National Geographic Videos Blocked in Singapore?

I subscribe to the YouTube channel of National Geographic, but just now when I clicked on a new video this popped up:

What's in that National Geographic video that warrants a blockage to Singapore? Other videos play just nice and fine.

Updates on teh Kittehs

Last month I introduced a few special kittehs that just arrived at SPCA, five of them to be exact. Well, with the departure of Miracle the three-legged kitteh two weeks ago, all of them are now in some loving (hopefully!) home.

Admittedly, I was getting somewhat worried that Miracle may not find a family because she may have special needs (like no high steps), but I suppose someone out there must've been real kind.

Oh well, the usual "residents" are still around and some of them are a joy to work with. I particularly like Chase, a black and white adult who had the habit of opening his cage and exploring the roof, at least until SPCA built a grille ceiling and doubled the security of his cage with twine. And of course there's Rita, who shows that the word "bitch" does not belong only to the dogs.

She's a proud one, but has a lovely side as well. I still kinda like her when she's mellow, despite the fact that she has drawn my blood thrice so far.

EDIT (11:08): Just returned from SPCA today. OMG! Rita is adopted! Unbelievable!

For (Probably) the First Time Here, Merry Christmas!

Meow!

Traffic Horrendificus

I went to attend my cousin's wedding dinner in town yesterday evening. Being in the Scotts/Orchard Road area, the traffic was of course horrendous. But what I witnessed yesterday was way beyond my expectations. I'm not sure if it's the approaching Christmas or the weekend, but both when I drove into Scotts Road at about seven and when I exited the area at about eleven, it was jam all the way.

Typically, if I were on my own, I would've taken the MRT. Yes, it's sardine-people instead of sardine-cars, but at least I'm moving. But I was chauffeuring my grandparents and parents (conveniently being a non-alcohol drinker) so I have no choice but to contribute to the crammed roads. The parking would've been murderous if it weren't for the special lot allocated to my grandparents, being the VIP of the dinner.

Man, one more reason why I don't like Orchard Road.

OpenTrolley Bookstore

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but if you're ever looking for books in Singapore, there's this online bookstore called The OpenTrolley Bookstore.

It allegedly offers the cheapest prices in Singapore and provides quite a wide variety of books - in fact, more than perhaps any physical bookstore like Borders. It's kinda like Amazon but without the ridiculous shipping costs. In fact, delivery charges are so low, they are quite insignificant if you order many copies.

I've tried their service once, and it's pretty cool because I can easily find whether a book is available instead of having to go down to Borders or Kinokuniya. The prices are also reasonable (but I'm not sure if they're the cheapest, since I'm too lazy to hop down to those bookstore and compare). I did get a hitch in my order though: the delivery address was misprinted and I had to arrange with SingPost to get it redelivered, thus delaying the package by a few days, but thankfully OpenTrolley's service was prompt and fuss-free.

And since the ordering is conducted online, it takes very little effort to hunt down some reviews of the book to see how it rates. In fact, I used Amazon's reviews to check the book before placing the order with OpenTrolley... Unfortunately but understandably enough, there is no "browsing" of the physical book itself, which is not all that important, but sometimes little things like contents and accompanying notes (primarily for non-fiction) as well as paper texture and smell may matter. A bigger problem is that, for some ironic reason, they do not have Singapore published books.

Oh, by the way, if you make a transaction before the end of the year, you can get a 10% discount if you use DBS cards to pay for the books.

Crying Over Nothing

My personal thoughts on the Climategate issue.

Ads for the Competitor

If you provide free service and get your revenue through advertising, would you allow your competitor to place an ad on your service? Apparently Google will:

Unbiased ads... that's Google living up to its slogan: "Don't be evil"!

A Haunting World Without Us

Alan Weisman's The World Without Us was on my reading list for a long time - quite high up in fact - but I've never got the chance until I visited the National Library last week (both the Sengkang and NUS library don't have it). Now that I've began on it, I realised what a haunting read it is.

For those who don't know, the book speculates on what would happen to the world, both urban and natural, if humans were to suddenly disappear right now. How would our houses disintegrate, how would our cities decay, what will happen to the pollution we generated, and what will be the fate of those empty farmlands, etc.. The is mostly done through interviews with certain experts, such as soil analysts and forest conservationists, but not unexpectedly with a environmental slant. It may not seem like it, but it is somewhat a reflection on the impact mankind are inflicting on the planet.

I know it ought not be taken too seriously. After all, it is pretty much speculative and not firmly grounded on good science. Weisman is, ultimately, a journalist and not a scientist, and this book is not even an analysis of the consensus of experts, so it will be foolish to accept this as if it is a scientific fact. But try as I may to question the speculation, I cannot deny the facts presented (unless Weisman lied outright, but then this book will be infamous rather than famous as it is). Most disturbing of what I've read so far is a chapter discussing the impact of plastics on the environment. It went way further than I thought worst possible.

This is certainly an ingenious method of conveying the way we are smashing our environment. A truly sombre book; one that really makes me think. When was the last time I've encountered such books...

SPCA Kittehs!

I've been helping out at the SPCA cat shelters for months now. Helping out around the cat cages, I've seen many cats (particularly cute kittens) come and go, but this week the arrivals are so special!

There're this pair of sisters (left: Skylar; right: Peaches) so stuffed with cuteness that I doubt I'll see them by the end of next week!

And the same goes for Casey, this rather uniquely coloured cat. Not only is the silver coat special, she's also extremely vocal, and vocal cats tend to get more attention and chances of getting adopted.

This is Misty, a round-faced chubby cat. She also has a warm temperament. Personally, if I were to choose one cat to adopt, she'd stand a high chance of topping the list!

And finally, this is Miracle. Here, she appeared like a typical local cat, but her name is apt if you look at the photo below:

That's right, her front right leg is missing. According to the SPCA adoption gallery, she arrived at SPCA in such a state. She really warmed my sympathy when I saw her, and it really made me wonder the possibly difficult life she must've lead previously. She is the primary reason for the "specialness" of this week's arrivals!

Oh, by the way, if you're a volunteer and have time to spare, do help out these days because there is somewhat a shortage of help at the moment (probably because of the school exams).

Five Years of Firefox

Being in the GMT+ time zones, sometimes you just have to celebrate events and anniversaries the day after it was suppose to happen because that's when the world starts trumpeting yesterday's events.

So here we have, a half-decade birthday of one of the open source community's proudest representation: Firefox.



Firefox has its impact in web browsing, partly because it's such an awesome program, and partly because it's ideas are so powerful, almost every web browser now has them. Things like tabbed browsing (I know FF is not the first to have it, but it's the first to implement it correctly popularise it), enhanced security and community-based add-ons. I still remember how much I was wowed by tabbed browsing, after having to wage a constant war against a gambolling mess of Internet Explorers windows.

