:: O [S]ophos ::

Speed Reading

2012-01-29T01:21:00.000+08:00

Learning the skill of speed reading could be most rewarding.

I’ve spent more than a year to read this book and practice according to what the book teaches with the view of being able to speed up for the rest of my life.

Indeed it was a great help to me. I was able to read up to the speed of 1200 words per minute (wpm). But it also depends on the difficulty of the material. When it’s difficult it could be as slow as 700 wpm.

I am certainly not the fastest reader on earth. But at least it’s still fast if you compare with my previously 100+ wpm. Hahaha.

Allow me to give you a little peak in the book.

Consider the following beliefs:
1. Reading slowly and carefully leads to better comprehension.
2. Each word should be read as an individual unit.
3. Comprehension should be 100%.
4. Understanding should be 100%.
5. Memory of what has been read should be 100%.
6. Notes should be neat and written out along ruled lines in sentence form.
7. Finger-pointing is ‘wrong’ and slows you down.
8. Speeds of above 500 words per minute are impossible.
9. The faster reader comprehends, understands, and appreciates less.
10. Higher speeds produce lower concentration.
11. Normal reading speeds are ‘natural’ and therefore the most appropriate.
12. Always read page 4 before you read page 5.
13 Immediately look up any vocabulary words you do not understand.
14. Problems or difficult areas in a book should be ‘dealt with’ before moving on.
15. Never subvocalize.
16. Sit still until you are finished.
All of the above are common misconceptions. The opposite of each is true!

Counterintuitive, huh? Well it’s true! If you would want to read a lot of books in your lifetime, this is definitely a book you should read. Forget about the busybodies' Boustrophedon. Speed reading is the way!

Highly recommended!

Last Two Months' Events

2012-01-18T00:09:00.000+08:00

This is probably the first time I’m posting a photo blog post, you may call it. It also serves as a quick review of what I did during the last two months of last year. When it comes to vacation, many people are curious of what I’m doing because I always seemed to be busy. Well, yet again, only the dead is not busy; we all know that.

While the photos I post here may not completely and clearly reflect or represent the things I do, I still have the pleasure of sharing them. Hehe. We shall proceed.

We had a children camp on the 12^th of November. Although it’s in the middle of my examinations, I take pleasure in serving in the children camp. I served in the EXACT station where children have to make parrots exactly according to the instructions else it will not be able to balance and swing on the stick.

Well, you can see that all their parrots seemed to balance so well. Okay, that is a small kid trick where you place a weight at the tail so that the parrot can balance itself. I had fun tricking the children to think that they hadn’t stuck their parrots correctly when I distracted them from the weight. xD

Look at the kid on the left. Oh yea! That’s my favorite kid. Did I tell you that? Hehe.

Oh there she is! Hehehe. Smudged her name tag to protect her identity.

I went to Kuantan and Kemaman right after my last paper and spent nine days there. That is where I meet Alfred, the elder brother of Wilson.

Of course that wasn’t the reason I went there. I went there for the gospel. At this point, allow me to utter my prayer. “Lord, what about Your testimony in Kemaman? Raise Your golden lampstand, Lord!” I hope that everyone who reads this will echo this prayer.

Oh right, I said this before. In my another blog post, Kemaman Kids. Sadly, I’ve not seen them yet.

After participating in the last gospel meeting in Kuantan, we left Kuantan and head to Penang. Beginning from the end of November until the first week of December, the few of us attended a campus training for ten days.

Training?! What’s that?! Teachers have their teachers’ training; doctors have their medical training; engineers have their industrial training. Likewise, as ministers of Christ, we all need training as well.

Who then is the few of us? Some from Miri, some from Subang Jaya… They are just my true spiritual companions. Right now, just thinking of them, I just praise the Lord for His sovereignty that I can be built up with them. May the Lord preserve us, that when He comes, we will all be manifested with Him in glory.

