A Better Title

Fwah… I was practically knocked out from 11.15 p.m. till 3.45 a.m. this morning. I couldn’t even remember receiving an SMS and switching off the air-con in the room within that time! >.<

Must have been due to the insane sleeping hours I’ve had (3 hours average) in the days preceding the three quizzes I was having this week.

The last of which, EE2006 Engineering Mathematics I, by the way, totally sucked.

There were three questions… One was on Fourier series, one on Laplace transform, and one on partial differential equation…

I was super careless also, partly because the quiz was held in the evening of the day, when I was most tired. I had originally used the correct initial formula for the Fourier series question, in which we were to find the Fourier series of a periodic function. But I didn’t get the correct answer. Thinking that I had used a wrong one, I changed the formula that I used to begin with. Apparently, my mistake was somewhere along the way and not in the initial formula. I could have gotten some marks for doing some steps correctly, but because I changed the initial formula, I probably won’t get the marks. >.<

Laplace question was almost good. Almost because I got stuck in the middle, because I couldn’t remember the formula to use… The question was finding the inverse Laplace transform from a Laplace equation which is actually a square of another Laplace equation, i.e. F(s) = G(s) G(s), the inverse of which should be (should be, I can’t be sure) f(t) = g(t) * g(t). I got up to the convolution part, but couldn’t go on.

PDE question was relatively easier, but I could never be sure of my final answer, because we were supposed to solve a PDE, but what I got was a function in terms of another arbitrary function.

For someone who only spent probably less than 2 days of effective studying, it was quite alright.

But for someone who took Further Mathematics in JC last time, the quiz was pretty badly done. I can only hope that the weightage of the quiz in the final grade is not as large as I had imagined.

Ah well, at least all the three quizzes have past, so I can finally heave a sigh of relief, before I embark on even more projects and assignments. >.<

Had a mugging (studying) session with my friend and her friend today. Although in the end we chatted quite a lot, that was fun for a start. Nothing beats peer pressure support in terms of studying. Oh, and I discovered quite a lot of similarities with my friend, which she coined as “[adding] more zest to life each day”.

It’s been a while since I last mugged, and even then I’ve never mugged in the day before, so this is good for a change, and I’m certainly looking forward to the next mugging sessions.
Anyway, I discovered something new too… Apparently her friend knew me way before we were officially introduced today. >.<

How?

It was through my blog. Apparently she was searching for something on Yahoo! earlier this year in Malaysia when she chanced upon my blog. I was shocked when I came for the mugging session and my friend told me that her friend asked her earlier if I was “the Ninerz guy”. And more shocks when this friend of hers told me she knew that I was from ACJC, as well as some details about myself which I had thought only my friends knew but apparently were disclosed in this blog when I was writing my entries.

In a way I was happy because an unknown person reads my blog, but it was also followed with a slight feeling of apprehension, because an unknown person reads my blog. My blog can’t be that famous, can it?

The world seems so small nowadays…

Capture Resistant Environment: Shwetak Patel, a graduate student from Georgia Institute of Technology has come up with an inexpensive way to block digital cameras and digital video cameras from taking any shots.

In this system, a device bathes the region in front of it with infrared light. When an intense retroreflection indicates the presence of a digital camera lens, the device then fires a localized beam of light directly at that point. Thus, the picture gets washed out.

The neutralizing light continues until the camera lens can no longer be detected, which prevents video cameras from capturing clear footage.

For added security, the system emits light beams in a pattern that prevents cameras from compensating for the light. (In the lab prototype, the video camera, with its built-in infrared beam, serves as the camera detector, while the projector is the neutralizer.)

Check out the ZDNet news article.

Watch the video (smaller version), needs DivX codec.

You know something is wrong with you when you listen to The Carpenters’s songs practically every single time you’re awake, from after waking up, when walking to school, during breaks, when doing your business in the toilet, when walking back home, when showering, when at home, while studying, and before you sleep.

I guess something is wrong with me then.

My current favourite is “Goodbye to Love”. Readers of this blog should note that I often listen to songs because they’re nice, and thus they don’t necessarily reflect my feelings.

I like the way The Carpenters play this song. I think it’s supposed to be a sad song, but the way they sing it is in such a way that it sounds as if they’ve accepted the fact fully, which I’ll probably do in a couple of years time if things stay the way it is now.