I think I've switched to FF long before it was officially released five years ago, that is, the one with a version number less than unity. It was already so good then, though I had to bear with some occasional crashes. Honestly, I can't remember what I used previously... I think there was a time I used IE (it wasn't so bad then), as well as Netscape Navigator (but Netscape 6 sucks mega big time though... what's with the version 6 of browsers being so sucky?...)

Now the guys at Microsoft has emerged from their reverie and started moseying in the IE department, but I think it's a long catch up to do.

Romantic Pose

A photo I took in the cattery at SPCA some time ago:

Looks like some romance scene from a movie. Anyone wants to cheezburgerise it?

Singapore and Carbon Emission Cuts

Being an environmentalist, I keep an eye on the proceedings of the Copenhagen summit this coming December. Being a Singapore too, I am interested in observing the response of Singapore to this conference and its probable promise of emission reduction targets.

So I am somewhat amused at two Straits Times reports on the government's response to emission cuts. The first (Climate change a challenge) revolves around a statement by the prime minister:

'Therefore, provided other countries also commit to do their part in a global deal, we will reduce emissions from 'business-as-usual' levels and do what we need to do with other countries to reduce humankind's carbon-dioxide emissions.'

Sounds good? But just one day before, he had his minister set the tone first (in this aggressively-titled S'pore rejects emission cuts),

'Whatever we do, we cannot compromise our ability to grow. So how we find a balance will be a continuous process.'

Of course, Singapore has no official obligation to obey any emissions deal, since we are not what is called an Annex I party under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Non-Annex I parties are mainly developing countries and a few which have economies that are vulnerable to emission cuts.

One can understand why Singapore, with a huge oil refining/trading economy, is quick to emphasise its non-responsibility. But doesn't that make the prime minister's words,

'But as a responsible member of the international community, we have to bear our fair share of the collective global effort to reduce carbon emissions.

a bit hypocritical?

350? Too Audacious a Target?

Again, on climate change, on 350.org's International Day of Climate Change.

Feels Like Hell

I'm not sure if it's just me, or is the weather blazing hot today. I was sweating as I was reading despite my faithful fan spinning at its fastest capability. According to Yahoo! Weather for today, it's supposed to feel like 37 °C today.

The highest temperature was 32 °C, but it was revised: earlier in the afternoon, it was reported as 35 °C. Interesting that the pressure was indicated as rising. Imagine instead if it said

Feels Like: 37 °C and rising

Now that'll be a real horror.

The Right to be Right

The promised post for Blog Action Day 2009: The Right to be Right.

One Blog Post on 15th Oct

Next Thursday, 15th October, you can expect one blog post on The Bosonic State.



It will be my little part for Blog Action Day 2009. The topic this year is climate change. I have a rough idea of what I'm going to say, based on some scrambled musings rumbling in my brain, but you'll have to visit my commentary blog that day to find out more.

And if you care enough about the environment, how about a post on BAD09?

A Hasty Nobel Peace Prize

It's screaming all over the airwaves and fibre optics cable (yay to Charles Kao!): Obama seized the Nobel Peace prize. From the citation of the Nobel committee, it seems that they admire his world vision and hope to use the prize to cement his conviction in that area.

I dunno about that, but it sounds so lame. I mean, I bet there are people with way better world vision than Obama and have committed more (and, for some, achieved more). Even previous winners awarded for their vision, like Aung San Suu Kyi, has achieved something (in her case, winning a biased election by emphasis on nonviolence protest). Giving it to Obama reminds me of the case of Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State during Nixon's and Ford's time, who also won the Peace prize in 1973. He was praised for his role in the negotiation for a ceasefire between North and South Vietnam, which, of course, as we all know, was broken very soon and developed into a full scale war with the eventual defeat of the latter.

It doesn't appear that I'm the only one to think this way. BBC's reader feedback seem to be flooded with disparaging comments, mostly towards the Nobel committee. If that's indicative of the general mood towards this decision, then I think the reputation for the Nobel committee for Peace is gonna take a bad hit.

This award for Obama is at best premature, at worst blinded. At the time of writing, Obama has yet to step forth to accept the prize. I dunno about him, but if I were him, I would've rejected the prize.

Nobel Prize Lands on Photonics

Just fresh: the Nobel Prize for Physics 2009 is awarded to researchers in photonics, on two separate technology: transmission of light through optical cables and capturing light precisely on electronic sensors.

Briton Charles Kao is lauded for his work in helping to develop fibre optic cables, the slender threads of glass that carry phone and net data as light.

Willard Boyle and George Smith, both North Americans, are recognised for their part in the invention of the charge-coupled device, or CCD.

It appears to me that the recent Prizes for physics have been leaning towards technology. I mean, it hardly needs to be mentioned the tremendous impact of optical cables and CCDs in modern society. It's just like how two years ago, it was awarded to giant magnetoresistance, which forms the basis of our hard disks.

In fact, if you compare it with Prizes given to fields in applied physics decades ago, it's a sharp contrast in terms of social applicability. Then, they were bestowed onto researchers working on neutron scattering, superconductors and stuff like that, which has a great impact in physics but not so much in terms of practical technology. Of course, there's always the exception - such as the transistor - but I think there is a greater emphasis on technology.

The Inevitable Photos from China

When in China, especially in ruraler areas, you'd bound to encounter Engrish. Here's some I've found on my journal through Tibet. Surprisingly, more than half were not within Tibet.

More can be found on my Picasa album.

Here Comes the Beatles

Quite a handful of months back, I was looking for the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and I sure had quite a lot of trouble finding it. MJ, I was sure, does not have it; but it turns out that my favourite Sembawang Music Centre at Sengkang were devoid of that particular album as well. Looking high and low, I eventually found it tucked away in a quiet corner at Borders.

Later on, I was looking for another album Abbey Road, and even HMV at City Link doesn't have it either (though it had a few other Beatles album which I bought - such as Rubber Soul). It seems that the Beatles albums are really rare...

So I decided to purchase them through Amazon. Sure, there are hefty delivery costs to Singapore, but I think the savings in terms of time, import costs and hair (from all those frustration) are worth it. So I made an order late last month, and a neat package swooshed in a few days ago, carrying:



Whoopie! It wasn't too costly, by the way. The CDs themselves are quite cheap, with most of the albums either US$9.99 or US$12.99 (only The Beatles a.k.a. White Album goes up to US$18.99 because of its comparative length).

But it appears that this set which I've just bought - a remastered set, according to the description - is part of the release to promote The Beatles: Rock Band. And what's more, because it's a new release, they greeted me on the shelves of Sembawang Music Centre! Argh!

Fortunately, it all works down to about the same price, since price tags call for S$19.90 or S$25.90 or something in those ranges. And, whatever it is, I've finally have 'em all!



