Well now, I think I have been procrastinating more than enough already. Have two rather large assignments that are due soon and I haven't even started. On top of that, there are the photos that I've taken recently that have yet to be processed and I'll be away over the weekend. This is only the onset of another big wave of assignments are soon to come. Seriously, I brought this upon myself. Again.
In the meantime, have some news for the week:
Kobe Bryant doesn't just get his superpowers from nowhere. He's got Superdad.
Would you want a $2 million dollar pair of speakers that weigh 5 tons? Or a $2.3 million dollar iPhone?
If a bomb blast doesn't kill you right there and then, your brain will.
This really sounds like something out of Harold and Kumar. Irony you say?
Drawing back to my experiences of being mugged twice since I've been here, I'm still trying to decide whether I think like a girl. Weird, I know.
I'd like to suggest that this article is flawed. You can be smarter from playing brain games. It's called the placebo effect. =P
Quite an interesting story (and video) of a pretty curious and somewhat playful octopus.
"Hellllll no!!! No volcano eruption is going to gatecrash my wedding!!", they said.
CS5 has been released. So why not see the evolution of the product while waiting for your copy?
Interesting though not entirely surprised by this article about the pressures of today.
I really like Penang. Not surprisingly because my parents were born there. But just when I've started liking my Hokkien roots and all the more eager to learn Hokkien about a decade late, we stop going there. I still love Penang.
"You suck!" "Well at least I'm not dying"
Who says we can't multitask? Just don't ask us to do more than 2 things at the same time because it's optimal.
Interesting how sexual liberalism promotes a funny kind idea of gender equality
A Graduate Walks Into Lunch In Belgrave
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
at
1:43 AM
I'll let the pictures do the talking again. One's from Belgrave and the other is a random assortment of events captured on film.
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Unskilled Assassin
Monday, April 19, 2010
at
2:09 AM
So yesterday was an...interesting day. I was going to have a photo shoot that I've been thinking and planning for awhile now but silly me made some assumptions. Needless to say the assumptions blew up in my face. 3 hours before the shoot. And then realized that most of the things that I want to do don't work. Panic ensued. Though not many great/good/usable shots came out from the shoot, it was fun sprinkled with a little "Gah! I should have done this and that" moments. That's just inexperience talking. I'm thankful that the people listening to me ranting and panicking prior to the shoot have been rather supportive and that helped a lot. So now I actually feel like I want to redo the shoot only this time using the stuff that I've prepared for. But that will have to wait for another time. If there is another time. For the time being, this will have to suffice. Oh and I'm not going to upload them on Facebook. You're going to have to hunt me down first and ask nicely.
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Sermon Fail
Thursday, April 15, 2010
at
1:20 AM
Thank goodness that really boring assignment was over. Normally I would be able to do assignments hours on end, trying to think of the solution and sometimes hours of coding and debugging but this bore me so much that I had to take a break every time I finish a small section. And you know what I'll be doing in my break? Play a variant of Sudoku. Sometimes I can be playing longer than the time it takes for me to complete that small section of the assignment. Well, I'm not really complaining since it was pretty straightforward, just that it just felt very trivial. The tutorial for the subject before the submission had me nearly break out in outrage. My tutor, after explaining to us the week's tutorial, concluded the class with this quote:
Right about then, every joke regarding engineers that I've heard finally make sense. The funny and perhaps disturbing thing about it was that he says it with such conviction, the kind you only see in rising/aspiring dictators. This type of behaviour has been burned in our brains from the word go in the education. While I agree that there are procedures and protocols that need to be followed, I think there is really no need to push creativity all the way back and label it as the not-smart-attribute. Felt very annoyed as I left the tutorial with the I-don't-need-this-shit look on my face.
