Some friends and I wanted to go on one last overnight trip before the start of classes, and we decided to go the famous East Coast gambling destination of Atlantic City. It was a fun trip, and here is a post with some photos and thoughts. We played around on the beach, walked around, shopped, dined and of course gambled… just a little bit.
I haven’t paid much attention to my websites lately, and thus I have completely forgotten about the anniversary of getting my own domain name until today. The anniversary is somewhere in August, but I don’t remember the exact date anymore. TonyJiang.com has been on the world wide web for 6 years and I have been running websites for probably past a decade now. I’ll be running websites for as long as I am able, and there should be plenty of years left for this personal blog and my other websites.
Over the last year, I haven’t done much work on my websites, but they’ve chugging along pretty well. Traffic is comparable to last year with my crabbing guide, Smash Bros. guide and this blog combining for around 700-1000 page views per day. Despite no real new content and steady traffic, ad revenue actually went up, and 2011-2012 is the first time my websites made over $1000 in a year, and I had a record-breaking month of nearly $150 in revenue. $1000 is obviously not enough for me to run websites as a full time job, but it’s a nice bit of extra income for a student like myself. My crabbing guide earns the vast majority of the ad revenue, showing that my first website is still the most useful website to visitors. Hopefully the ad revenue will keep on rolling in.
So what’s my plan for the next year? Not much. Graduate school takes a lot of time and energy. Of course I want to provide new content that will draw visitors, but I don’t have much to write these days other than post the occasional travel photos. Some people get a great idea and make it big on the internet, but I haven’t found that great idea yet. I’ll keep thinking about it though, and in the meantime I’ll continue running my websites. Hopefully I’ll remember to post on the anniversary date next year.
I recently went on a conference trip to sunny San Diego, California, and it was probably the best conference trip I’ve been on. San Diego in the summer is just a great place to be, and it’s even more awesome when my travel costs are paid for. Of course, this was a conference trip and I did spend most of the trip attending conference events, but fortunately I also had a bit of time to do touristy things as covered in this post.
It’s been more than two months since the end of my latest academic semester. The winter term was my fourth term as a graduate student, and it was a pretty tough term with two out of three courses being quite challenging. I managed to survive though, and here are some thoughts on the courses.
A couple of weekends ago, some friends and I went to Niagara Falls and Buffalo. I have been to the great falls before, but that was a long time ago and also I have never been to the US side of the falls. It’s also summer where I have a little more time on my hands, so it was a good time to visit. As always, this post is a short account of the my trip along with some photos. Photo credits go to my roommate HL.
Another school year of graduate studies have gone by, and once again I managed to get a little time off before starting my summer research. Just like last year, my parents came to visit me and so we went on a few short trips. We stayed in New York City for a few days, and this year we also went up into Quebec to visit Montreal and Quebec City. Here is a short account of the trips with some photos.
After four semesters of graduate studies, I finally get to walk across the stage for my master’s degree. I actually earned my degree at the end of last year, but my school only has one graduation ceremony a year. Getting the degree feels good of course, and I have to thank my family, friends and my advisor. However, there is still much to do. I probably have at least two more years until I can get my PhD. It ain’t going to be easy, but I’ll work hard to get through it.
Now that I’m a grad student, I travel more than before thanks to various conferences and meetings. Recently, I went on a conference trip to Knoxville, Tennessee. It was my first time in the city (and the state for that matter), and I managed to squeeze in a little bit of sight-seeing in between business duties. Here are some photos and a few thoughts I had about the city of Knoxville.
This is my third post on the blog within a week. I guess I feel like writing more here these days despite the fact that I should probably be spending the time to do research, do homework, do something with my social life or even sleep. Anyways, here is another mundane post of me doing some simple task, and this time it’s replacing my car’s air filters.
A little while ago I went on a conference trip to Orlando, Florida. Back then, the Northeast was still pretty cold, while Orlando was sunny and warm, so it was certainly a great destination to go to. Unfortunately, the conference took place right at the hotel inside the airport, and so I ended up staying in the airport through almost the entire trip. It was a short trip and we didn’t have much free time, but just going outside for a couple of hours to the actual city would have been nice. At least the hotel and airport were quite nice though. The Orlando Airport is one of the nicest airports I’ve been to in the United States. The Hyatt hotel is right on top of the main airport lobby which is shown in the picture below. This trip was the first time I’ve been to Orlando or Florida. I didn’t really get to go anywhere, but hopefully I’ll make it back there some day as a tourist and actually visit the city.