(Ya, the last one is a bit out of place, but whatever!)

Back to a Warm Wet Haze

Sorry for the absence - though considering that this blog has occasional breaks, this one shouldn't be anything worthy apologising over - but here's the deal: I've been away from Singapore.

Specifically, I've tagged along with my parents to Tibet, and hence the lack of updates while I'm swimming in the high altitudes and frolicking with the yaks. It's a real nice cool and dry over there, and that came in full force when I returned to Singapore's massive pile of humid and hazy air.

Anyway, here are some of the highlights of the photos I've taken:

This is a nice photo, though the focus of that spot is behind me: a sculpture of Buddha - about 10 metres high - into the cliff wall. I wished I had more time to capture a better composition, but some locals were about to walk into the picture from my left (it turns out that they were going to fertilise the pond).

The most amazing thing about this Yamdrok Lake is the deep blue colour - its most striking feature, especially when viewed from a mountaintop behind me (a typical tourist spot). I like this photo because the lighter colours of the fields in the opposite shore makes it appear as if light was shining through the clouds onto the village.

Sheep sheep sheep! (Or are they goats?) In any case, livestock are so common in rural areas, the coach we were travelling in had often to give way to them... cows, yaks, sheep/goats, boars, pigs and even dogs. It is the case in this photo: the coach is cautiously overtaking this army of sheep/goats.

Excellent photo, standard postcard picture. But still, nice to be there, proud to have it in my personal photo collection!

At certain tourist destinations, locals offer photo posing opportunities with Tibetan mastiffs for a small fee. I went for the free cat instead.

Strictly speaking, this is not in Tibet but in the neighbouring state of Qinghai (connecting by the railway in the first photo), but it's a wonderful sight to behold that I've decided to add this in.

More selected photos on my Picasa album.

Earning a PHD with your Army Helmet

Yeah, that's right! Screw those long hours of research in a dank dungeon lab, slaving away at your pathetic sample or impossible equations. Your army Kevlar helmet can actually do that for you. The directions are simple: just denote a C4 some 5 metres away from your helmet, and sooner or later you may earn a permanent head damage.

Some medical physicists have done simulations on just such a situation: the long-term effect of a shockwave from an explosion, and it's supposedly slated for publication in Physical Review Letters (and that's a top-tier physics journal if there was ever one). They found that the gap between the head and the helmet - designed to prevent the soldiers from getting saucepan-ed on the head should their helmets get rapped - allows the shockwave to sneak to the head and rattle the cranium out of shape. What happens then is that the soldier will suffer from traumatic brain injury when they return home.

The blast doesn't even have to be deadly; in fact, it is the non-lethal blasts that causes this. Of course, lethal blasts understandably leaves no options for long-term damage. So until the time when ST Engineering or Chartered Industries comes up with a groundbreaking and earth-shattering helmet (just like what the latter did for the o'-so-wonder-yet-so-heavy SAR 21), I suppose we'll have to improvise. So will it be old newspaper or toilet paper for you?

Coconut Split

I was in the Botanic Gardens today, and I came across this weird coconut tree:



This is quite a bizarre sight because, the way coconuts grow, I cannot imagine how such a branching out can occur naturally. My guess is that the botanists have grafted one coconut plant onto another (can you graft a coconut?), probably for scientific reasons.

Well now if pirates want to hide gold in the Botanic Gardens, that's an unmistakable landmark!

Time-Lapse Video of Drive along AYE/ECP

Just for fun, I created this time-lapse video using my digital camera while driving along AYE and ECP. I placed my camera on a small tripod on the dashboard, and recorded twenty minutes of nonstop travelling which ended when the tripod fell over while I circled up the Changi Village exit along ECP.



The video was sped up 25 times. And because of this modification of framerate, I was able to eliminate the slight choppiness of the recorded video (since my camera can only go up to about 11 fps). But I can do nothing about the quality: 640 by 480 is the max my good old camera can go.

Some music will be great, but it's too much a hassle to find a royalty-free music.

The Superfluous Checkbox

I had to access www.ns.sg today to apply for an Overseas Notification. It has been quite a while - a few months at least - since I've visited the website, and one improvement is noticeable: the download speed of the website. Previously, it can take minutes before a page - a normal page with a few small images - load, but it seems that they have finally migrated away from their antiquated server. I hope they can do the same to the signal sets we carry, but I digress...

Since I was logged in to that website, I thought I might as well update some of my particulars, mainly my email address. Apparently, www.ns.sg thinks I'm still using my Hotmail one, whereas it is nearly a year since I switched over to Gmail. I thought I had changed with www.ns.sg when I ditched Hotmail, but maybe I got tired of spending half an hour trying to access the profile page (which is creatively called MyProfile).

Well, I did just that, and tried to submit. It threw this back at me:



It seems that I need to tick a checkbox saying "I would like to receive NS Portal eNewsletter updates and agree to Terms and Conditions". And since I cannot submit my personal information without agreeing to the Terms and Conditions, this checkbox is superfluous. Die die I must subscribe to the newsletter I won't read, and probably filter to spam when they start coming.

Sigh... why so Pioneer magazine one? But at least this one no need to pay...

A New Way to Google

Try Bing: a whole new way to google what you want to find!

The Paradox of Thio Li-Ann's Anti-Gay Stand

A rather lengthy exposition on what I perceive as a paradox in Thio's stand.

The Naked Version

I've always liked Sembawang Music Centre. When I visit the Sengkang library at Compass Point, sometimes I'll just pop by the Sembawang Music Centre just opposite. Sure, there is a MJ Multimedia quite near where I stay, but I still prefer SMC.

It's the selection of music they have: I like old songs by The Beatles, The Carpenters, Elton John, Billy Joel and Elvis Presley. SMC seems to stock them on their shelves (at least more often than MJ). Maybe they just couldn't clear them as efficiently. Or maybe it's just that Sengkang is where all the old people like me go.

What's more, SMC tends to have excellent offers (though there is a chance it is an album imported from China or Taiwan with some glitzy Chinese characters along with the glitzy original English words). Indeed, just today I've gotten The Beatles' Let It Be... Naked (imported from China) with a 50% off its price tag.

Let It Be... Naked is not some pornographic film or music (pornographic music?) about The Beatles. It is basically the similar list of songs from their 1970 album Let It Be, but mixed in a very different way. It is a very long story why this is so, but basically the original album was edited by Phil Spector and the result was strongly disapproved by Paul McCartney. So this 2003 version was how the songs should've been, according to McCartney.

Prior to the purchase, I've heard both versions of Let It Be and The Long and Winding Road, the latter being significantly different (it attained a slightly more light-hearted tone than the original heavy feeling). Of course, I'm in no position to judge which version is better, since it's actually all a matter of taste, but I'm quite blown away by the new version of Let It Be, which is actually the reason why I've decided to buy the CD in the first place.

