Sometimes you don't have to go looking for good friends.

Life brings them to you. :D

-_-|| or genius?

"My Boyfriend, Our Army"

The new slogan of the army here.

My first reaction: "SERIOUSLY?!"

Okay, we have a pretty good army (:D), so let's give credit to most of those guys for being intelligent and physically fit.

But seriously... SERIOUSLY? Using the prospect of becoming a girl magnet to attract guys to join the army is the craziest advertising idea used by the army so far.

Because I'm too appalled to think coherently, here's a link to Mr Brown's blog post. Thank you Mr Brown! For some odd reason, we seem to share many similar thoughts on this.

Quotes from his post:
"Or is this to tell young men, "Hey, SAF scholars get all the hot chicks, man! Sign on now!"

"If you watched this commercial, and signed on as a regular because of it, we are doomed."

Nicely done.

The Ukrainian army recruitment advert at the end of his post promotes the same "army guy=chick magnet" idea, except that it's overly exaggerated. (and therefore, funny!... Even the music is unnecessarily dramatic, haha!)

Who knows, maybe these adverts were meant to create a kind of anchoring effect in our young men, like other commercial products. People tend to buy the stuff they see more often. I don't know why. Maybe humans just like familiarity.

At the end of the day, bad publicity is still publicity. :)

My Non-Portable PSP

Yep, my playstation portable is no longer portable.

Why?

Because it can't charge by USB or by the standard charger. :( In fact, the only way to turn it on is to connect it to the mains while using it. It doesn't even recognise the battery!! Sigh. I hope there wasn't anything that blew up inside. I *really* hope it's just the battery that has gone nuts.

Some forums suggest that a fuse may have blown.

Oh well. One more thing to add to my very short wishlist!

1) 1TB hard disk
2) New PSP battery

By the way, I chanced upon this guy's amazing blog. He hacks and mods video game consoles and other stuff. Recently, he jazzed up his self-made portable xbox 360! I can't believe that I've only found his blog now... Better late than never! :D :D :D

Ben Heck's Official Blog

Premonitions

17 November 2010, Evening
Feeling bored of studying, I decided to take my DSLR out to take photos of my turtles. I don't know why, I just felt like it.

21 November 2010, Sunday, 9pm
Sitting in front of my laptop, this song suddenly popped into my head.


优客李林 - 认错

“我又怎么告诉你我还爱你？”
“是我自己错误的决定。。。”

Yeah it's a really old song (1991) but it's kinda nice. :) (I've never seen the music video, but yes, it's a real cheesy video, so just listening to the song is a good idea.)
I didn't know why I thought of that song.

This morning, I knew why.

Photo taken on 17th November 2010

My favourite turtle, Shun Shun, left the earth this morning. I was about to feed them their breakfast when I realised that she was just laying there, motionless, with her eyes shut, and her hands neatly placed by her side.

She didn't eat much for the past few days, which was kind of odd. Two days ago, the water in their tank started to smell really bad very often.

The other turtle had been attacking her pretty often this week, and I was seriously considering separating them. But I remembered how sad my aunt's turtle was when my mum and I separated it from its violent friend, so I decided against it.

Photo also taken on 17 November 2010. As you can see, nearly half of her tail was bitten off by that crazy turtle.

I don't know whether she died because of her injuries, an illness, or my decision of not to separate them. Whatever it is, my heart still believes that I caused her death. And I feel extremely bad about it, so this post is dedicated to her. Sigh. So here's my message to my turtle.

++++++++++++
Wherever your soul resides now, I want you to know that everyone in my family loves you! I'm really, truly sorry if I did something wrong to cause your departure. We will always remember how adorable you were, how you blew little bubbles in the water for fun, and how you yawned or burped from time to time. You have been the best turtle, ever. We will miss you dearly.
++++++++++++

Not sure if you believe in reincarnation... In either case, just in case there is such a thing, I hope my turtle's soul will enjoy a good life in her next reincarnation.

Sniff. Love my turtle. >_<... May she rest in peace.