I came back and rested for one week at home, trying to catch up with things in the Petaling Jaya. Before I could finish what I was supposed to do, I left home again for another two weeks… Okay, I’ll keep that for another day. It’s getting long xD

_{Seems like it’s not a photo blog post xD}

Simple Adventure Game

2012-01-11T13:22:00.000+08:00

I was helping my brothers to do their programming assignment. It was rather an easy assignment that just requires us to use if else statement only. Of course printf, scanf, and all those. It’s C++.

They had to like make an adventure story and user will have to choose what to do at any point in the game. It was supposed to be a simple game… But I wrote it a little too long. It surprises me that such a simple game without any graphics requires such a long time to code.

Well… I had some bad programming practice like using system() and all those… And if you notice, my program will eat the memory as you play the game again and again… But since it’s a small game, it wouldn’t hog too much xD

Here it is. All you need to do is to download it and run! Don't worry, no virus xD

Adventure Game

Enjoy the story!

Logos and Rhema

2012-01-07T13:36:00.000+08:00

In the Greek language, there are two words which are translated into the English language as “word”; they are λογος (logos) and ρηεμα (rhema). Logos means constant word, and rhema means instant word. The written word in the Bible is logos, while the spoken word is called rhema. So what’s the big deal?

Many people like to quote Matthew 4:4 when encouraging others to read the Bible. It says, “But He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out through the mouth of God.”

Well, it is not wrong to quote this verse in this way. But we need to realize that the word here is rhema, not logos. This clearly does not mean to simply read the Bible every day is enough; because the written word by itself is useless.

I’m not saying that we should not read the Bible. We need to read the Bible. But the logos we read have to become the rhema to us.

A boy may have met an accident and were about to die. His mother quickly opened the Bible and happened to turn to John 11:4: “This sickness is not unto death.” So his mother felt peaceful and rejoiced. But later when her son died, she may say that the word of God is not true. This is because the word she read was merely the logos, it was not the word spoken to her at that instance.

Another popular verse that is often quoted is John 6:63: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” The word here is rhema. It is not the logos that gives life, but the rhema.

However, this does not mean that we do not need to read the Bible. The logos is still important because rhema comes from logos. If you do not have the word of God in you, the Lord could not speak to you.

Lastly, in Ephesians 5:25 Paul spoke of the cleansing of the church in the washing of the water in the word. The word here is also rhema. How can the church be built up today? It is not by knowledge or by any practices. It is by the cleansing of the living word of the Lord.

The whole matter of our growth depends on our attitude towards life and rhema. The growth of the church also depends upon the word which the Lord speaks. If we see this, every day we will pray, “Lord, give me today’s rhema, speak to me this day.”

If we read the Bible solely for knowledge and are satisfied with knowledge and doctrines, we are finished. May the Lord be merciful and gracious to us! For true growth depends upon our receiving of the word directly from God.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Some instances in the New Testament when believers experienced rhema:
1. Peter remembered the word of the Lord after denying Him (Mark 14:72).
2. Mary heard the word of prophecy spoken by the angel (Luke 1:38).
3. Simeon seeing the Lord Jesus (Luke 2:29).
4. The word of God came to John (Luke 3:2).
5. Peter receiving the Lord's word in letting the nets down (Luke 5:5).
6. The women who went to find the Lord in the tomb remembered His word (Luke 24:8).
7. Peter remembered the word of the Lord in Cornelius' house (Acts 11:16).

Designing a Bishop Chess Piece

2012-01-03T17:56:00.000+08:00

This is my proud bishop designed for my manufacturing unit in Monash University. I think I said earlier here that we're require to do one of those...

First, I designed it on paper.

Then I digitalize it with the computer. In this case, I used Google SketchUp, free and easy to use.

Next, I write the turning code for the CNC machine.

We can use the same program to simulate our code.

Then leave it to the machine to do the job.