Well anyway, now that that assignment is done, the real assignment for me begins. I'm trying and frantically trying to come up with ideas on a shoot that I'm going to try later this week. Manage to get some ideas around but having more ideas just makes me even more nervous about the whole thing. And of course, it is at a time where the tsunami of other assignments is about to hit me. I'm excited of course because I get to try my hand at something new in photography but the thing that is really being tested is my relational skills. Need to get them comfortable and not feel like there's a stalker around.
I was going to write some thoughts on the irrationality of grace but it seems that I needed more time articulating it. I've just spend a good hour writing it down here until at the very end I just realized that a small but valid issue cropped up and that might be a bit worrying to some. Fail. Oh well...
Now for the news:
Some churches totally missed the point and become very unloving till it gets ugly.
Singaporean schools and it's associated social climate has long been very interesting to me. Funny how in just one generation since its independence, all of this materialized.
So, racial bias (and can we extend it to the roots of racial discrimination?) is now because of genetics?
Interesting couple of blog posts of a photographer on being a professional and an amateur.
Is it time to change how we Asians discipline our children?
The wicked benefits from other wicked actions.
Atheists preparing their case to prosecute the Pope. All the more, we should be careful on how we live.
Would you be scared if your doctor is legitimately called Dr. Death?
Some interesting info about WWII weapons.
Apparently breaking up with a post-it note is so hard to do.
This would be so doggone cute.
In this subject, it is not the clever and creative people who get the high marks. Those guys are artists and we are not artists and we don't want to be them. We are software engineers. Those who follow procedure and protocol are the ones who will get far in this area.
Right about then, every joke regarding engineers that I've heard finally make sense. The funny and perhaps disturbing thing about it was that he says it with such conviction, the kind you only see in rising/aspiring dictators. This type of behaviour has been burned in our brains from the word go in the education. While I agree that there are procedures and protocols that need to be followed, I think there is really no need to push creativity all the way back and label it as the not-smart-attribute. Felt very annoyed as I left the tutorial with the I-don't-need-this-shit look on my face.
Well anyway, now that that assignment is done, the real assignment for me begins. I'm trying and frantically trying to come up with ideas on a shoot that I'm going to try later this week. Manage to get some ideas around but having more ideas just makes me even more nervous about the whole thing. And of course, it is at a time where the tsunami of other assignments is about to hit me. I'm excited of course because I get to try my hand at something new in photography but the thing that is really being tested is my relational skills. Need to get them comfortable and not feel like there's a stalker around.
I was going to write some thoughts on the irrationality of grace but it seems that I needed more time articulating it. I've just spend a good hour writing it down here until at the very end I just realized that a small but valid issue cropped up and that might be a bit worrying to some. Fail. Oh well...
Now for the news:
Some churches totally missed the point and become very unloving till it gets ugly.
Singaporean schools and it's associated social climate has long been very interesting to me. Funny how in just one generation since its independence, all of this materialized.
So, racial bias (and can we extend it to the roots of racial discrimination?) is now because of genetics?
Interesting couple of blog posts of a photographer on being a professional and an amateur.
Is it time to change how we Asians discipline our children?
The wicked benefits from other wicked actions.
Atheists preparing their case to prosecute the Pope. All the more, we should be careful on how we live.
Would you be scared if your doctor is legitimately called Dr. Death?
Some interesting info about WWII weapons.
Apparently breaking up with a post-it note is so hard to do.
This would be so doggone cute.
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Wait Until Tomorrow
Friday, April 9, 2010
at
2:11 AM
Belgrave was great as usual. Great teaching from Chris Chia and Peter Adam this time round and not to mention a great time with some of the newer OCFers. On top of all the poking fun at people, playing cards, Scattergories, word games late at night. Such fun times.
