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[ September 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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- academics - Read it and weep...  Then again, it probably isn't hopelessly bad. So... in the short term (up to Friday) - Mug a bit for CS3212, flesh out my mostly-done EC3333 assignment, type up yet another one-pager, but most of all get down to that ORTS Simulator like a man possessed. Next weekend should be fully burnt up on the UROP Literature Review. Two intense days should do it. One night for the Money & Banking midterm should be par for the course from what I see so far, and a few more for Financial Econs is good. The fortnight after that should be more relaxing, with just the one essay (and probably an AI Assignment), though with video editing for MNO1001. That's October for me. Ball sports on 19/26 Oct anyone? Downloaded that academic staple, TeX, a few days ago after my grad student project mate in CS5340 insisted we use it for our report. A good Windows implementation is MikTeX, though it weighs in at 566MB for a complete installation (ouch!). Got TeXnicCenter (4.7MB) as my IDE after that, and it indeed integrated seamlessly with MikTeX and made conversion to PDF a charm. 
Note the ubiquiteous Computer Modern TeX default font, seen in lecture notes and research papers everywhere Joined Facebook (yes, behind the curve again) to browse through some old 4O pics, and ended up experimenting with developing applications for it. The canonical FAQ for Perl development should be this (and it's only four months old!), and it's a pretty good start for the Perl platform. As expected, CPAN has a Perl Facebook API (WWW::Facebook::API), but horror of horrors - I don't have the requisite permissions to install it on my hosted webserver. For pure Perl modules, this doesn't seem to be a problem since one can just copy the directory structure wholesale over to whatever directory your script is in, but this module appears to have additional C dependencies (which I don't have the rights to run either). This would be no issue if I didn't want to have the ability to update an application box on the profile page, but that seems to defeat the purpose of a Facebook app. Undaunted, I delved into the Facebook Developers' Wiki, and after some digging figured out their bare-bones communications protocol at their Authentication Guide page. Essentially, one can bypass the API library by opening a POST connection to their REST server at http://api.facebook.com/restserver.php, and just feeding it the appropriate requests as per a normal web form. For example, to display something in the app's profile box, one would just use the method profile.setFBML by having a parameter method=profile.setFBML, and insert the desired FBML (really just HTML most of the time) in the markup parameter as explained in the API definition. There was a little issue with URL encoding the strings, and sourcing out a pure Perl MD5 hashing function, but once that was done it was a simple matter of using the handy old LWP module that I've been using for quite some time in slurping data off Hattrick and building metasearches (Status: broken due to changes in Google and Yahoo search page HTML formats, ugh). Thus, the moral of the story is that it is fully possible to develop a Facebook app without any special permissions or libraries, though of course it should be much more convenient with access to them. Not a shade on Mel, of course. Those interested can check out my Generic Timewasting RPG app, though it doesn't do much more as of now than roll up and save a character. I'll get onto it in a fortnight (see schedule above). Not too bad for half a day of scrabbling from scratch, I suppose, so I was rather surprised when page 45 of today's Straits Times screamed out Facebook course a hit at Stanford varsity. I dunno, one doesn't really need a course to learn this, but then again that's true for almost everything Computing. You just need Google as your personal bestest friend. On social networking websites in general, I wonder if there's a market for a meta-site that automates registration for every major site at once. And before I forget, I paid the experiment cash to CSQ yesterday. Thanks to all those who flooded my Gmail with Facebook photo tag announcements, too. I really mean it. Thank you all. IFUL. On to EPL previews, Arsenal yawned their way to a complete drubbing of Derby last week at a very generous 250% return to pull me up to $725.90/$850. In the red, but looking up. Nothing so glaringly obvious this week in Round Eight, sadly: Manchester City vs. Newcastle Drawish, but no bet. Portsmouth vs. Reading Home win, Pompey look awfully solid at Fratton Park and Reading are going through a sticky patch. 2-0? Wigan vs. Liverpool Pool have gone from title shoo-ins to being disoriented from all that spinning, thanks to Rafa's Rotations. As a United fan, I should hope for Benitez to muck it up and rest Torres again, but something tells me that he won't be so silly - or will he? Actually, I could be tempted to given the opposition. Twice bitten, thrice shy, though, and Pool should get back to winning ways regardless. 0-2. Chelsea vs. Fulham It's getting mournfully quiet after Mourinho's untimely departure, and United winning a penalty en route to beating the Blues just isn't the same without him. While new coach Avram Grant's wife looks set to stand in as the new media attraction, Grant himself may not be a worthy replacement, not the least because he hasn't even gotten his UEFA Pro License. I sense that Abramovich doesn't really care, though, and is more than happy to have a frontman while he starts off a real-life round of Football Manager. They are likely to remain too strong for Fulham, though. I call it 2-1. Derby vs. Bolton My favourite whipping boys feature again, against a woeful Bolton who have lost all three away games so far. Both desperately need the points, but the moody Anelka - the only player they have between them that I really rate - should make a difference. 0-1 Bolton win. Sunderland vs. Blackburn Two former United legends go head to head as managers. I would say I'll keep clear out of respect, but to be honest I just don't know what to make of this one. 1-1 looks good. West Ham vs. Arsenal The Hammers have a great record against the Gunners, and have been performing pretty well lately, but if Arsenal continue at present levels I don't see history repeating itself. I do see Arsenal chugging along for a while more, so 1-2 to them. Birmingham vs. Manchester United Can't argue with five wins and five clean sheets in a row, even if their reserves got spanked by Coventry. Birmingham are a tough nut as Liverpool found out last week, but watch out for another 1-0 to the United. Can't expect much more the way they are playing now. My Picks: $50 on Portsmouth to beat Reading (at 1.70) $25 on Bolton to beat Derby (2.45) $25 on Liverpool (-1.5) vs. Wigan (2.45)
 The Play Balls session was  Choccy raisins, how decadent. Thanks to you-know-who, and I'll certainly try to pick some up when I next pass by Borders. Which isn't anytime soon.
