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[ February 2006 ] | |
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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+ today's page views: 56 (5 mobile) all-time page views: 3741697 most viewed entry: 18739 views most commented entry: 14 comments number of entries: 1257 page created Thu Mar 12, 2026 02:17:01 |
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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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Mine
It somehow hurts a lot more to overlook the first question of an MCQ test and get it wrong, than one of the last questions, or even one in the middle. Having a breach in the previously rock-solid "100% Correct" classification... what a downer. Of course, had I not thought of it at the last possible second, I would be blissfully unaware of the mistake, which probably has no long-term impact whatsoever anyway. Edit: Credit to TPK for spotting the grammatical error. 1 point to you. See, careless again!
- programming - I wonder how much more time I would have blown on my labs had web search engines not been available. CS2106 Operating Systems turned out to be CS2106 Practical C, and for someone who has never before touched it (my CS1102 was in Java, and JC, erm, C++?), all the directly mucking about in memory would prove hazardous to health. Let it not be said that the course is without its own geek humour. One of the first exhibitions of such was the command cat "food in cans" which returns, in UNIX (and its variants): cat: cannot open food in cans There's more! [ Where is my brain? gives: [: missing `]' Funny! In a lame sort of way, that is. Back to the lab assignments, the second one involved implementing a list structure to store a collection of words (strings) for later sorting. I go "linked lists C" in Google, and ta-da! Stanford is there to help! Well, they showed how to create a linked list that inserted new items at the head, not at the tail, which I didn't like, so it took a bit more editing, but the skeletal example was seriously useful. Indeed, any software company worth its salt probably has some inhouse archive of such libraries, which makes me ponder just how much extra work it has to accomplish after developing a certain solution - which can be sold to more than one client. Wait... isn't that what Windows XP is anyway? Bonus Advertisement: Use Firefox! (Actually, sucker for convenience that I am, I still use IE) 
Wallpaper from Firefoxy
- music - 她泪中含着蕴情但她爱的不是我 （*） 她梦内追的幸福对我终究是个谜 我并不这么肤浅 我有的是厚脸皮 还是一天守着一天这么地等下去 又何必这般痛苦 （**） 为何坚持笑下去 只因世间唯有爱不是平俗的交易 能说出无所谓 能答道不要紧 硬吞着几份不甘坐在墙角望空壁 至少她不必为我操心 我是否白鬓而归 我难道会这样简单乖乖地就放弃 火焰里烧着的花碎舞着她唱得多甜蜜不觉中东方亮出朝阳原来一日又过去 （*） （**） （*）
So many things to be done, so little heart with which to do it... What is it all for?
- philosophy - poetry - I slept too easily for my liking last night. Granted the repose of slumber is generally a good thing; But not when a person has watched a nightmare of humanity in the light of day. It was during a GEM2003 tutorial, which turned out to be a film screening. First was the Nazi propaganda Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), by Leni Riefenstahl. A 1934 documentary that nevertheless is acclaimed as one of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever made, it is not difficult not to see how it could have moved its audience in those grainy days. The words were grand, the scope magnificent. It kindled the pride, that most sought of commodities in a broken nation, with the servicemen's affirmation of their identity. From the Ruhr, from the Saar, from the Black Forest they came. They drilled with shovels and stood before their flags. They smiled, playing with water like boys, as young men are often wont to do. On the streets, their mothers and sisters lined up in salute, acclaiming Hitler as Germany's Messiah. Hitler was too at his mesmeric best. Utterly at ease in front of thousands, his talent for speech was given, if not by god, then by the devil. His was an aura bequeathed by the times, but to tell the truth, without his uniform, he was just a man with a funny mustache whom, in different times, kids might pass by and greet with a cheery "Uncle". But the times are ours and no other, as Alain Resnais mourns so devastatingly in his thirty-one minutes of Night and Fog. Fair warning, do not show this to your younger siblings. Nuit et Bruillard is horror beyond popcorn fare. It burns through to the soul. It shows Man in his darkest depravity, fallen so far, so fast. It starts in the empty concentration camps a decade after their abandonment. Silent, a trifle lonely, but still much an idyllic scene. The autumn grass blows in the wind as the poppies did in Flanders, but where the latter retained some trappings of honour in combat, the former bows only in unspeakable shame. Many reviews call the film beautiful. Is it? Where do we find the art, in the concrete ceiling of the gas chambers cunningly disguised as shower houses, where victims wore their fingers to stumps in a futile attempt to escape? Perhaps some can appreciate abstract designs in the mountain of women's hair, later weaved into cloth and rolled into bales? There is admittedly balance and structure in the five naked, emaciated bodies lying neatly in a row, propped on a beam. The heads, however, are gone. They are piled, again with attention to