Kalen Lu

Yesterday, Valve released the very first update since the end of Operation Shattered Web. For the past few months, the game’s community has had a few concerns in terms of weapon balances and map updates. In this recent update Valve has tried to address some of those things, and this week I’ll be writing about them.

The biggest change that was made in this update was to the SG553 which is one of the main rifles on the terrorist side. Before this update, the SG553 had undergone various amounts of usage despite not having it’s statistical values changed. In a past update, a change in price was made for the gun, creating more opportunities for players to use it. People soon realized its potential and it became apparent that the weapon needed to be changed in order for it to be more balanced. Valve did just that by reducing the fire rate and accuracy of the weapon, but now there’s concern that they may have overdone it. Now, the SG553 has become almost unviable in a lot of eyes.

Another big change that Valve made in this update was towards the Desert Eagle pistol. Being one of the most infamous pistols in the game there wasn’t much conversation about changing the weapon before the update. In fact, some would even argue that it was already overpowered. Instead, it was decided that the jumping accuracy of the weapon was increased. Now, it’s possible to hit very accurate shots while jumping in the air. Jumping and shooting have never been really synonymous to the Counter-Strike franchise, and the pistol’s update is quickly being compared to the R8 revolver update which was known for being quite terrible in terms of balancing.

Valve also decided to reduce the price of the counter-terrorist side’s M4A1-S which is an alternative version to the M4A4 which remains at its original price. For the time being this change doesn’t appear to be that big of an issue, but later on after more usage due to a reduced price; it is possible that rebalancing may need to occur. Personally, I’ve switched from the M4A4 over to the M4A1-S just to see how it compares, but so far the price difference hasn’t made that big of a difference in my opinion.

Overall, the only other notable things included in the update were small map related changes and a slight buff to the Tec-9 pistol and PP-Bizon SMG. I think that this update has definitely already shifted the weapon choices that players make, and we’ll most likely also see further changes in the following weeks. Right now, I think that Valve has tried to balance the old META, but they’ve already created new problems for themselves. As of now, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Due to schools being closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, students are now being required to learn online starting next Monday. We’ve been given instructions on what to do, but I think there’ll still be some issues. This week I’ll be writing about how our online learning system is being used.

For the past few weeks, the school hadn’t given much information on what to do in terms of learning. At the start of March break some teachers gave out a small amount of work, but that was about it. However, as of this week, it’s been announced that we will begin online learning using platforms such as Google Classroom. Supposedly teachers will post class material in the morning, and students will have the rest of the day to work on what has been posted. This allows for students to choose which subjects they want to work on first.

Posting the classwork for every single class all at once happens at the beginning of the day at around 9:00-10:00. I’m not too sure how it will affect my workflow, and which subjects to work on first, so we’ll see how it goes. Students should be able to ask questions to the teacher through email which would be helpful since the whole online learning thing is quite new.

In one of the emails the school sent out, they stated that high school students will receive “three hours of work per course per week”. From my interpretation, that means that class time will effectively be cut in half since the usual class time is 70 minutes. In my opinion, I feel like this is quite strange because each day you’d only be working for around two and a half hours each day. That seems quite little since we’d usually be at school for six hours. The material will either have to be really efficient to process or else we’d be slowing down on the curriculum. With my experience of my last semester, each class was planned out so that we could get through the entire curriculum before exams came up. By cutting class time in half I’m not too sure whether not we’ll be able to get through the material in the same amount of time.

Another thing that I’m curious about is how things will turn out if students don’t do the work. Some students don’t even do their work at school, and now that teaching is being done online, it’d be up to the parents to make sure that students are doing their work. With everyone staying at home I’m pretty sure that some people are going to end up not doing their school work.

Overall, the online learning plan seems to have some holes in it, but I think that there will be improvements to the system as time goes on. However, I think the main question will be whether or not classes will be able to progress through the curriculum according to schedule while also having the students understanding the material.

For the past few weeks, my friends and I have been playing a lot of games together, and one of the games we’ve been playing is CS:GO. It’s a game that I’ve been playing for almost five years, so it’s really nice seeing some of my other friends starting to play. One of the main problems that we’ve been facing though is with the game’s matchmaking system. However, we were able to solve it by using something called FACEIT.