"Money grow... like a tree" - EC3333 professor
I acknowledge that there may have been some misunderstandings, pertaining to the piecemeal adoption of the tentatively-named IFUL creole, as a consequence of its popularity amongst certain associates. This is a perfectly normal occurance, and a continuation of the progressive trend of modernizing and perfecting the primitive Queen's English, which has before this seen its ultimate expression in standard Singlish. The elegance of a natural language must lie predominantly, if not wholly, in its simplicity, unambiguity and utility. Although I will be the first to admit that obsolete tongues possess a certain quaint charm, the days of backward natives - the noble savages of today - embarrasingly harrumphing their way through criminally awkward and unintuitive sentence constructions are, I regret to say, as over as that of steam-powered counting machines. Compare the sleekness of Singlish compared to its clunky forebear: Ye Olde British English: "Please excuse me, I would like to visit the washroom." Singlish: "I go toilet." It does not take a language specialist to conclude that an inferior lingo that expends several times the effort of a modern language to convey the same meaning will eventually be replaced, as its aged adherents die out without passing their knowledge on to their descendants, who know better. Sentimentalist that I am, I'll probably even shed a tear when the last native English speaker moves on to the next world, but at least technology should ensure that its legacy will be carried on in some dusty hard drive archive somewhere, when that happens. But Singlish is no longer the cutting edge, as some of the undeniably bright undergraduates of one of the top research centres of the world - the National University of Singapore - have been observed to be conversing amongst themselves with a wonderfully efficient offshoot, IFUL. Although details are sketchy, some facts are available. 
So simple even bunnies can pick it up (Original pic) Firstly, IFUL takes compactness to a whole new level by encapsulating the breadth of possible human experience into four basic sounds - I "[ahy]" as a reference to the self, U "[yoo]" as a reference to some/all other humans, FARK "[fahk]" as an all-purpose noun-pronoun-adjective-verb-adverb-preposition-conjunction-interjection which, with subtly different pronunciation may encompass any existing or yet-to-be object or idea, while the final sound LAH "[lah]" provides a poetic richness of emotional modifiers to speech. Like Italian, much of IFUL may derive from accompanying physical cues, a largely underexploited goldmine of expressive possibilities that more stuffy languages have ignored to their detriment. Observe: British English: "Hello, good morning, how are you today?" IFUL: "I fark u lah?" (Cheery tone, lighthearted "fark", gentle "u", politely questioning "lah") British English: "I am fine, thank you." IFUL: "I fark u lah." (Slightly rapid enunciation for a stock response, obliging "lah") British English: "I am glad to hear that. Would you be so kind as to return me the fifty dollars I lent you yesterday?" IFUL: "I fark u lah?" (Neutral, firm insistent tone, mildly sharp "fark", clipped "lah") British English: "I am sorry, but I do not recall myself ever borrowing money from you." IFUL: "I fark u lah." (Controlled but hostile overall mood, curt "fark", hint of finality in "lah") British English: "I am not pleased to hear that." IFUL: "I FARK U LAH." (Self explanatory) Somewhere around this point, the outmoded traditions of English public schools would mandate a hard punch in the jaw without warning; They might not get too far here, though, since the locally developed equivalent - a kick in the balls without warning - is an improvement both in speed and in effect. The sun has certainly set on the formerly Great Britain. An additional advantage of IFUL is that advanced speakers can choose to make themselves completely incomprehensible to non-advanced speakers, by barely perceptible nuances that recall the nobility of Paul Atreides' gift of conveying intention by a single glance, or alternatively resorting to the abbreviated Atreides Battle Tongue. Ah, for the subtle hauteur of Fremen poise... On to materialism now, while keeping my soles warm and comfy on a $3 made-in-Egypt white Näckten floor mat that my parents got me when we were at IKEA. Bashing materialism is all well and fashionable, but buying stuff has to be good up to a point - and I've not done my part for the economy for some time. It's been over a year since I got my last pair of shoes, and I suddenly got an irrational craving for a new pair. So... 
