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[ February 2009 ] | |
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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: 228 (48 mobile) all-time page views: 3402597 most viewed entry: 18739 views most commented entry: 14 comments number of entries: 1228 page created Fri Jul 18, 2025 16:53:48 |
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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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- academics - + hamsters - Another Friday, another visit to my Gmail inbox... It is a pleasure to inform you that you have been awarded the NUS research scholarship with admission into the Doctor of Philosophy offered by the School of Computing, Dept of Computer Science, National University of Singapore." Darn. Google does know all (see previous post). That's that then, since my second choice (in terms of probability of getting in) Stanford had already answered in the negative, and I had not the heart to reject them; And I had managed to apply to no others, no thanks in part to the continuing confusion over my GRE scores, and also my unwillingness to donate unnecessarily to universities with billion-dollar endowments via application fees. Realistically, I suppose I could pad my record with some work experience and perhaps a Masters' at a U.S. institution before applying again, but heck it, life's too short for that. That's the next three years at least settled then. Something on economics, which seems appropriate as my formal study of it will enter an indefinite hiatus very soon - A recent Straits Times article "Of Black-Scholes and black swans", brings up the relation between economics and physics, raised here a few months ago. The main insinuation, that "...Any optimal solution, if there is one, is quickly perturbed by tiny changes in the system. Equilibria are largely irrelevant and small changes can have large effects.", downplays the predictive powers of textbook economics, but given the non-isolable and non-testable nature of macroeconomic hypothesis, I suppose the market for economists, like philosophers, will not dry up in a hurry... Spent a few hours just reading O. Henry's collection of short stories, The Four Million. Most of those who have passed through the Singaporean education system in recent times should at least recall The Gift of the Magi, which was adapted into the Chinese syllabus. The translation does little justice to the original. My favourite of the lot would still be Mammon and the Archer, though. $1610.25/$1900 as United scraped out three more points against Blackburn. Today's pick are the conquerors of Real Madrid, who visit the Riverside: $50 on Liverpool to beat Middlesbrough (at 1.57) Fun fact of the day: Fixture-for-fixture, United are actually six points ahead of their point total for the equivalent fixtures last season, while Liverpool, despite their boom, are actually two points off. Make what of that you will.
No idea why I'm still not that up to doing my FYP. Perhaps I must wait until I'm hauled over the coals to get an adrenaline rush? Or perhaps I have a hidden confidence I can emulate smk's famous "A in 3 days" (makes a good slogan)? Oh well, I'm right on it now, after I implemented the latest Facebook mememe by edchong: So what does it say about myself? 1. Gilbert needs change Yes I do, in regard to my FYP habits. Where's Obama when you need him? 2. Gilbert needs to fulfill its duty to the county islands as now spelled out in state Oh, I'm not on any bonded scholarship. Lala. Eh wait, I still got NS obligations hor. 3. Gilbert needs strength Who doesn't? Especially on those pesky saving throws. 4. Gilbert needs a dean To approve my grad school application, yes. 5. Gilbert needs to work to expand bus service within the town I wouldn't mind, getting on a bus from NUS at 6 p.m. is a killer... 6. Gilbert needs is not a career politician Few really need a career politician. 7. Gilbert needs someone who can foster cooperation Godgle probably got this wrong. 8. Gilbert needs right now "to do his FYP". Yes, yes I get the idea. 9. Gilbert needs an outside voice experienced in ...how to smoke FYP evaluators? Wow! 10. Gilbert needs someone who can tell our story and focus on the positive During the FYP presentation in a couple of months, yah.
Participated in the Chancellor's Challenge Shield with edchong (who finally returned my Linear Algebra text) and kkok today [as Team 4OKOJ, years after the first edchong/smk combi], after smacking a few tennis balls around with my cousin at the top secret Kent Ridge Hall tennis court at about 8:30 am. Didn't realise that there are hot showers in the halls! Successfully out-lated both my teammates, to my intense joy after years of failure. The preliminary round of fifty MCQ questions began at 10:30 am. They didn't have the standard OMR forms, which was fine, but the custom answer sheet they gave out had ovals that were 1.1 cm in length, and 0.9 cm high - and the organizer even explicitly stated that the whole oval had to be shaded. In case you are wondering, that is a lot of pencil lead. 