FACEIT is a separate client from Steam which is the platform that hosts CS:GO. When you use FACEIT, you are still playing the game off of Steam, but you are playing the game on FACEIT’s servers. The FACEIT servers are pretty much an alternative version of Valve’s official matchmaking system.

I’ve used FACEIT in the past before, but only to play a few games. However, the reason why my friends and I are using it more now is because of Valve’s matchmaking system. With the official servers, players that want to play together have to be within a certain skill ranking of each other. Since I’ve been playing the game for much longer, my rank is a lot higher than the rest of my friends. This means that we aren’t able to play together unless we have a full premade team of five people. Often times this proves difficult, and so we’d always be missing one person to fill the last spot on the team.

Fortunately, FACEIT fixed this problem for us because since I’ve never really used my FACEIT account too much, my level is around the same as my friends who’ve just made new accounts. This lets us play together without having to go through the hassle of trying to find a group of five people.

Playing with your friends isn’t the only reason why other people use FACEIT though. A lot of the people that play on FACEIT servers are looking for a more competitive experience, and the skill ceiling in FACEIT is considered much high than the official matchmaking system. Some players currently playing for big-name organizations used to play in FACEIT’s pro league. FACEIT servers are also run on 128 tick servers which are more responsive than the official matchmaking servers.

Some issues we’ve had with FACEIT though is the fact that you don’t always get to choose which maps you want to play on. CS:GO has different maps with different layouts, and since most of my friends aren’t too into the game they don’t know how to play some of the maps. In FACEIT, each team has team captains and they go back and forth banning different maps until there’s only one left. The map that wasn’t banned is the one everyone plays on. Sometimes you don’t get to be team captain, and sometimes the other team bans the only maps you know how to play. This sometimes results in devastating losses where our team just can’t play as well as the other team. To us though, it isn’t really too big of a deal since we’re mostly playing for fun anyways.

Overall, FACEIT has been a good alternative to the official CS:GO matchmaking system for when my friends and I want to play. There is a bit of a trade-off, but to be honest it’s a lot more convenient to be able to play with whoever I want without being held back by skill difference.

Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, my music teacher and I have resorted to conduction our music lessons online via Skype. So far we’ve only had one lesson, but we plan on continuing them for the time being. That being said, there have been some issues concerning how our first online lesson went. This week I’ll be writing about the advantages and disadvantages that I found during the first lesson.

One new thing that wasn’t really an advantage or disadvantage was that my music teacher created his own lesson template file for us to work with. This didn’t really have to be something exclusive to our online lessons, but it was the first time that we did something like it. What he did was create a short song with different instruments that wasn’t really complete. For the duration of the lesson, we spent time applying different strategies to improve on the file in order to make it sound better. I found this to be quite different and interesting since we would typically start creating something from scratch which would take some time.

Setting the new lesson format aside, an advantage that I found in the online lessons was that I was able to see what my music teacher has on his screen and how he is working around the music program. Usually, we’d both be working off of the same laptop, however, this time I was able to see what he’s doing and how he has his software set up.

While I was able to see my teacher’s screen, Skype caused quite a few problems. The first problem that I immediately noticed was that only one person could share their screen at a time. That meant that either I had to be screen sharing or my teacher had to be screen sharing. This meant that we had to keep on switching back and forth. In the end, it wasn’t too big of a deal since we were mainly focusing on my screen, but it was still an inconvenience.

A second disadvantage of using Skype was that screen sharing doesn’t share the audio from the computer. For a music lesson, this was quite the issue, and the only way to fix it was to not use headphones in order to let the audio come out of the speakers and into the microphone. This made it impossible to use headphones which made it harder to tell the differences when changing effects, and it also made it really difficult to hear what was playing on each other’s computers. Sometimes the audio would be really quiet sometimes, so we had to bump up the volume of the laptop since we didn’t want to change the levels in the program. This also made the Skype call audio louder, so the other person would be really loud when you wanted them to hear the audio. Currently, there isn’t a way in Skype to change the audio of individuals during calls.

Overall, the online lesson was different and interesting. Most of the issues we had were just from Skype which was the program we used to share each other’s screen. As far as I know, Skype doesn’t really get useful updates very often, but pretty much all of our problems would be solved if we used something like Discord. It’s also free, multiple people can share their screens at the same time with the audio, and you can adjust other people’s volumes. However, its format is more that of being a social hub rather than making phone calls between individuals.

