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[ March 2009 ] | |
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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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- + hamsters - Last Semester Roundup Did a bit more for my FYP, which I should be able to complete one way or another, if in reduced form, and which doesn't matter even if I get a C-. [Ok lah, at least B lah, I hope] Still managing ok for Natural Language Processing, which also doesn't matter even if I get a C-. [A- at least should be achievable] Got my second essay (an A-) for Development Economics back, and it doesn't matter even if I get a C-. [A- and above possible] Retrieved my midterm for Environmental Economics (26/30), felt the professor was exceedingly generous to give me a 6/10 for the last question (I wouldn't have given myself more than maybe a 3), though he was probably as generous to everyone else, and yes you guessed it, it doesn't matter even if I get a C-. [A- and above possible] And uh, was happy to just pass for my first Macroeconomics III assignment. As Donald Rumsfeld said, "There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know." I am split between using known unknown and unknown unknown to describe the module, but yes, it doesn't matter even if I get a C-. [Please let me get a B- at least]  And my GRE scores also came in the mail, officially ending the five-month long survey. Only got a soul-crushing 5.5/6 in the Analytical Writing section, but I suppose I will have to live with that. Side-note: ETS supposedly uses a computer to rate the essays as well, which is likely something similar to the Flesch-Kincaid readability statistics in Microsoft Word (under Spelling & Grammar), i.e. string those complex sentences together! RT RT! <psw> he had a loser friend who failed sit-ups <psw> :S <psw> who the f**k will fail sit-ups? <psw> =.= (Guess who?) Completed the second session of the eight-session long Phase I Remedial Training yesterday. Mr. Ham will be helping to illustrate what the RT may or may not have looked like. Dad was nice enough to drive me to Bedok Camp once more, where I strode in armed with towel (useful everywhere), waterbottle and identity card, and was promptly told by the sentry to tuck in my singlet. Waited twenty minutes to in-process (register) myself, and then waited perhaps another twenty in the multi-purpose hall. Waiting is, of course, a time-honoured practice in the Army. Did the usual warm-up, and then our PTI got us to sit in the grandstand and began calling out random names and asking people to introduce themselves. There were four captains and a former regular staff sergeant (who made no bones that it was quite a waste of time), but unfortunately no joker to lighten the mood further as the PTI noted sagely. Finally we were lined up on the track to begin, and the PTI pulled his first stunt by reversing the direction of the run, so that those who thought they were at the back were now at the front and vice versa. Not too affected since I was smack in the middle of the pack, and in the end things would even themselves out again anyhow as those who didn't really want to push themselves would straggle. Mr. Ham demonstrating Got near the front as the 20 minute jog went on. It brought me back to the old JC dragonboating days, though of course the intensity here was a notch lower. Felt like I could go on forever in the beginning, but as the pace began to pick up, I was reminded of why I had never gone under 10 minutes for the 2.4km.  Mr. Ham says, look good when exercising! Style your hair! It was tiring, but sweating some did make me feel good. Calisthenics was next, and frankly the crunches didn't tax my abs at all - my neck appeared to take the brunt of the strain. Then again, there was another guy from a different group blazing past who supposedly got 5 points in all his stations and a Gold timing for the 2.4km - but failed his sit-ups too. Kind of like me, except for the 5 points in all stations and Gold timing for the 2.4km parts.  Note legs should be bent and crossed in the air Next up were flutter kicks, done by raising both legs up and kicking them up and down as in the front crawl motion, keeping them straight and extended. Again, it was my thighs that felt the burn, and not my lower abs as supposed. What are my abs doing for their keep?  Kicks should be vertically up and down Mr. Ham... And finally the bridge and push-ups. I might have thought that holding one's midsection off the ground for a minute with support from elbows and toes only was chickenfeed. Well, no longer. Not after a ton of crunches and flutter kicks anyway.  Keep yer butt up! Supper after RT with Dad after we took a short detour to his office, where I found my copy of Ralph D. Sawyer's translation of Sun Tzu's Art of War that I thought I had lost. Nice end to a nice day. Oh, and I was caught by a ballad on Love 97.2FM on the way to Bedok, and this time I managed to remember enough phrases to Google it up. It turned out to be Mavis Hee's (许美静) 铁窗. I'm quite the banana in my taste for songs and literature, seeing that I am undoubtedly more comfortable with English than Mandarin. Still, that song was touching enough. 我伸出手却只是冰冷铁窗 若现实它总教人更加悲伤 就让我在回忆里继续梦幻... 我以为我从此能快乐飞翔 在梦醒後却只是冰冷铁窗 若现实它能教人更加勇敢 就让我在地狱里等待天堂..."
