We drive them to their end,
The things destroyed? We cannot mend...

Okay, so again, I am not trying to offend anyone by this (note be taken, by suits I actually meant adults, well, adults with power, but mainly adults). But it is still out there, would appear in your search as one of the main results, and also, well, I did it. And it means something. For all of us.

This brings me to my idea (to save the world of course). But this isn't the time or the place to write about it. It's basically opposite to the last sentence in the poem, it's about us all trying to save the world together... I wonder if it may be that simple... But it's based on the principle that more minds are better than one. So, we'll see, that is the plan...

And... this post also brings writing poetry to mind... something I haven't done in so long... But maybe I'll do it soon :D I miss that feeling of creating something. Though I was such a kid then...

CCSCNE Programming Competition

The northeastern region of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges, or CCSCNE, holds a conference under the same name every Spring in a college in the northeast of the United States. Last year's conference, CCSCNE 2008, was held April 11 - 12, 2008 at Wagner College, Staten Island, NY, while this year's conference, CCSCNE 2009, was held April 24 - 25, 2009 at SUNY Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, NY.

The conference hosts workshops, poster sessions and an ACM-like Computer Programming Contest. Although most of the workshops are faculty-targeted, I found the poster session to be pretty interesting [I'm considering participating next year], and the programming competition, well, exciting!

A team from Bard College, of which I was part, joined the past two conferences for the programming competition. The team was composed of Wayne Yu Wu, Maksim Tsikhanovich and myself, and we had as advisers professor Robert McGrail last year (2008), and professor Sven Anderson this year (2009). A picture of the team, taken this year, follows below:

The programing contest involves teams of students coding solutions to a list of 5 problems on one computer (that is, only one computer per 3 people, so you have to take turns solving the problems on paper and submitting them). You get your result immediately (whether the solution you submitted works for all the test cases), and you are scored for the sum of the times you solved the problems in. Re-submissions are allowed, without any penalty other than the time you lost submitting it, getting the result, figuring it out and re-submitting. Coding is done in Java, C, or C++. We did it in Java, as Maksim was better than us at the actual coding and his strength was Java... And Java and C are pretty alike, so I could code my part [with some help].

I don't really know what number we ended in 2008, as we left the competition before the banquet, but this year we solved all the problems and ended up number 7 out of 29 (due to the time it took us to figure out bugs in the program)... which is pretty decent anyway...

I can just hope we can do better next year. Oh, yes, and maybe a poster next year too, featuring my research at UH or my research at Bard, or maybe two posters :)

The ECHO adventure

ECHO happened whole I was still in high school. It was the student company I was president of. A student company is just like a real company, but it's run by students. The name stands for Earning through Curiosity, Honesty and Originality, and the slogan was "Up to the peak". Our company produced HanRuc, an anorak that can be turned into a backpack and the other way around. We got first prize in the Student Company Competition in Romania, and attended the European finals in Interlaken, Switzerland. ECHO was probably my greatest achievement before I got accepted to College.

You can view our website above or check out this link.