Next Monday will be the start of March break and for the following two weeks, there will also be no school. So far, my class’ teachers still haven’t said much about how the curriculum will change, but most students at my school seem pretty happy about not having to go to school. This week, I’ll be writing about my thoughts on the extended break.

The cause for the closing of the schools after the break was due to the COVID-19 virus. For the past couple of days, the school had made announcements about making sure people are keeping their hands clean, but it was only until last Thursday after school that the school closures were announced. By the time everyone went to school on Friday, none of the teachers really knew what was going to happen during the two weeks following the actual March break. The only thing that they said they’d do is to make sure to post updates online if anything new comes up, but so far the only thing I’ve seen posted is that one of my English assignments has been postponed for the week back. To me, this doesn’t really make sense because 100% of the assignment can be done online. Though, I don’t mind having the extra time.

In terms of what I’ll be doing for the next few weeks, I think my friends and I will probably be playing video games for the most part. We don’t really go outside to hang out too much in the first place, so it’s pretty much just an extended break. I’ll also most likely end up watching a lot of Youtube and Anime. However, I still do have some school things to complete although it isn’t much.

There have been talks of online teaching taking place, though, I can’t really see it being used effectively. Especially since it could be hard to make students participate in lessons while they’re at home. Even inside a physical classroom there are some students that don’t really take their work seriously, and I can see how some of them would choose not to participate in the online teaching. However, even if online teaching was put into effect, I don’t really think I’d mind too much.

Overall, I think that the extended March break won’t really end up being too interesting. Maybe there will be the possibility of online teaching, but I can’t really see it happening realistically. Most of my time during the break will end up not doing anything very productive anyways.

By the end of this month, CS:GO’s operation Shattered Web will end. I ended up not writing about it when it was first announced because I hadn’t really been playing the game too much at the time. However, operation Shattered Web has been the first operation the game has had in almost three years. This week, I’ll be writing about my thoughts on the operation.

Operations in CS:GO don’t really show up too often, and the last one that took place was operation Hydra which was a couple of years ago. A lot of the times when new operations are announced players are really excited because operations are kind of like special events containing different missions. While you can still play the game in the normal modes, operations usually add special missions with a different style of gameplay. Additionally, there are side missions to complete in the normal game modes that help you earn certain rewards.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really end up playing too much throughout the duration of the operation, but I’ve heard that for this operation there was a battle pass that was introduced. Much like battle royale games like Fortnite, the more you play the operation the more rewards you can get. You were able to pay money in order to get an enhanced battle pass with more rewards, and you could also speed up your progress in the pass if you wanted too.

The battle pass allowed for the introduction of new cosmetic items such as player model skins. At first, there were lots of videos of YouTube showcasing how the skins could be used to gain a competitive advantage, but as of late I think that the developers have taken measures to keep the game fair to other players. To go along with the player model skins, patches to put onto character models were added which are basically stickers for your character models. The patches seem really similar to the stickers you can put onto your weapons, and to me, it seems kind of unnecessary. However, the game has gone free to play, so I guess it kind of makes sense to add more purchasable items in the game.

I’ve started playing a bit more in the past few weeks, but not enough to really care too much about the operation. However, other people have been saying that it’s been really fun and how the quality of operations keeps improving. I think that’s true especially since a lot of new features have been added between the last two operations.

Overall, operation Shattered Web is coming to close, and a lot of new content was brought in for the months that it’s been active. I still won’t be worrying too much about completing the many remaining missions I have, but more of my friends have started playing the game. Now I pretty much play to have fun on the weekends with my friends.

Yesterday I took part in Richmond Hill’s Youth Action Committee’s annual Hill Afer Dark event. The event took place at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts and revolved around various arts performances such as music, dance, and art. After auditioning I was offered the opportunity to perform during the event which is what I’ll be writing about today.

Sometime in January, a classmate from elementary school who’s on the committee told me that they needed to find people to audition for the event. I figured that I wouldn’t be too busy around the time of the event I decided to audition. The auditions for the event were done through video email, and even though the video I submitted was rushed, it was still accepted.