But it was also a very unusual time for me mainly it's one of the more embarrassing times in Belgrave so far. On the first night I had trouble sleeping, in fact, I had only 2 hours of sleep. The night before we went to Belgrave I slept for 3 hours so things should be really interesting. On top of that the sleeping bag that I was given to use for the camp couldn't open. Now the sleeping bag was inside another zippered bag and that zip failed to open. For those who are familiar with Belgrave's weather, you know that at night it can get pretty cold there. The good thing was that I was sleeping in a small tent with two other people so there's still residual heat trapped inside the tent but it was still cold for my liking. So I slept without a functioning sleeping bag and used that zippered bag with my sleeping bag inside of it to cover my feet and wore an extra hoodie jacket.
2 hours later I got up and never went back to sleep again. Thinking I'd rather do something than just lie around trying to go to sleep for the past hour or so, I went out and grabbed my camera gear and went off to see whether I can do some night shots on my film. Oh yeah, I've decided to shoot pretty much everything on film except when it comes to people. So the shots that you are about to see are all from the digital. I still got another 12 more shots to go before the roll is done so for those waiting on the film shots, you have to be patient. 2 more hours have passed of photo taking and the sun has just about risen at this point. It's another half an hour before everyone is supposed to wake up and so to kill time I hooked myself up to my iPod and listened to music. As usual, the first thing that came out was John Mayer and I was happily humming and very light singing along to it. I've unplugged one side of the earphones just to check that I wasn't too loud or anything.
I thought I was fine until the only guy who was sleeping in a hammock basically told me off. Felt kinda stupid so I went to the other end of the area where no tents, caravans or cabins were within a good number of metres away. All seems fine and dandy until I went for breakfast and apparently the guy in the hammock wasn't the only one who heard me. In fact virtually everyone who is half awake heard me even though I thought whatever sound that was coming out of my mouth was pretty darn close to unnoticeable. There goes my face.
So lesson number one, don't bring your iPod to Belgrave. Things can go wrong. Lesson number two, if you think you can't be heard in the morning, think again. Lesson number three, John Mayer in the morning is annoying to most people (apart from the few of us who listen to it to our graves). Lesson number 4, check sleeping bag is in functioning order before proceeding to bed. I didn't and I didn't want to wake up people.
Fairly frustrating Bible study leaders' meeting last night. A record time of 3 hours of discussion. That really killed me.
I've had a lab exam today and it was supposed to be a good day. Key word is should because the magic poached egg said so. Unfortunately, either the magic poached egg is no match to pure unfairness or that I didn't make enough magic poached eggs. In 100 minutes, we had to write 5 programs. Apart from one program, everything else was monumentally big given the amount of time. I was working away, clicking window to window, coding on keyboards that just simply annoy the life out of me and thinking at the same time. I felt like one of those Korean StarCraft players playing 3 matches in a row (or more). Non-stop clicking and typing. And on top of that, I still didn't finish the exam. I think no one really did. It would be a miracle if I can get 60% of the total marks. On the possible plus side, apparently this is how it has been for the past years and normally people would make it up for the assignment because normally the assignment has bonus marks because seriously no human can finish the exam questions on time. Well it is all up to God now.
And now for the news:
Damn you Hollywood on the misconception of geeks.
The psychology of a penalty shot. Interesting stuff.
Go ahead. Take that nap. It will reap rewards later.
The difference between learning new songs and being stuck to just one is in the genes. Hmm.
Think twice before searching anything in Google. It's not as green as you thought it is.
Comparing this to my own workings, I am a shy guy.
Not quite news with a link, but I need more ideas on the shoot that I'm going to have soon. I think I pretty much need to storyboard my ideas so that I won't forget them and at least I know what I want (and hopefully what they want).
But it was also a very unusual time for me mainly it's one of the more embarrassing times in Belgrave so far. On the first night I had trouble sleeping, in fact, I had only 2 hours of sleep. The night before we went to Belgrave I slept for 3 hours so things should be really interesting. On top of that the sleeping bag that I was given to use for the camp couldn't open. Now the sleeping bag was inside another zippered bag and that zip failed to open. For those who are familiar with Belgrave's weather, you know that at night it can get pretty cold there. The good thing was that I was sleeping in a small tent with two other people so there's still residual heat trapped inside the tent but it was still cold for my liking. So I slept without a functioning sleeping bag and used that zippered bag with my sleeping bag inside of it to cover my feet and wore an extra hoodie jacket.