Sponsored by a pencil company? There were a number of questions that made one sit up and think, as well as a few giveaways (Steve Jobs oversaw McDonald's expansion, anyone?). I soon realised that I had been skimming over mere details a bit too much for contests of this type. The reader might wish to have a go of it, from this random selection of 30 questions, mostly culled from the preliminary round with few adjustments, and a few from the final rounds where options were not given: HCI won rather convincingly against VJC and NUS in the finals, with the most amusing moment coming when the NUS representatives polled the audience for help in determining the nationality of Miss Universe 2008. A bunch of guys immediately started shouting "Russia! Russia!", and the team happily took that as their final answer. Turns out it was Venezuela (Ms Dayana Mendoza, to be specific - Russia last won in 2002)... Wonder what happens if multiple teams from a school end up scoring the best in these competitions - HCI Team 1 vs HCI Team 2 vs HCI Team 3 for example wouldn't be as fun for the rest of the spectators. 
(Sources: About.com & CBS News) Had a short discussion on political correctness over lunch and 3 person Daidee - it appears to be all a-ok to compare a white President to a chimp, but try to do it once to a (half) black President, parodying a recent news event to boot. This extends to certain religions as well, which probably won't help them any, but hey, it's their call on how to respond to little digs. $1490.25/$1800 after United did the job against Derby. I'll take the simple win again. $100 on Man Utd to beat Blackburn (at 1.20)
- academics - changelog - changelog v1.12 --------------- * Simple related posts algorithm (on individual pages) implemented, to be improved in the future. * Link errors on search corrected. * Next page function (on individual pages) implemented for Atalanta skin. "If you like Pina Coladas/And gettin' caught in the rain..." The Pina Colada Song (wiki) (strangely heartwarming) Football last Sunday (with Hattrick Alvin and zy), where I was once again "out-lated" despite making it a point to be late by half an hour. On the FYP front, I think I will have to reimplement some stuff; Calmed myself by doing some fun coding of a crude related posts function for this blog. If only research were that relaxing too... Scholes back in rip-roaring form as he volleyed a stopped-yet-unstoppable goal direct from a corner, pinged thirty-metre passes with ridiculous accuracy, and even put in several good tackles against Fulham (Mr. Ham lost his bet, btw). And did the vendors at the NUS Central Forum bother to sell his keychain? Nahhhh... 
Where is Number 18, Uncle? The vendor's loss, I suppose. Or perhaps they were all sold out. Then again, no Ronaldo either, so they aren't trying too hard to make money. Attended the 14th NUROP Congress on Wednesday as a poster presenter. The dress code swung between tie and no tie, but finally it was another of those uncomfortable half-choked days with a strip of fabric wound around my neck. Obtained a lanyard to rebuild my collection, and a nifty programme booklet, but the attendance at the Engineering Auditorium was... quite a bit lower than what I expected, despite well over 300 projects in total being completed. The Plenary session was interesting enough, though for Chemistry one ("Enantioselective Protonation of Itaconimides Catalyzed by Chiral Bicyclic Guanidine") I was ashamed to be unable to follow much of the proceedings. Enantiomeric excess did, at least, remind me of entropy. I suppose it would be fair to say that most students wouldn't be able to find appropriate questions to ask, since the stuff would be out of reach of those not in the correct field to ask about specifics, and general queries might be just too trivial. The emcee was prepared with his own backups, of course. The Engineering presentation reminded me of my passing interest in robotic motion - is it really that hard for a robot to walk (or rather, run) in a dynamic human-like fashion, instead of conservatively cycling through multiple stable states? That, and the poster I saw about NUS's Team ROPE. My first thoughts were, if the body structure (and weight distributions) are known, joint movement control is sufficiently quick and fine-grained, and sensory feedback is likewise fast, why not? Did talk to a few people, including a visiting A*STAR researcher, during the short poster presentation, and I have to say it is an art to infer whether someone wants the guided tour, so to speak, or just read the poster, thankyouverymuch (which is more my own style actually). Here's to a good longish sleep for once.