Between the time of the auditions and the actual event, I didn’t really worry about it too much since exams were my main focus at the time. After the second school semester started, I started communicating the Youth Action Committee a bit more. They needed to know the details of the performance and what equipment was needed. I didn’t really start practicing until a week before the performance, but I already knew how to play the song.

When I showed up for the event the Youth Action Committee was still setting things up before people arrived. The room that they had everyone put their things in was actually a kitchen area that was pretty small with nowhere to sit. After all the performers did a soundcheck most of us waited in the kitchen room. While I was waiting I got to know one of the other performers who had performed for a couple of years at the event already.

Once the show actually started there wasn’t really much to do besides waiting for a committee member to call you down to get ready to go on stage. During my performance, I made a few mistakes like moving my capo up to far, but I think the first half was pretty good. Once I was finished playing I packed up my guitar back in the waiting area and went back down to watch the rest of the performances.

After watching the performances up until the almost hour-long intermission. My family didn’t really want to stay so we ended up leaving early. I ended up getting a thank you card from the committee members and that was the end of the event for me.

Overall, I think it was a good experience auditioning and communicating with the committee as well as performing for other people. I wish that they had a bigger area for everyone to put their belongings though because the small kitchen area they had was quite cramped. Otherwise, I enjoyed the time I stayed at the event, and I plan I auditioning again next year.

Sometime next week will be the final day to submit course selections for next year at my school. I’ve already chosen what courses I’m going to take, so this week I’ll be writing about the different courses I’ve chosen to take. More specifically, the three electives I chose since the majority of the courses in grade 10 are still compulsory.

I’ll start with the compulsory courses which are English, Maths, Science, History, and Civics. These courses are all pretty self-explanatory and every grade 10 has to take them. Some of my friends are planning on taking their History course in summer school, but since my family plans on going on vacation over the summer, I won’t be taking summer school. However, if I had the choice, I still wouldn’t choose to attend summer school.

The first elective I selected was Orchestral Strings which is pretty much the exact same music course I took earlier on in grade 9. Almost everything about the course is identical, but you just learn more theory and improve your playing. Most of my friends in my grade aren’t planning on taking the course in grade 10, but I still have some people I know in the older grades that plan on taking the course again. I enjoyed the course in grade 9, and it was a pretty easy course to get by. However, I think in grade 10 I should probably practice and study the theory a bit more.

My second elective is Technological Design, and according to the course description, it is all about designing and researching how to design different things such as making prototypes and building models. I’m not sure if the course is going to be involving any hands-on work, and according to my older brother, it shouldn’t. However, his Technological Design class was in the workshop by chance and so they were able to build their designs. I chose the course since it seemed interesting and fun, but also because several of my friends are going to be taking it.

For my third elective, I have Computer Studies. To be more specific the Introduction to Computer Studies course, and it’s supposed to introduce students to programming. I’ve tried learning programming before, but it didn’t really interest me since I kept on trying to do different things when I didn’t understand how or why they worked. I’m hoping that by taking this introductory course I’ll be able to slowly learn step by step. With a few of my other friends also taking the course I hope it’ll be less frustrating than trying to learn on my own.

In addition to our three electives, we were also instructed to select two back up courses in case there isn’t enough room in the classes for our first three. My two back up courses are Food and Nutrition and Fitness. Food and Nutrition is a course that I feel like would still be fun and interesting even if it replaced one of my first three choices. Fitness is a course that a lot of my friends have as one of their first three choices. I’m still not sure if choosing the course was a good idea or not, but at least if I do end up with it there’ll be a lot of people I know in the class.

Overall, those were my course selections for my grade 10 year and I’m pretty satisfied with the choices I’ve made. I feel like most of the courses are ones that I would enjoy being in, but I still haven’t really thought too much about what I want to do in the future. In the end though, I don’t really think one course I don’t like will end up mattering too much though because at the start of the semester you can always go to the guidance office and request a course change as long as it’s at the beginning of the semester.

It has been two weeks since the start of my school’s second semester, and that means that I have new courses with different classmates. After having gotten to know my new courses I’ll be sharing which courses I am currently taking and my thoughts on each class.