2 hours later I got up and never went back to sleep again. Thinking I'd rather do something than just lie around trying to go to sleep for the past hour or so, I went out and grabbed my camera gear and went off to see whether I can do some night shots on my film. Oh yeah, I've decided to shoot pretty much everything on film except when it comes to people. So the shots that you are about to see are all from the digital. I still got another 12 more shots to go before the roll is done so for those waiting on the film shots, you have to be patient. 2 more hours have passed of photo taking and the sun has just about risen at this point. It's another half an hour before everyone is supposed to wake up and so to kill time I hooked myself up to my iPod and listened to music. As usual, the first thing that came out was John Mayer and I was happily humming and very light singing along to it. I've unplugged one side of the earphones just to check that I wasn't too loud or anything.
I thought I was fine until the only guy who was sleeping in a hammock basically told me off. Felt kinda stupid so I went to the other end of the area where no tents, caravans or cabins were within a good number of metres away. All seems fine and dandy until I went for breakfast and apparently the guy in the hammock wasn't the only one who heard me. In fact virtually everyone who is half awake heard me even though I thought whatever sound that was coming out of my mouth was pretty darn close to unnoticeable. There goes my face.
So lesson number one, don't bring your iPod to Belgrave. Things can go wrong. Lesson number two, if you think you can't be heard in the morning, think again. Lesson number three, John Mayer in the morning is annoying to most people (apart from the few of us who listen to it to our graves). Lesson number 4, check sleeping bag is in functioning order before proceeding to bed. I didn't and I didn't want to wake up people.
Fairly frustrating Bible study leaders' meeting last night. A record time of 3 hours of discussion. That really killed me.
I've had a lab exam today and it was supposed to be a good day. Key word is should because the magic poached egg said so. Unfortunately, either the magic poached egg is no match to pure unfairness or that I didn't make enough magic poached eggs. In 100 minutes, we had to write 5 programs. Apart from one program, everything else was monumentally big given the amount of time. I was working away, clicking window to window, coding on keyboards that just simply annoy the life out of me and thinking at the same time. I felt like one of those Korean StarCraft players playing 3 matches in a row (or more). Non-stop clicking and typing. And on top of that, I still didn't finish the exam. I think no one really did. It would be a miracle if I can get 60% of the total marks. On the possible plus side, apparently this is how it has been for the past years and normally people would make it up for the assignment because normally the assignment has bonus marks because seriously no human can finish the exam questions on time. Well it is all up to God now.
And now for the news:
Damn you Hollywood on the misconception of geeks.
The psychology of a penalty shot. Interesting stuff.
Go ahead. Take that nap. It will reap rewards later.
The difference between learning new songs and being stuck to just one is in the genes. Hmm.
Think twice before searching anything in Google. It's not as green as you thought it is.
Comparing this to my own workings, I am a shy guy.
Not quite news with a link, but I need more ideas on the shoot that I'm going to have soon. I think I pretty much need to storyboard my ideas so that I won't forget them and at least I know what I want (and hopefully what they want).
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Stranger Than Fiction
Thursday, April 1, 2010
at
1:42 AM
You know sometimes it is amazing how many ways I can put myself in positions that will just about any normal person. People have heard some of the crazy stories I have surviving some of these epic ordeals and some have actually jumped to the conclusion that I will do so again. This 2 weeks is another one of those kill-myself-positions with a lab exam immediately after the Easter holidays and an assignment due the following Tuesday which I haven't started at all. Granted it's not the worst I've been in, but still, you'd think that I will learn.