I’ll say goodbye to love
No one ever cared if I should live or die
Time and time again the chance for love has passed me by
And all I know of love is how to live without it
I just can’t seem to find it

So I’ve made my mind up I must live my life alone
And though it’s not the easy way
I guess I’ve always known
I’d say goodbye to love

There are no tomorrows for this heart of mine
Surely time will lose these bitter memories
And I’ll find that there is someone to believe in
And to live for something I could live for

All the years of useless search
Have finally reached an end
Loneliness and empty days will be my only friend
From this day love is forgotten
I’ll go on as best I can

What lies in the future is a mystery to us all
No one can predict the wheel of fortune as it falls
There may come a time when I will see that I’ve been wrong
But for now this is my song

And it’s goodbye to love
I’ll say goodbye to love

The Ninerz guy,
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Apparently, errata is already a plural. The singular form is erratum. Oops.

I feel very lucky about EE2010 Signals and Systems quiz.

After spending a lot of time studying for the quiz, I was presented with the very first question of the very first tutorial, in which we were to find the even and odd parts of a signal. It couldn’t get any more fundamental than that, otherwise we would be doing pure algebra!

That means that, among all things, for the purpose of the quiz, the effort I spent cramming cross-correlation, convolution theorem, and characteristics power- and energy-type signals and LTI systems were wasted. But never mind, because I admit I didn’t prepare well for the quiz and at least now I know a lot of things I will need in the exams… The summary sheet I did for the quiz would be useful later too!
But apparently, I was lucky too because the quiz covered up to Tutorial 6. I only studied up to Tutorial 5, because I mixed up the topics for this quiz and the other. Imagine my surprise when I saw my friend’s question paper (we were given different question paper each) which contained questions on CTFS! I wouldn’t be able to do the quiz if I were given the same question!

Lucky,
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If you clicked on the links to the video presentation in an entry entitled Vue 5 Esprit: The Art Of Natural 3D! that I posted a couple of days ago, and were presented with a 404 Not Found error, fear not. Apparently they have disabled hot-linking on their server. Simply go to the website and open the presentation from there.

Another thing is that if you’ve noticed my About box to the right, you might have read a line that said: “He has a younger brother who is studying in Australia, and a sister in Indonesia.”

This is no longer accurate. I had a younger brother and a sister in my previous life as an owl (I was quite famous in my previous life. Ever heard of “Too-Too”? Oh gawd, I missed those days) but after reincarnation as a human, I sort of forgot to make the necessary changes.

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Ok, fine, I typed wrongly lah.

The correct one now reads: “He has an older brother who is studying in Australia, and a younger sister in Indonesia.”

EE2001 Sir Cute Circuit Analysis went quite well… A little too well in fact. The questions were very straightforward that I now worry that I might have made mistakes along the way.

Anyway, doesn’t matter now. Time to start studying for EE2010 Signals and Systems, the quiz of which starts in 45 minutes.

Too-Too!

Quizzical,
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Sometimes it upsets me when I lie down in bed and I reflect on the conversations I’ve had with my friends and then suddenly the fog clears and out of the blue all the dots are connected and then I realise that I’ve been plain rude or insensitive to my own friends.

To these friends, I apologize.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, it’s 6.26 a.m. in the morning and I have a lesson at 9.30 a.m. and I cannot sleep and my timetable is packed until 6.30 p.m. and I have two quizzes tomorrow and I’m far, far away from being prepared.

I’m so gonna die.

Cannot sleep,
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Vue 5 Esprit: The Art Of Natural 3D!: Another 3D software for natural 3D graphics and animation. Check out the video presentation at the website. Very impressive.

[searched after seeing Quiescent, a deviation by radiositysg]

Wishing to learn 3D graphics in depth,
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eJamming: Making music together over the internet in real time. Cool! Watch the demo.

10 Things To Know Before You Buy The iPod Nano: In case you want to buy one.

[via lancerlord]

On another news, I think I’m pretty much screwed up. School resumes tomorrow, I have two quizzes on Tuesday, one quiz on Wednesday, and I still haven’t continued studying. Seriously have no mood in studying my EEE subjects. Sigh…

Not a jammer,
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I went to the Indonesian Art Festival 2005 today with a bunch of Indonesian NTU people. I was most thankful for the bus provided by PINTU (Pelajar Indonesia NTU; NTU Indonesian Students Association) to ferry NTU students from the university to Kallang Theatre where it was held. But in order to catch the bus, I had to take a taxi to school first, burning SGD 4.50 in the process.

The show was not bad, but not exceptional either. The MCs were funny, but I didn’t really enjoy it as much as I would have liked. Maybe it was because I just can’t appreciate the type of music performed. And the drama, although funny, was waaay too long. But considering it was organised by Indonesian students and professionals in Singapore from many different walks of life, I guess it could be considered quite a good effort. Maliq & d’Essentials, a relatively-new Indonesian jazz group performed as a guest star. Unfortunately again, their songs are not of my type either.

