Revision as of 04:45, 10 July 2012

Hi guys. I'm Damien Jiang. I'm a mommy for the 2012-2013 school year. I'm also apparently a famous professor, but don't believe that. (A shirt with the former picture exists as well.)

About me

I am obsessive and compulsive, in the sense that I compulsively obsess over stupid things like editing wikis, reading wikis, writing forum posts, reading forum posts, giving bad advice, heeding bad advice, playing games, watching games, etc. Basically, my self-control is lacking. Moreover, I'm easily distracted while working, and my procrastination skills are well-honed; this commonly forces problem-set all-nighters and sometimes causes poor academic performance. I'm also simultaneously elitist and naive, loud in public and shy with strangers, stupid and a math major.

Despite all this, I'm relatively friendly, and my door is almost always open, so feel free to talk to me!

Things I do, except for video games

Don't be fooled; I actually spend all my time gaming/interneting (on Teamliquid, facebook, Art of Problem Solving)/IMing/eating. Sigh.

Academic

I need a work ethic and some sort of anti-distraction mechanism.

• Major: Course 18 (Mathematics). May be interested in algebraic topology or number theory, but who knows?
• Other subjects of interest:
  • (Theoretical) computer science: Though my coding skill is lacking, and my tricky-algorithms skill is lacking, I find TCS pretty cool.
  • Linguistics: I did linguistics olympiad, which is really a puzzle contest... but I've taken a few linguistics classes and done a linguistics UROP, so hopefully I'm not totally clueless.
  • Physics: I am terrible at physics.
  • Econ: I guess I'm concentrating in this. I don't know why (something money something?)

Classes Taken

• 2010 - 2011
  • Fall 2010: 3.091, 8.022, 18.701, 12.A32 (Cellular Automata Seminar), 24.906
  • IAP 2011: Battlecode (with Josh, Vlad, and Alex Zhai), 6.096 (Introduction to C++)
  • Spring 2011 : 14.01, 18.312, 18.702, 8.04, 21M.302, 18.03

• 2011 - 2012
  • Fall 2011: 18.100C, 6.046J, 24.902, 14.12, 8.05
  • IAP 2012: Battlecode (with Josh and Tim, and Jon as a consultant). (Somehow a finalist!)
  • Spring 2012: 18.901, 6.004, 6.005, 6.875J, ES.S61 (Introduction to Trading)

Sports

I'm fat and unathletic, and with my sedentary lifestyle and voracious appetite, have been getting progressively more so.

• Swimming: Horribly, horribly out of shape.
• Ultimate: Can't run; hopefully improving at throwing while being defended?
• Ping-pong: Disgustingly bad backhand, but can rally with forehand decently.
• Badminton: Took a PE class! Woo!
• Basketball: Can knock down Brandon while defending him; having mass is useful!

Music

I like harmonizing a lot, and fancy myself a musician... though the list of pieces/songs I know is horrendously short. Please introduce more music to me (except maybe death metal.)

• Singing: Part of XLinked, a summer version of the Christian a capella group XProducts.
• Piano: Stopped taking lessons in 9th grade (after 12 years), at which point my skill rivaled that of my friend who had played for two years. Now, I improvise, heavily overusing left-hand arpeggios and pedal.
• Clarinet: Was first chair in high school, playing in Wind Ensemble/Orchestra/Pit Orchestra; now I sound like a 6th grader.

Other activities

Things that I wouldn't terribly mind for an interviewer to know.

• Grading captain and teaching assistant for AoPS; in particular, I work mostly with the Worldwide Online Olympiad Training (WOOT) program. We also grade for the USA Mathematical Talent Search.
• (Inactive) writer (and sometimes translator/Liquipedia editor) for teamliquid.net. I am a Brood War elitist, despite my lack of skills at the game. I'm also a (non-contributing) member of MIT Starleague.
• I usually teach a class for ESP's Splash and Spark programs. In the past, I've taught:
  • Splash 2010:
    1. Maxwell's Equations for Dummies (with Josh): self-explanatory, though Josh took 1.5 of our 2 ours teaching multivariable calculus, resulting in disaster.
    2. Intermediate Olympiad Geometry (with Vlad): turned out to be more like AIME-level geometry.
    3. Canada, and why you shouldn't live there (with Josh and Jon): a horrible but amusing class.
  • Splash 2011:
    1. My Little Set: Compactness is Magic (with Josh): it turns out that explaining Dedekind cuts really sucks.
    2. ZT Stacking and T-Spinning: stole (with permission) my former roommate flamewheel's guide.
    3. Extreme Math (with Jon): Kids came up to the board and solved problems on the spot! Jon did most of the work, but it was entertaining!
  • Spark 2012:
    1. Coloring (with Josh): checkerboard and graph coloring.
    2. Extreme Math (with Josh and Jon): Again, Jon did most of the work. Again, it was amusing.