Monday was a day of frustrations and also utter weirdness. I woke up early in the morning (by my standards) just to go and use the computers in one specific lab and to submit the assignment. The lab was locked. All other labs were fine except this one, the one that mattered. So risking everything I went back home and sent it there praying that my assignment will work and went to sleep after that. Barely half an hour later, I got a call from a company on whether I was interested in extending one of my magazine subscriptions. Told them no and went back to sleep. Ten minutes later got a call from a friend who asked me to be her character reference and needed me to fill in a form and have it signed in front of an authorized person, in this case was a pharmacist. So I agreed and it will take her awhile to get to me with the forms and stuff. Went back to sleep. Half an hour later I got a call from my friend saying she's at my place already. After that I couldn't sleep anymore and tried doing work but can't figure out why my programs are not working. Class in the evening and just found out that the assignment is due 10 days earlier than expected (stupid me). Panicked and went back and tried to finish up with the other work so I can do the assignment. Now the weird part, my sister came back and I was still doing work and all of the sudden, I see my cousin next to my door. I can tell that she's pretty close to being drunk and she just blurted that her boyfriend just dumped her. Naturally and not surprisingly she broke down in tears. Me being a guy who really doesn't know what to do when a girl cries, tries to comfort her in a so-what-do-I-do-now manner. While this is going on, my sister's friend is crazily drunk (and she's the happy drunk kind) pretty much leapt into my sister's bed along with a few more actions that I shall refrain from describing here. A minute later, something happened and my cousin just went ballistically angry. There is no such quota of F-bombs dropped in this house apparently. Not sure what happened but I think it has got to do with the whole break-up thing. Three minutes later, my cousin left still being nearly drunk and drove home despite our efforts in trying to stop her. My sister, being very tipsy and all, briefly described to me what happened before she crashed. Her friend KO-ed already. And then the house went silent again as though they were never here in the first place. Seriously, I thought I entered the Twilight Zone...
Anyway Belgrave is coming up and I am quite excited *blocks work to be done* about it because I'm going to be cooking again. Oh, and Chris Chia and Peter Adam is back doing the sermons in Belgrave this year. This basically the best time to be able to get to know some of the OCFers better, unlike July Camp where we expect a massive exodus back to their home countries. So despite all the work that I have to do, I'm just going to enjoy those 4 days in Belgrave and then later become a hermit. No promises that I will actually be one, in fact I won't be surprised if I managed to find even more ways to kill myself with seemingly impossible situations. But all of this surviving of course is not because I'm capable of doing great escapes but I believe that God has been utterly gracious to me. You know, every time I think about how on earth did I get away with whatever the situation that I was in, I occasionally would say to myself "Seriously God, I could have died there. Wouldn't it be easier if you just pressed the intercom button in my brain and say stop it?" But God is not about the easy as stated in Bible history. It's because of the crazily impossible things that He does bringing his people out of hardship to show that he is God. In the days leading up to Easter, it is good to reflect on the fact that He did the crazily impossible for us today to show that He has dealt with a big problem. He sent his son to die for us. To deal with sin, he did the crazy so that we might live again as it was supposed to be.
I'm going to leave it at there to simmer and go straight to the news:
The LHC is working fine now and once again physics can resume. Essentially, physicists are like a bunch of rednecks in a demolition derby, only instead of fast cars it's fast protons. And they love it when stuff gets smashed together and explode.
Sometimes I find it hard to believe that math in the States are 2 years behind everyone else. But I support this revamp.
It's bad enough that people do outrages things for proposing to their girlfriend, now weddings too. On that note, interesting records on the subject of wedding couples.
Something doesn't smell right about this.
I can imagine a situation of Failbooking.com about this
Life can sometimes produce stories that even the best minds can't
Have gamers sunk to a new low already? But seriously, an excellent way to make money playing games if you're a female gamer.
The U2 aircraft is still back in business. Now there's an idea, Bono + U2.