detail, in a basket by the side. The faces peer out, as though pondering where the soap made of their flesh will be sent. We do not think much of roasted animals, and many among us have enjoyed a suckling pig, or perhaps just a chicken. So should we be so shaken when we see half-cremated bodies, just a hand and a head, the rest charred? Is there some rhythm in the movement of the naked, skeletal corpses, as they are unceremoniously shoved by a bulldozer into an open pit so they may finally be forever hidden from the sight of men? Arms of skin and bone jerk into a macabre last wave from beyond the pale, bodies once human plummet like poorly made marionettes to their final rest. Two men - survivors? soldiers? - haul one of the dead by his arms and feet, and send him in with his kith. There has for long been no muscular tension left in those withered limbs. He drops, bending like a rubber toy. Is it a dancer's grace? Even in the imagination it would be terrible. But to have it shown, as fact unvarnished by the skill of animators or makeup artists, is far, far worse. Can man do that to man? We do not accept it, but we have to. Faith may indeed just be believing what we know is not true. Mankind is a superb enigma, capable of the greatest good and the vilest evil. The post-screening discussion, suitably muted, revolved about the blame game and the reasons for the Holocaust. The details were recited, anti-Semitism explored. Milgram's experiment was brought up as expected, to which the Stanford prison experiment could have been added. But when the truly weighty philosophical questions come, it is all relative. Unfortunately, the average man has not truly changed. He will still bow to authority - physical, political, moral, religious. Every so often it all happens again. The Khmer Rouge harvested their skulls in Cambodia, the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, the Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. Just recently people died for cartoons in a Danish newspaper. What madness, man? Once, I would have spent the night awake. As a toddler, I was terrified by the rag-men on display outside the National Museum. In primary school I was mortified for days by a horror manga borrowed during a badminton competition. But the price last night was perhaps an hour. Is that the measure of my empathy? Am I braver, or just more world-weary? Now I mull on a poem I penned some years ago, and fear that, even then, I was right. And what then is the meaning of the nature of life? Does it all boil down to the battle to survive? Read then and delight in the beauty of strife Feel the warm and dark stains tantalizingly invite The only law in iron clad of this world has always been thus The winner by might or otherwise is always right and just If it were meant to be another way the gods would have made it such Till now the legends of heroes still are written in bloodlust Empires great and small built and maintained by warcraft Between life and death reside the fates of those who will fight Silently, silently, watch the steel rise up and fall In crimson red, on the ground, and on the walls In arcane symbols of streaks and puddles The scales of glory continue to keep their score By the warm and dark stains spreading far and wide
- rants - Having to wait for a discussion room to get freed up was the best thing to happen to me for some time. It led me to a corridor window, where I rediscovered how enthralling even a normal sky can be. I keep my head down too much of the time, and too seldom recall Oscar Wilde. "We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" It was a cloudy day, to be sure, but the clouds were cotton white, fluffy and large lower down, wispy in the high heavens. No, I shall not pretend to have memorized their scientific names offhand. And they aren't idle; In minutes they can traverse the limits of one's sight, though not at the same velocity. A nephoscope would come in handy. But more fascinating was the homogeneous layer of white extending from the horizon and fading gradually into the foreground. It made for a terrific counterpoint to the independent character of the larger, distinct clumps. Nature everywhere is art. I must look upwards again. Then there are the small irritating facets of life. For one, I somehow dislike people walking slowly, at the sort of pace that implies disinterest in his destination. Relaxation, smelling the flowers, my two feet. Either sit and bide, or move with purpose. Too frequently I have been trapped behind a pair or group on a crowded path, who shuffle along just quickly enough to make overtaking tricky, and clog up traffic while intent on conversation. And if there are only the two of them, they invariably maintain just enough distance between them so that no one can nip through the gap. Yes, I realise it is the product of the intersection of typical personal space, but that does not make it any less aggravating. Top gripe though has to go to squeaky buses, and to a smaller extent MRT trains. I dread the trips where I draw the short end of the stick and board one of the offending vehicles. Being treated to half an hour of a stop-start rendition of Fingernails Scratching a Blackboard No. 3 is enough to make one go mad. I do not believe the drivers have failed to notice it. Maybe they have already stoically gotten used to having their hairs stand up and stretch?
