Nice SEO, blogger!

The above title has been injected with sarcasm. *shows sarcasm sign*

Alright. Those who haven't watched enough of the Big Bang Theory probably won't get that joke. :D

The hits on my blog have curiously jumped by 42 counts today. Why? I just realised why.

At least 42 people have googled for something which includes the phrase "CS1231 Midterm". And by some google/blogger magic, it's the 4th search result from the top. Wow. That was really unprecedented.

So... I guess I'm not the only chronic googler around? :D

I really want to finish off the MA1505 vectors tutorial right now, because of the sporadic pangs of guilt which have struck me. (ever since Pei Yi reminded me about it this evening) Darn, I've spent so much time preparing for the mid-terms that my usual schooling schedule is completely out of whack.

The despicable trait of laziness has, once again, emerged victorious from the magnificently well-ordered depths of logic.

We make really bad decisions when we're tired, don't we?

Off to watch The Outer Limits. Whee!

(Argh. Can't wait for channel 5 to start broadcasting the 3rd season of Fringe!)

CS1231 Midterm: Reflections

I was kinda concerned about the difficulty level of the paper rising, since this was the first open book test for CS1231. (apparently the past exams were not open book)

Finishing the mcqs in around 10mins gave me some confidence, but the structured questions scared the hell out of me..... Even though I had 50mins left. -_-|| Especially the first order predicate logic questions. That made me realise that I had spent too much time on the Relations and Sets chapters. (I didn't understand them very well before the mid-term break)

Prof Bressan was standing next to me; staring at my answers for the predicate logic question. I was feeling so terrible because I was panicking as soon as I realised that I wasn't able to converse in predicate logic after all! All I can do is read them. It's kinda like Japanese. I can read and sorta understand *some* Japanese, but I can't speak or write Japanese fluently. Guess I need much more practice on that.

Having spent so much effort and time on the Relations chapter, I was expecting to breeze through the last question. BUT NOOOO..... The panicky feeling from the predicate question remained, and I took a very long time to understand the question. By some stroke of luck, I somehow managed to prove (contrapositive proof, I think) the first part of the question. (but I omitted the proof to show that there exists an X such that x is related to y. Damn, I just thought of the answer when I woke up this morning, after only 6 hrs of sleep. If only I realised that letting y=x would result in a singleton where xRx!!!)

Sadly, I left the last page blank because I couldn't even understand the question after all that panicking. Sigh. How could I have spent THAT much time panicking?? Strangely, I thought of the answer after showering last night. Maybe it's really true that people are the most creative when they're in the bathroom. :P

Undoubtedly, this paper was much harder than those in the previous years. Maybe I have not prepared well enough. :/ Maybe nearly getting hit on the head by a huge tree branch (while walking to technoedge) before the exam was a bad omen? :P (be careful if you hear a loud crack from above while walking under tall trees! If I had walked a step slower, that damned branch would definitely have knocked the top of my head, spot on.)

Let us all seek solace in the fact that this isn't the paper which constitutes 60% of our final grade.

This means that attaining that A+ (or some variation of A) is not impossible, just kinda improbable if I don't practice even more questions for the finals.

We have about 2 months left. That's a lot of time.

Let's all continue working hard towards that goal! :D

If you want your dreams to come true…

Don’t sleep too much!

Hehe, what an appropriate quote! (especially since this is a long weekend)

=D

The Konami Code, and more cool stuff! (Information overload alert)

(warning: long post with lots and lots and LOTSSS of links!)

If you played a few video games as a kid, you may remember the button-mashing games from Japan... like Street Fighter.

Well, we're not completely honest people, are we?

I know you've used a game cheat code before. ;D

It seems like the gaming nerds of the past have made a silent comeback... in the form of the Konami Code.

It's everywhere, it's even on Facebook! :O

Check out KonamiCodeSites.com for a list of websites which do weird things when you enter the code. :D This is so geeky and wonderfully weird but IT'S SO COOL(!!!) that it's actually keeping me awake at 2am.

Simply enter the following code on your keyboard:
up up down down left right left right A B
and press 'enter'!

The konamicodesites.com thingy will even work on an iPhone. I tried it! :D

Talking about iPhones, this guy owns the manufacturing company that MAKES iPhones. Apparently, many people from his factory have committed suicide. (btw, his company employs 800,000 people. WOW.)

see how he looks like in an arty photo.

To be honest (hehe), I found out about this (and the video about motivation below) on this guy's blog. Linking back eases my conscience.

www.feross.org

He's a computer science student at Stanford, and he created the YouTube Instant thingy as a spoof of the recently introduced Google Instant. Google likes his sense of humour, and so do I.

