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TCHS 4O 2000 [4o's nonsense] alvinny [2] - csq - edchong jenming - joseph - law meepok - mingqi - pea pengkian [2] - qwergopot - woof xinghao - zhengyu HCJC 01S60 [understated sixzero] andy - edwin - jack jiaqi - peter - rex serena SAF 21SA khenghui - jiaming - jinrui [2] ritchie - vicknesh - zhenhao Others Lwei [2] - shaowei - website links - Alien Loves Predator BloggerSG Cute Overload! Cyanide and Happiness Daily Bunny Hamleto Hattrick Magic: The Gathering The Onion The Order of the Stick Perry Bible Fellowship PvP Online Soccernet Sluggy Freelance The Students' Sketchpad Talk Rock Talking Cock.com Tom the Dancing Bug Wikipedia Wulffmorgenthaler       |
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bert's blog v1.21 Powered by glolg Programmed with Perl 5.6.1 on Apache/1.3.27 (Red Hat Linux) best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution on Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Mozilla Firefox 1.5+ entry views: 2572 today's page views: 211 (15 mobile) all-time page views: 3241404 most viewed entry: 18739 views most commented entry: 14 comments number of entries: 1213 page created Sat Apr 5, 2025 12:27:05 |
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- tagcloud - academics [70] art [8] changelog [49] current events [36] cute stuff [12] gaming [11] music [8] outings [16] philosophy [10] poetry [4] programming [15] rants [5] reviews [8] sport [37] travel [19] work [3] miscellaneous [75] |
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- category tags - academics art changelog current events cute stuff gaming miscellaneous music outings philosophy poetry programming rants reviews sport travel work tags in total: 386 |
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- changelog - Log Change changelog v1.04 --------------- * Chatterbox fix fixed. Spaces were inadvertently outlawed, as a certain ef noted. Ya,thatsucked. * Site Statistics date fixed, small time. No more Nov 0! * More statistics! More! Monthly averages, max, min and everything in between. * Technorati button added - why not a leetle pic? * Automated ping to Technorati on new post. Of no interest to mere readers, but hey, it's nice to get it out. * Most recent entries link improved, now scrolls down to appropriate entry instead of opening in a new page and jacking up my woefully low viewcount. Old behaviour available by clicking the two leetle arrows (»). Let's hear it for backward compatibility! Spare Change Feeling like a Third World tinpot-dictator money-launderer for virtually-making $20 off Chelski last week. On this subject, penalizing some clubs with fines appears to be missing the point. Broke some rules again? Will a few million pounds soothe the matter? You bet it will. Señor Abramovic pays. He always pays. Ah, dirty money or not, I'll take it. A lot of cash is drug money after all. With $837.00/$800 in my imaginary bankroll, there's no better time to do penance. $70 on Man U (-1.5) vs Pompey (at 1.85) - slightly short odds methinks, but let that be my tithe $20 on Bolton to beat Wigan (at 1.68) - bouncebackability? $10 on one goal in Liverpool vs Reading (at 5.40) - just a hunch Side Change 
Huat Ah! It's been years since I last accompanied my grandma to a temple, but one can't help but remember the divinity blocks used to check the omens. They're the two red kidney-shaped things in the above pic, from the latest Sunday Times feature. There are only two ways for them to land - either flat side down, or rounded side down. Being dissimilar, it's easy to suspect that the probabilities for each outcome are not the same, though what role that may play in divination I do not pretend to know. Say, however, that some guys wanted to sit down to a round of good old AD&D, but aren't in possession of any d20 dice, any non-d20 dice, any calculator with a random function, or even any coin. What they do have are two identical divinity blocks. They could of course approximate the chances for each side empirically by tossing the blocks umpteen times (a variation which I did for last year's Stats module. I never looked the same way at satay sticks again), then re-adjust all the tables of probabilities accordingly. But what if they are not inclined to put in exhausting preparatory work? Enter John von Neumann, who devised a "whitening" algorithm to fix simple bias. Toss the two blocks in two directions, so it is abundantly clear which is which (or if the players are not so anal-retentive, they can just use a marker to label them and disregard the weight of the ink). If the blocks land same side up, repeat the throw. However, if the first block lands flat side up and the second rounded side up, take it as a "Heads" event. Otherwise, consider it "Tails". No matter the individual probabilities of flat-or-rounded, the chances of F/R and R/F will forever be equal. So next time, when you're stuck in a temple with nothing to do, you know what to do! Face Change Not my own work When two modules (Philosophy and Computer Graphics) reference the same video, something must be on. It's from Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, and shows a rather average-looking normal gal metamorphing into a supermodel-esque chick. Cosmetics and styling weren't enough - it was Photoshop that imparted the X-factor. This commentary might have ended here, had not a 4O classmate of mine brought it back into my consciousness by name-dropping Dawn Yang, about a year after the big hooha about whether she had been surgically augmented. To her credit, she doesn't look half bad, I'm shallow that way :) As it turns out, said ex-classmate (a medical student btw) had a blog which argues (very persuasively, I may add) for the pro-surgery side of the story. Too bad updates are sporadic, but the ROFLMAO thing is that he got a mention (scroll close to bottom) on her site! 
Hell hath no fury... Old friend, I have to say, 
C'mon, this is easy! My thoughts on plastic surgery, then? Sign of low self-esteem? Disrespect for one's body? (Tell that to Xiahou Dun of Romance of the Three Kingdoms fame, who after being hit in the eye by an arrow shaft cried "Essence of my father, blood of my mother, I cannot throw this away" and swallowed it) Methinks that is actually a rather minor objection, and the real concerns are actually 1. $$$ and 2. future dangers (look at Michael Jackson, nose in particular). If body-altering operations were as cheap, safe and reversible as daily make-up, but the effects (obviously) far more striking, I would wager that the conscientious holdouts would dwindle to nothing. Moreover, as one who takes an interest in strong Artificial Intelligence, my dream is nothing less than the theft of the soul, the biggest theft of all; What is a mass of flesh to me? Phone Change Another gem adapted from the New Paper, quite long ago: Two buddies, Al and Bob, were in the changing room after a round of golf, and tired of listening to their richer flightmates brag about how wealthy they were. All of a sudden, a mobile phone rang. Al picked it up. "Hello?" "Dear, it's me! I've just seen this absolutely fantastic necklace, and it costs only ten thousand dollars! Can I have it, please?" "No problem. Get two of them if you want to." Al said. "That's great! And come to think of it, our car's getting pretty old. What about a brand new red Ferrari? The latest model just arrived in the showroom, we can have it for just two hundred thousand dollars." "Sure, sure, remember to upgrade all the accessories too." Al continued, aware that all eyes were on him now. "That's wonderful! How about the house we were looking at but you always said was horribly overpriced? It's still at over a million dollars, but..." "Just buy it, I'm in a good mood today." Al shrugged, ended the call, and sauntered out of the room having earned newfound respect. Bob followed and said, aghast. "Al, I know you - you don't have that sort of money!" Al wasn't bothered. "Bob, that phone wasn't mine either." Next: Clearly Improved
meepok man said... Supposedly, the aim of the divination blocks is just to get approval for stuff that they want to do, so they really don't want it to be of even probability anyway. According to my prof at least, they will keep throwing the blocks until they get the result they want, usually, so if even prob, they will get stuck for damn long
gilbert said... Then i got an idea for a new invention - magnetic divinity blocks with matching board! Guaranteed to land properly the first time you throw! What a timesaver!
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