adidas Bracara IV IN (Black/Silver), UK size 9.5 Went back to the same Queensway Shopping Centre outlet, to realise that they just don't make football boots in sober black anymore. In a twist on the old Henry Ford line, "the customer can have any colour he wants... so long as it's not black". You can have canary yellow, obsidian blue cum metallic platinum, white and gold, silver grass or just about any combination of maroon, orange, lime green and bronze, but just not mostly black. Okay, I exaggerate, but seriously it seems that only a tiny handful of boots are over 70% black nowadays, and just as seriously an equally tiny handful of casual players have the skill to carry off flashy boots. Whites, maybe even deep reds, are still fine, but chances are if you're not Ronaldo or Henry stuff like yellow or electric blue won't fit. Also, I plan for my indoor boots to do double duty as casual wear, and they don't cut it for that either. Black doesn't show up as much dirt, too. The Bracaras were the sharpest-looking pair in my opinion (and as a bonus they actually bore some resemblance to "proper" old-school boots), so I took them. I had actually resolved to try out a non-adidas product, but oh well. They felt extremely solid and durable (as is my experience for adidas), and were fairly priced and fit snugly to boot. 
Frustratingly there seemed to be no information on this particular line, so it was only through some research that I found that it was the low-end version of the Aveiros (Aveiros [high-end] - Leiras [mid-end] - Bracaras [low-end], in the same way as say Absolute [high-end] - Absolion [mid-end] - Absolado [low-end]). Fine by me, I'm not shelling out several hundred for true leather boots anytime soon. But what are the Aveiros? They appear to be boots from adidas' flagship Predator line, without the extra stuff like the rubber vamps. I managed to trace the Bracara III back to the Aveiro III and the Pulse, but the Bracara IV has laces in the middle (another rarity in this day), so I'm not sure which model influenced it. Imaginary Punting Round Seven. Only got Sunderland to beat Reading right last time around, so $525.90/$750. Not too unexpected given all were long odds, and I can count myself lucky I forgot to place one on Newcastle vs Derby, as Derby actually won. Repeat after me: Football, bloody game. There's only really one option that jumps out at me today though, and it's: $80 on Arsenal (-2.5) vs. Derby (at 2.50) I hate to say it, but Arsenal are looking like the imperious United of last season right now, and three goals is what can reasonably be expected. Liverpool's odds are far too short against Birmingham, and for the rest I may as well flip a coin. Wait, there's also... $20 on Manchester City to beat Fulham (2.75)
...again not scared. Actually, I just figured that mugging too much for the graduate Artificial Intelligence module wasn't going to help much, given that it's an unrestricted open-book quiz. So I reckoned, why not collect my impressions of the course and post them, in part organizing my own thoughts? The A.I. of A.I. is still extremely far off (assuming that any top-secret underground government or evil-corporation research labs haven't made any fundamental breakthroughs), and as of now we are more interested in far simpler representations, for the reason that they are at least useful. This module focuses on Bayesian networks, which despite its unpromising pedigree of combining a celebrated mathematician's name with a technical term remains quite accessible - in the beginning at least. Cut to the bone, Bayesian networks are just formal representations of dependencies between events. Before I lose anyone, here's a real-life example: Let's say you have a friend, Kok, who sometimes invites people (such as Che B.) to his place to play mahjong. As might be imagined, Che B. is far more likely to drop by invited than uninvited - we observe that he goes to play nine days out of ten when Kok asks him to, and only one day out of a hundred when he is not asked. We also know that Kok has about an even chance of asking Che B. and other friends to play mahjong each day (ya they are very hiong). Now, we can use some shorthand and let K be the event that Kok talks, and C be the event that Che B. plays mahjong. Clearly, whether C (Che B. plays mahjong) happens depends very much on K (Kok talks). We show this in a Bayesian Network by simply drawing two circles to represent K and C, and an arrow from K to C since K directly affects C (i.e. C is conditional on K). 
