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[ April 2007 ] | |
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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: 117 (15 mobile) all-time page views: 3741055 most viewed entry: 18739 views most commented entry: 14 comments number of entries: 1257 page created Wed Mar 11, 2026 03:51:19 |
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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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- + epl tales - Forgot my weekly predictions, but frankly, who cares? Not me, after a great evening - dinner with the family, then some incredible results in the EPL, finally even winning at DotA. Heh. 
- academics - You've heard of birdspotters, and perhaps even trainspotters, but undoubtedly the most popular spotting pastime amongst students here is questionspotting. We usually get into it at a young age; Many a parent has made a gift to their child of a collection of O-Level Ten-Year Series books, the tried and trusted introductionary texts to this fascinating hobby. The more adventurous dip into it even earlier, with suitably simplified PSLE Practice Papers, chockful of vivid and insightful examples to give the young enthuasiast a solid foundation in identifying popular questions. Some parents are so serious that they pay older spotters to accompany their young ones on their journeys, in an archaic process fondly called "tuition", where the accumulated experience of the senior inevitably rubs off on the initiate. Ah, many doubtless remember their first sighting - that magical moment when, glancing through a fibrous landscape of words, the eyes positively identified a specimen indelibly committed to the memory by countless hours of poring through the abovementioned fieldguides. The mind will instinctively refuse to believe; Could this be it? Then realization washes over the new spotter, as he mentally confirms his finding - Keyword "Explain"? Check. "Three ways"? Check. Letter after letter is carefully scrutinized, but the sighting is eventually confirmed - from something as mundane as a common April-1997 Short-Answer-Question, to the more fanciful Stamford-Secondary-Express-Stream-2001- Makeup-Paper-Additional-Question, each one is special by itself, to be savoured. Joyfully, the spotter will then make a note of his findings in what in the lingo of the sport is called an "exam booklet", where it is traditional to repeat the standard characteristics of the particular question as noted in the fieldguide. For the simple questions, it may be as brief as noting down a single character representing the variant, generally "A", "B", "C", "D" or more rarely "E". For the complex questions, the treatment is usually much more involved - essays of upwards a thousand words are not unknown, and celebrated is the spotter who manages to regurgitate all the relevant features into his booklet. These star spotters are rewarded with the equivalent of boy scout patches, though in a less flashy manner - upon passing through a given age category, they receive a "certificate" or "transcript" indicating their general aptitude and proficiency at spotting. Of course, some miscreants invariably slip through the cracks and manage to cheat the system, making a mockery of the art. The lesser evil is "mugging", which is often recognized as spotting done in poor style; Muggers actually do the questions, and worse are prone to sometimes rely on suspicious sources, such as "assignments" and "tutorials" which good spotters know are unlikely to be sighted twice in the same environment so soon again. Extremely bad form. While muggers are disdainfully accepted in spotter society, those who actually understand the questions are just outcasts; Oh, the problem is not with the understanding per se. Some well-known spotters have admitted to understanding a handful of the questions they have spotted, and maybe even hold slightly different opinions from the fieldguides - A little eccentricity is only to be expected. However, actually aiming to understand the general concepts behind the questions is just horribly unsportsmanlike, though legal. Imagine, if one actually understood, one could actually return from the journey with an answer to every question, as if one had genuinely spotted each of them, without the possibility of glorious failure. Where is the challenge in that? It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. It takes the very soul from the sport, spitting upon the heroic defeats of elders who ran the gauntlet without resorting to such deception. Ask the men on the street - likely it will not be long before you come upon one with such a tale to tell. He will close his eyes, sigh and rub his grizzled chin, and regale you with his personal drama, the time when, all those long years ago, he messed up by preparing only for the Human Geography family, then on his trip only Physical Geography specimens could be seen. He will tell of the pain of recognizing the questions, but having no recollection of their characteristics, nothing to record in his empty exam booklet; Of the sadness felt when turning in that empty booklet; Of the despair when receiving his less-than-stellar certificate. But, he will not forget to say: He is proud of himself. Proud of staying true to the path, of not sullying the name of spotting with mugging, understanding, or heaven forbid, flair. And to this day, he spots; 4-D numbers from the wreckage of cars, stock tips from the squiggly graphs in the financial pages, can't-lose bets from the top neighbourhood punter. One cannot help but admire this class of man. (The author of this article was inspired to write this tribute to spotting by his recent experience in a Macroeconomics examination for which he had only several hours to study for, courtesy of the unmissable Man Utd vs AC Milan Champions League semi-final at 3 a.m. the morning before the 1 p.m. paper. Ostensibly he was not the only one to watch the match, though, as the release of the candidates after the examination was delayed by half an hour because some guy fell asleep on his MCQ OMR form and neglected to hand it in)
Without justification, I state: $60 on Man Utd (-1.5) vs Boro (at 1.67) - Boro lost 10/17 on the road so far, United 15 wins out of 17 at home $20 on Liverpool (-1.5) vs Wigan (2.00) - Not underpriced like the above, I see $20 on West Ham to draw Everton (3.15)
- cute stuff - On MSN, some nights ago: <A> wat r u gonna do during the holis? <ME> find a bunny to poke <A> EEEEE I was then informed that poke had an... ulterior meaning! Wah lau eh, can't I just get on with some good clean poking? You can start here, for beginners: 
Cannot... Resist... And how did I miss this for so long? Bundemonium!!! Just completed one Physics past year paper, which gave me some hope. Zzz time.