I met a bunch of old friends, including my ex-crush whom I haven’t seen in person for more than one year. Two hours before the show, a friend called to tell me that he couldn’t make it to the show, and asked if I knew someone who might want to buy the ticket at half-price. I randomly picked her from my MSN Messenger window, and it just so happened that she wanted to go with her friends but couldn’t because she didn’t get a ticket herself. We met before the show started for the transaction to be completed. Unfortunately, other than the exchange of ticket for money, we didn’t get a chance to talk much, because I was with my group of friends and she was with hers. Never mind, there’s still the good old MSN Messenger. A good thing is that I no longer feel awkward around her. Yay.

I think I’m in love… with The Carpenters. For some time I’ve been putting their songs on repeat. I might even consider buying their CDs.

One of those stuck in my mind right now is the song called “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”. Ha, now you know why the title of this post is as such. I first listened to the song while I was walking back from school a couple of days ago. It was past midnight, and I was all alone, and the song started with voices of ‘aliens’ talking to a radio host, happily spooking me in the process. But when the actual song started, I thought hey, it was not that bad after all.

And as I walked through Yunnan Garden to reach the pedestrian bridge, I couldn’t help but look up there in the skies, wondering if there were any interplanetary craft observing our earth.

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft
Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft

Click for full lyrics.

There’s a second song that also got stuck in my mind. It’s cutely called “Puff, the Magic Dragon”. When I first heard the song, I thought it was very cute, but after actually listening to the lyrics, I realised that it is quite a sad song. The song actually tells a story about a toy dragon and his life-long owner, a little boy called Jackie Paper. Together they embarked in quests, gaining respects from virtually everyone.

But the little boy grew up, got other toys, and the dragon was left alone by himself. There was no more friendship like it was earlier. He was simply forgotten.

The song kind of reminds me of the story of Winnie the Pooh. I’m sure that most of you should know the story of the bear and his owner, Christopher Robin. At the very end of the story, Christopher Robin outgrew Pooh Bear and went to school, leaving the silly old Pooh Bear alone… Click here to read about it. Very sad… Maybe I should go read the entire story one of these days… Anyway, here’s The Carpenters’s song:

Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff
And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff

Click for full lyrics.

On another news, I’ve been neglecting my studies. Argh! Three quizzes next week, and I haven’t touched one-and-a-half subjects yet. I’ve read the other one-and-a-half, but haven’t really memorised and understood the concepts yet… I think I really need to suspend my blogging for a while. I intended to write only about IAF 2005 today, but ended up writing this long… It’s a bad habit, I tell you. And not good for the readers too, because you all need to read so much… X-P

I was playing around with the settings of Ubuntu because I noticed that the fonts in some programs were not smooth. I ended up making all fonts in Ubuntu not smooth instead, and I don’t know how to restore the original fonts. T_T

Click on the picture above to see a bigger version.

I was following the instructions here when the problem happened. I’ve switched on all font smoothing options, to no avail.

Any help from any Linux gurus out there would be much appreciated… The jagged fonts are hurting my eyes! @_@

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The Photoshop course on Thursday went really well, despite some last-minute preparations for crucial items such as the projector and images to be used in the course. The projector was only obtained the day before, because someone from Centre for Advanced Media Technology (CAMTECH) was supposed to supply us with one–but he didn’t and only informed us, like, in the afternoon of the day before. We had to borrow from Centre for Educational Development (CED) at the last minute in the end–for a fee.

There were four extra participants, who told us that there was a sub-committee member (don’t know who also) who invited them to come. O.o Luckily in addition to this–or rather in substraction to this–quite a few participants didn’t turn up, so we had enough computers for everyone… although some seats were too far at the sides to see the screen very clearly. We didn’t expect the room to be ———that——— wide.

It was definitely obvious that sitting at the centre part is advantageous in learning, like what LKH, the Honorary General Secretary experienced. He had no background in Photoshop and came as a participant. He was sitting at the sides at first. He couldn’t follow the introductory part, so he gave up and stood around together with the course assistants–people who were supposed to help the participants should they come into any problems. From this new vantage point, the instructions suddenly became crystal clear to him and he instantly became a new assistant!

Computers-wise, we thought we were perfectly prepared–until we realised that a computer happily decided to lock up in random intervals. We had to move the participant who was using the computer to another computer–leaving her friend behind.

There was also a computer that didn’t work during our installation day. It somehow resurrected on the course day itself. O.o We took advantage of this by installing the software on the said computer, increasing our capacity by one.

As a bribe To keep the spirits of the people involved up, I brought with me a bag of fun size Nestlé Milkybar Milk & Cookies. Which is bad in the long run, because after the course I ate almost whatever that were left. Now I have new pimples coming out and start to cough again. Crap.