Went for my first taste of IPPT remedial training at Bedok Camp of all places (no other options available for the time period I needed), and rediscovered the joys of exercising as part of a large group. ECL draws are also out, and surprise, surprise, it is Liverpool vs Chelsea again. $1877.25/$2200 for the Challenge after United's mighty crash last weekend - they can pay me back today: $75 on Man Utd (-1.5) vs Fulham (at 2.05) $25 on Chelsea to beat Tottenham (at 1.75)
- changelog - + hamsters - changelog v1.12c --------------- * Refbacks implemented (nearly a year after track/pingbacks) for individual blog posts. Mostly gotten over the seeming departure of Mr. Fish, especially after I realised that it is now no longer inconsistent to consider him perpetually with me, given that his actions were never too hard to predict (a mentality that might perhaps be disrespectful with humans); getting bitten by formless teeth is, after all, less painful. (Strange how this happens to a dedicated omnivore, and one who has dissected a chlorofoamed white mouse in secondary school bio class...) Coded refback functionality for the blog when I had a spare hour at the school labs after meeting my FYP advisor (who has admitted to being "concerned" at my progress). Hey, programming practice is programming after all!  Refbacks essentially examine any webpage that has linked to a blog page, and extract the link and surrounding text for context. This is in fact not very difficult at all, since browsers usually supply the referer header with the required information to the blog script. All that is needed is therefore to grab the referring page and analyse it. This supposes that someone does actually click the link, but I suppose that is a very reasonable assumption for a meaningful link. A few issues: Firstly, this incurs an overhead, which can possibly be minimized by saving the addresses of all previously visited links, so that they need not be checked in future. Given this blog's current traffic, however, this is hardly necessary. Secondly, refbacks are potentially spammed, but I guess this is true for almost any sort of blog feedback. Thirdly, refback potentially occurs without the link originator being aware that his link is being recorded, but this is mitigated by the fact that the text extraction can only occur if the page with the link is accessible to the general public in the first place. Finally, some sites implement ref/track/pingbacks by mixing them in with regular comments. For now, I have opted to separate them, as I feel they tend to break the flow of conversation when handled that way. This may be a good place to consolidate the (selected) reactions to the Not Very Curious Case of Mr. Fish, from various media:
- changelog - + hamsters - 
Dying does have its benefits, after all. I had happily and quietly expired last night, and thought that it would be a good long holiday in the hereafter, but darn if my former employer hadn't the cheek to contact me immediately after that and offer me my old job at the blog back, since "your upkeep and wages will be far less of a problem as you no longer have to eat or be groomed, and moreover we can pass on part of your remaining wages to Workfare." I wanted to buzz IFUL in his face, but he threw in debt forgiveness and a promotion to Senior Hamster Associate (Deceased), and I couldn't resist the opportunity to get one over former-Hamster Intern Mr. Ham; who, I just discovered, put my name on my user profile as Fish F. Bacon. Very funny, gay one! I didn't get the Cryonics package that my pals up there told me to fight for, nor even the mummification-and-mini-pyramid one, but I did at least get a Flashy Fifteen-storey Chute Fall funeral for my earthly remains. And more importantly, my first feature post on the blog! Which is my eulogy, by the way. It begins with what a wonderfully great hamster I am, especially compared to that fat slob/blob Mr. Ham, but I'm sure you all knew that. High point of my last life was certainly my first prison break, which got me some fame and groupies. And of course Mr. Ham had to ruin all that by getting us kicked out of our pad. [  Digging myself out of bankruptcy was hardly a simple task (see Ham & Fish #10 - by the way, the series will be continuing, with me in incorporeal form). We had to wait till the wastepaper bin was full before we could clamber out (thus the term poverty trap), and then it took days more to scrounge up enough credit to rent a pair of shoes to live in.  I even got enough for a deposit on our old home, but after I fell asleep in one of my favourite spots under the food plate, I somehow neglected to wake up. Most inconvenient. Wasn't discovered for a few hours, and I'm told I was quite stiff by then. It goes without saying that the family was inconsolable, what with me being so cute and popular, for a borderline psychotic fingertip-chewer, heh heh. Even ol' Mr. Ham was sad enough not to try and eat my corpse. Or he wasn't hungry. Hmm. It all turned out well though, as mentioned. They gave the cage a good washing, which probably has boosted its property value even in this buyer's market, which means Mr. Ham will have to sweat a bit more before he reclaims it. The bugger now owes me interest on that as well. Muahahahahaha! [ changelog v1.12b --------------- * Images *may* now have mouseover captions in the xkcd tradition. And the scoop on the current situation in the Hamster afterlife:  Click to enlarge Well, if you think you're not sufficiently depressed at the passing of a hamster of my stature, you might want to visit this miscellaneous hamster memorial site. Like that farker Mr. Ham, who isn't even trying to appear lonely. Hello? - Death of a Hamster Yes Mr. Ham, that's for you. [Ham's Note: Eh this page says I'm social leh. IDAMNSAD. Really. *munch* *munch* *munch*] And Mr. Ham, you can come to my office right now.