However, due to the limitation of the tools in our lab, e.g. only right hand cutting tool and neutral cutting tool is provided, wide angled cutting tool…, we had a simpler design and do away with the complicated multi-layered collar. Yada yada yada… Okay, let’s proceed.

These are the designs by our seniors for the previous years.

Hehe… Big improvement yea? Die, our juniors! LOL! Our bishop bagged the highest marks for our mini project and trounced all other groups! Proud face. xD

By any chance if you’re interested with my initial design…
2D without measurements
2D with measurements
Well, they are SketchUp files.

Long live our magnificent bishop!

Pay Me to Move!

2011-12-21T12:39:00.000+08:00

The house I’m currently staying in is trapped between rich people. On my left is Mr Edward. On my right is his brother-in-law (wife’s brother (inferiority of English to Chinese)). On the right of his brother-in-law, is another brother-in-law.

Being the malcolm in the middle, Mr Edward has been offering to buy our house at 350,000 MYR (if not mistaken).

Nonsense! That’s too little. It’s not like we’re in great need for money. Of course my dad turned down the offer by cracking a joke saying that we will have no place to stay.

I then asked my mother if she is willing to sell it. Of course she was not willing to. My next question came, “At what price are you willing to sell the house?” My mum’s immediate respond was “Impossible!”

I didn’t stop there of course. I tried my mum by asking her, “A million? Two million?” She kept repeating, “Impossible, impossible!” Oh well…

Few months later, Mr Edward offered my dad 400,000 MYR this time. My dad turned him down by chuckling this time.

I then asked my dad the same sets of questions. He said if it’s 600,000 or 700,000 MYR and he’s able to find a bigger house in Subang Jaya or so, why not?

Oh yes! That’s logical! Of course Mr Edward has to offer us a higher price since he’s requesting us to leave and it must worth all the troubles of moving to another place. But yea, if with the money I can get a bigger house and perhaps even have extra money to spend, why not?

A good illustration of how logical boys are and how emotional girls are…up till 2 million MYR.

Kemaman Kids

2011-12-17T16:46:00.001+08:00

I know I shouldn’t spend my time blogging. But since I went to Kemaman three weeks ago, I think I should say something about it.

I’m happy to see the saints there very much. The children there especially, couldn’t wait for us to go back. When we tell them that we will come in January again, they were like, “So long? Want to wait until I 8 years old only come?” Oh no…

So you say leh, how can I not go back leh? I myself am not sure if I’ll be there again coming January. But sure I miss them. The Lord loves them. So do I.

6 Stars College

2011-12-16T00:57:00.000+08:00

We went to the six stars college today. Oh yes, that's the six stars college! Hahaha.

Once we tread the land, the gospel has arrived! It was a good meet up. I do look forward to going there more often.

Regarding who are the "we"... hehehe. The one in the picture is Russell xD

The Focus—the Mingled Spirit

2011-12-10T09:37:00.000+08:00

The Christian life is a life in the mingled spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). Apart from the mingled spirit, there is no Christian life, and there can be no Christian life.

Many times we are misaimed and veered away from the mingled spirit (1 Tim. 1:6). We may talk a lot about the high peak truth, or practice the God-ordained way; but without this mingled spirit, everything is empty and in vain. Today we all need to turn our focus back to the mingled spirit, for it is the key and the focus of God’s economy.

There are many verses in the Bible that Bible teachers find it hard to translate because it is difficult [or even impossible] to identify if the “s” of the word “spirit” should be capitalized to refer to God the Spirit, or to have it in lower case to refer to our human spirit. (There was no upper case in ancient Greek).

But there are at least three verses in the Bible that have both “Spirit” and “spirit”:

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6).
God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness (John 4:24).
The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16).

The Long and Winding Road to a PHD

2011-11-15T19:23:00.002+08:00

Recently, Khang Lab posted something regarding getting a PhD. Apparently, getting a PhD is not so worthwhile.