My psychic abilities tell me that he might be getting a job offer from a company with a name that begins with 'G' real soon.

(ya rrrright...)

Anyways. I like his blog so much that I can't help posting some of his favourite quotations too! Here's a quote that made me laugh:

I may have invented Control-Alt-Delete, but Bill Gates made it famous.
— David Bradley, designer of the IBM PC

And another one:

[To a class of Stanford CS106B students]
You should try opening up the C++ STL header files some time — it will be a very eye-opening experience, sort of how looking directly at the Sun is a eye-opening –err, eye-closing experience.
— Keith Schwarz

Omg, I can't break out of this random-information-posting craze yet!!! Here's a HDR video (!!!) which was found through www.hckr.com:
Watch the coolness unravel before your eyes!

I'm kinda nit-picking here, but I'm not sure whether the people who made the video avoided panning the cameras (on purpose!) because of the rolling shutter effect. Hmmm :/ But whatever. Shooting a HDR video is a brilliant idea!

If you're bored, and you've noticed Google's Easter Eggs, try this out.
http://dotty-dots.appspot.com/
Type in whatever you want, and the flash applet thingy turns it into colourful dots which happily bounce around. Your cursor can even repel them. Really cute. :)

Now it seems like my blog is just a place where I show everyone the interesting sites that I've found in the middle of the night. Hehe.

Looking at the clock, I think I'm going to wake up at 12pm tomorrow. Again!
Good night everybody. :)

What motivates you?

This presentation by Dan Pink will grab your attention like a ravenous lion tearing the raw flesh of another animal with its sharp fangs...

Astronomy Photography

Astronomy is a topic I got interested in about 2 years ago. Photography is a hobby I picked up about a year ago.

Their union is really inspiring!

Here's the audio-slideshow for the 2010 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition (held by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich) which was posted on BBC's site. I guarantee (plus 10 'chops') that it's worth your time!
Click me to view the slideshow :D

That was posted on the 10th of September. Which is actually yesterday (because it's 1am now) but feels like today, because I woke up at 2pm today. That is now my record for waking up late. Anyone managed to beat that? :P

If you feel all astronomy-ish after the slideshow, check out the official Flick group for this competition at http://www.flickr.com/groups/astrophoto. Once again, I guarantee (plus 10 'chops') that you will find something *reallyyy* impressive!

Weird Habits, and Nice Quotes.

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
- Aristotle

Go Aristotle! That was spot-on.

I just realised that one of his little pieces of wisdom is one of my innate beliefs:

"A friend to all is a friend to none."

Yep. Those with lots of friends usually don't really know who their true friends are... Or just prefer to maintain superficial relationships. My mum is a living example. She frequently tells me that she doesn't have any trustworthy friends at all, in spite of her magnificent social network which never fails to leave me in awe. (but then again, who cares about friends when you're 20, and you've got a smart AND hardworking boyfriend in NUS who takes real good care of you!!? :D)

That's a sad situation (which the person may not be aware of); but it's also not an unexpected consequence, because a lot of time has to be invested into a friendship before sturdy links of trust build up.

Here is another quote about friendship which you may find very true too.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one!”
- C.S. Lewis

(Just like how I thought I was the only one among my friends to enter computer engineering (CEG)... and later came to know that Pei Yi and Belle were in this course too! Kaypoh note: I think this guy in my CEG cohort was from HCI too...)

In the past 3 weeks, I've had the weird habit of sleeping past 2am on Fridays, waking up around 11am-12pm on Saturdays, sleeping at 3am on Saturdays, and then waking up at 12pm on Sundays. This is really bad. I think it's taking a toll on my alertness... So I'm going to sleep at 11pm today! :D

“When late morning rolls around and you're feeling a bit out of sorts, don't worry; you're probably just a little eleven o'clockish.”
- Winnie the Pooh

Have you ever inspected your work during tutorials and compared them to your tutor's answer, realised that your work is correct, and then suddenly find yourself unable to comprehend your own work? That happens to me pretty often. Oscar Wilde shares our experience too!

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
- Oscar Wilde

Oh my!!! I don't understand a single thing that I typed above.

Maybe I need to check if I've got amnesia...

In case you were wondering, these quotes were obtained from www.thinkexist.com! :D

The Big Bang Theory - The Friendship Algorithm

This show is really hilarious!
In a highly innovative (and should I say... desperate) attempt to expand the radius of his social circle, Sheldon creates the friendship algorithm... And tests it out on his friend.

Counters are useful. :D