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Tuesday, Mar 13, 2007 - 04:10 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- - -
Bobble Backwards

Here's the last few days, in reverse chronological order:

Monday:

Got back the Physics and Microeconomics midterms, and a Physics lab report. On the Physics midterm, lets just say that I got back from the away leg 0-1 down. But then again it's only 10%, the labs and tutorials are probably worth twice that, and if I can't score in the home leg it won't make any difference anyway. And my Physics-major cousin wants to whack me in that module. Pressure pressure!

At least the lab reports so far have been decent. Suffered a literal headache in carrying out the last experiment on atomic spectra, brought on by staring at damnably bright lines composed of all sorts of wavelengths through a microscope for an hour. Felt like vomiting at the end of that session. The one this Monday was much better, only requiring me to measure the diameter of electron diffraction rings. If only my voltmeter's needle worked properly, it would have been completed much more quickly. The needle got stuck at the 3kV mark, I brought in my lab TA to have a look, he confirmed the problem, we brought the lab staff over, and then lo and behold, Mr. Needle was innocently resting beyond 4kV.

And after the two of them left, the needle reverted to holding firm at 3kV no matter how I twisted the knob. Ended up delivering a series of sharp (measured) blows to the top of the voltmeter to knock some sense into it. Who says violence doesn't solve any problems?

This leads me to recall a particular very nice lab staff who talked to me about the stand for equipment that he designed, in my first lab session. I can always appreciate some pride on one's work.

Now the Microecons midterm (40% of total module grade). Remember my take on it eleven days ago? "At best decidedly average, I suppose..." Well, I was wrong. Turns out that the lecturer did give partial credit for the procedure, and I ended up overshooting the class average of 52 by 30 marks. Most satisfyingly, I somehow managed to get a full 40/40 marks for the "most difficult" Question three, nearly matching the given solution word for word. Blur tio. Got a little exclamation point to mark the occasion some more. Can't resist blowing my own trumpet here. *Toot toot toot*.

Then again, I guess it's nothing too special after all - remember (and understand) some formulae, apply them, don't make stupid mistakes en route. So this time, I managed to do that well. Big deal. I would probably fail it if told to sit for it again this very moment. Hey, I'm a big idea kind of guy, I don't like to keep the nitty-gritty details in my head. Other than the Planck's blackbody radiation formula that's somehow stuck in my head. Here we go: I-lambda,T is equal to 2 pi h c squared over lambda to the power of five open bracket e to the power of h c over lambda k-e T minus one close bracket. With some luck I'll manage to forget it by the time I graduate.

Game theory, one of my pet topics, is coming up for Microecons next, so with some luck I won't have trouble passing the module. It won't count towards my CAP, remember? Hmm, so if I manage to grab an A for it, would it be counted as 损人不利己? Wah, suddenly I feel so evil.

Sunday:

Gana persuaded by Law to attend his SMU band's Symphonia Festiva: Con l' espressione at the Singapore Conference Hall, and fork out S$15 for the privilege of doing do. To make up for that, I influenced edchong to go, but he fell sick. So in the end it was just alvin, sel, smk and me.


Infants may only be kicked into the hall.

Was never that big on music, and never had too much of a ear for it either, but pieces in the classical tradition are pretty timeless. Enjoyed the casually staged Technology by Jim Casella, and after that the next favourite would probably be Samuel R. Hazo's Danse Diabolique.

Supposedly the performance had some mistakes here and there, but I can't pretend to be able to tell whether some dissonance is unintentional or part of the performance. Just as diners praised branded mineral water to the high heavens even when a news team had secretly replaced the water with normal tap water beforehand, in an experiment some time back.

Well, we refrained from shouting for a refund after the show, and to show our support for law we hoisted a large banner over the stage during the interval. The management made us take it down.


The banner speaks for itself.

Alvin got accused of being chee hong when he kept asking about one of the band girls with shoulder-long hair. Turns out that she's from NUS. I sense wanted posters being plastered about campus soon :P

Oh, and I finished coding a simple version of Puzzle Bobble (with sound!) for my last 3D Game Programming lab assignment before rushing down for the event. There's at least one bug I know of, but the very appropriate Unreal Tournament announcer makes up for it. Download the executable (1.04 MB). Caution: may need openAL (more on this below).

Saturday:

Was coding the above lab. Lesson learnt: Getting sound functionality in C++ isn't as straightforward as one may expect, especially when the whole bleeping openAL library website was down. And no other site seemed to have a mirror (maybe some had, but I couldn't find it, I'm not the Google shen), they all linked to that site. What good is the redudancy of the Internet here? In the end I downloaded a copy of the openAL SDK from the Creative Developer site. Only to find out that it didn't have some required freealut headers and libraries.

A lot more Googling later, I found the files on a German open source flight simulator website. Didn't care about version compatibilities at that point, just chucked it in. It worked. Three cheers for German flight simulator programmers!

Friday:

Went to NUS for a SIGAIGAMES meeting, where everyone cheerfully revealed that they had been thinking really hard about it and would get down to the actual coding real soon. Fighting other fires first, I said. Had lunch at the makeshift Arts canteen and collected tickets from law there before that. Some of the seats at the makeshift canteen were better than those we're used to!

Thursday:

Well, I was salvaging some fun trading faces with a stray cat at the lift landing after that soul-crushing Physics midterm, when the lift doors opened and the young lady inside freaked out at the cat standing right at the lift entrance. It wasn't even a big, aggressive cat or anything, just the normal kind one can find in any self-respecting HDB estate. So there were several seconds of a standoff as she shrank to one corner of the lift, with the cat looking at her not comprehending what was going on. Or maybe it did, and was just getting a kick out of spooking a creature many times its size.

Wanting to get home, I did what I believed was the gentlemanly thing and placed myself between the cat and the girl. It appeared to work, as she mustered up the courage to nip out, while muttering what I took to be a sincere thanks. Question: Has anyone ever been afraid of a bunny?

Unfortunately it works the other way too - a couple of semesters back, while rushing to a test, I cut in front of a girl and ended up being berated for not being a gentleman. Then, I was all wtf, first time and kena. Maybe she had a bad day or something. *shrugs*



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1 comment

LaW said...
hahaha.. din get to see the banner tt nite..
but yeah.. thanks for tt..


March 20, 2007 - 23:47 SGT     

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