A few things to note:

1. It seems that it is still worth getting a PhD in Asia.

2. Only 12% managed to receive their PhD in 5 years.

3. 100k PhDs vs 16k Jobs clearly means that your professionalism might not be wanted.

4. Lastly, for engineers, PhDs holder earn less. Industrial experience is more precious.

_{Image courtesy of Online PhD Programs and Degree Database.}

The Most Daring Thing I did during Primary School Days

2011-11-14T02:47:00.004+08:00

Perhaps for some, the most daring thing they did during their primary school days was to argue with a teacher, or to fight with someone older. But for me, it is to eat lead.

What?! Eat lead?! No, no, not the plumbum kind of lead. It’s the mechanical pencil lead. I would’ve suffered from strange illness and perhaps died many years ago; even if I were to survive, probably my brain would be dysfunctional (not like it’s functioning properly now anyway).

I can’t remember who came up with this brilliant idea and I started eating lead. To demonstrate the daredevil feat again, I continued eating more lead. A few friends of mine joined me in performance by eating lead openly.

Some people were too terrified; they reported us to our form teacher. Our form teacher then scolded us but nothing else could be done.

But there was a friend of mine who was still very interested in what we did, wrote on a paper asking us to describe the feeling. I still remember writing “Yum yum!” One of my friends also commented similarly, “Nyam nyam!” Another girl even wrote in detailed: “开始的是后有一点怪。但是慢慢咬还满好吃的。”, which could be translated as, “Initially it feels weird. But as I chew slowly, it is quite delicious.”

We were some crazy bunch of curious kids. Given the chance again, I’ll not do it again. Hahahaha. Fortunately, pencil leads were made of carbon instead of the plumbum lead.

Guess what? Inspired by us, one of our friends wanted to try something “new” by eating eraser ==. Because it was too hard and not chewable, obviously it didn’t succeed. Surely it tasted awful since eraser is made from rubber. Carbon is tasteless xD

Gabai's Tarzan

2011-10-29T23:33:00.002+08:00

Today we went to Gabai's waterfall in Hulu Langat. Well, we didn't swim. We just climb up the waterfall with an unachievable goal in mind, wanting to reach the summit.

Obviously we didn't reach the summit but instead turn back because we didn't have enough time; it was too far.

Before we come down, we took some pictures. The one with me inside was taken with shaky hands. So I won’t put it up here.

The one in dark blue is Tarzan. He was the one who led us up the hill. With just his slippers he climbed up so fast that we could no longer hear him if he is to do a Tarzan’s Yell. Haha. He simply put us, who wear shoes, into shame.

Look, Tarzan is going to do a Sunway Lagoon!

Oh yar! I have a paper on Tuesday! Wonder why I go waterfall... Hehe

Give Me Six Hours to Chop Down a Tree and I will Spend the First Five Sleeping

2011-10-27T15:29:00.001+08:00

The famous quote by Abraham Lincoln reads:

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Digital Clock using FPGA

2011-10-25T02:54:00.003+08:00

In Monash University Sunway Campus, we learnt how to use construct circuits and even processors from an FPGA.

One of the basic tasks we had was to build digital clock. The real challenge comes when we have to allow it to receive inputs from the keyboard to change the time. Well, that’s actually just a bonus task. Being one who is passionate in programming, how can I ignore this challenge?

Without further ado, I shall present you the video.

I've just took this video 3:49pm just now. You can see it in the video. xD Although I'm famous for procrastinating (kiasu is next), I'm still determined in things that I have passion in. Hahahaha!

Special thanks to Altera’s FPGA and Loo Han for shooting the video.

Postgraduates' Prayer

2011-10-13T23:31:00.002+08:00

I find this very interesting; especially when the fourth picture exactly described me.

Just got to know about PHD Comics today when I was reading Khang Lab awhile ago.

_{Image courtesy of PHD Comics.}

File Transfering

2011-09-10T15:37:00.006+08:00

File transfer is still a problem today.