Thus, "if Kok can talk, Che B. can play mahjong" Please do not misinterpret this as saying that C can only happen when K happens. It only says that K happening or not may make a difference on how likely C is to happen. We can state exactly how likely as follows: 
With probability information In probability theory, the probability of any event E is written as P(E). If that event is bound to happen, P(E) has a value of 1. If that event is impossible, P(E) has a value of 0. In reality, most events fall somewhere in between - as may be expected, events that are as likely to happen as not to happen, like flipping a fair coin and getting heads, have a value of 0.5. E' refers to E not happening, such that P(E') = 1-P(E). Finally, P(E|F) refers to the probability of E happening if F happens. So, from the above (very simple) Bayesian network, one can derive a number of results. Say that, without knowing if Kok has talked today, we want to estimate how likely Che B. is to go over for mahjong. The Bayesian network tells us that Kok has been known to be equally likely to talk as not to talk, so we can base our prediction on that and weigh our decision evenly on his having talked. In this case, P(C) is P(C|K)P(K) + P(C|K')P(K'), which may be translated as "the chance that Che B. plays mahjong, is equal to the [chance that Che B. plays mahjong given that Kok talks multiplied by the chance that Kok talks] plus the [chance that Che B. plays mahjong given that Kok does not talk multiplied by the chance that Kok does not talk]". Logical? So it is (0.5*0.9)+(0.5*0.01)=0.455. Now say that we know that Kok has talked today. Then we can ignore the possibility that he has not talked, and evaluate Che B.'s mahjong chances as 1*0.9 = 0.9 (i,e, 90%). We can even go backwards and compute the chance that Kok has talked depending on Che B. being observed to play mahjong. Intuitively, Che B. playing mahjong is a very strong hint that he has been asked by Kok; More rigorously, we can use Bayes' Rule to calculate the exact value for P(K|C) using P(C), P(K) and P(C|K), which turns out to be about 0.989 - this makes sense since we know that Che B. drops by uninvited only about 1% of the time. Yes, I know what you're probably thinking now - so what?! So let us say that whether a mahjong game actually happens depends on having sufficient players, who each have their own probabilities of turning up depending on Kok talking: 
Enter Ah Seng, Bunny and Dick ...And now they influence each other on whether to go or not - Ah Seng threatens Che B., Dick calls up Bunny, and Bunny is also notified by Che B. 
Eh, mai like that, come leh! More of the same, and it quickly balloons far beyond human comprehension: 
Siao liao So here's where the indefatigable computers come in, and A.I. researchers earn their keep. Short excerpt The titular Twelve Angry Men came from a 1957 movie about twelve men deliberating about whether to send a man to the gallows for murder. I got to watch it for MNO, and it's one of the most riveting I've ever watched, never mind that there was no action and that almost all its one and a half hour length took part in a small jury room. All pure acting and characterization. It is fully deserving of its 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, they really don't make them like they did any more. The kid in the movie might actually be guilty, though, and the question of reasonable doubt and justice arises - is it better to punish one innocent man together with a hundred (or whatever number of) guilty ones, or let them all go free? Another day...
The first midterm test/quiz is on the coming Tuesday, and I'll be lucky if I manage to go over my notes properly by the end of today. Bo bian, ¡No Máf! ¡No Máf! For destressing, watching some YouTube videos with pretty high production values may help - ever wondered what happened to the Street Fighter characters after they heyday in the 90s? Street Fighter - The Later Years [2] [3] [4] obliges. Singapore could do with more TV ads from Thailand too - see this and this and this and this. It's an EPL weekend after the Euro qualifiers, where Steve McClaren's England finally redeemed themselves. As for my own predictions, all I can say is that at least the updating was a breeze, given that last time round was a wipeout. $468.40/$650 after Round Six. Skipping the previews and getting into the meat. Yes, it's long-shot week: $25 on Man Utd (-1.5) vs. Everton (at 2.90) $25 on Liverpool (-1.5) vs. Portsmouth (2.50) $25 on Tottenham to draw Arsenal (3.10) $25 on Sunderland to beat Reading (2.30)
- current events - ...I also not scared. No lah, talk cock only. But lets start with a personal observation in the morning. Issue: Cyclists on Footpaths So I was waiting at the busstop before 8 a.m. on a made-for-sleeping-in rainy Saturday morning, when a standing guy put his hand out to hail the incoming No. 198 bus, nearly knocking down a cyclist wearing a raincoat who had his head bowed down. The cyclist teetered on the edge of the pavement before going over the kerb, but managed to regain control before saying something not exactly very nice and continuing on his way. In Singapore, I believe cyclists legally belong on the roads. Not long ago, though, there was an initiative to allow them on the pedestrian footpaths. Not that cyclists, in my neighbourhood at least, ever really cared about that particular rule; For every one of them I see dutifully keeping left on the tarmac, there are probably four or more who just go about their merry way on the pavement and ring their bells at walkers to let them pass. One can understand why they are reluctant to pedal on the roads, where having heavy vehicles continually whizz by them a hair's breadth away, at sixty kilometres an hour or more, can be a harrowing experience. Since the lanes here don't have that much allowance to begin with, this may cause motorists to regard them with frustration sometimes too - at least the ones who bother to moderate their speed when close to a cyclist. Unfortunately, I get the sense that they are equally unwelcome on the pavements, which are again often too narrow for the cyclist to overtake when a