This difference in the "engineered" version and the "authored" version led me to a certain opinion - after some casual discussion as well - about modern music, which is the whole purpose of this post after a chain of boring ramblings. Personally, I found it that, after Michael Jackson, there has not been any mega stars. And I'm not talking about his death; I'm referring to after his decline in creative productivity after 1990s. Of course, there are super stars, but not mega star - mega in the sense of Elvis, The Beatles and Michael Jackson (in fact, these are the only three I'd consider mega stars). The ones who created songs no one have heard before, the ones who directed the future of popular music, the ones who have hordes of fans even after their deaths, the ones whose songs are still heard and played decades later.

And I think the whole reason why this is so is because of how music is created nowadays. I mean, what music publishers have done is that they discovered a formula for making music by sprinkling some sort of pop garnish over songs generated from hired songwriters and lyricists which are then passed over to good looking people to sing, after which algorithms were applied to the product to make it even more pop. It sells, and it sells well - really well - but it appears to me that this sort of business is suffocating music. Of course, there are singers out there who put their souls into their songs (and by that I mean that they participate in the production of the song other than just singing), but these singers have to compete with producers' demands and other albums of manufactured music that are always topping the charts and grabbing other people's attention.

I am completely clueless as to how long modern pop groups spent in recording an album, but judging from their time spent in promoting them, it is certainly less than Let It Be's months. And that's not counting the writing of the songs. Of course technology can account for some of the reduction in time, but it does make me wonder if I should lament.

The Big Shots Commencement

Yup, my commencement was this morning - the first day of the entire series - and I've only found out moments ago why we physics honours students (as well as students from food sciences and quantitative finance from science faculty) were shoved together with a bunch of political science graduate and dentistry people. An odd collection of majors; but it was to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the three faculties, and we were kinda of token representative. And it certainly helps that the physics cohort is rather small; a nifty 30+ people that would extend the ceremony by no more than five minutes.

Being the first day, I got the *ahem* honour to shake hands with the president, who is presiding over today's ceremony. But is it just me, or was his congratulations when I collected my hollow tube rather tired (after all, we physics majors got queued right to the end of all the graduates that day)? After all, it's must've been hazardous to the jaw muscles to say "congratulations" for over 500 times. Some graduates stayed to chit-chat for few seconds; maybe they have some political science tidbits for him?

But it turned out, to my surprise, he was not the only big shot there (or from a political science viewpoint, there was a bigger shot there). Lee Hsien Loong's son, from the FASS, was graduating on the same day as well, so the big man himself came down. Whoa, the Head of State and Head of Parliament together... No wonder there were rows of helpers standing by, waiting to gallop into action if the slightest needs arise.

Things turn out alright however... No mega-terrorists, no assassins and no Magnetos. Except for one glitch: a typo in my graduate attendance card: the ceremony was at 1100, and the invitation cards and information leaflets put admission at 1000 - 1040. But all the graduate's attendance card (or as far as I can tell) had it saying 0900 - 0940 (which is the time for other morning ceremonies). For me, I deduced that there was a typo, but apparently, there were some who turned up an hour early just to find the door shut.

Well, I suppose something must go wrong... it might as well be this.

No Shit Sherlock

Village Roadshows and Silver Pictures are releasing a new movie called Sherlock Holmes at the end of the year, with Guy Ritchie at the helm of director, and stars Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. You can watch the trailer on Youtube, but I'm not going to embed it here because I completely freaked out when I watched it.

From what I can gather in the trailer, the Sherlock Holmes in this movie is completely out of character with that of the books. Unlike that cool, efficient and deceptive guy from Arthur Conan Doyle, this Downey-Holmes is cheesy and full of bouncing and thumping. I mean, if Sherlock Holmes employs action, it is usually quick and to-the-point with deadly efficiency. Action seldom last longer than a brief struggle, and the longest is probably in Hound of the Baskerville which involves a chase and a few bullets.

According to its Wikipedia page, Ritchie was trying to be more authentic to Doyle's version of Holmes instead of the earlier screen adaptations which presents the image of Sherlock Holmes as a pipe smoking guy in an armchair predicting the precise movements of Watson. I am quite doubtful if he has achieved what he wanted. I mean, I never watched the earlier films, but the image of Sherlock Holmes in my mind, which is solely based on the books, comes nowhere close to that guy in the trailer. And they justified the action based on one quote from canon; pretty liberal interpretation, in my opinion.

To be honest, I think Ritchie and the screenwriters are portraying a Sherlock Holmes that they conceived in their mind based on the books, but he is not based directly on the books, if you know what I'm saying. Nonetheless I can't help having the feeling that they're just borrowing the fame of Sherlock Holmes to sell their movie.

I wonder what Hollywood has in mind next. A young Hercule Poirot with Taekwondo?

I Want to Explode

I collected my Commencement package and academic gown this morning, and was thereafter shoved with tons of brochures, magazines and gifts primarily from the NUS Alumni Relations for obvious purposes. Then, when I was re-organising the stuff (which included delegation of some stuff into the recycling bin), I came across the Commencement magazine which has this cover:



When I first saw this, I was rendered speechless. Yao was with me. I showed her the picture. I looked at her; she looked at me. Silence. Even the thermal motion of the air molecules seemed to have turned sluggish.

Okay. Let's get this straight. This is the magazine NUS produced for the Commencement. That cover image was supposed to symbolise our emotions on graduation. But either the cover artist was trying to be sarcastically exaggerating which has failed on me, or this is really chills-down-the-spine kind of cheesy picture which I would do my utmost to distance from.

A Day of Massive HTML Coding

Spent the entire afternoon and evening modifying the HTML code for my website. I've got all the formatting onto CSS now, so that cleans up the code a lot; but this also meant a massive job at it.

So now it sports a cleaner look, though I haven't had the time to add more content.

Nonetheless, I think it was time well spent. I upgraded my HTML knowledge by a huge margin. Not sure if that'll ever come in useful, but watching my webpage load up neatly is quite a satisfaction. And with the entire site on CSS, it'll be much easier in the future for me to modify any formatting of the site.

Not that it matters, right? Heh, like anyone visits the site... But it's all for myself, I suppose. Really, I mean it... the Notes section is particularly useful when I need to check some information offhand from another terminal.

Electronic Rodent Woes

For the past week I have somewhat of a mouse problem. Basically, the fidelity between the motion of the mouse and the cursor on the screen is rather poor. Moving the mouse in a constant motion, the cursor may slide in the right direction, but sometimes faster and sometimes slower. Moving the mouse in circles, the cursor runs along a path of a dented ellipse whose centre moves randomly all over the screen.

