Science

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday
thinking.

Albert Einsein

Purpose of Life

Unless you assume there a God, the question of life's purpose is
meaningless

Bertrand Russel
Atheist Philosopher

Type of Blogger?

You scored as The Journalist.

You love recording. You record the events that happened to you during the day, and you usually note them down in a fluent and formal language. You normally receive a lot of props and comments since you are sociable and it is comparatively easy to give you a comment. Seldom will a journalist write about his/her VERY personal feelings on a blog, secrets are secrets to them!

The Journalist 83%
The Philosopher 67%
The Copy-Cat 58%
The Shouter 50%
The Writer 50%
The Lover 42%
The Photographer 42%
The Paparazzi 33%
The Addict 25%

Which type of Xangan/Blogger are you?

Friends, exam

Glad to have friends that always contact you and update you with the activities back at hometown. They will message you, once a while, to tell you about their life or even just to forward funny sms.

Sometimes, I feel guilty for not have the initiative to message them in the first place. Hmm, I just do not have the habit to message and initiate conversation with people. I want people to keep me updated but I do not take the first step to contact them in the first place... this is really bad.

-----

Had ET1000 English for Academic Writing paper this morning. Think I wrote the wrong idea for the first and second paragraph. Only when I reach the third paragraph, I suddenly realize that I was kind of off topic. I wonder what grade will I get.

My exams officially start tomorrow. Tomorrow is EG1108 Electrical paper. Studied the whole day, do past years with friends from the same floor (lucky to have 2 friends taking the same module on my floor), but somehow the feeling of "still-cannot-make-it" is lingering in mind. Have no confident at all.

Anyway, I am very tired and sleepy now. I better get enough rest to put myself in best condition for the test tomorrow.

What the...

Read this...

http://malaysia-today.net/blog2006/holds.php?itemid=843#nucleus_cf

~*~*~*~*~*~

One word, sad. The comments posted by people there are so racist. What "Hidup Melayu", "Hidup India", "Hidup China/Cina". We all should live under one same identity - Malaysian!

These comments are so misleading and definitely not a positive impression to represent Malaysians.


(By the way, why the post makes chinese sound so stupid?)

CS1101Y Discussion Group 8

CS1101Y Discussion Group 8.

This is the photo of my discussion group for CS1101Y. My discussion leader, Tok Wee Hyong, is the one squatting down at the left most. We took this photo during the last tutorial.

Before class ends, Wee Hyong gave us an advice:

If you face difficulties when doing programming, do not stop! Keep on
practicing! Because you will eventually reach a threshold where you start seeing lights!

Yeap, this is very true! Because I experienced once when I am doing my lab. I started to "see light" after doing the lab for 2 whole days. Maybe that is why I find this advice very meaningful.

Guide to Better Sleep

Got this from http://health.msn.com/centers/sleep/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100118531

1. Get more exercise—physical and mental. It primes the sleep homeostat. It's a myth that exercise at bedtime is bad. Sex is, among other things, a great exercise.
   
2. Set a regular bedtime—and keep it. Your body needs reliability.
   
3. Set up conditions so that you catch the wave of sleep. Sleep has to be permitted. Take obstacles out of the way, and give up the notion that you can control sleep.
   
4. Learn simple meditation and practice it before bedtime; it cuts down nervous system arousal.
   
5. Put sleep in the background of your life. Don't monitor it, don't evaluate it.
   
6. Jack up your body temperature with a warm bath before bed. Exaggerating the normal drop in body temperature that accompanies lying down abets sleep.
   
7. Keep your bedroom dark, especially as you get older. Even small amounts of light and noise can disturb sleep as you age.
   
8. Don't overheat your environment. Sleep loves cold. Keep your bedroom cold but load up on blankets.
   
9. Less is more. The less you do in response to a bout of sleeplessness, the faster your sleep patterns will return to normal.
   
10. Keeping your wake-up time constant but going to bed one hour later will help 25 percent of insomniacs in one to two weeks. Prepare to feel sleepy at times and avoid driving then. After two weeks, add back the time in half-hour increments.
    
11. Look on two or three nights of insomnia as a gift—the gift of time you wanted to get done all that you have to get done. Insomnia may be functional, a signal that you need to attend to what got you up.
    
12. Don't fight the insomnia. The homeostat makes sleep a self-reparative system—if you stay out of its way.
    
13. Don't worry about the consequences of not sleeping. Worrying about insomnia can create insomnia.
    
14. Don't sleep with your pets! Animal dander can create allergies that manifest only at night, and the movement of any pet on your bed can wake you up.
    
15. Do not sleep later to make up for lost sleep. It de-primes the sleep homeostat and reduces pressure for sleep the next night, turning a night of sleeplessness into insomnia.
    
16. Don't make up for a night of sleeplessness by napping. That undermines the sleep homeostat and makes it less likely you will sleep through the next night.
    
17. Don't make up for an acute bout of insomnia by going to bed early.
    
18. Do not try to induce sleepiness by drinking alcohol. Yes, it's a great relaxant—but it is metabolized so quickly it creates rebound insomnia within the night; it's so fast-acting you'll be up in four short hours.
    