- academics - That's my project commitments for this semester finally gone and done with, four days before my Physics paper. Looking at how much can be achieved in a day, however, I'm not too concerned - yet. So its: Modern Physics on 23rd April - bulk of the marks and probably the most significant paper Artificial Intelligence on 24th April - 30% of total. Should be enjoyable. I hope And my CAP ends here. Macroeconomics II on 25th April - 50% of total. Not worrying too much Microeconomics II on 3rd May - 50% of total. This will likely be... fun. Really not too hard I'm due to be in holiday mood after I reach home on the 25th. And if anyone's interested, here are the project reports I sweated over. They may not be much, but I'm not the sort to reject my past work when and if I get better. I still remember when my artist uncle asked me if a painting of a vase of flowers looked good when I was much younger. To me, it was pretty stunning, but he promptly said it wasn't that good and ripped it up. Ah well. Supposedly they can repair wrinkles and small rips quite easily. Next up: a short vid of the 3D Game Programming project. It's no Half-Life 2, but it was coded almost from scratch in C++, and the 3D model was taken apart and recombined vertex by vertex, so cut me some slack. Didn't achieve everything I hoped for (read the report for more), but that's life, isn't it? Desire is unlimited, while means are. Simple Ragdoll Physics
I see three days of frantic coding coming up. Oh, and a plug for the best local cartoon I've seen since The Students' Sketchpad ceased production. The next Mr. Kiasu! 
For Great Justice
So United suffered a reverse against Pompey - big deal. They absolutely crushed Roma at Old Trafford this morning. In the words of a neutral on the Man Utd forums - "This game will not guarantee you any trophies, but in your lifetime as football fans, and United fans, you will have very few nights like this. You must remember it, and you must enjoy it." To think I was concerned about Roma holding out for a draw before the match, but once Carrick gave United the early lead there was no looking back. Magnificent Seven It was a game when everything just clicked. The second goal was a display of incredible passing and pace, for example. Pity the Roma goalkeeper, most of it wasn't his fault, but he still had to suffer the ignomity of being beaten seven times. First goal - Carrick (11th minute). Doni slightly off his line, but Carrick picked out the edge of his goal with great precision. Second goal - Smith (17th minute). Defensive error, failure to clear resulting in a favourable one-on-one. Notable for the buildup. Third goal - Rooney (19th minute). Maybe could have leaped out, but it was skipping away from him as seen in the reverse angle. Fourth goal - Ronaldo (44th minute). Probably the goal in which Doni was most at fault for, being beaten at the near post by an admittedly powerful shot. Ronaldo is becoming a "cheat-code" sort of talent, nigh-impossible to mark by a single man, and he knows it too. Infectious confidence and optimism. Fifth goal - Ronaldo (49th minute). Smith was coming through the middle. Nothing to be done. Sixth goal - Carrick (60th minute). I didn't know he could do that. No goalkeeper in the world would have stopped this. Doni collapsed after seeing this one go in. Not his day. Seventh goal - Evra (81st minute). Again at the near post, but just off the inside of the post and Doni was wrong-footed. Not the best goalkeeping, but by then it didn't matter, did it? Roma's scant consolation by De Rossi was pretty neat too, as a further treat for the discerning football connoisseur. Sneak preview of my 3D Game Programming project (starting to enjoy it): 
More to come
I guess I can program pretty quickly when I set my mind to it. Need more energy! And it's one-nil to the Chelski in the early kickoff vs Spurs, where Paul Robinson missed a bread-and-butter save. Yes, yes, I know he can score goals from eighty metres out like he did against Watford, but can't he just lay off the howlers too? By the way, Watford were nailed 1-0 by Chelski last week by a last-minute goal, which neither endeared me to the boys in blue nor offered me a reprieve in my predictions. $2059.25/$2700, but it's drawing to a close. This week: $100 on Man Utd to beat Portsmouth (at 1.43) For those of you with nothing to do: Help raise Singapore's ranking at clickclickclick.com. Not *ahem* dickdickdick.com as someone thought.
4O basketball + soccer. My legs ache. Need much more exercise. Not many days left to my project deadlines, but I guess I'm cool with them now. What can be done, will be done, and if that isn't enough, then that's that. Two of the three are more or less okay anyway. Tolkien as a refuge: "Then all memory of his pain departed from him, and he fell into an enchantment; for Lúthien was the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar. Blue was her raiment as the unclouded heaven, but her eyes were grey as the starlit evening; her mantle was sewn with golden flowers, but her hair was dark as the shadows of twilight." and later... "...More fair than mortal tongue can tell. Though all to ruin fell the world and were dissolved and backwards hurled unmade into the old abyss, yet were its making good, for this - the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea - that Lúthien for a time should be." So was it that on Tolkien's grave, beneath his name, was engraved that of Beren, and beneath his wife's, that of Lúthien; This world needs more stories like that. I am very tired, but happily this time it is simply physical. I shall sleep before twelve for the first time in a long, long while. Goodnight.
- cute stuff - ... eating instant noodles when hungry. Ah, and this. Almost forgot. Hint: Look for the reaching out of teeny paw at 0:20 left for ultimate OMGZZZness!
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