Stupid Catchphrases

I mindlessly repeat stupid lots of stupid catchphrases, including, but not limited to:

• "How rude!"
• "The following,"
• "et cetera" (replacing the end of a sentence, clause, or phrase)
• "various" (generic pronoun, usually used when it's unclear what is being replaced)
• "thereof" (generic pronoun, usually used when it's clear what is being replaced)
• "(Holy) buckets" (variations include "what the buckets," etc.)
• "Holy carp"
• "Saucebag"

Other interests

Other things I'm probably willing to talk about:

• Christianity: I attend Redemption Hill Church in Medford.
• Chinese culture / language: my knowledge of Chinese is extremely lacking, but I can try.
• Food.
• Professional/competitive Starcraft: Brood War: though this is a game [which, incidentally, is about to die as a sport in Korea], it's special enough that it warrants being here.
• North Carolina, and how it's so awesome.
• Basketball (college and NBA), competitive swimming. To a lesser extent, World/Euro Cup soccer.
• Star Wars / Lord of the Rings.
• Webcomics:
  • xkcd
  • Abstruse Goose
  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
  • Order of the Stick
  • Questionable Content
  • Piled Higher and Deeper
  • Dino Comics.
• LaTeX and Linux.
• The US Civil War, though my knowledge thereof is but a tiny fraction of that of Ian A.

Games

Video/Computer games I've been playing for a while

Usually I play these sporadically, but in huge (and devastating, to my health and grades) bursts.

• Game Boy games, usually on VisualBoyAdvance: Pokemon (Gen I/II mostly), Zelda, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars.
• Tetris. I'm #2 now #5 on the Ultra leaderboard.
• Starcraft: Brood War on iCCup. D/D- Terran 1v1, D/D+ Terran/sometimes Protoss/rarely Zerg 2v2. I don't own Starcraft II, and will likely not be persuaded to buy it (though I may begin playing if someone wants to donate an account to me and if my computer can handle it without crashing...)
• Super Smash Bros. Melee (see SmashBoards.) I mostly play Samus/Sheik/Zelda/Ganondorf/Link/Falco. I'm among the worst players on hall; I can't L-cancel, frequently do things I don't want to, and don't know what to do besides.
• The Two Towers MUD. I've been playing on and off since 2005 or so.
• Minecraft--the only game I paid for on this list!¹
• Not technically a computer game, but online Dominion. I'm not very good.

Video/Computer games I started playing in the past year

• Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Best runs: Level 25 MiFi, Level 22 HoPr.
• Dwarf Fortress. Currently procrastinating on succession game with Theo and Charles.
• Battle for Wesnoth.

Video/Computer games played on hall

• Super Smash Bros. Melee, again.
• Mario Kart. Haven't really tried Double Dash, though I've played Wii a fair bit.
• Rock Band. Can do the singing part, hard bass, and medium drums. Urgh.

Other video/computer games I found fun at some point

• Foldit.
• Realm of the Mad God.
• Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. (Wiki link?)
• Halo: Combat Evolved Trial! Woo! Also, minuscule amounts of Halo II/III.
• n game. Cleared everything but some (10x+9)-4's and 88-4 (and thus 89.)
• Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Warcraft II. Tiny bit of Warcraft III.
• Age of Empires II. I really should learn how to play this.
• FreeCiv, and a tiny bit of Civilization III.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert.
• Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters.
• Spore.
• Simcity 3000.
• Heroes of Might and Magic III.

Puzzles/Word games

• I participate on the hall Mystery Hunt team each year.
• Ian has lured me into doing puzzles such as [Slitherlink], [Nurikabe], and [Shikaku]. I also do Sudoku sometimes.
• Scrabble (Words with Friends), Contact.
• 24 (and its cousin 161, with 6 cards).

Evil games I once played

• League of Legends (no link because it's evil).

Notes

¹ This excludes: old games my parents/grandparents may have bought for me, hall games.