|
[ February 2008 ] | |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
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       |
|
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: 315 (40 mobile) all-time page views: 3403344 most viewed entry: 18739 views most commented entry: 14 comments number of entries: 1228 page created Sun Jul 20, 2025 21:08:38 |
|
- 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] |
|
- 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 |
| ||
|
"FIFA is like the United Nations - but has more members and is more powerful." - Sepp Blatter, FIFA President. He does have a point. Was in a computing lab at the basement when this happened (another report). The accident actually got the top half of the front page of The Straits Times, which may put the state of safety on the island into perspective. Didn't remember hearing anything, but then again the basement of COM1 is seriously soundproofed - no handphone reception either. Discovered SCIgen, an Automatic CS Paper Generator for when I need to smoke something quickly in the future. Okay, it probably won't work with any professor worth his sodium chloride, but the attraction of just typing in one's name for a plausible paper (at least to laymen) is there. For the unconvinced, read my painstakingly researched paper on the simulation of randomized algorithms. About as level as it can be: $2309.75/$2300 going into the final third of the season. This calls for some fluttering on Derby and United. $50 on Wigan to beat Derby (at 1.60) - Self-explanatory $50 on Man Utd (-1.5) vs Newcastle (2.30) - Newcastle haven't won in five games, but they are still a big enough side to raise themselves for this. Unlikely though
- + hamsters - In lieu of five thousand words, I offer the following five pictures (and a video as a bonus):  (Probably belongs to the previous post). Note the closeness of the espoused positions. This led me to recalled a pertinent quote from Alvin Toffler's Powershift, by Ronald Reagan's chief aide Lee Atwater: "You will hear a lot in the coming months about the Reagan Revolution, the headlines will be full of the tremendous changes Reagan plans to introduce. Don't believe them. Reagan does want to make a lot of changes. But the reality is, he won't be able to. Jimmy Carter pushed the 'system' five degrees in one direction. If we here work very hard and are extremely lucky, Reagan may be able to push it five degrees in the opposite direction. That's what the Reagan Revolution is really about." Obama, hear that? The relative closeness of political positions can admit an economic explanation - imagine a straight waterfront or beach, with people evenly distributed along its length - if you were an ice cream vendor with a mobile cart, where would you place it to get the most sales? Yes, that's right, smack in the middle. Now enter another vendor - where would he place his cart to grab the maximum amount of sales? Right next to you, that's where, assuming that customers have a preference for the cart closest to them. If the political spectrum can be roughly said to have a single axis, then the corollary of the ice cream example is obvious - parties will park themselves in a centrist position to get the votes. Even with two axes as shown above, the middle ground is still the most fertile, especially as the mass of opinions are going to be situated there rather than being equally sparse everywhere. (Also probably belongs to the previous post). N.B. there were some who got the full marks in my case:  To those who think NUS is stuffy, I offer countervailing evidence in the form of this:  We got ten million bucks in "Ben" (that's our prof) money to "vote" for good project proposals in a Saturday pitching session, and while sadly the scheme couldn't be followed through due to time constraints, they still made good souvenirs of the event. The initial plan was to give the money to each presenting group after they said their piece, but of course this was a bit problematic as the later presenters might indeed be the best, but all the cash might have been given out before then; The obvious solution would be to wait till everybody was done, but then some presentations may have been forgotten (then again, those probably wouldn't deserve the cash anyway). If we had only a single ten million dollar note, this could be considered as a form of the secretary problem (may have covered it on this blog already, but what the heck). And on the subject of cash, the plastering of Google Adsense on this blog has finally paid out:   Thanks for the support, folks :) Please do continue clicking on them if they honestly interest you. The hamster thanks you too, as you are indirectly funding his star-shaped treats:
- academics - Just to complete the very brief USA presidential candidate roundup. See also more comprehensive comparisms of their stands. Barack Hussien Obama Pros:
Pros:
Already getting swamped by academic stuff in the first half of the semester, not that surprising given that each module has some sort of project or presentation attached - at least one's over already. Doing lab marking has lifted my estimation of teachers, as it turns out that it is rather time-consuming, assuming that it is to be done well. <.> so theres no actual incentive to mark to a good standard nothing except.. duty. conscience. academic spirit. blah blah <g!ys> yeah Generally all the students knew what they were doing, just that they don't really follow output formatting to the letter (or more accurately, character) just yet - so only a relatively small portion got full marks (N.B. Lab assignment marks don't count in this module, they are just practice for the lab exam). A bit surprised at the reaction a primary school relief teacher got when he posted several "star" essays on his blog, though. While not in the absolute best of taste, there was probably a negligible chance that the kids involved would stumble upon their masterworks (though the public nature of the Internet has been debated in the Wee Shu Min case), and he didn't mention any names - so how little can he quote verbatim before he gets hauled up? Then again, if I got something like this (from SgForums), I would have to publish it for posterity:  Pure Undistilled Genius A Norwegian with one left peg, a crippled Aussie and a hardworking but luckless Dutchman walk into a bar. The barman (a Liverpool fan) says, "Is this some kind of a joke?" The focus here is on United though, as they recovered in splendid fashion to gun down Arsenal by four to nothing. It was a day when Darren Fletcher played like Ronaldo, which explains a lot. Nani got plenty of attention by giving a trial preview of Kerlon's seal dribble towards the end, but for me the move of the game was Anderson's backheeled nutmeg - does that guy ever give up possession cheaply? And how was that a foul, by the way?  Coincidentally the nutmeg is considered a pretty big insult especially in South America, but then, like stepovers, they don't win the game by themselves, do they? Funny moment of the game was Adebayor's swan dive:  Yes, yes, Ronaldo does them too, but this was just woefully bad - and at four goals down too, what's the point?
- art - My two-day week turned into five days this week due to various project commitments, but I insisted on doing something for myself:  Fanart, rough sketch of Kongo Agon, Eyeshield 21 Probably a lot of drawing coming up for the Facebook final project...
- current events - A short and shallow commentary on the just-past Super Tuesday in American politics, and while as Sumiko Tan in today's Sunday Times' Lifestyle section says "Not that it matters one bit whether I in Singapore do or do not (like Hillary Clinton)...", control of what is still the world's only superpower will surely affect us all. But first, what is Super Tuesday? Okay, we have two main parties in the USA - the Republicans (or GOP, Grand Old Party), and the Democrats. Others like the Greens and Libertarians do exist, but they don't really count in the big scheme of things. The US of A is comprised of fifty states (thus the United States part), and in each of them the Republicans and Democrats hold primaries, elections where prominent politicians try and convince the common man to support them in getting the party's nomination to run for President, so that one fine day the common man can vote for them in the actual Presidential election. These primaries are held over months, but Super Tuesday sees nearly half the states hold some primary or other, hence the name. All this is a huge simplification, of course - Firstly, the US of A has non-state territories too. Secondly, each state offers a different number of delegates, generally proportional to population, who then directly do the voting for candidacy at the national convention, and may award those delegates either by proportion of common-man votes won (for Democrats) or in a winner-take-all system (sometimes for Republicans). Thirdly, the delegates are sometimes not bound to vote for the candidate they official represent (though this rarely happens). Fourthly, about 20% of the delegates are superdelegates, party bigwigs who are not offered through the electoral system but vote who whomever they damn well choose. The date where primary elections is also important since earlier primaries act as signals and states who hold their primaries late can often be ignored politically if a candidate already has the nomination tied up (see the frontloading effect), and some states (Michigan and Florida for the Democrats) have indeed tried to increase their influence by unilaterally moving their primary dates forwards, which caused their delegates to be discounted (though the winner in both states, Clinton, isn't too eager to let them go just yet). Now, after all that dust has settled, the reality is that the next President of the United States, barring some miracle, will be one of three people - Hillary Rodham Clinton (Democratic), Barack Hussein Obama (Democratic) or John McCain (Republican). Here's my personal take on the former, to be continued: Hillary Rodham Clinton Pros:
$25 on Chelsea to draw Liverpool (at 2.95) - Pool a big-game hunter? Not so far in the league, but they can start now. $25 on one goal in Chelsea vs Liverpool (3.80) - A hedge. $25 on Draw-Home (4.50) - Another hedge.