- + sim lim square - The story today begins with my computer abruptly entering sleep mode, and not waking from it, several times in the past few days. I successfully ignored its silent entreaties, and was unpleasantly shocked to discover one morning that the computer refused to output any signal to the monitor, despite appearing to boot adequately in other respects. After the usual percussive maintenance did not have any effect, some research on the family box suggested that it was either a partial failure of the Power Supply Unit, or a conked-out graphics card. I figured, why not replace both, and have spares if necessary? Hitched a ride on my grandpa's van to Sim Lim Square, where I grabbed a Coolermaster Silent Pro M600 600W PSU, and an nvidia 9800 card that I ended up having to return as my system's micro-sized motherboard didn't even have a PCI-e slot. Made another trip with my uncle, and discovered first hand how wonderful the evening jam can be towards the city area (I would have guessed the opposite, that the after-work traffic should be clogged from the CBD outwards instead). Three hours later, I verified that my old N7600GS had indeed committed hari-kiri, perhaps due to the shame of being asked to buck up in my last post. I thought that was the end of it, but no, Windows XP began refusing to boot. With no more time to waste, it was time to whip out the ATM card and fund an early upgrading spree. Lugged the old system down to Fuwell, where I picked out a 3GHz Core 2 Duo E8400 chip (S$285) on an ASUS P5QL-E motherboard (S$157) and a Seagate 1.5TB hard disk (S$223) as my new primary drive, no thanks to the pain inflicted by having a full system partition. I had originally wanted to transfer my brand new AGP card over, only to discover that it wasn't supported on my new motherboard. Encouraged by the rows of spanking new merchandise on display, I forked out for an XFX 9800GT card (S$205). Of course it all needed a new case to go into, and the four 5.25-inch slots and side window of the Coolermaster Elite 330 (S$69) looked nicest to me. Whiled away an hour and a half as the serviceman (an uncle probably some 50 years old) did the assembly (S$20), but more issues cropped up: Firstly, the RAM from my old system was obsoleted as well, so there went another S$68 for 4GB of DDR2 RAM. Also, my antique Samsung 150GB drive caused the system not to boot, so he had hooked up only the new 1.5TB one, and my other 200GB drive containing my life's work. He also decided to leave out my dusty old floppy drive from the last decade for aesthetic reasons, and I have to agree with his judgment there - the casing was simply too handsome for that. Probably will pop down one of these days to get a black floppy drive just to fill the slot, still. 
It's so... beautiful... Then came the tricky part back home - migrating my stuff properly. First was copying about the entire contents of my old 200GB drive onto the new 1.5TB drive, which took some time; the blazing speed of the new system was worth everything, though - think the new underpants feel, multiplied by a thousand. Losing years of accumulated gunk (installed-and-used-once programs, conflicting configurations, etc) and having a desktop with a single column of icons has that effect. Switched to a new cordless Logitech keyboard for good measure, though I kept my X7 a4tech mouse since I had gotten used to its feel. I then installed the programs that I most needed, though an oversight involving drive letters - many installations don't take kindly to having their designations changed after the fact - meant that I had to spend a couple of hours reinstalling stuff. Happily, I discovered a fix for the problem of the Samsung 150GB drive preventing booting. Since it was, as suspected, working fine when hot-plugged into the third SATA controller once XP was up and running, I garnered that it was a BIOS configuration issue, and indeed setting the BIOS to allow Plug-and-Play of drives by default worked a charm. Also disabled the non-functional Express Gate option to gain a few more seconds each boot. Formatted my old drives after that, for a new setup of a 500GB system partition (take that, patch bloat!), 500GB for "work", 500GB for "data" (and my academic files) on the new drive, with the 200GB one now wholly for games, and the final 150GB one for backup and scratch purposes. Might also get Ubuntu onto it, since the new Wubi Installer makes it so easy to dual-boot. To think of the days when it required mucking about with extx partitions and system files! Lost some minor stuff like my custom MSN emoticons and some old script files, but overall I have to call it a success. I give it two years before the new computer degrades to unusuability as the 2TB of space is filled, if history is anything to go by. $1877.25/$2100 for the Challenge, and here goes nothing: $50 on Man Utd (-1.5) vs Liverpool (at 3.50) - probably not, but at 3.50... $50 on Arsenal to draw Blackburn (3.90) - another measured long shot