I love...

my fantastic family and friends.

my friend's wonderful mum.

the exhilarating sense of release I feel after each exam.

watching movies. :D

good food.

cuddly soft toys.

air-con on a sweltering day.

acts of kindness.

I wish I could attach a photo to each of those things written above, but I guess those warm, fuzzy feelings they can give you is enough. :D

My laptop has a good chance of passing the Turing test!

Trying out last year's cg1101 paper... And I forgot how to read in a text file with the string of numbers "111" such that the 1s will be split up in an array...
My computer laughed!

Here's a closer look!

Cheeky computer.
On hindsight, it must have been tracking what I've typed so far, or it wouldn't have known that colon D is my favourite emoticon. :D

/*EDIT!*/

I finally figured it out, after 1 hour of frustration. And I don't feel any smarter. On the contrary, I think my intelligence today has hit an all-new low. Must sleep by 11pm from now on. >_<

In case anyone had trouble with that too, (I doubt so, but anyway!!) here's the code.

Note the 4. NOTE THE 4.

Bleddy number 4 wasted 1hr of my youth!!!!! To make it worse, I'm gonna be 20 soon.
ARGHHHHH

Have a nice day, everyone. :D

A Sudden Burst Of Inspiration

Creativity struck while I was revising for the final year exams!

My entry for NUSPS's photo of the month. This month's theme is 'destruction'. It reflects how I feel right now. I feel really sick of studying, and I really need a break from all this madness. I need to spend some quality time with my family and friends. And take more photos! (my poor little camera feels under-utilised...) hehe.

This was taken during the basic photography course conducted by NUSPS this year.

Just as how the old adage goes, "You can never know when true love comes knocking on your door", my thoughts run wildly into the very sought-after zone of creativity during the strangest of times.

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” - George Bernard Shaw

brain hack!

Just broke one of my own records!

Haven't slept a wink since 5am today... which means that I have stayed awake for nearly 22 hours consecutively.

All thanks to the tutorials. Luckily, this week's tutorials are pretty easy. In fact, I'm stunned by how fast I completed this week's cs1231 tutorial! It usually takes me ages.
But surface integrals for ma1505 is another story. :P It's a different; depressingly melancholic story... That's the way it goes for engineering math, I suppose?

while(student_status=alive)
Practice(paper, ink, a hell lot of time, a hell lot of hard work);

Darn. I couldn't resist typing that. :P


Before I get some well-deserved sleep, here's a really interesting site I found today:
http://dustincurtis.com/index.html

This guy writes about pretty interesting stuff... And meticulously places them in magazine-like templates. His designing skills are really good too! You gotta read it to appreciate how much effort he spends on writing interesting essays, accompanied with equally, if not more awesome website designs which he creates for EACH essay! Now that's unorthodox. :D It really set my imagination ablaze. Whee!

Did you know that it might be possible to 'hack' your brain (not with a blunt metal object, hehehe) so that you don't have to sleep so many hours every night... while still feeling energetic throughout the day?

http://dustincurtis.com/sleep.html

I don't think most of us are in a good position to try this, though. The time schedule which society considers to be 'normal' is way too widespread for us to take so many short naps throughout the day. Nevertheless, it's an intriguing idea.

-----------------------------------------------

The welfare pack from the SoC computer club actually contains a GLOWING STICK!!! Oddly, my mum was the one who found it in the pack. I was oblivious to it until she told me. :P How thoughtful of them to appeal to the inner geek in all SoCians! :D :D :D (i.e. lightsaber substitute, since I don't think anyone has figured out how to stop/break a laser beam in mid-air without blocking it with any visible material??)

My childhood days are long gone, but I just can't stop marvelling at how the liquid in the stick appears to be yellow in light, and glows a very mesmerizing blue when you view it in the dark. No matter how old you are, you just HAVE to admit that glowing sticks are SO COOL! :D Thank you, computer club!

is this the life of a programmer? if it is, then for the sake of my sanity, I'm not going to be one. O_o

cg1101 lab was the terrible-*st* lab, ever.