Used the RBR (Reserve Books/Readings) Section at the NUS Central Library for the first time today (the third day of CNY). Not too complicated really - drop bag, pop in, grab book, checkout, pop next door to photocopy relevant chapters, return book in the slot, repeat for next book/reading. I think I managed a couple of hundred pages on South Asia. The photocopiers now accept EZ-Link cards too (as opposed to CashCards only the last time I visited in like, my first year?), a welcome convenience. I wonder if some algorithm could be developed by the manufacturers to prevent wasting toner on printing those useless black fills at either end of the page when the book is too short (in spatial length), but at three cents a page perhaps it is not worth their while. Copped a duck egg last weekend but still barely ahead, at $2163.50/$2150. Time to depend on Derby County again... $50 on Tottenham to beat Derby (at 1.45) - If Spurs can nearly defeat the Devils, they better do it to the Rams. $25 on Everton (-1.5) vs Reading (2.45) - Blues not exactly flying, but Reading have lost their last five and have yet to win on the road.
Another year, another trip back to my parents'. A spate of last-minuting before that, though - switched off the telly in the 92nd minute on Saturday when it seemed United would go down to a rejuvenated Spurs. Unsurprisingly they equalised in the final seconds through a Tevez goal/Dawson own goal, although a draw nowadays is not much better than a defeat in the big picture. Hadn't found a project group for my E-biz module on Monday with the formation deadline at noon Tuesday, and after a false positive I got down to compiling a list of students who had not yet been declared in a group, and mass-spammed them along with all groups which had not yet reached maximum size. Didn't think it would save me as I did it in the wee hours of Tuesday, but to my surprise I got three replies from group leaders (and one fellow straggler) and managed to clinch a spot in the nick of time. More of the same at night, with Assignment 2 for Facebook programming due at 12 a.m. - Wasn't too sure where the main programmer for the assignment was (at least, nothing more specific than Malaysia), though he had done quite a bit before that it would still be curtains if we did not have the code to submit. He reappeared just after ten, and we squeezed in the submission right before the folder, which sneakily displayed a closing day somewhere in May, disappeared. Moral: It's (almost) never too late. The first random realization of Chinese New Year Eve was that each single HDB block could handily qualify as a village - take for instance my own block, which has 25 storeys of four units. Conservatively assuming four people per unit, that's still a population of some 400 souls, and 100 units is likely to be on the small side as blocks go; Hundreds of villages, as far as the eye can see, remind me why I prefer man-made urban architecture over the unworked-for beauties of nature all over again... My other grandma's place had been extensively upgraded. Spanking new multistorey carpark, covered walkways (in progress), and most impressive of all, a lift literally to the doorstep. A couple of new baby cousins were on show, and they reminded me of hamsters with their puffy cheeks. Could barely restrain myself from the reflex of stuffing them with food, what with that irresistible Wen the Eternally Surprised look on them. Much of the time at Chai Chee was spent poring over my sister's secondary school/junior college subscriptions of TIME magazine, bringing back memories of that own period of my life when I too had weekly reads to look forward to. However I don't think many people actually do continue with the TIME/Newsweek habit voluntarily, and may have their teenage years as the high point of their perusal of global news literature. Another form of regression was realised when my Dad drove us to the local manual carwash en route to Chinatown. Weren't we using those entertaining behemoth machine scrubbers when I was a kid in the early nineties? Instead, we had a single overworked guy doing all the splashing, foaming and wiping for six bucks a car, though I must add that he did an exceedingly thorough job. A sober reminder that many toil at backbreaking work for a living. Not sure of why the machines were ousted - were they just more expensive, or was it to create jobs for our expanding population? Chinatown was as crowded as I remembered, and after the expected jostling for the right to be deafened by firecrackers at the turn of the year (recorded dutifully by dozens of raised camera phones), we observed an auction taking place by rows of obviously fake soccer jerseys. No close inspection of the goods appeared to be expected, and I was befuddled by the bids for what appeared to be slabs of ordinary rock with glitterdust applied, but what do I know, diamonds and glass are similar too right? The auctioneer did allow participants to freely give opening bids (leading to a few derisory S$2 ones), though of course he would have his own people in the crowd to rescue the prices to an acceptable level. His marketing was impeccable too - when faced with one glitterdusted rock which was sloped, he praised it as symbolising 高高在上, or roughly translated "(Being) high high on Top". The rock could hardly slope such that it could not be arranged to go up, could it? Immersed myself in TIME from when we got back to about four a.m., when the England-Switzerland friendly began. Learnt from a recent issue that Singapore has two Sovereign wealth funds in the "Big Seven", the GIC fund with approximately US$200 billion and the Temasek one with US$100 billion (differs quite a bit from Wikipedia which puts then at US$330 billion and US$160 billion respectively, likely sourced from The Economist), which either way comes out to around a cool hundred thousand per citizen. Combined, we are second behind only Abu Dhabi, which does have enough in its US$1.3 trillion fund to make each of its some 850 thousand residents instant millionaires. The mysteries of wealth. I wonder sometimes if anyone really understands how the global economy functions. One could imagine Richard Feynman and Alan Greenspan somehow coming across each other. "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.", Feynman would say, and Greenspan could reply "I know that for a fact about macroeconomics." Jérôme Kerviel, a futures trader who allegedly lost some five billion Euros for Société Générale, may agree. There have been more mundane errors which do not even qualify as bad bets, such as the Mizuho Securities 40 billion Yen (some US$400 million) data entry error due to a broker mixing up his columns and selling off 600000 shares for one Yen each instead of one share for 600000 Yen. Just one misclick, and there goes the GDP of a few third world states. Sat through the first half of Capello's first game in charge, and all I have to say is that England need to improve if they are going to have a realistic chance at going for the next World Cup. Decided to go to sleep at half-time. A bit of trivia, from a 2008 calendar "inspired by our PM Lee Hsien Loong", "presented by http://www.singportal.sg" and in actuality disseminated by a cute little (as in maybe six, seven years old?) girl holding balloons at Chinatown. Here's the full calendar if you are interested, but the focus is on the picture displayed: 
Supposedly, if the cowherd isn't wearing shoes, the year's gonna be relatively sunny. The copy that I have of last year does indeed have the elderly cowherd shod, so this means it is play ball time!
One cold and bitter Thursday in Munich, Germany, Eight great football stalwarts conceded victory, Eight men will never play again who met destruction there, The flowers of English football, the flowers of Manchester Matt Busby's boys were flying, returning from Belgrade, This great United family, all masters of their trade, The pilot of the aircraft, the skipper Captain Thain, Three times they tried to take off and twice turned back again. The third time down the runaway disaster followed close, There was slush upon that runaway and the aircraft never rose, It ploughed into the marshy ground, it broke, it overturned. And eight of the team were killed as the blazing wreckage burned. Roger Byrne and Tommy Taylor who were capped for England's side. And Ireland's Billy Whelan and England's Geoff Bent died, Mark Jones and Eddie Colman, and David Pegg also, They all lost their lives as it ploughed on through the snow. Big Duncan he went too, with an injury to his brain, And Ireland's brave Jack Blanchflower will never play again, The great Matt Busby lay there, the father of his team Three long months passed by before he saw his team again. The trainer, coach and secretary, and a member of the crew, Also eight sporting journalists who with United flew, and one of them Big Swifty, who we will ne'er forget, the finest English 'keeper that ever graced the net. Oh, England's finest football team its record truly great, its proud successes mocked by a cruel turn of fate. Eight men will never play again, who met destruction there, the flowers of English football, the flowers of Manchester
"So cute!" - Some girls gushing over Achmed the Dead Terrorist during the GE1101E lecture break. What is this world coming to? With King Keegan failing to rouse his vassals in his first few games in charge, I'm staying well clear of them for the week. The current state of the $100 Challenge: $2163.50/$2050. $50 on West Ham to beat Wigan (at 2.53) - Very, very tasty odds for a good-looking Hammers side. Above evens would already have been a fair deal $25 on Manchester City to draw Arsenal (3.30) - City unbeaten at home, and Arsenal have failed to win on their travels almost as often as they have won... $25 on Manchester United to beat Tottenham (1.77) - Decently high returns against the decently good "first-class attack, second-class midfield, no-class defence" Spurs. Dropping Robinson has, coincidentally or not, stemmed their leak a little, but with Scholes looking as he had never been out, is there a team better than United right now? (Biased, I know)
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Copyright © 2006-2025 GLYS. All Rights Reserved. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