- academics - - Comment 64 (by a professor), from The Online Citizen Well, it is kind of discouraging to discover that Mr. Fake Bert has managed to garner more comments in only his third blog post, than I have ever managed in over 300. The customer is king, though, and it seems that said customers are demanding more straight talk, if on the crude side. A certain amount of rough-hewn vitality is always charming. The Other Stuff Hammered out another three thousand words for my second and last Development Economics essay some weeks in advance, and indeed it was somehow more attractive than working on my dissertation, if perhaps slightly less than cleaning my bathroom. Now, coming up with 3000 words is, by itself, not a terribly difficult (if time-consuming) task. There are quite a few approaches that may be taken, not the least of which is paraphrasing the relevant chapter of the textbook, and chopping unneeded stuff away. In fact, this probably will be done to some extent, as a completely original essay would either mean that the textbook is out-of-point, or that the economists before oneself were all dumb enough to miss something glaringly obvious, or that one is using a bunch of unsubstantiated points. In any of these cases, it has been my experience that the grader is unlikely to be too impressed, and therefore taking the text as a framework is usually a good idea. Save one's creativity for publications. Of course, keeping the entire structure isn't optimal either, and thus some reorganization, and a few out-of-the-text tidbits is ideal. My FYP advisor recently reminded me of a writing technique which I have not used for a long time - plan out a key point for each paragraph and stick that sentence at the head, leaving the rest of the paragraph for elaboration of that point only. This gives rise to a rather stiff and regular academic style, which however is efficient in that it allows the reader to speed-read through a paper by glancing at the first sentence of each paragraph. It applies better to more technical subjects in my opinion, and for my economics essay I stuck to more free-form writing. The natural follow-up question is, if the majority of the meaning can be conveyed thus, why bother with the rest of the words? I have encountered this issue with my UROP project, and really in many cases I feel a few sentences can adequately convey the essentials. For example, the first part of my essay was supposed to answer "why has there been such dramatic rural-urban migration in LDCs?" One probably doesn't need a module to arrive at most of the answers - lack of rural jobs due to an increasing population from high births, societal expectations for reasons of status, recommendations by acquaintances, seeking jobs not available in rural areas, the desire for a new start or different life, and of course most importantly, the fact that people generally earn more in urban areas (which quite surprisingly was supposedly ignored by most migration theories half a century ago). So I am supposed to expand these few dozen words into a thousand. Well, a student's gotta do what a student's gotta do... This Irritating Computer And how often have you tried to save a Notepad file for Windows to tell you that there is not enough space on the disk? Well, it just happened for me when saving the draft of this post to the Desktop - my C drive has literally zero bytes free, or so Windows Explorer tells me. I thought that ten gigabytes was reasonable for a system-only partition, but all that space has slowly, inexorably vanished, and to top it off I'm pretty sure my computer isn't infected. Can't wait for the holidays to arrive, so that I can reformat everything and chuck in a new 500GB drive with a 100GB system partition. To think that I once thought a few gigabytes was plenty on my first system. Had my surfing of overseas sites, and especially images, slow to a crawl some of these nights, no thanks to the fat green pipe of Starhub. Slightly disappointing. Also discovered that Chrome isn't all it's cracked up to be when it doesn't have enough space for cacheing, and indeed I'm unsure if it knows when to stop doing so - the first time my C drive filled, I discovered that Chrome was responsible for over a gigabyte of data. I suppose I could try surfing using emacs, as one particularly masochistic guy does:  Classy white Think I should buy a netbook to get the desktop to wake up its idea. I was never really sold on laptops, since to me they offered too little for too high a price. Netbooks, on the other hand - they don't pretend to have the solidity and power of a desktop, and keep to the essentials, i.e. Internet access. Seriously, to me there is little point in paying through the nose for a wow-it-can-do-everything-a-desktop-can laptop, when I would prefer the desktop whenever I'm home. Most of that processing power would be simply wasted, as many consumers are doubtless beginning to realize. If you're mostly using a laptop to check your email, do word processing and watch YouTube, why the heck do you need a freaking 2 GHz processor