_{Image courtesy of xkcd.}

Pendulum Waves

2011-09-09T00:50:00.002+08:00

This is absolutely stunning. If you like physics, or you think you like physics, this video is definitely for you. Even if you don’t like physics, you will love it!

I don’t usually watch Youtube videos. So when I watch them, be sure that it’s a good one.

Or if you want to see it from a different prespective:
I’ve been watching these videos over five times and I’m still amazed by it. Who would think of this?!

Detailed explanation can be found here. If you’re not interested, don’t click it, just enjoy the video. Hehe.

Young People = Time + Energy

2011-08-29T23:28:00.004+08:00

I read an email recently, categorizing life in three stages:

Teenage. Having a lot of time and energy. Probably those in the early twenties belong also to this category. The thing lacking is money.

Working age. Still having energy and begin to have more money. But working takes up one third of a day's time.

Old age. Having a large sum of money after retirement and a lot of time to spend. But there's not much energy in the old bones.

I'm in the teenage category. Though I've passed my teenage years, I still have a lot of time and energy. I think this is the best category to be in as well.

There's not much point having so much money but then do not have time or energy. [At most you'll see me grow thinner and thinner heh] Anyway money can't follow you to the grave. Time and energy is our (referring to young people) capital and we all should treasure this.

It is sad to say that young people these days waste their time and energy on the internet. Perhaps I also belong to this category to some extent.

Well, money can't do much. Time and energy are most precious. With time and energy, I can go around preaching the gospel… I can learn my Malay language well… I can learn more languages… I can translate some spiritual books… I can serve in the bookroom during the day and go out preaching the gospel during the night and serve the training center throughout the night and still wake up for fellowship the next day…

May the Lord train us and use us well while we are still young.

_{Images courtesy of Bill Watterson and Google.}

The Girl's Color, Pink

2011-08-26T02:12:00.000+08:00

I changed my toothbrush recently. When I was told to choose the color, I chose pink.

All of my family members laughed at me thinking that it's funny for a boy to choose pink. It's just funny how people consider pink as the color for the girl.

It's kinda unfair that girls have a color that identifies them but boys don't. While boys are labeled girlish when using pink stuffs, girls are never boyish using any colors.

The Knight Piece

2011-08-08T20:51:00.001+08:00

I'm somewhat attracted to the knight piece in a chess set. This is a piece that was made by our seniors. We have to make one of those too.

Hmmm.. Anybody wanna play chess? xD

Meaningful Holiday

2011-08-02T01:16:00.001+08:00

If you have been following my blog for some time, I think you will know I had ambitious holiday plans for the previous semester break. Obviously, I did not finish all the tasks.

Out of the 19 tasks on my list, I only managed to complete the first few easy tasks. That would be cleaning my room, clearing my notes, solving the 5x5x5 Rubik’s cube, and flashing a sense 3.0 rom. That’s like 4 out of 19 tasks completed.

My tasks list is always getting longer and longer. People tend to jest me by asking me how many tasks I have in my tasks list each time they see me. At this point, I don’t think I’m going to complete all the tasks on my list. Probably it’s due to the law of diminishing intent. Don’t know how to help myself.

Even though I only managed to complete minimal tasks, I am still rather satisfied with how I spend my holidays. I went to Kemaman, I served in the training center, I minister life in Monash University, and more that I forgot. It makes my holidays very meaningful.

Anyway, I will still try to follow my tasks list to see if I can reduce the pending tasks.

Beloved Comrades

2011-07-21T01:27:00.001+08:00

One of the first times my panorama feature in my phone camera is used. It is not perfect, but I like it. I was the one who took it so I’m not in the picture. There were other pictures taken with me inside but they weren’t as successful. So never mind, it’s okay. Haha.

Of course not everyone is in there. But I treasure them very much. Sometimes just thinking of them will make me happy and I will even forget about all the negative things. They are truly my dear brothers and sisters. You don’t know how much I love them.