It's not so bad as to be easily apparent. I was only aware of the exact symptoms when I did some simple "calibration" experiments. But there was some difficulty in getting the cursor to the right spot - and for a while it left me wondering why it has suddenly become so frustrating to play games that require precision of the mouse, like Diablo 2. Basically, the problem is a borderline case: there was a vague feeling that something's wrong, but it's not "wrong" enough to be immediately apparent that there is a problem.

In fact, this cranky mouse is still alright for general purposes. It was even okay when I played Mass Effect yesterday (because ME only requires me to point roughly in the right direction). It's just irritating when you need precision.

What's worse is that this mouse was no longer than a month old. (The previous mouse, on the other hand, had good movement fidelity but the left-click works only like 30% of the time.) I admit this mouse is one of those inexpensive kind (< $20), but it's by Prolink, which is known for their modems and wireless routers and stuff along those lines, and not one of those seldom heard, made-in-China brands. I suppose they don't make good mice.

Well, I'll have to get a new mouse, and it shall be from a reliable brand. A quick search reveals that mice by Logitech and Microsoft are pretty reliable and durable. But I'd better avoid Microsoft mouse in case it triggers a blue screen of death on my Ubuntu... okay, I exaggerate, but I'm just worried that incompatibilities may arise from using a Microsoft product on a non-Windows platform.

So it's gonna be good old Logitech, whom I recall has been around since the earlier days of PCs. But the neighbourhood computer shop does not sell Logitech mice (well, they have $70+ wireless mouse with special mojo for gaming, but I'm not looking for those). Thus until I find a shop that sells a mouse I want, I think D2 will be taking a backseat. On the other hand, I can always steal the steady IBM mouse from my laptop (which is currently in the lab in school).

Ah bummers... electronics nowadays...

Meteor Attack!

My opinions about a recent science news about a meteorite smiting a German dude.

Scribblenauts: A Game to Wait For

At the E3 2009 last week, numerous games were previewed, including those super big titles like Final Fantasy XIV and Left 4 Dead 2, as well as new devices for consoles such as Microsoft's Project Natal which was meant to take on Wii. But one that caught many's attention, including mine, was a little Nintendo DS game called Scribblenauts.

The objective of the game is very simple. It is essentially a puzzle-solving game, in which the player needs to help a character to get a star (called a starite) in a small, side-scrolling stage. To do that, the player should "summon" tools or objects to help the character. But the amazing thing is, there seems to be endless number of tools, each with its own properties, that can be summoned. That is to say, there is practically endless ways in which the player can complete a particular stage. Just watch the trailer to know what I mean.

Reviewers seemed impressed (see here and here). The gameplay video in the latter article shows what the game is simply capable of. The testers first summoned a stegosaurus. Then they got a kraken, which promptly defeats the stegosaurus. Then they tried griffon, Obama (but the game does not recognise the word) and jackalope, all of which were easily beaten by the kraken. Finally, they conjured up God which killed the kraken with ease. Thereafter, they called in Einstein to fight God. Go watch the video to know what happens next.

If one pauses to think about it, the programming behind the game is either immensely complicated, or thoroughly groundbreaking. According to the developers, each object is endowed with several properties, and the game will execute actions based on these properties. Even so, it is not difficult to imagine the immense database the game has to draw upon; to begin with, for example, the developers have to create the animation for almost all objects we know of. And then the interaction (e.g. from the official trailer, we have interaction between policeman and donut, as well as beaver and tree) will greatly complicate things.

This game is ultra-ambitious, but if the developers really pull this off, I may consider buying a Nintendo DS.

CAP Evolution

Ripping off the idea from chillycraps, I've created a graph of my CAP over my various semesters in NUS, and here you go:



Actually, come to think of it, it's quite amazing that my CAP did not change in semester 3 (as for semester 5, I went on exchange, so CAP is naturally constant).

But it seems that after my exchange, my CAP has been dropping steadily... Ah well, I suppose the relaxed and laid back Australian lifestyle changed me...

More Opposition MPs: How Will This Change Voting Patterns?

A writeup on a particular angle of thought on the latest political change in Singapore.

Advanced Cat Yodelling

Okay, for some reason, this good-humoured video of annoying cats amused me terrifically:



Love the yodelling "orchestra" at the end.

A Scientifically Correct Game

One of the recent games I've played is Mass Effect, the infamous one that got banned in Singapore for a rather short while due to its sex scene between a human and an alien (which is one of the stupidest ban I've ever seen). But that aside, the game is quite awesome, with a solid storyline and creative gameplay. Different types of characters are quite amazingly balanced, but above all, it's one of those scientifically correct sci-fi game.

It is a game set in the future and it's very much set in an interstellar world. Of course, that being said, some leeway in terms of "creative technology" must be granted. But I think it can be considered one of those hard science fiction, where, other than a couple of technological and scientific assumptions, the science is quite justified.

The main scientific assumption of ME is, well, the phenomenon of mass effect, which is the ability to accelerate objects up to superluminal speeds. They managed to link it to dark energy, and it is apparent that the writers have at least some ideas of what they're talking about. And it's quite a surprise to see terms like L2 (Lagrange points) used... kind of like an easter egg for people who know what it means.

But then again, they made the usual error of hearing sound in space. Ah well, drama rules over science, I suppose.

After Graduation

Phew! It's been a rather tiring day for me. I spent the entire morning and afternoon attending the second Singapore Animal Welfare Symposium that is held at NUS. It is a very inspirational event for me, watching a gathering of animal lovers in Singapore debating passionately on several issues. Even if I do not agree with some of their stands, their dedication for animal welfare and animal rights were arrestingly exceptional. And they are not the stereotyped highbrow activists who are unyielding to compromise: the presence of and civil discussions with representatives from AVA shows that their methods of activism lean towards cooperation and compromise.

It was also a major leap for the lazy me as I signed up to be a volunteer for a number of the groups including ACRES and Sea Shepherd. It was something I've been wanting to do for years, but just can't really get myself to commit to it. Typically, I'm held back with the concern that I cannot give that much time to the effort, and there is some strain of truth in this. But with my studies over, I think time is plentiful now.

And true enough, I have quite a lot of it in the next few months. My plan for the future, changed now due to the poor economic situation, is to apply for graduate studies (in fact, I'm in the process of doing so) overseas for the Feb/Mar intake. In the meantime, it's gonna be volunteer work and part-time job for me, hopefully more of the former.

Of course, there's always the worry that I cannot perform up to task for the expectation of the volunteer. But we'll see... we'll see.

And also, I don't want to restrict myself to volunteer work for animal welfare only. I'm also quite into environmentalism, and, to a small extent, social activism. So if you are in an organisation that needs volunteers, I'm up for grabs!

The Aftermath of the AWARE War

Yet another post on the AWARE issue.