single person walks in the middle of it. Essentially, they are caught between two speeds - too slow for the roads, yet rather too fast for the footpaths. It may not be an issue during off-peak hours where there are few pedestrians, but during the morning rush where they have to more or less herd walkers out of the way every ten metres, I wonder about the point of riding at all. Speaking of walking, I quite often observe that even if one keeps right to the side of the pavement, incoming groups approaching in the opposite direction all too often refuse to let one pass despite knowing well in advance. Okay, so it is debatable whether being in a big group confers the privilege of maintaining a four-abreast formation across the length of the pavement, but my own opinion is that it is quite a cock thing to do, so on principle I just continue straight on hugging the edge; Somehow I also notice that a mixed group (containing some girls) is far more likely to proactively let a lone guy through on the side. Maybe it's just a primitive game of chicken hardwired into our instincts. But back to the wet Saturday morning. The reason for going to the campus was a Bafa-Bafa simulation run by the MNO class. Since the rules don't appear to be freely available on the Internet already, I won't spoil it for those of you whom may experience it in the future. Some interesting game theory implications, though. This year's edition of Splashdown (renamed Swim+Save) was on right after the simulation, but I decided to give it a miss this time around. Next year maybe. An invitation to a Monetary Authority of Singapore "Talent Attraction Event" got me again considering my exact career path for the first time in a while. I'll be the first to admit that I am not sure precisely what I want to do, but even this potential opportunity to work for a "big governmental organization" (accurate enough, roughly speaking) got my grandma pretty excited. Since my uncles have been in Singapore Airlines and the Air Force respectively for decades, and my slightly younger cousin has an MOE Teaching Scholarship, it's not hard to see why she may think that it would be a great job. In response, I guess I may have to subtly tank the interview if it gets to that stage. Then again, I could be singing a different tune after I graduate (which isn't that far away) and get to know what the marketplace thinks of the merits of Computer Science and Economics degrees. It's just that I think taking a job without being reasonably passionate about it is a lose-lose for both myself and the employer. Something just doesn't feel right about declaring an opening to be your "dream job" and going all starry-eyed when it isn't, which is why I haven't done that in any interviews so far - Someday, however, having to earn my own keep might push me over the line from polite enthusiasm to that :) Issue: Legal Fees Today's Straits Times reported the sad circumstances of a primary school teacher who was awarded $188 for damage sustained by his motorbike in 2004, but had the verdict overturned since the other party's lawyers managed to argue that the ex-PRDC (now e@dr) was not a true court and thus the order was invalid. Fair enough, perhaps, but the kicker is that the appeal cost $63000 - and guess who is liable to pay? Anyone with a modicum of sense should be able to see that having to cough up such a sum for what is by all accounts a perfectly trivial matter is quite ridiculous - I don't think the teacher had much say in how pricey the lawyers his opponent had engaged were. Then there's the famous Ricky Bodine case in the USA. There are several versions floating about on the Internet, and depending on which one believes, Bodine was "...a recent graduate who fell through a skylight on the roof of his alma mater", or a burglar who fell after stealing a floodlight. Likely both are true - it's just that the devil's in the details, and in my search for a definitive version I found a document on the case on UC Berkeley's law website. If one skips to page thirteen of that document, it appears agreed that Bodine was indeed involved in burglary. So, although he was in the process of stealing from a property, and got to the gym roof by climbing ledges - not particularly a standard mode of access, and fell through a skylight and hurt himself, he still managed to claim US$260000 (and that in the early 80s) and a monthly stipend of US$1200. Maybe it was harsh that he became a spastic quadriplegic for petty crime, but I would say that it's hardly the school's fault he got into this mess. At least a judge didn't manage to win his US$54 million lawsuit for a lost pair of trousers. Moral of the story: What's right may not be lawful, what's lawful may not be right. Nothing new, I know, I know. Hmm, speeding things up... Issue: CAP S/U Okay, the background here is that NUS is reviewing its policy of allowing students to assign Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory (S/U) grades to their modules only around mid-semester and not after. In a nutshell, S/U-ing a module makes it such that its final grade does not count towards the computation of a student's CAP, which in turn determines the student's degree class; Ideally, this would allow students to pursue modules in which they are not necessarily good, but do have interest in, without worrying that a bad result would pull their grades down. Of course, using the S/U option cuts both ways - if the student in fact aces the module and gets an A+, his CAP will not be raised either; But in general, knowing that, students will put less effort in modules that they have S/U-ed, in essence allowing themselves an easier ride. Now, NUS has proposed that incoming freshmen (and later cohorts) will be allowed to exercise the S/U option after receiving their results. In effect, they would be able to drop their three worst non-major requirement scores, eliminating the risk of wasting one of their their three S/U opportunities on a module they actually did relatively well in. Current students, on the other hand, would stick with the old system. Predictably, there was a great hoo-hah. A sampling of (non-freshmen) responses on the