19. Limit caffeine to one cup of coffee in the morning. At age 18, caffeine has a half-life of 4.5 hours, which increases with age. Gradually eliminate caffeine altogether if you have trouble sleeping.

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect

Practice does not make perfect but a perfect practice makes perfect.

-teik zhen

Programming Practical

Yeah, got 80.8 marks for my CS1101Y (Programming Methology; Java) Practical Exam (PE). Guess this is the highest mark I've got so far among all test I've sat for so far. There are 20 people got more than 80 marks (gosh, I'm the 20th?) out of 99 in CS1101Y. Guess, I'm just average, which is true all the time. So, should I be happy about it? Hmm, good question.

In CS1101Y:
# students who took the PE: 99

Average score: 62.3 / 100

# students scored 100: 4
# students scored >= 90: 12
# students scored >= 80: 20
# students scored >= 70: 31
# students scored >= 60: 55
# students scored >= 50: 77

Need to catch up in other subjects already. Can't really survive if I keep on like this - screwed up in other modules and fairly good in ONE module only. In the end, I will surely kill myself with low CAP.

Widget

My Yahoo! Widget

Cool, just realize how usefull tools like Yahoo! Widget are. With it, I can manage my daily activities easier. Furthermore, all the notes and events are stored in Yahoo! server. Which means I still can view the notes and events even I did not bring my laptop with me. Before this, I manage my daily activities using Microsoft Outlook. But now, hey, with Yahoo! Widget, I can paste notes, things-to-do and syncronize them with my Yahoo account. Hmm, I wonder why now only I realize how to use this kind of tools. I mean before this, I saw my friends using the calendar, clock, etc and I thought they just use it as "desktop decorations". But now, I can understand why it is not "things that waste cpu memories".

Why do not you try it too?

All Test Paper Has Been Destoryed

Received this email from EG1108 Electrical Engineering lecturer.

1. A number of you have emailed me directly, soon after the release of the grades, with requests for release of the raw marks, review of the answer scripts, release of questions and solutions, among others. Some of these requests are also posted on the IVLE.
2. I hope you understand that I am not able to respond to you individually.
3. Setting a normal exam paper (6 questions) and grading some 700 scripts is a big exercise, involving many lecturer-hours: marking, checking the marks, processing the marks etc, taking easily 10 days.
4. The MCQ paper shortcuts this process and saves time as computers can be used to grade the answers.
5. Unlike the "normal" paper, MCQ papers provide valuable feedback for the instructors on what students do not know through the award of negative marks, over which some of you have displayed much passion, not unreasonably.
6. As I mentioned in my note that accompanied the release of the test results, I am satisfied that the raw marks fall on a very well-behaved bell-shape curve, as can be expected from a student population of 700. The shape tells us that we have some very good students in the P band, some very weak students in the T band and the bulk of the population lying between these two bands. It's a bit like wealth distribution in a population: a small percentage that are filthy rich, a small percentage dirt poor, and the bulk managing 3 meals a day.
7. Raw marks are not very meaningful. They must be viewed in relation to the rest of the student population. We use a band of marks for the simple reason that a student with a score of 75 need not necessarily be better than a student who scores 73. Further there is always some uncertainly in the grading (not for MCQ papers), between
markers, over time for the same marker (before or after lunch, depending whether it's a good or a bad lunch), etc. Markers are subject to the same human weaknesses as everyone else including students.
8. Marking on the curve is a standard NUS procedure. And this is also practised in many enlightened universities in the world. One Canadian professor remarked: "We don't give the students the raw marks, because if we do, they all fail." A bit of an exaggeration, of course.
9. All the Midterm test papers have been destroyed.

C H Ling

Hmm, interesting eh? Nobody will know if they (markers) make mistakes during marking. Anyway, my mark falls in R Band. There is no way to check my own mistakes at all.

"We are not retreating - we are advancing in another
direction."


--Douglas MacArthur

Improbable Collapse of World Trade Center

Just a 1 hour 30 minutes video clip which I got it from video.goole.com. The clip is about why The Twin Towers and Building 7 of World Trade Center (WTC) should not have collapsed during 9/11.

Below are some of the facts that might get you hooked on the 1 hour 30 minute long video clip.

• No steel frame high-rise building has ever collapsed due to fire in mankind history. The impact of the Boeing-767 airplane and the explosion from the fuel of the airplane can never melt down the metal core of the buildings. It takes about 2500F to melt down metals and the maximum temperature an uncontrolled open fire is less than 1100F. Therefore, we can conclude that the reason WTC collapsed is not because of metal meltdown, probably because of explosives, such as Termites!
  


• The Twin Towers and Building 7 collapsed almost at free-fall speed. It takes about 8 seconds for an object to fall from the top of The Twin Towers to ground while these buildings "pan-cake" collapsed in less than 10 seconds. (South Tower - 11 seconds, North Tower - 9 seconds, Building 7 – 6.6 seconds. It is like the metal at the lower level did not even give any resistant to the falling of the upper level. This lead us to one hypothesis – The buildings were planted with explosives to carry out controlled demolition!