The Problem with the New AWARE EXCO

A few comments off my mind about the developments of one of Singapore's most established civil groups:

The Problem with the New AWARE EXCO

Here We Go, One Last Time

300409 1700: MA3215 Three-Dimensional Differential Geometry
050509 0900: PC4274 Mathematical Methods in Physics III

Yes, it will not be a pumped up battle... just two papers, that's all. One of the module I'm taking, which is GE3239, is without exam. That is quite a pity, since it's pretty much my favourite module this semester. And of course my honours module has no exams.

Here we go...

Finito

That's it. The end of my FYP presentation on Thursday puts an official full stop on my entire project. There is still one part which I couldn't get to work in time to include in my thesis and presentation, but nonetheless I was hoping to weed out the error and get it functioning... it's too close to give up now. But otherwise, all the assessment is over.

The FYP presentation was rather daunting, but it went smoothly enough. Us theorists were all group together (there were three concurrent groups of presentations) in the conference room, and theory projects meant theoretical physicists as assessors. This simply meant that, during the presentation, there is a row of theoretical physicists being the firing squad, and for some reasons theoreticians are much sharper in asking questions than experimentalists. So it was a sizzling spot when the Q&A section comes in. For one guy, the questions were so tough that the profs began cross-firing at each other while the poor student stood there trying to be invisible.

But it's not yet all over for me. I've undergone a grilling session; later this morning, it will be my turn to play the firing squad, interrogating the SPS students on their SP2171 presentation... To be honest, it's a rather queer feeling, watching juniors walking the paths that I have taken just a few years ago.

A few years ago... doesn't sound very long, and yet it stands on opposite end of the undergraduate track. Not too long ago indeed, yet it felt like eons since I've talked about cosmological inflation as a first year student.

Yeah, not too long ago, I just matriculated.

16th April: When Deadlines Collide

You'd think that I'd have time on my hands after my thesis is submitted, don't you? But no! Last week I have seen myself busy trying to catch up with all that I've neglected since the latter half of this semester. It was achieved only to partial success. And then today was a bit of a crammed day, with my FYP viva setting off in the morning and a test in the afternoon.

But the big one's on this Thursday. 16th April. So much is due, and a huge stake to be played on that day:

1) FYP presentation
2) Maths module assignment deadline
3) Geography module weekly reports deadline
4) Geography project essay deadline

Funny, isn't it, that everyone puts the deadlines on the day before the last day of the semester.

Thesis: A Logarithmic Progression

Just handed in my thesis. That's one big thing off my hands (but of course there's still the viva and presentation). Quite worn out... nothing much to say... just that this thesis has a file size which increases roughly logarithmically with the draft number.



And yes, my final draft was the tenth draft.

The Irony of SecuRom

After upgrading my PC, I loaded in Mass Effect which I've bought some time ago and installed it. The game has been idling in my room for quite a few months now, primarily because when I first bought it, my old PC wasn't good enough for the game.

But my new system is more than able to handle it, but then the installation was a crazy headache! The main issue lies in the security feature in the DVD which was meant to combat piracy. My DVD drive (being old) cannot read one particular file on the DVD and kept consistently giving my some read error. It's appear to be some sort of SecuRom protection, but whatever it is, it has driven lots of players pretty mad, such that the developers came up with a way to manually install the game.

This manual installation involves extracting some rar files and then running a few programs separately. Sounds like a load of hard work, and it did help some people but not me. It's the same old problem: my DVD drive cannot read one particular rar file! After hours of fiddling, it still didn't work.

Eventually, I had to bring it to school, use my laptop in my lab to copy out that particular rar file, put it on my thumbdrive and transfer it to my PC one week later. Luckily, this method finally worked and phew!... the game installed fine. There was a problem running the game, but it turns out to be an issue with all AMD processors and has been corrected in released patch.

So, finally, I can get the game running after lots of hassle. But this is really, really ironic. Many players who bought the game had plenty of headache with the installation, but those using the pirated version (which is typically cracked) has few issues with it.

Moral of story?

PC Upgrade

As mentioned previously, I've bought parts to upgrade my home PC two weeks ago, but it wasn't until last week that I've managed to get everything fixed up.

Much of the time was consumed in cleaning the dust loaded various parts of the chassis, but some time was also spent wondering what certain error messages meant (got stuck for quite some time with the IDE conduction cable). But it's all up and running now, a mixture of old and new parts.

The new components are:

AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHz dual core (and a compatible motherboard)
ATI Radeon HD3850
4 GB DDR RAM
160 GB Seagate hard drive
Power unit

And I kept the CD drive, my old 120 GB hard drive and sound card.

This upgrade finally allowed me to clean up my old files and reinstall everything. Now I finally have Ubuntu running on my PC alongside with Windows XP, which is primarily used for games only.

Human Detectors

Question: why use humans when detectors are relatively good and cheap nowadays?

Answer: because students are free.

Pluto: A Planetary Comeback

Okay, seems like someone out there doesn't like Pluto being called a dwarf planet. The state of Illinois has passed a bill declaring Pluto as a planet.

Linky

I thought US is sinking into a financial crisis, but I suppose, in the land of the free, there is never a shortage of good jokes for gloomy times!

Keyboard Replacement: A Bit of Fail

With the multiple (but non-fatal) failures of my laptop keyboard, I've finally gotten myself to go down to Sim Lim and get it changed. And at the same time, I got a fan that has a quieter motor, as well as 1 GB of RAM to help my computer handle certain demanding affairs (1.5 GB is quite sufficient for most purposes, especially in Ubuntu).

In truth though, the real motivation for me to get down to Sim Lim was actually to upgrade my home PC. It was several years old, and above all, last week it has finally died. It did not so much as cannot power up, but it kept hanging at some point when booting or loading Windows XP. I suspect it has something to do with the motherboard (which I've realised, when shopping for new parts, that it is now named with the politically-correct "mainboard"... fatherboard anyone?), but in any case, this upgrade will finally give me the chance to install Ubuntu in my PC (previously I can't because my hard disk - only one - has one partition, all occupied by Windows XP).

But back to the topic. I got my T43's keyboard and fan changed. All works excellently, but there's something... different about the keyboard. It is actually a keyboard with another country's layout:



The buttons are labelled differently, but they actually serve the old function. For example, the "~, #" key next to the "Enter" button is actually the old "\, |" button. "Shift + 2" still gives "@" instead of the double inverted commas as displayed on the key. This is not too big a problem, since I still have my old keyboard and I can simply replace the key.

What really irritates me, at least until I get used to it, is the different key sizes. The left shift key is smaller, and the Enter key has, well, morphed into another shape (previously, it wasn't too different from the right shift key downstairs). As a consequence, I ended up pressing the wrong key from time to time.

Oh, and also, the left shift key feels pretty mushy instead of the fresh springiness of other new keys. I suppose it has something to do with the rubber nipples, and I, again, have plenty of that from my old keyboard.