official forums to discuss the matter follows (My own comments in bold): "Fair - all or none!" "We take the same modules, why not the same S/U?" "Discriminated" "I doubt our concerns will be taken into consideration... so much for Top 20" "We ([Faculty] Year 3 students) strongly agree that seniors should be applied to the new policy!!!" (Glad to see that this student took the effort to poll so many of his peers) "Fairness for all" "I am already pretty upset that [Faculty] Year 1 students are preallocated modules... It already tipped the scales and made it severely unbalanced." (Hm... perhaps their competition for module registration is really really strong) "We pay school fees just like they do... Frankly the only difference between seniors and Year 1 students are our ages. And that is an unacceptable reason for not being allowed to use the new S/U option, just because I was born earlier than my juniors..." (Refer to * - also, I'm not sure if the school fees paid are exactly the same...) "Why should Year 1 be so privileged!!!" "Do not even think of using the phrase that 'nothing is fair in this world' as an excuse, because the situation now is far from fair but unjust, ridiculous and unreasonable." (Score one for the preemptive strike! But if 'nothing is fair in this world' is a catchall argument, isn't this sort of a catchall rebuttal?) The freshies were quite a bit less vocal, though it may have had more to do with their unfamiliarity with the forums than of any selfishness on their part. An NUS law student has said his piece on the issue, and I tend to mostly concur. His third point that the "S/U option is a matter of policy, not of principle or right" is an interesting one for me, though. Suppose now that NUS has decided that average grades have risen too fast, and that it does not want to fall prey to the grade inflation that has plagued other universities. So, to maintain the value of good honours classifications, they implement a policy that current graduating students have their CAPs cut by 0.25 across the board (or equivalently raise all honours class requirements by 0.25). As a policy, I believe that it is well within the rights of the university to do this, but the screams of bloody murder that would echo around its world-class halls would dwarf anything that has happened due to the current real-life S/U issue. The point here is that very few things are cast-in-stone rights, but many things are certainly unfair. The reduction in NSF service period has been cited both in the above blog post and on the forums, with the intention of illustrating that sometimes total fairness and improvement cannot coexist (reminds me of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle); The basic idea is that whenever some improved policy is put into effect that, it will always be unfair to prior batches. Or will it? Indeed, seniors and juniors compete in the same modules, and probably in the same job market - and the difference between a second upper and a second lower is not a small one, at least in the civil service. An extra few hundred bucks per month from the start can add up. But I would surmise that the impact of S/Us is just one of very many unknowns. The difficulty of a module may vary quite significantly from one semester to the next. The percentage of As and other grades awarded by various professors may differ. And so on. Heck, even finding the percentage of each cohort in each honours classification has been a huge challenge for me (anyone with any publicly-available hard figures, please inform me). And I don't see any protests on the behalf of the last batch of graduates, who must be just as adversely affected. There have been quite a lot of comments that "administrative complications should not prevent senior students from being able to reassign their old S/Us", but nothing on inviting the seniors' own beloved seniors back to possibly upgrade their own degrees too. The fact that frankly, the only difference between those graduates and current seniors is their age has conveniently flown over everyone's heads. All I can say is, 人不为己, 天珠地灭 (Approximate Translation: The day when people do not look out for themselves, the heavens and earth will be destroyed). For all the arguments about fairness, it is mostly just dressed-up self-interest made to sound more noble, but no less natural or justified for that. If the situation were reversed and the S/U option slated to be totally removed, I wonder how many seniors would lift a finger to their keyboards to fight on the behalf of their disadvantaged juniors. Not nearly as many, I would expect. Then again, I fully expect all this sound and fury to signify nothing, the policy to be pushed through, and the uproar quickly forgotten. So nothing is fair in this world - just suck on it. Just in case any of you were wondering, I personally don't give a beep about this. Haven't used any S/Us, don't plan to. * Good opportunity for a joke on discrimination and affirmative action (USA context): A manager called in his four employees and informed them sorrowfully that due to declining business conditions, he would have to let one of them go. Black guy: I'm black, you can't dismiss me. Woman: I'm female. 50 year-old: You fire me, and I'll have an age discrimination lawsuit on you so fast your head will spin. They all look at the last employee, an average white male. Guy (hopefully): Ermmmmm.... I'm gay? Issue: Inflation The Old Chang Kee curry puff (OCKCP) on campus has risen from S$0.90 to S$1.00. Certain burgers seem to have silently diminished to a healthier, smaller size too. Note to self: Investigate how Singapore's official inflation rate is determined purely out of academic interest. Issue: Online privacy By now, you must have heard of the ODEX saga, summarised here. I won't go into discussions about whether suing primary school kids for thousands of dollars without warning is acceptable, or turning to pirated fansubs is justified if the official version has shitty dubbing at a high price. Instead, I will just touch on local ISP attitudes towards consumer privacy. First, ODEX approached SingNet, and by all accounts got the information