I dream for the day, it wouldn’t be just the 8 of us in front of the tree, but twenty of us. Or even thirty, or fifty.

愿我们都成为主的踏脚石。我们这一生只要给主踏过一次，我们就活够了。

Gospel in Kemaman

2011-07-13T00:39:00.001+08:00

I’ve been to Kuantan and Kemaman recently during my semester break. Probably that’s the only place I went during the break. Hahaha. But this trip is definitely more meaningful than any other trips.

15 of us were commissioned to go there and spread the word of God. May the Lord bless the ears’ of those who hear the word of God.

I learnt many things in these few days going there for the gospel. They are too many of them and some are better to be kept to myself. I encourage all the saints to participate in the gospel.

The gospel is free—this is what we always preach. All we need to do is to open our mouth and call upon the name of the Lord. This is absolutely right. Salvation is free. But Christ has to pay the price to die on the cross. Likewise, someone has to bring this gospel to them and this requires a price. This is clearly shown in Romans 10:14-15.

Do you think we’re insane to go and preach the gospel when we’re not paid? Christ paid the price, as followers of Christ we likewise pay the price for the word of God to grow and multiply. Christ died on the cross, we die for the gospel.

Here are some pictures.

Trying to be funny to place the small brush like the big ones. Haha. That’s Leon in there.

This would be David Chuah mixing the paint…

…and stirring the paint happily.

But sadly, I was too tired after painting the floor of the meeting hall that I forgot to take a picture of it xD

Sze Kai is so happy to be in Kuantan. Hahaha.

View Larger Map The Kemaman meeting hall is right opposite the primary school.

Each day we live on the earth, the gospel advance further through us.

Is Beauty Subjective?

2011-07-04T01:10:00.000+08:00

Sorry to say, my answer is "No." Regardless of how noble or how wise a man is, beauty is one of the first qualities that he evaluates.

Even though ultimately what a man seeks in a woman is personality, beauty is the quality that plays the most important role in giving the first impression.

Sad to say, many girls do not understand them, thinking that busts size and butt size is all that matters. Beauty plays a part, but not so much when it comes to long-term relationship. But definitely, it still is an important quality.

Larry's Circuit

2011-06-28T18:54:00.000+08:00

A video was absent from my previous post. It won’t be absent for this post. Although I am not able to construct my own circuit, I helped Larry constructed his. Hope he’ll get his 4 marks.

The circuit is actually pretty simple. When all 3 switches are ON, all LEDs are lit. When any of the switches is OFF, the LED on the right most stops lighting. At the same time, each switch controls an individual LED.

So does the circuit look redundant? Hahaha. Well, it’s just to help him in his assignment of making a teaching aid for some nerves in the eyes. Hahaha. When he finish building it I’ll see if I can take another video. Hahaha.

Of course he has to do some work. Hehehe.

Okay, I should get going. Too many things to do this holiday. Cheers!

Simple Circuit

2011-06-24T22:29:00.001+08:00

The lab won’t be open during the semester break. How sad… That also means that one of my holiday plans cannot be done. Okay never mind, I will do it when the semester reopens.

But then I’ve built a simple circuit for my brother Chun Fatt. I took a video but it’s not showing properly. So I don’t think I want to upload it here. Perhaps when the model is working I will try taking a video of it. Hahaha.

Hmm… Without that video this post seems so meaningless… Ahhh, whatever! Lols

Holiday Plans

2011-06-23T17:13:00.003+08:00

I’ve finished my examinations 2 days ago. My last paper 2 days ago was the hardest paper in 3 semesters. Well, it’s over anyway. No high hopes. Haha.

As for the 1 month break… I’ve a few things that I wish to do. I think you and I can agree that we’ll never get things done during the holidays no matter how hard we try to. It’s something like making a new year resolution and always fail at the end of the year.

