Hey there, it has been a month since I updated my posts. In the past month I struggled with all those troublesome stuffs emerging at the beginning of the campus life in UIUC.
Actually I am still struggling with them now
So much for the complaints, I’ve enrolled in the cs124 honor course besides the cs124. These two classes are in fact not correlated at all. The cs124 honor is mainly held by a group of senior students.
And no credit hour is given for this course. What I can get is, basically, well, honor?
All in all, they are training us with bash and git for future projects.
I learned bash this week and luckily found that it was just like how the terminal in Linux OS worked.
Here are some notes:

1. touch file.ext is used to create a file. The type of the file depends on the extension you give.
2. echo "string" and echo "string" > file.ext The first command prints the content in the string in a new line, and the second one prints the string into the fil. Using the “>” redirect sign, you can write the string directly into the file through terminal, but “>” will delete the original content and “>>” won’t
3. cat file.ext prints the content in the file to the terminal
   I think these are things to be noticed during my bash learning. So much for that.

0. Wechat Miniapplication:

Wechat Miniapplication is literally an application based on Wehcat. Different from ordinary applications, it is said that these miniapplications can be used without downloading & installing. In fact, it is because they have a very small size (less than 2M) so that the users won’t be aware of the process of downloading.

1. Wechat developer tool: a specially designed IDE for wechat miniapplications.

2. The regular code structure of a miniapplication:

This is an example folder for a log page in the application. In a page folder, there will usually be four files:

log.js: .js file is responsible for the logical components of the page. Using javascript, developers can bind events to a button, pass parameters, etc.

log.json: I haven't worked much about the .json files so far. As far as I know, it is resonsible for the page's "setup": page title, text style, background color...

log.wxml: .wxml is derived from html. It sues a language syntax similar to html to create elements like `<view></view>`, `<button></button>` on the page.

log.wxss: wxss is derived from css. It works similarly. I use it to arrange the elements shown on the page, like position and flex display.

Arriving at Vail, Colorado!

2022.12.16


Heavy snow covered the fields in Denvor!

First night at Vail Resort. It was fantastic with all neon lights glowing.

Practicing on introductory skiing skills

2022.12.17


Since I’d skied for once before, I mastered the “snow plough” pretty quickly.

snow plough is a elementary skiing skill. It helps to slow down by pushing the back of both skis out, or make a turn by pushing the back of one of the skis.

Learning higher level skills and “adventure” in the mountain

2022.12.18~2022.12.21
To be able to ski on steeper slopes, I had to learn the “parallel turning”, which would slow down and turn more effectively.
I practiced on a relatively gentle slope for two days.
Here are some tips:

1. Put most of the weight of the body forward (downhill) so that the body won’t fall to the slope;
2. While making a parallel turn, put more weight on the ski downhill, it is then easier to make the ski uphill parallel to the one downhill.
3. Look forward and make sure that you cannot see the tips of your skis, or your weight may be lagging behind, leading to a fall.

On 2022.12.21, I rode the chairlift to a top of the mountain and skied all the way down. There were some slip-overs but I did feel a sense of achievement!

For more pictures, go to image gallery

My first specialty dishes: Braising eggplant…

Even thoug it doesn’t look very tasty, it is really delicious especially when you eat it with rice.
Cookbook:

1. Peel the eggplant and “spread” it like this:
   
   In this way the dish won’t look that messy.
2. Then steam the eggplant for about 15 min.
3. As for the sauce, there are two versions:
   _ For the light version,
   soy sauce 2 spoons
   oyster sauce 1 spoon
   rice wine 1 spoon
   dark soy sauce 1 spoon (or less)
   honey 1 spoon
   white sugar, salt depends
   Starch water 1 bowl
   _ For the heavy flavor version,
   soy sauce 2 spoons
   oyster sauce 1 spoon
   dark soy sauce 1 spoon (or less)
   honey 1 spoon
   white sugar, salt depends
   Coca Cola (NO PEPSI, thanks!) 1 bowl
4. Fry the eggplants until they turn burnt yellow (I haven’t succeeded frying eggplants into this color, maybe I should add more oil?).
5. Add the sauce into the pan, and stew it for some time over high heat to thicken the sauce.
6. FINISHED

さ、やてみろ！