they wanted without much hassle. A district judge wrote that they did not even bother to send lawyers to court to contest the order. Doesn't sound good, does it? The PR rearguard action came later, when SingNet claimed that "it did not "consent" to demands... to hand over [subscriber details]". Technically, that's probably true. Their attitude, as far as I can see, was that they needed a court order. And they got it, not by "consent" but by "complete absence of dissent". Although the order presumably ran directly counter to the interests of their valued customers, they just threw in the towel before the bell and fulfilled their legal obligations. Starhub was next. They didn't win their case, but at least they sent their own lawyers to fight it. Finally, they went for the smallest ISP, Pacific Internet. PacNet won. I'm staying on PacNet for the foreseeable future. Issue: Ten Twenty Something trivial to finish up. The line references "You come ten twenty men I also not scared", slightly altered from the "You come ten twenty men I also dun scared ah" in the infamous Bangla vs Ah Beng conversation (full transcript). Its can-do spirit resonated with some of my friends, who invoke it regularly even today. Come to think of it, a long time ago it was "I give you ten (twenty) years to prepare". "Ten-twenty X" has a nice ring about it, and I realised that in a rather unlikely place - Felice Benuzzi's No Picnic on Mount Kenya. There is a sentence: "... When any book enters the barracks, it is assaulted by ten, twenty men hungry for reading matter". Déjà vu! Across long years, some phrases are just meant to be rediscovered again and again.
- current events - I think I'll submit myself as a poster boy for anti-punting campaigns. Tottenham to beat Fulham was in the bag, with them comfortably up 3-1 after an hour much as I expected. Then Fulham pulled one back, no biggie - and then in the 90th minute they get busted again. I have absolutely no sympathy for their plight whatsoever. This week's Management & Organisation tutorial class had us building a contraption to safely receive an egg dropped from about two metres, out of twenty drinking straws and as much masking tape as we had brought; I did some reading beforehand but mistakenly prepared for the more common variation that had the contraption travelling with the egg (that was all I could infer from "Young Chickens In Space"), so our group had just twenty minutes to conceptualize and build the device from scratch. The four groups came out with varied designs, but in the end all did the job. 
1. Cradle-like 2. Suspension legs 3. Triangular (pretty small target area) 4. Two-layered basket (ours) By the way, an intriguing solution for the version where the device contains the egg is by just stuffing the egg pointy side down into a newspaper cone (filling the space beneath it with some soft padding beforehand), perhaps with fins on the cone to guide it into spinning when it falls - The idea is that although the egg will impact the ground hard, the force will be evenly distributed around the circumference of the shell, which would be strong enough to handle it. That beats the usual parachutes for freshness. Next up, the NSF rifleman armed with SAR 21 at Cathay Cineleisure Orchard saga. Feels almost surreal - an automatic rifle outside an army camp in Singapore? I can't even recall the last local firearms case. Strict gun laws do have their upsides. It was reported that he was apprehended dressed to the nines in a suit and tie, so some style points there. Dunno what was going through his mind, especially since he was due to ORD in a month anyway. Sad case. Not sure why the media can't seem to find any other photo of him, though. This incident reminded me of a dilemma posed by an army friend during some guard duty of our own - if your prowling buddy goes mad and threatens to shoot you with his rifle, what can you do? If you don't shoot first you may be dead, but if you do it's your word against a dead guy. Classic lose-lose situation. Managed to squeeze in some sketching/painting recently, and I've moved on from being blender-brush only to airbrush. Currently partway done, but of what? Figure it out yourself :) 
Solve the Jigsaw
Tutorials have started, and I'm just about keeping my head above water in assignments and such. Got a rude awakening when I saw COM4 printed by my name on an attendance sheet - I'm a fourth-year student already! Granted, I was a first-year student for just one semester, but it still all seems so... fast. Actually, I should be ahead of time given that I haven't done too much for my UROP yet - surely, I'll feel bleeping bad if I show up in front of my project advisor in a fortnight with nothing concrete again. Furthermore there seems to be some overlap in the Econs modules I'm taking, but the graduate-level AI module is worryingly reminiscent of math. Watched The Bourne Ultimatum with my old JC class on Thursday night; The plot was implausibly linear compared to my vague impression of the novels, and Ludlum's novels in general, and indeed I confirmed when I got home that the film had as much in common with the novel as Snow White has with Lord of the Rings. There's the main character role, and there's a story, but other than that the producers could have slapped on some other title had their right to the Bourne franchise been revoked for any reason, changed some names, and no one would have been any the wiser. For all that, it was an enjoyable action film, and they were even kind enough to definitively confirm that Bourne survived the final ten-storey plunge into water - prepare for the further milking of Bourne in a couple of years. For the curious, applying some secondary school physics indicates that his body would likely have hit the water surface at about 90km/h (first sub into d=gt^2/2, then v=gt), with said water surface acting pretty much like a brick wall. Bourne didn't even have good form plunging down, but as far as suspension of disbelief goes in thriller movies, this is pretty tame. I also had a nagging feeling that the CIA Deputy Head played by David Strathairn resembled someone. It took me some time, but... 