I was trying to do it since the weekend, but a flu virus took over my nose (and brain), causing me to feel woozy all the time. (teethers and wobbles around...) The medication only exacerbated the drowsiness I felt... and so did my blocked nose, which probably cut off some oxygen supply to my body. :S With all the other tutorials to complete, it felt like my life just hit an all-time new low.

Thanks to the help from so many nice people in my life, I finally got it done last night around 11pm. Even more thanks to my aunt's friend, Jasmin, who took time off her super hectic schedule this week to help me with the recursion qn 1e. :) My aunt also came to my house with loads and loads of nice food, and a much-needed pore pack which I wanted to buy, haha! Thank you all so much! :D
After much trouble trying to print it... (I was so tired that I kept printing stuff on the wrong sides of the papers!!! >_<) Yep. I took my medication, drank a cup of water, replied my aunt's friend, watched big bang theory season 4 episode 6 (damn funny, as usual!) and went to sleep around 1am.

I have no idea why I abruptly woke up at 5am today. I tried and tried to force myself back to sleep, but nooo... I couldn't sleep. This random thought of assigning a different variable name to my blocked nose could cause me to stop breathing forever, because the rest of my bodily program need to have their variable names for my nose changed, too. Deciding that I may be losing my sanity, I replied my aunt's friend again (how nice of her to reply last night!), and started to write this post.

This almost feels like recursion, because my thoughts in this post just went in a big circle, back to this post.

Now, let's read my daily horoscope on iGoogle...

Gemini

By Rick Levine

You are set on having a good time, but you might not be willing to jump into the flow of fun until after you finish tying up some loose ends. Taking care of them today can free you up to enjoy yourself, but ignoring previous obligations could invite unnecessary problems toward the end of the week. Work now and play later.

Generic as it is (who DOESN'T LOVE HAVING A GOOD TIME?!)... I gotta admit the iGoogle horoscope is the most frequently accurate daily online horoscope that I've found so far. Final exams in 3 weeks... Can't argue with the last line! :D

The Oddities of the World.

A sonogram caught this foetus ''rocking out'' in his mum's womb.

Click here to visit the news article.

Rock on, yo! :D

Everyone could do with a little motivation!

The sunrise this morning was one of the most mesmerizing ones that I've seen in Singapore.

An azure sky painted with glowing streaks and patches of clouds. The golden sun rose slowly, casting shadows on the clouds and giving their edges greater definition.

I really like how the position of the sun gave this HDR-like effect to the clouds, thanks to the shadows. :D Just amazing. (and amusing at the same time. whee!)

That makes me feel like 'frying the frag of hwachong high'. Hehe.

this blog template is starting to look boring.

Hopefully, having all the links here in uncomfortably glaring shades of pink will spruce it up a little! :D

I just had a long heart-to-heart talk with my mum about friends, and now I really wish that I could go back in time to become a primary school student. Relationships were so simple back then. One could befriend another for just as long as he/she wished, because a simple proclamation of "I don't friend you!" would quickly extricate toxic friends from one's life.

Now that we're all grown up now, we often force ourselves to dilute the strong emotions we had during our childhood. Now, we can't get rid of poisons from our lives so easily. We have to conceal how we really feel in order to avoid unpleasant situations, and I can't stand doing that for much longer.

It's really sad to think about how many people (other than my family) there are in this world that I can trust and love without any reservations. On the other hand, it's really a great blessing that I have these people in my lives; there are many people out there who live meaningless lives with ever-changing grocery lists of mild acquaintances.

On a side note, I am a firm believer of the old adage, "the more you share, the more you gain". It's a value which has been deeply rooted in me, especially when applied to knowledge. This doesn't mean giving some revolutionary stuff (which you took 10 years to invent) away to the world for free, because I think 99% of humans are not capable of actions like that. If you actually did that, the world would nominate you for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The old kung-fu master thinking of 'I'm not gonna share everything with my disciples, just in case they triumph me!' is reasonable in the cut-throat corporate world, but it should not be applied to everything in life. This is the open-source era, people. Google, Wikipedia, Linux, and free apps are just a few famous examples of how sharing has made the world a better and happier place. :)

I can't take down a mountain all by myself; but together, we can.

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