- changelog - + hamsters - changelog v1.11 --------------- * Changelogs now aggregated onto their own page. * A few standard text colours now automatically adjusted for readability by blog skin. * Minor correction of Javascript in an old blog post. FYP not done. Well, it was always much simpler to bang out a 3200-word essay on contemporary development theories, plug in formulae for the Ramsey model (a friendly explanation) and fiddle about with smoothing methods and trace the Viterbi algorithm than my FYP. Honestly, going by the original timeline, I am quite screwed. However, going by my usual project timeline, and taking into consideration I have settled all my other modules for the next fortnight, I might just have a chance... One point to IKEA for keeping up with current affairs (NSFW?) (ad appeared prominently in print media):  And by special request, Ham & Fish continues its revival!  Luckily I didn't go for Man City to beat Pompey last night, or I would be in worse (virtual) straits than $1353.25/$1700. United to beat Derby seems to be safe enough... $100 on Man Utd to beat Derby (at 1.37)
- EC3383 lecturer, without the slightest hint of irony Quite an eventful week - played badminton (strings still broken), tennis and basketball; attempted to teach, still not very good at it; came across my sister (a fellow Econs major) in NUS for the first time (Feb 4); attended all lectures, though something inside me whispers that it doesn't really make a difference (for certain modules, anyway)... Also bought the Macroecons textbook with a bought-from-wenhoo co-op voucher (checked very carefully beforehand, goes without saying):  One thing about lectures is that, even if the content may be miserably rehashed, which to be fair isn't really the fault of the lecturers since the spread of familiarity towards related material may be quite wide (though going through basic supply and demand in a Level Three Economics module is a bit too much for me), they at least are decently entertaining, whether intentionally or not. We got to hear how one doesn't bother to write a textbook as buying the rights to parts of an existing one is cheaper (perfectly rational, btw), for instance. And smile wanly when "Special Economic Zones" is mistakenly abbreviated as "SEX". And listen to accounts of how modern Chinese wariness of foreign economic influence stemmed from past injustices, e.g. the Boxer Uprising ("Why must you shoot me when I box?") - all of which made attendance almost worth it. Other stuff: Wizards of the Coast recently released a new Magic: The Gathering set called Conflux (as I once mentioned in passing), and out of nowhere the website of the fan-set created in 2005 garnered nearly 50k pageviews (in comparism, this blog has just over 70k views for now), thanks to it occupying a high spot on Google due to its age. Amusingly, there were even a few comments defending some of the cards I designed as authentic, but since deception was never my intent, I changed the name of my set to clarify matters. On the subject of Magic: The Gathering, there seems to be some cross-fertilization of ideas going on, as the original concept of the card Progenitus was inspired (see Question #17) by DotA's Antimage. On the subject of Google, wenhoo introduced me to the wonder of letmegooglethatforyou.com, a superb riposte to acquaintances who expect you to be their search engine middleman (ok lah, that has some social value at least I guess) Amusing football moment of the year so far has to go to Chelsea's Bosingwa, who also deserves awards for "discouraging timewasting at the corner flag", "how to walk away nonchalantly without getting booked" and "THIS IS SPARRRTTTTAAAAAAAA!":  And United just beat the Hammers 1-0 (yeah!), classic Giggs goal. Hamsters still stewing. Sedition in Singapore? The Straits Times recently ran an eyecatching article on a couple who were arrested for "distributing seditious tracts", thanks to an aggrieved member of a (different religion). Their lawyer read excerpts from God Is Not Great (I bought it), The End Of Faith (nope), The Da Vinci Code (sort of read) and The God Delusion (bought) in their defence, reasoning that if these attacks on religion were openly available, why not the tracts? The counterargument was that the tracts were more blindly partisan and moreover graphical in nature, and thus more likely to sway the young and vulnerable. On principle, I would say that the couple should have freedom of expression, but sensitive polito-religious realities mean that this sort of thing is just not done (their conviction has to be admired, though). Notably, the official website for the Chick tracts they were accused of giving away is banned in Singapore - or more accurately, made slightly inconvenient to access in Singapore. If a guy really wanted to access the potentially inflammatory evangelical fundamentalist Protestant material, he could maybe Google for something like, I don't know, a free anonymous proxy service. But I wouldn't know anything about those things, of course. Being the seeker after wisdom that I am, I obtained a brief outline of the offensive tract in question ("The Little Bride"), which may or may not be accurate:
... Is there anything wrong with this at all? Hell no! It is, by some distance, the funniest comic that I've read in many a week - seriously, I would be wary that nonbelievers with a sense of humour would actually convert due to the laugh factor. I move that the distributors just place it alongside Dilbert and Garfield on the shelves with the good God-fearing folk on both sides shaking hands and wishing goodwill to one another. Now, that would be the sensible thing to do. Another day, another storm in a teapot. [Further reading: on biological and cultural Gods, and on mirthless heathens and the incongruity thereof]
- changelog - + epl tales - + hamsters - changelog v1.10b --------------- * Site visit counter now autoupdated through AJAX to prevent unnecessary inflation through reloading. 
References: 1. Full transcript of the Benitez rant 2. SAF hits back 3. Scolari shows support 4. Kidney stones... 5. "Crazy game" The Virtual Challenge now stands at $1353.25/$1600 after a good week. I would have plonked my bet down on Manchester City, only to realise they have already lost to Stoke. So... $100 on Man Utd (-1.5) vs Everton (at 2.08)
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