Face/off Not quite on the level of Rafa Benitez and Kevin Spacey (inset), but there may be a lesson here - wanna be a big shot football manager? It helps to look like a movie star. Or is it the other way around...? As I'm gently blending this post into soccer (again), here's another New Paper humour tidbit: One day, a husband was driving his wife back home from a party. His wife noticed that he seemed uncharacteristically grumpy, and asked whether anything was wrong out of concern. "No, everything's all right." the husband replied somewhat abruptly and coldly, and continued driving in silence. Wife's thoughts: What has got into him? He was so upbeat for most of the party - could it be due to me spending too much time with my friends there? Perhaps he's still upset at my mother turning up unannounced again? Or maybe he got fired from his job. Yes, that may be it, he's been complaining about work for ages... Where will we live if that happens? Or is it an affair? Oh my, it must be! What am I going to do? Does he still love me? Ohnoohnoohno... Husband's thoughts: DAMN IT, MANCHESTER UNITED LOST AGAIN!!! Round Four: $214/$150, which updates the cumulative total to $468.40/$550. Got everything but Chelsea last time around, and held off putting anything on Boro vs. Newcastle on Sunday, fortunately. Round Five, Saturday 1 September 2007: 1. Newcastle vs. Wigan 2. Reading vs. West Ham 3. Fulham vs. Tottenham 4. Bolton vs. Everton 5. Liverpool vs. Derby 6. Middlesbrough vs. Birmingham 7. Man Utd vs. Sunderland Newcastle vs. Wigan 2-0. Sounds right. Reading vs. West Ham Last season, this tie ended in a 6-0 hiding for West Ham, the largest margin of victory for that campaign. I don't see anything remotely like that happening again, but Reading may well retain a psychological advantage from that. I call it 2-1, but a draw's not unlikely. Fulham vs. Tottenham Value match of the week? Spurs have good reason to be furious at not having gotten a point at least from Old Trafford, and Fulham's no Manchester United even on their current form. 2.07 for Spurs to get a simple win is mouth-watering, given that Fulham have lost three of their four so far - 4.20 for them to win by two or more is a real siren call too, but let's not get greedy here, shall we? Verdict: No-brainer, I'll back Tottenham for the away victory. 0-2. Bolton vs. Everton Now what can I say about these guys? I can't predict their adventures for nuts, but both expert advice and history point to a draw. 1-1 it is, devoid of any confidence. Liverpool vs. Derby The 1.13 on Liverpool to prevail might almost be considered a guaranteed overnight interest rate of 13%, given Pool's red-hot form and Derby's consistent woefulness. The obvious alternative is the half-goal, but Pools have been given a -2.5 handicap to earn 2.35. Perhaps worth it, but there is an option to create a 2.00 wager on three or four goals by picking both equally at 4.00. I'll have a small one on that punt, and call it 3-0 to Liverpool. Middlesbrough vs. Birmingham Um. No comment. 1-0 Boro. Man Utd vs. Sunderland A very thin 1.17 on a home victory, and 1.55 on the half goal. Not the best value to be had, but Sunderland have hit a very bad patch and are there for the taking. United fans will probably take any number of 1-0 wins right now, but surely the low-scoring streak should break soon. 2-0, again worth putting a bit on. $60 on Tottenham to beat Fulham (at 2.07) $10 on three goals in Liverpool vs. Portsmouth (4.00) $10 on four goals in Liverpool vs. Portsmouth (4.00) $20 on Man Utd (-1.5) vs. Sunderland (1.55)
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