Rejuvenation

As Easter came and went in a blur this weekend, we are reminded of the day two millennia ago when He sacrificed for us. Our lives are constantly filled with noise, external stimuli and worldly desires..it's hard to focus on what truly is important in our lives.

Forget not.

Fret not.

Living to the Fullest

When I first heard the news of the professor from school who passed away on a diving trip, I was filled with shock, then anguish and sadness for his family. He was a man who fully utilized his time; training for marathons, picking up several new hobbies while juggling his academic and administrative duties. It is often a tragedy that a person who inspired many is taken away from us too quickly.

What does it mean to live fully, since our lives are oft too short?

Do you spend too much time watching TV shows, playing mindless mobile games or clicking away on social network sites?

What was the last thing you learnt outside of your common knowledge? What was the last nice thing you said to someone?

As we begin our lives each day, we have to remind ourselves that what we have does not belong to us. We are not entitled to our blessings each day. Be thankful that you are still alive now. Be grateful for the kind people around you.

Job 1:21 (NIV)

Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.

Bleary, Mind Over Flown

So the Digital Signal Processing course's pace and rigor is making my head spin. Firstly, I did not have any formal education on linear algebra past JC stuff. Secondly, the pace at which the course goes on makes a lot of assumptions that someone without an engineering background (aka me) gets totally lost. While I slowly decipher what each Greek letter means, the lecturer has already moved on to the next topic. I have not felt stupider in a long time (okay just last week when I had to plow through a few other academic papers). Thirdly, I think I am only able to gain an appreciation of the underlying computations when the lecturer shows the formulas in a graphical format (sinusoidal waves, transformed and scaled etc) and I go, oooh.

Free quality education. How can one not make use of this? I've signed up for a few more classes and I think I may need to go through MIT's open course thing on linear algebra to brush up my skills. Learning is such an important part of my life that I just cannot imagine my brain rotting away.

At least I learnt the mathematical properties of tuning a guitar today. Never dared to approach the topic of how a sound wave can be mathematically expressed and manipulated. The wonders of things we take for granted.

Bleary eyed, it's way past bed time. I have got an interesting thought looking at how fast Fourier transformations are done that I will eventually tackle a problem that eluded me for the past few months. It's awesome to learn new things.