- gaming - Possibly the most popular multiplayer RTS (okay... not a true RTS) since the two Crafts, appealing with a misleadingly shallow learning curve to players tired of playing General and put up with their troops whining over everything from their combat rations to being sent to be slaughtered. Yes, take part in the Defence of the Ancients. Putting aside the fact that it is not a particularly polished social experience, with the most common in-game conversation going something like "b DotA takes away the chore of conscripting and commanding hordes of lesser units, who will die shortly anyway, and task the player with controlling just one hero. This alone cuts the gap between gosu Koreans who can achieve a CPM of over 200 a minute and have water-cooled mice, and mere nubs like the rest of us. The footsoldiers (creeps) are generated in equal numbers and strengths on both the teams, and follow predetermined paths down the three lanes of the map to their doom. Heroes kill them for gold, which they can spend on items. Sticking around when enemy creeps die earns the heroes experience points, which translates into levels and better stats. The ultimate aim is to destroy the opponents' Ancient, which coincidentally is why the game is called Defence of the Ancients, a fact many forget as they merrily pawn all comers as their Ancient is going down. The path to that final objective is protected by three towers along each lane, and of course all the creeps and heroes on the team. There are plenty of tips out there, so I'll just try to add a dash of less common observations. Some stuff is pretty much common sense, like not hanging about enemies when low on life and they have an instakill combo (think Lion at level six with Finger of Death). Well, on to the opening. The earliest levels are a golden opportunity to try to force an advantage, which can often prove decisive. It is often not easy to score a kill unless an opponent makes a critical mistake (like hanging around at 100HP, see above), since damage output is initially pretty weak, and creeps and towers can really hurt a hero going on the offensive. Therefore, decent defensive play is often optimal if the heroes are anywhere near evenly matched. Normal initial matchups will be one-on-one duels (in side lanes, or smaller games), two-on-two (middle lane and sometimes a side lane, in 4v4 or larger games) and two-on-one (most often 5v5 games in a side lane). One-on-one duelling is the most basic of all. A player should then concentrate on putting his direct opponent into an untenable position. As Sergius in G.B. Shaw's Arms and the Man sagely remarked, successful fighting is "...the coward's art of attacking mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm's way when you are weak." Following Sun-Tzu's lead, recognize the good points and bad, of both yourself and your opponent. A common mistake would be not acquiring any form of HP regeneration from the start. This is an open invitation to chip away at his health, then sitting back and healing for a couple of minutes while he languishes at low HP. The main priority remains not getting hit, however, since even a single blow from a lowly creep can take ten seconds to heal. A few creeps smacking a hero several times will probably put him in danger. Opposing melee heroes generally should dance about the creeps and try to get last hits for the gold (and prefably also deny last hits). Direct confrontation is usually not a good idea, given the hero will often be surrounded by hostile creeps and will suffer the consequences soon enough. Ranged heroes can either just stand off and try to maximize revenue, or try to snipe at each other. Many ranged heroes actually have a pretty hard time farming gold, since their damage may not be much more than a creep at the start and their attacks have a significant delay, unlike melee heroes. Getting the timing right is thus important. It must be noted that enemy creeps will set upon a hero that has targetted their leader, so pull back when that happens. This is also why ranged heroes often go into an intricate dance where both try to maneuver within range, while not getting hurt themselves. Those with a faster pre-attack animation (less time between starting the attack and having a projectile actually shoot out) are at an advantage here. Ranged vs melee duels usually are in favour of the ranged hero at the beginning, for the obvious reason that ranged heroes can hit-and-run with little fear of retaliation, and also because melee heroes have to move past defending creeps. Often not falling behind in levels can be considered a victory for the melee hero, though, since they come into their own in the mid-game. The melee heroes should aim to steal last hits, and perhaps test the opponent's responsiveness by trying to close him down - many ranged heroes are badly disadvantaged once engaged at melee range due to their relatively poor HP. Keep in mind also that ranged heroes can often get accidentally beaten up by creeps if they get overconfident and try one shot too many :P That's it for today, more in a few weeks/months/years (circle one).
Realised that there's actually a lot to be done... like two programming assignments, a microeconomics tutorial, an Abstract Data Types tutorial (which will probably get ignored till last) and a CS3230 quiz to prepare for tomorrow. Argh. On the bright side, fixed up one obscure bug in the blog code that only manifests itself in the wee hours of certain mornings, implemented the monthly archiving properly, and finished the new entry submission script - so this is actually the first entry I've not uploaded through FTP :P Oh yes, and finally got about to the write-ups for the past few Hattrick matches for the Grilled Birds. Maybe I'll get around to sticking to a one honest chin-up-each-time-I-enter-my-room regime, too.
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