My first-period class is English and so far we haven’t actually done too much. Throughout the first week, we’ve gone over basic grammar such as proper sentence structure and how to use conjunctions. We even took a day to make posters for the “Seven Grandfather” teachings which is basically how you should treat other people. It was only until recently that we started with the grade 9 curriculum with storytelling and narratives. The class material hasn’t been too difficult so far though.

As for the people in the class, there are some students that just don’t stop talking, and it doesn’t matter whether the teacher is presenting or if we’re doing independent work. What I find most annoying about it though is that the teacher doesn’t even try to keep them quiet and instead talks back to them. This can become quite distracting, especially when we’re assigned in-class reading and all you can hear is the teacher and students talking back and forth really loudly.

After English, I have Non-Tradition Arts and the course revolves around art, except it’s mainly using computer technology such as animation and Photoshop. During the first week, it was quite interesting and fun learning how to use Photoshop, but the current assignment that we are working on right now is pretty frustrating.

Since the teacher doesn’t exactly have time to go around showing every single what they should be doing, she put up an example online. However, she explained how a majority of the examples would only get you around a 70-79% mark. The instructions on what to do haven’t been really clear. Even if you follow the guidelines she set at the start of the assignment she’ll tell you to change something because “I might not catch it when I’m marking it.”

For my third-period class, I have Science which has actually been relatively well. Taking notes in class is quite easy since we take them using a PDF file course package that the teacher has given us. I’m also really glad that we had the option to take a digital version of the textbook so my bag doesn’t get too heavy. The only problem I have in the class is with the people. Just like my English class, it feels like some students can’t stop talking and just want attention. At times you can visually see on everyone else’s faces that they’re just annoyed after a while. Other than that though, Science has been fun and we even get to use the lab room.

My last-period class is French which is probably the most normal class I have this semester. The only problem I have with the class is that I’m really bad at French. If we’re covering reading and writing I can usually do alright, but when we get to listening comprehension I can’t really figure anything out. Despite that, I feel like French class passes the most quickly out of all of my other classes which might be a good thing.

Overall, I would definitely prefer my classes from semester one over the current one. However, I think that if even just a couple of this semester’s classes start to shape up a little bit better I just might start enjoying it a bit better.

Arknights is a mobile game that released globally around a month ago. The game is a tower defense that follows a story where you’re the main character that commands different operators. This week I’ll be sharing my thoughts and experience while playing Arknights.

The way the gameplay of Arknights works is that you have different units called operators, and each operator belongs to a certain class with different skills, traits, and abilities. Operators have different rarity values and usually, the rarer ones are better, but that’s not always the case depending on the situation. Since each operator can only be deployed once in a battle, you get to have twelve different operators to use each battle. Experimenting with different combinations of operators on different stages is part of the game.

Your objective in each stage or battle is to prevent enemies from entering your zone which is represented by one or more blue cubes. Depending on the stage there will also be red cubes where the enemies come from, and different stages have different types of enemies that have strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes there are boss enemies that usually have very unique traits such as being able to teleport through your operators or disable certain tiles.

Arknights at the beginning is pretty easy and it follows you through most of the mechanics. For the first few stages, you can get by without using too much strategy, but later on in the game, you’ll have to figure out which operators to specifically level up and use. A lot of the times you won’t be able to use the exact same twelve operators for every single stage, so you’ll have to end up changing your roster depending on the layout of the stage and what enemies come out.

There’s also base that you have where you can produce and sell resources, and the layout is extremely similar to Fallout Shelter with different types of facilities and jobs that need to be filled. Even though the base isn’t too interesting, it’s very important if you want to be able to efficiently upgrade and level up your operators.

New operators can be obtained through a recruitment system that happens over time or you can spend in-game currency to roll for a random operator. Some operators have increased chances when you roll, but they rotate every few weeks. Since Arknights was released in China first, there are currently operators that are still limited to the Chinese servers.

As of now, I have completed almost all of the content in the main story except for the challenge modes, but there are still unreleased chapters of the story. In the meantime, I’ll be spending time upgrading my operators and trying to finish the side missions while I wait for the next content release.

Overall, I’ve had a lot of fun playing Arknights, and I usually don’t really play mobile games too much. There have been times where I was struggling on certain stages and had to look up some tutorials, but I’ve been able to get through a decent portion of the game on my own.