and a 15-inch screen? Well, to be fair, there isn't a sudden price dropoff between netbooks and budget laptops, since most decent netbooks start from around S$600 to S$900, while entry-level laptops can be had for S$1000-odd. Still, I'm not inclined to go halfway on this matter. It's get a cute little extra-portable 10-inch netbook, or stuff my desktop, monitor and miscellaneous paraphernalia in a backpack to go! On Temperatures And Moods I seriously think I am less irritable, more optimistic and more productive at lower temperatures, kind of like Pratchett's trolls. I have felt rather tired and down many a time in recent days, only to discover that the fan (not csq's) was switched off. Wonder if the temperate latitudes are for me. Entered my name in the ballot for a couple of Champions League final tickets, as the spectacle very coincidentally takes place the very next day after we touch down in Rome. Not too optimistic given the sheer number of applicants, but we'll see what comes up. Interestingly the official UEFA site uses the same reCAPTCHA authentication as this blog. Feel like ending with a quote I thought rather meaningful, so here goes: - Marianne Williamson
AH YAH OK LAH HWATEVER LAH. FARK REALBERT PRETEND TO DO FYP SAY NO TIME POST ON BLOG SO WOULD FAKEBERT PLZ HELP OUT HUH HUH. HE THINK LIMPEH VELLY FREE ISSIT. FARK HIM AND FARK U2 AND NEXT CB WHO SAY I COPY M&M CAN GO DIAF. AND PLZ HELP ME SETTLE MY $100 CHALLENGE. WAH LAN EH TRY TO GET FREE BETTING ADVICE SOMEMORE. I TOP CONSULTANT OK - MY CUSTOMERS ALWAYS GANA CON PLUS INSULT UNTIL DAMN SONG! AND WHO THE FARK BET ON LIVERPOOL LIKE HE DID LAST TIME ONE. WANT TO THROW AWAY MONEY GIVE ME LAH. ZZZ. LIMPEH $150 ON MAN UNITED TO WHACK FULHAM AT $1.78 LAH! GAH-GAH LAI, MAI HUMCHEE! I OSO HOOT $50 on 2-0! ONE DOLLAH EARN SEVEN-FIFTY LEH! WHAT FINANCE PHD AT INVESTMENT BANK, TUA TAO AT TEMASEK ALL DUNNO HOW TO EARN BIG BIG ONE! SIMI LONG TERM VIEW IN LONG TERM ALL U GANA TOK BY THE BIGGEST AH LONG AND UP LORRY ALREDDY! FAKEBERT FTW LOLOLOLOL!!!
- academics - current events - Slightly more than one month to my FYP submission (uh oh), but surely no call for what happened at NTU today... Well, with an FYP about "Multiview acquisition from Multi-camera configuration for person adaptive 3D Display", I suppose I would be stressed too; it sounds like the Hawk-Eye system used in tennis to judge line calls, only more complicated (!) Come to think of it, what's the worst that could happen? Failing the module, which would certainly be a kick in the teeth for one's CAP/GPA (probably enough to drop a honours classification) and maybe even an extra year redoing it. Sounds bad enough, but certainly not stab-advisor-and-jump bad, right? Unless of course a bunch of other unfortunate incidents converged on the poor student at the same time and became too much to take, but I guess we'll never know. A-plus, B-minus... it was really such a small thing after all. Maybe the greatest pain is from not living up to expectations, especially in kiasu "You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow" Singapore? My grad trip to Europe should hopefully help me shed some light on this. So I was really quite fortunate after all... neither my UROP nor my FYP were true collaborations with my profs (i.e. they weren't on the profs' primary research areas, and no joint publication was expected), so the stress was never that high - it was just my own grades I was playing with. Now, I may not be really sure what to present for my FYP, but be it an A+ (superbly unlikely) or B- (at least, hopefully), I'll simply go from barely missing a First to comfortably within my Second Upper, and in any case I've gotten into grad school, which was somewhat the whole point of getting the grades in the first place, and if I do make it through nobody will care about the bachelors' classification anyway. Well, not that many would really care in the first place. I have to say that my CS profs are as a rule awfully nice - and very wired - people. After I shot off a thank-you email to the three profs I approached for (and got) letters of reference from on Sunday night, within minutes two of them had replied, and the third replied in the early morning of the very next day. Ah, it shouldn't have taken a death to remind me of all this though. RIP. On to more uplifting things:  Hawaiian & Teriyaki (Inset: Hams with their biscuit-pizza) Ordered pizza together with my cousin for the Carling Cup final, which United duly won on penalties. Feels shiok to gorge myself once in a while. The hamsters also got some of Alvin's tapioca chips as a prize :P And have I mentioned the simple joy of the humble self-cooked plate of instant noodles (44 cents per pack)? Easily satisfied when food is concerned, I am. Did three of the four questions for my second NLP assignment, and all I have left (other than the FYP) for the next few weeks is one Development Economics essay and a few Environmental Economics tutorials. It's on!
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