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Saturday, Aug 14, 2010 - 23:58 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Inreverse

Every so often, a movie comes along that catches the popular imagination. The latest is Inception, which I have heard mentioned in several separate social settings (SSSS), though without hearing the title being dropped I would not have surmised that the conversations were about the same flick. I'm filing it behind Primer in my mental Netflix queue.


Saturday

Watched the end of the YOG opening ceremony (which explained all the purple-shirted volunteers at the airport yesterday), and particularly admired the firebreathing dragon float, as well as the phoenix boat. The DNA-helix animation changing colors to match the flags as they entered was a nice touch too.

Far more importantly, the EPL kicks off again, and as of blog-press time newcomers Blackpool have smashed Wigan 0-4 and go to the top of the table. Didn't see that coming.

Using odds from the Singapore Pools website, the Challenge resumes:

P$50 on Manchester United to beat Newcastle (at 1.20)
P$50 on Liverpool to draw Arsenal (at 3.00)


Friday

Woke at five-thirty, and happened to drop by Changi Airport, where I saw the recently-back-from-Japan Mr. Chong preparing to disappear off to Dartmouth, which was the biggest coincidence that had happened to me since I mysteriously found myself in the vicinity of Rome on the morning of the Champions League final last year.

Law also happened to be hanging around, and smk was there since, well, it's his place of work. Mr. Chong's dad took a photo, but as it is currently unavailable, I spent much effort in replicating it in the Chongian style of fine arts (I hasten to add that Mr. Chong is far superior at it):


Drawn in imitation of the mature Chongian period



Thursday


You want a piece of me, boy?


My cousin got a copy of Starcraft II, and I quickly realised that it's basically the original 1998 Starcraft updated with 2010 graphics, which Blizzard has admittedly done up well. They've got the near-photorealistic-but-not-creepy look down pat. This also means that plenty of the old tactics work/can be adapted, so I stuck to my siege tanks until I can find the time to learn new tricks.


Tychus Findlay up close


Irritatingly, while the campaign can be played as a guest, there is no LAN option, which means that the days of LAN parties where only one of the participants needed to have a copy of the game are over. But then, everybody is on Battle.net. Right? Right.

Read up in preparation for attempting the Distributed Systems assignment, cleaned my keyboard (it was getting real nasty).


Wednesday

Stuff happened.

Met supervisors in the morning, before restocking on stationery and supplies. Was back in NUS by two to drop in on a talk about Environmental Effects of Electricity Generation, by Dr. Landsberger from UTexas.

It was far less technical than I had feared, with some of the information previously covered in high school science & geography classes (think the greenhouse gas cycle/acid rain), but still worth revisiting. In summary, increased quality of life has led to changes in the environment, not the least due to the need for electrical energy - which can only decrease as China (which now consumes more energy than the USA, from just half a decade ago!) and other developing nations modernize.

We have only really begun to consider the environmental effects in the 1960s, and most people now know that fossil fuels (mostly coal, since oil is usually too precious for this purpose) are highly polluting. However, it turns out that "cleaner" sources aren't too great either:

  • Hydroelectrical - Dams affect wildlife and possibly fail and cause floods
  • Geothermal - Very situational unless you're Iceland, noise, air and groundwater pollution
  • Solar - Needs sunlight (suitable for Singapore), plenty of land (not so suitable), and useless at night (needs efficient batteries, I guess). The photovoltaic cells also need silicon, the production of which causes pollution too (N.B. these tradeoffs occur often enough such that what's good for the environment is not always obvious - see Slate's The Green Lantern)
  • Tidal - Not economical. Unfortunately for us
  • Wind - Land area, noise, dead birds, broken mill blade decapitation
  • Fusion - Produces tritium. Doesn't quite exist yet

And as for nuclear (fission) power; It supplies 20% of the USA's needs, and heck, coal plants produce as much radiation as nuclear plants, and miners die every so often, but one unlucky meltdown and a few three-eyed toads and everyone gets in a tizzy. I'm not sure if this sounds like a subtle endorsement of nuclear energy (an option that Singapore is looking into), but the professor happens to be from the Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program after all.

One thing has to be said - the catered noodles and ham-and-cheese sandwiches were to die for, and the portions more than filling, since they seemed to have slightly overestimated the attendance. Free food is one of the best academic traditions, IMHO.

Blissfully filled up, I stumbled into the room for the Distributed Systems module ten minutes early, only to find it nearly packed. Felt motivated to do the (yay, individual) assignments early. Might have been all the glucose speaking.


Tuesday

More research. This might be a good time to mention the boot problem that had afflicted my home system for some time after a BIOS update - the startup beeps were heard, but the monitor showed nothing at all.

My initial diagnosis was that the motherboard battery had run out of juice, but it turned out that the BIOS update had helpfully reset the first boot device to a completely non-existent floppy disk drive, causing a fruitless minutes-long search each time. By the way, internal floppy drives are available again at Sim Lim, which makes some sense as they've never stopped selling the disks.


Monday

National Day. Didn't watch much of the parade. Planned modules, researched.


Sunday

United win the Community Shield! Amazingly, despite their dominance over the past couple of decades, they have yet to win it without resorting to a penalty shootout since 1996.

But they did deserve it this time, with Scholes spreading ridiculously accurate fifty-metre passes to the sheer pace of Valencia, Nani and Chicharito, who assisted his own goal on his debut. He looks like a great signing already. Özil who?


(Source: Redcafe.net)



Saturday

Set foot in Holland Village (didn't realise it was but a stone's throw from the university) and the Wala Wala cafe bar, where I set my heart on appreciating the first mug of iced coffee that I can remember paying eight bucks for. Stayed for three sets by The Unexpecteds, the most memorable being a retelling of I Will Survive, but including many songs that I've never heard (not that that's out of the ordinary).

Law moreover got us some appropriate T-shirts from Thailand. Thanks a bunch!


Tell me about it - everybody's on LCD screens now!




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