Goodbye for now :)

First things first...

This letter (of sorts) will be split into 2 sections. The first section will be about a problematic part of this website that I failed to act upon, and the steps that I will take to fix this in the future. The second section will be about the future of the website (mainly Blaze) and what's next.

An apology

I'm sorry I'm not brave enough to say this in person.

It came to my attention that I had written down parts of a year 11 chemistry lesson that, at a surface level, gravely misrepresents Ms Pilling's character and teachings. While it was never my intention to portray Ms Pilling as anything other than the best chemistry teacher that I ever had (and probably one of the best ever, full stop), after re-reading what I had written down, it is clear that I failed to accurately reflect the context and nuance of the situation. And for that, I am very sorry.

To clarify, as far as I can remember (and with the added confirmation from HKW), Ms Pilling was referring to a scene from the movie World War Z, where zombies are climbing a wall in Jerusalem, as a metaphor for capillary action. For some reason, I also put in dot points summarising the movie. While I had, at the time, never considered that what I had written could be hurtful, I don't believe that I had provided enough context and clarification to convey my intention, which is a severe mistake on my part.

It's clear that what I had written down had unintentionally mischaracterised Ms Pilling. The onus is on me, as the sole maintainer of this website, to manage and construct the contents of this website in a way that demonstrates my gratitude and respect for all of my teachers and the guidance they provide, without whom my notes would not exist. However, it is also my responsibility to ensure that the publication of my notes is sanctioned by my teachers. And on both parts, I have failed in my duty to do so.

Moving forward

  • Now that I've graduated (with WACE on the way :|), I unfortunately don't have time to carefully read through all of my class notes, or to ask all my teachers, past and present, whether they are okay with me publishing their notes. So, I've decided to unpublish all of my class notes. If anyone has questions on anything that I can help with, feel free to email me.
  • I will try my very best to ensure that the content that I upload is appropriate and sensible. I will conduct semi-regular reviews and ensure that upholds the necessarily high standard that should be placed on a public website's content.

    • To conclude

    To quote Newton, or whoever really came up with the phrase in the first place, I could not have accomplished a fraction of the achievements I have done over my life if I were not standing on the shoulders of giants. It makes me feel sick to think that I have failed to hold my teachers with the greatest reverence and esteem that I can muster. From this experience, I have learnt that I cannot take the privilege of being a student of my teachers for granted. In the future, I will endeavour to ensure that I manage the content that I publicise with the utmost care.

    What's next (feel free to skip)

    So... Blaze is pretty broken. Graphs going to the side, random json files being loaded, general lagginess, issues with backnotes, sidenotes, latex, markdown processing, recent notes... and the list goes on. And I think it's safe to say that this general unstability of Blaze stems from my inability to plan things out. Blaze is kinda just an amalgamation of cool features without cohesion and consistency.

    Don't get me wrong, Blaze is definitely 'functional'. But I've come to realise that something needs to change. There's a term in software development called technical debt. And Blaze certainly has a lot of it. I've been planning a rework of Blaze for literal months, but I've never found the will to go through the code and actually change things.

    And thus,I'm excited to announce that Blaze 2 will be in the works soon™. This time, we're gonna have so many cool features, but with the added benefit of a little planning this time. SPA, mobile compatibility (at last), full customisation from a single config file, and a bunch more cool things to be added. Maybe then, the Blaze repo will be truly worthy of Jzhao's star.

    To conclude (twice)

    Till then, this website won't be updated. As always, feel free to send me any questions via email or through Discord. And remember, it's electromagnetism, not electrostatic...

    - Ed :)



    Fibre optic cables for reference