VCCH, our ex-chairperson did such a good job being the instructor of the course, while at the backstage back, I spent my time preparing the impromptu course website, online feedback form, and gallery. SL, the ex-treasurer helped CRR, the current assistant treasurer/membership officer with matters regarding the registration of new members. SL also compiled the images for use in the course. SL and CRR spent the rest of the day watching downloaded Final Fantasy VII Advent Children a movie, while the Art Resource people (DN, Nicole, Risuchia, HKK, XY) and even myself, after I was done with my work, were kept busy with questions from the participants. LMY, GJH, GWJ, HLX, and TSW dropped by later on in the course.

The participants themselves were also very enthusiastic about the course. They kept on asking questions to either the instructor or the assistants–quite unlike the other course that I organised last year with my other society. And they did things that just totally amused the assistants. One participant decided to give a punch mark around the eyes of a person. Another decided to give the person huge bumps on his head. Yet another gave blue teeth to the person.

At the end of the day, we received quite a good feedback from the participants. It’s good to know that everyone who submitted the feedback form thought that the course was useful, the instructor was handsome clear, and the assistants were pretty helpful. The course was rated excellent by 1 person, very good by 14, and good by 5. With 21 feedback respondents out of the 40-ish participants, I feel that it’s quite a good gauge.

Oh, I almost forgot the photographer… But before I begin, let me tell you what’s going on with this year’s committee. Apparently we still don’t have a Publications main committee member, so I, being a Publications sub-committee member last year, volunteered to help. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the photographer doesn’t have a digital camera, the videographer doesn’t have a video camera, and the writer quitted. O.o I wonder how the new Publications main committee member will cope with this issue later. Any volunteers?

For the course, I assigned the videographer a job as the writer. Being a participant himself, he should be able to write in a participant’s point-of-view, hopefully something which is fresh and more honest compared to other reviews written by the committee.

The photographer was assigned the job as, well, photographer. But apparently, the photographer was a trigger-happy person who came late and left early and had to use my digital camera to do his job. Snap here, snap there, snap everywhere. There was one time when he took like 3 photos in a span of less than 15 seconds–with flash on. @_@

In the end, I told him not to take too many photos in one go because: 1. It would be distracting to the participants, and 2. My camera sucks up a lot of battery–especially with the flash on. Unfortunately, he’s also a person with the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I had to gag him and put him under restraints, knock him unconscious, and dump him in the store room before he could stop the urge to press the shutter. He complied.

The photographer spent some time assisting the people too.

Oh by the way, have I told you that SIGGRAPH NTU was also requested to give courses to two other clubs, who were willing to pay us for that? ^^

Oh anyway… Enough talk. Time for photos. There are 16 of them, most courtesy of our trigger-happy photographer, but some are taken by myself. See if you can spot which is whose. Enjoy!

Here’s how the course looks like from the back. Risuchia and Nicole, and later the entire team of assistants, were at the back of the room, ready to approach any participants with queries.

A shot of the participants. They look so serious, don’t they?

More participants. This one was taken from the front. See the assistants behind?

Even more participants. This one showing the screen.

This one was taken from the back. Oooh, look at the laptop screen nearest to the camera. Someone wasn’t paying attention! Oh, it’s CRR, the assistant treasurer watching downloaded FF7AC a movie.

VCCH, our ex-chairperson who was the instructor for the course.

Our instructor again, showing the participants how to do 3D effects with Photoshop.

Yet our instructor again from another angle.

Yet another shot of the instructor from yet another angle. Our instructor went down himself to help the participants while Nicole scratched her head in amusement and Risuchia searched for people to help. Ooh, and that’s part of XS the videographer’s head at the bottom!

DN, the Art Director, helps a participant while LKH, the Honorary General Secretary watches behind. Well, the Secretary was supposed to be a participant, but turned to become an assistant in the end. See above.

The super-friendly-and-nice Super Projects Manager Special Projects Manager, bcc, was also there to help.

Again, it’s the Special Projects Manager to the rescue while HHK looks on behind. XY, the assistant who is sitting on the left of the photograph, was trying out stuff on the vacant computer.

XY, another assistant with his prey a participant to help.

Risuchia talking to TXQ, one of the Special Projects sub-committee member who attended the course as a participant.

This is what one of the participants managed to create after attending the course.

Aiyoh… Cannot make it lah. Which photographer take this kind of picture one? Wah lau eh… =_=”

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… literally.

My goodness, I can’t believe someone really did this…

[via mrbrown]

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Damn… Shouldn’t have slept only for three hours last night. @_@

iPod nano: I want…

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