While I'm aware of keyboards of other layouts, I didn't realise this will be a problem until it got replace and fully installed. Ah, well, at least Alt + Tab works great, and I no longer get that worrying sound of grinding from my old fan.

By the way, anyone wants to guess what the key next to the left shift (it's labelled "|, \" but of course it is mapped to two other keys) gives?

Me, Now on Facebook

That's right, as the title says.

The reason for this is due to my tutorial subgroup (5 people) in GE3239 Environmental Sustainability. My group members decided, wisely, that email communication is too much of a hassle for the online communication that we were supposed to do (this being a prelude to the collaboration with ANU students coming soon). So they settled on a Facebook group, which kinda forced me to sign up for it.

But it turns out that this tutorial group may just be temporary, since I think the lecturers meant it as a warm up to the necessary online communication with ANU students, and once the ANU-NUS communication is established, this tutorial group will be placed aside. What's more, even though the group got created, most of the work for the first tutorial was done via email, so it is currently pretty empty... a couple of members, but no files or messages.

So whatever it is, I have now a Facebook account, so if you want, you can try searching me out and adding me as a friend. But so far I find nothing spectacular about Facebook... So chances are, you won't see me online often.

Election in 2009? The Chances Involved

A new post in The Bosonic State, which is finally a direct comment on politics since eons.

Dying Keyboard

Two weeks ago I've opened up my Thinkpad T43 to examine the increasing noise from the cooling fan, which turns out to be a problem with the motor (nothing I can do about it). And since I was at it, I decided to clean the keyboard at the same time, since it's quite clogged up with dust.

So I took out all the keys and washed them thoroughly with soap. I also wiped the board with a slightly damp cloth. And while putting all back, I realised the first casualty of the cleanup: a missing "nipple", the blue spongy thing that acts as the spring to pop the button back up as well as a contact to trigger the circuit board.

Not too big an issue. I took the nipple from NumLock/ScrLock button, so now this particular button is permanently depressed. But it doesn't matter because I don't remember an occasion when I needed that particular button (I think Scroll Lock comes from an age long gone today).

After using my laptop for a while, more problems cropped up. Most obvious is that Left Alt + Tab no longer works. Left Alt works (with other buttons), Tab works, Right Alt + Tab works, but Left Alt + Tab just doesn't. I guess I must've killed some circuitry, such that only one of the two buttons can be pressed at any one time (just like how computers will complain when you press three arrow keys simultaneously). Now, that's irritating, because Left Alt + Tab is one of the most common shortcut I use on my Ubuntu. Right Alt + Tab just doesn't feel right (it requires both hands anyway).

Soon, I discovered the same problem with the letter "A" and "L", because when I type words like "real" quickly, the "l" may not appear. Then, the problem, I realised, can be generalised to the entire second row of alphabets: once "A" is depressed, "S", "D", "F", ... , "L" don't work (but other combinations, like "F" and "J", works).

If that's not bad enough, I've also found out that the Esc key doesn't function too well. In fact, it works only like 10% of the time. This key's not used as frequently as Alt + Tab, but it is used sometimes, and it kinda irks me when I have to press the key many times before the computer knows what I'm doing.

I'm considering buying a new keyboard and fan. Hopefully,nootherkeysfailinthemeantime.

My Project Stands on Dangerous Grounds

"You're stepping on dangerous grounds, young man."
- Berthold-Georg Englert

That's Berge's comment on some things in my project, during the second presentation that just took place yesterday.

Okay, okay. It's not as bad as it sounds. Anyone who knows Englert will know that he has killer eyes. But then again, anyone who knows him will also know that he is seldom harsh to students (at least undergraduates), even if he disagrees with what's being presented. In any case, he did say it with a tinge of humour in his voice (you know, the kind whereby a sagely grandmaster advises a young apprentice).

So indeed, he's a bit skeptical when I presented a master equation for quantum Brownian motion that has negative coefficients for the dissipators. The main issue he has with these negative coefficients is that they violate a sacred condition called complete positivity, which roughly implies that certain probabilities cannot be negative (naturally).

But you see, the situation is not as simple as stated above. The coefficients can be negative if, in a vague sense, they have been positive for sufficiently long periods prior to that. Specifically, there must be enough time when the coefficients are positive such that the eigenvalues of the matrix formed by these coefficients can be positive as well, even though certain matrix elements are negative. This will imply positive probabilities.

The thing is that this is a very delicate issue and difficult to evaluate for sure, which is his comment on "dangerous grounds". But then again, I didn't create this master equation which has negative coefficients. This comes from some published articles, and in fact this equation has been used by several authors.

Well, Yeo Ye is telling me to go ahead, because it's not too big an issue. Still, it's not very reassuring to know that my project (at least a part of it) is build on shaky grounds.

A Trip to Chek Jawa

It was a pretty successful trip to Chek Jawa on Sunday, after a couple of attempts at visiting it. There were numerous factors that could've spoiled the trip such as rain which seems itching to fall these few days, but fortunately almost all was smooth.

The "almost" was to justify the short moment when we got lost while cycling on the dirt track. The map showed that the route ought to connect to a track road, but it went in a circle instead. That, however, did not throw us off too long (we were there early anyway), and we caught Chek Jawa at the lowest tide of ~0.3 m and the intertidal region was exposed.


Chek Jawa exposed. If the water was a mere 0.2 m higher, this entire region will be flooded.



Fiddler Crabs. Plenty of them in the higher regions (which are also exposed during "high" low tides), so they're pretty much common sight.



I think these are the colonial ascidians.



Found this shrimp digging a hole by dumping out dirt. It was quite hard to capture it because it was constantly in its hole, coming out once every ten seconds to cast out some dirt (which rapidly blurs the surrounding water).



This should be a carpet anemone. It supposedly can stun a fish by stinging it and then swallow it in a popiah fashion.



Some eggs on the rocky shore. Not sure which organism it belongs to... Probably some snails'.



The obligatory group photo at the Ubin jetty.

Okay, next trip there, I'll make sure I get a guided tour so I can go down there.

Password Security

Recently, an email arrived in my NUS inbox concerning IT security. Specifically, NUS wishes to tighten password security by introducing a few requirements.

1) Passwords must be at least 8 characters in length.
2) Passwords must contain at least a number, an alphabet and a symbol (eg. Pa55Word!)
3) You will be required to change your password every 180 days.
4) You can change your password at most once/day.
5) You cannot re-use any of your 6 previous passwords.

Requirement 3, 4 and 5 are already in existence, which is pretty much one of the most stringent password requirements I've ever encountered. 1 and 2 are new, and while the former is reasonable, the latter is, well, a bit too much. Alphabet, okay; number, okay; but symbol too? Hey man, why not try this:



Can I suggest more? Ditch Internet Explorer for Firefox (some machines are still running IE6). Ditch Windows for Linux (at least for the mail server). But oh wait, NUS has a deal with Microsoft. Dang!

