P(X>Y)
E[X=3]

Which gives you something like this:

The problem here is that the probability and expected value operators are italicized as if they were variables. I should have been writing:

\operatorname{P}(X>Y)
\operatorname{E}[X=3]

Which will render them in the plain old Roman font like \lim or \min.

Wikibooks has a nice snippet on it with some more details.

The design you see now is the culmination of over two months of work. I went through four designs but I wasn’t satisfied with them. In my frustration I downloaded a theme which you may have seen and I hope you forget. I gave one more try at a redesign and came up with the current design, dubbed “Ambassador”. I wanted to move away from the traditional blog design and include data from my social networks to create a central hub for my online presence. My latest Twitter, top albums from Last.fm, and latest Delicious bookmarks are all on the home page.

I hope to post more often often from now on. I’ve taken an interest in photography so you might see some photos soon. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy the new design.

I can’t say it will be the best years of my life since I have still a long life to live ahead of me, but they were right about one thing: you will change more than you know and so will your friends. When you first enter as a freshman, the counselors make you fill out a questionnaire with some random questions about yourself. Four years later, they show it to you again just to prove their point about how much you’ve changed.

As a freshman I was timid and shy around strangers and socially inept at times. Now… I think I’m just socially inept. Two out of three isn’t too bad. I’ve become a somewhat competent technologist too, but I’ll save that for another blog someday. My philosophy on life has changed significantly for reasons I don’t remember at the moment. It goes something like this: overcome one hurdle at a time; when you knock one down, look back to see what you did wrong, but focus on getting over the next hurdle. More recently, I developed another when I had an introspective moment this year: don’t care so much about what people think.

Thinking back, I can remember the many different phases I went through, particularly this year, where I behaved and thought differently in each. Sometimes the transition between each phase was gradual and at other times it would be quite sudden.

The friends you have as a freshman may not be the same friends you have as a senior. The reality is that although you may hold onto a few close friends all the way through high school, many of them will change and you will make new ones along the way. I met most of the people I hang out with now in my junior year: Luke, Abbi, Melissa, Sadie, Brian, Julia. Interestingly enough I got to know most of you through IB Physics. Matt and Brett, my homies, my partners in crime, you guys are awesome. We’ve been making ruckus together for all four years. Rock on at OSU and try not to get into too much trouble.

I’ve learned to appreciate the immeasurable value of mentors in one’s life. At the time you don’t think much of it, but afterwards you appreciate how much time they’ve set aside to make sure you succeed. I’m not sure what motivates them, but it is a gift that exceeds all others. I have been fortunate enough to have two mentors during my time at Gresham. The first is Stephen Scannell who without him, there would be neither InvenTeams nor FIRST Robotics for me. The second is John Walker, who has imparted many words of wisdom and helped me realize, perhaps, the human side of technology. If I ever write a book about my life, both of you will most certainly get a shout-out. It’s been an honor.

I mercilessly teased some of the lower classmen about how many days of high school they have left (actually, I only talk to one so you know who you are), but part of me is envious of him. A small part of me doesn’t want to let go. There are a lot of people I don’t talk to much outside of school. Previous summers have always been fairly easy to cope with. I think part of the reason for that is that I knew that I would get to see everyone again in the fall. But this summer is different because we’re all headed off in different directions, or at least many of us will be. We were all traveling the same road for a while, but it is nearing the time where we all must choose our own path and follow our own destiny. Perhaps they will converge again at some point, or at least cross.

Reading posts I wrote a year ago is amusing. I blogged about some of the things everyone else did like the Zune and the iPhone. One of my goals now for this blog is to have unique content. I don’t think people want to read stuff they can find on Engadget and the like, nor do I want to rewrite it.

What I think people do like is I’ve been posting a lot more code lately. This is a trend I want to continue because I like giving back to the community. I’ve been using WordPress longer than I’ve been running jameslao.com and I owe a lot the platform. Much of the PHP I know comes from studying and developing for WordPress. The framework for the engineering site I helped develop for Vernier was actually inspired by the way WordPress is designed.

The past year has been interesting to the say the least. Some parts were more fun than others, a lot more actually. But I can say that I learned a lot, about myself, life, friends, school, physics, and IB of course. Here’s to another year of blogging.

As you can see Google has made its first move with Google TiSP.

Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.

ThinkGeek is up to no good as usual too. Vilcus Plug Dactyloadapter anyone? Or how about Inhalable Caffeine Stix? God I love April Fool’s day…

I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen this much snow. The good: no school today. The bad: I was hoping to talk to my English teacher about my presentation. The ugly: it’s cold; very, very cold. Nature works at the most inconvenient times. More pics after the jump.

The Messiah has arrived. The one show I’ve been looking forward to for over six months now is finally returning today. 24 is going to rock!

Anyways, happy holidays, I hope you have a good one.

I originally planned to create a custom theme for jameslao.com but unfortunately I don’t have time at the moment. K2 with a custom header image will have to suffice for now, which isn’t so bad if you think about it. I always liked K2…