Monday was a day of frustrations and also utter weirdness. I woke up early in the morning (by my standards) just to go and use the computers in one specific lab and to submit the assignment. The lab was locked. All other labs were fine except this one, the one that mattered. So risking everything I went back home and sent it there praying that my assignment will work and went to sleep after that. Barely half an hour later, I got a call from a company on whether I was interested in extending one of my magazine subscriptions. Told them no and went back to sleep. Ten minutes later got a call from a friend who asked me to be her character reference and needed me to fill in a form and have it signed in front of an authorized person, in this case was a pharmacist. So I agreed and it will take her awhile to get to me with the forms and stuff. Went back to sleep. Half an hour later I got a call from my friend saying she's at my place already. After that I couldn't sleep anymore and tried doing work but can't figure out why my programs are not working. Class in the evening and just found out that the assignment is due 10 days earlier than expected (stupid me). Panicked and went back and tried to finish up with the other work so I can do the assignment. Now the weird part, my sister came back and I was still doing work and all of the sudden, I see my cousin next to my door. I can tell that she's pretty close to being drunk and she just blurted that her boyfriend just dumped her. Naturally and not surprisingly she broke down in tears. Me being a guy who really doesn't know what to do when a girl cries, tries to comfort her in a so-what-do-I-do-now manner. While this is going on, my sister's friend is crazily drunk (and she's the happy drunk kind) pretty much leapt into my sister's bed along with a few more actions that I shall refrain from describing here. A minute later, something happened and my cousin just went ballistically angry. There is no such quota of F-bombs dropped in this house apparently. Not sure what happened but I think it has got to do with the whole break-up thing. Three minutes later, my cousin left still being nearly drunk and drove home despite our efforts in trying to stop her. My sister, being very tipsy and all, briefly described to me what happened before she crashed. Her friend KO-ed already. And then the house went silent again as though they were never here in the first place. Seriously, I thought I entered the Twilight Zone...
Anyway Belgrave is coming up and I am quite excited *blocks work to be done* about it because I'm going to be cooking again. Oh, and Chris Chia and Peter Adam is back doing the sermons in Belgrave this year. This basically the best time to be able to get to know some of the OCFers better, unlike July Camp where we expect a massive exodus back to their home countries. So despite all the work that I have to do, I'm just going to enjoy those 4 days in Belgrave and then later become a hermit. No promises that I will actually be one, in fact I won't be surprised if I managed to find even more ways to kill myself with seemingly impossible situations. But all of this surviving of course is not because I'm capable of doing great escapes but I believe that God has been utterly gracious to me. You know, every time I think about how on earth did I get away with whatever the situation that I was in, I occasionally would say to myself "Seriously God, I could have died there. Wouldn't it be easier if you just pressed the intercom button in my brain and say stop it?" But God is not about the easy as stated in Bible history. It's because of the crazily impossible things that He does bringing his people out of hardship to show that he is God. In the days leading up to Easter, it is good to reflect on the fact that He did the crazily impossible for us today to show that He has dealt with a big problem. He sent his son to die for us. To deal with sin, he did the crazy so that we might live again as it was supposed to be.
I'm going to leave it at there to simmer and go straight to the news:
The LHC is working fine now and once again physics can resume. Essentially, physicists are like a bunch of rednecks in a demolition derby, only instead of fast cars it's fast protons. And they love it when stuff gets smashed together and explode.
Sometimes I find it hard to believe that math in the States are 2 years behind everyone else. But I support this revamp.
It's bad enough that people do outrages things for proposing to their girlfriend, now weddings too. On that note, interesting records on the subject of wedding couples.
Something doesn't smell right about this.
I can imagine a situation of Failbooking.com about this
Life can sometimes produce stories that even the best minds can't
Have gamers sunk to a new low already? But seriously, an excellent way to make money playing games if you're a female gamer.
The U2 aircraft is still back in business. Now there's an idea, Bono + U2.
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