Galaxy Song

Here's a little song (and a video that is cheeky at one point) from the Monty Python Youtube channel to commemorate the International Year of Astronomy.

Happy Chinese New Year 2009!

新年快乐!

And this year's CNY is pretty strategically positioned to give a ultra long weekend! So that makes almost everyone happy except for the masochists and sadists.

If you happen to have nothing to do on this first day of CNY, why not try looking out for the partial eclipse (maximum at 1749)? On a side note, eclipses are often considered bad omen in ancient China... I wonder how the superstitious will regard this day.

Chek Jawa Attempts

I have been trying to organise a small trip to Chek Jawa lately. I do not mean a stroll on the broadwalk at any time of the day. The real gem of Chek Jawa is the natural habitat and wildlife there, and to really appreciate all that, ideally I need to go down onto the flats during low tides (< 0.5 m).

The last time I went to Chek Jawa was during the SPS camp trial run. It was a walk along the wooden planks over glittering water (but that was never the main focus of the camp anyway). Then I tried to organise one trip three weekends ago with a few other people, as the tides would be ideal then. That was when I found out that to get down to the flats we've gotta book a place on the guided tour (which is reasonable; they can't have everyone trampling over the delicate shores), and it was too late for us to do so.

So attempt #3: I announced amongst SPSians and get a handful who're interested, and then armed with the numbers I tried making a booking for one at the first week of February. Turns out that the tours have been fully booked for the entire quarter. The next available tour is 1st April (no joke), and the reason why it's still available is because the booking date starts only 1st March.

Yeah... I never knew Chek Jawa was so popular. I knew there was a time when Chek Jawa was the destination for everyone, a weekend family trip. Now things have quieten down, and I presumed that the trips won't be so rapidly filled. Hmm well, I suppose we'll still go (or whoever's still interested), but keep to the broadwalk. Well, it's an improvement from "looking at water from broadwalk" to "looking at exposed shore from broadwalk".

Modular Overview of my Degree

Being in the final semester implies that the complete set of modules I've taken for my undergraduate degree is determined. For a B.Sc. (Hons.) I need 160 MCs worth of modules, or equivalently 40 modules (since all the modules I took are 4 MCs each), 35 of which is distributed to categories according to the requirement of my degree.

Roughly, this is a breakdown of the number of modules from each category I've taken.

GEM: 2 / 2
SS: 1 / 1
Breadth: 5 / 4 (+1)
Faculty: 9 / 4 (+5)
Major 1000: 4 / 4
Major 2000: 6 / 6
Major 3000: 8 / 6 (+2)
Major 4000: 8 / 8
Subtotal: 43/35 (+8)
--------------------------------
UEM: 1
--------------------------------
Total: 44/40 (+4)

I need an excess of 5 modules to fill up the slots in the unrestricted elective modules (UEM) category. There's already one there - my ISM - because a newly-designed ISM cannot be categorised anywhere, but clearly I have more than enough. Even my faculty modules alone overflowed enough to fill up the UEM category. The severe cramming of faculty modules is primarily due to my maths minor, which accounts for 6 of the modules.

I recall that when I was first year, this system is quite baffling, and took quite a serious amount of time to understand what the whole deal is about. And it does take a bit of proper accounting to ensure that the modules go into the correct categories and that I've taken enough and all.

It may be that NUS is striving to give students a wholesome education with at least general knowledge from all areas (and thus the GEM, Faculty and Breadth categories). However, this makes the entire structure pretty rigid. Comparing it with ANU's system (where I was under for one semester when on exchange), it seems that the system hardly gives the student much room to manoeuvre. A typical ANU student can choose to concentrate on his/her own major (save a few basic requirements), or branch out and reach for breadth, but a NUS student does not enjoy the luxury of this choice.

No way am I saying that the NUS system is inferior as compared to ANU's. I suppose it's more like a tradeoff: the ANU system gives more freedom, but the NUS degree guarantees breadth in its education.

Between Geometry and Engineering

This is the last semester. This is also the first semester in which the modules I'm taking are not decided until so late in the CORS bidding.

First of all, the modules I'm taking:

PC4274 Mathematical Methods in Physics 3
MA3215 Three-Dimensional Differential Geometry
GE3239 Environmental Sustainability

And on top of them, of course, is my FYP.

So what's taking me so long to decide upon the three? It's primary the maths module: I was torn between that module and MA3501 Mathematical Methods in Engineering. To begin with, MA3215 is probably more abstract and difficult than MA3501. Both are pretty interesting and useful to physics, but MA3215 may have the tendency to stray into stuff like, "Let X be a set and Y a subset that forms a topological structure of X..." However, MA3215 may serve (if taught at the correct level) as a bridge between general relativity and the underlying mathematics, whereas MA3501 is like those knowledge that you store somewhere in the obscure corner of your brain and may be useful in some indeterminate future. Another concern - a practical one - is that MA3215 lectures are in the afternoon, while MA3501 is at 0800.

But ultimately the issue is decided by a simple external factor. Initially, my plan was to bid and take both modules, and then drop one of them before the "withdraw" deadline. However, try as I might, I cannot get MA3501 (it doesn't even appear in CORS). Even with a successful appeal to waive the prerequisite of MA1506 (I have other equivalent modules) doesn't make it magically appear. Neither does the lecturer have any idea why this is so. But a quick check with the mathematics department office informed me that MA3501, despite its description of "modeling of basic phenomena in science, engineering and technology", is not meant for science students.

Ah well, that means I'm down to MA3215. Good? Bad? I'll have to see, but at least this is one semester, finally, that I do not have 8 a.m. lectures!

2009: International Year of Astronomy

And it wasn't too long ago in 2005 that we had the World Year of Physics. Heh, one when I'm entering my undergraduate life and one when I'm leaving.

But really, astronomy is one science that is hard to appreciate in Singapore and thus very often neglected. Singapore is way too bright to see the skies save for a few exceptionally bright stars and planets (and maybe a plane to increase the cosmic glitter). Even in "dark" places like Ubin, the place is still well lit by the reflection of city lights on clouds and smog.

The above picture is something taken when I was in Australia. I was at the Mount Stromlo Observatory, right smack in the middle of winter (the low temperature and wind chill is no joke). Up there, isolated from light pollution, the sky was filled with blips and dots... an incredible view beyond what one's imagination might paint. Pictures of course don't capture that majestic scene, as my photo above demonstrate (it was an 8-second exposure, mind you! - and don't ask me what that triangle thing is, I don't know).

So next time you head off to some place shielded from light pollution, take a look at the skies at night. It's a rewarding view.