Regardless, I still have a few things that I want to achieve in this 1 month break. But I don’t expect myself to achieve all of it. Hahaha. Anyway, here they are:

1. Clean my room. [Easy]
2. Clear my notes. [Easy]
3. Clear my desktop space. [Easy]
4. Solve Hana’s 5x5x5 Rubik’s Cube. [Easy]
5. Flash a Sense 3.0 rom into my phone. [Easy]
6. Design and construct my circuit. [Medium]
7. Finish programming Tic Tac Toe’s AI. [Medium]
8. Finish composing FTTMY graduation song. [Medium]
9. Read a book. [Medium]
10. Teach Leon how to play guitar by ear. [Medium]
11. Finish recording children hymns that were left out. [Difficult]
12. Download hymns from hymnal.net. [Difficult]
13. Learn how to use Improvisor. [Difficult]
14. Save all the meeting halls’ GPS location in my phone. [Difficult]
15. Solve a few Project Euler questions.
16. Learn R, and perhaps Python, programing language. [Extremely difficult]
17. Convert the tapes in my room into .mp3. [Extremely difficult]
18. And more that I forgot. [Extremely difficult]
19. You tell me. [Extremely difficult]

As you can see, I’m still pretty ambitious although I don’t have high hopes that I can do all of them. At least I have something to review when I’m idling. Hahaha.

Cheers!

Lastly,

My cat sitting on my car. Woops. I meant my mother's cat sitting on my sister's car. Bwahahahaha!

Higher Expectation, Higher Performance

2011-06-18T00:39:00.003+08:00

Ever heard of the saying that says the higher your expectation the greater your disappointment? Well, that may be true. But not exactly true.

Know what is the Placebo Effect? One way to demonstrate the Placebo effect is to have one group of patients who are ill to take common medicine, while another group of subjects with similar illness to take inert tablets.

The subjects who take inert tablets were given false information, telling them that they will feel better after taking the pills. The patients then believed that the pills will improve their condition causing a therapeutic effect and the patients felt that their condition has improved.

Surprisingly, both the control group and the patients who take inert tablets got better after taking the pill. This effect is known as the Placebo Effect.

Of course, the Placebo Effect is not limited to only patients with illness. Studies tell us again and again that what we think and expect will affect us physically. If you think that you will do well in your exam, you will do well in your exam.

This may sound ridiculous. Sometimes it’s so difficult to relate Placebo Effect to how we perform. But anyway, read the article that inspired me to write this post.

Pacified

2011-06-14T00:16:00.000+08:00

Today’s paper wasn’t easy. It’s not exactly difficult either. I must say that the paper is balanced with both easy and challenging questions. I think I just did about okay. Hahaha.

Anyway, I was pacified by the marks of my design unit. 44/50. That’s not very excellent. But then again, you tend to lose marks in design units. I worked like a donkey and I just earned myself extra 1-2 marks (when compared). Quite pathetic.

But that also meant that I’ve passed my design unit! Woohoo! Passed without sitting for the final paper. How’s that? Hahaha.

I do not know why I am here reporting my day. But the next paper is on Wednesday, and it’s 8:30a.m.. Oh noooo! You know how it feels to morning papers.

Okay, I’ll die in the next paper. Haven’t touched it at all.

Sore Loser

2011-06-13T02:29:00.000+08:00

Every professor and PhD holder will tell you that results is not everything. Fine. Then what is everything? Okay, Christ is everything. I know. But if results is not everything, then what? I don’t have to study?

I still remember Doraemon’s post saying that students who study with passion are those who perform well and might change the world.

Okay, I have passion. But my passion is somewhat useless because I tend to over-study one part (passionate about one part), and neglected the other parts (doesn’t seem to interest me). And when I say over-study I mean studying something too detailed that even my neighbor knows that it won’t come out in exam.

So what? Does this mean I have to stop pursuing my passion and force myself to study the other parts that I have no passion for? Okay, I believe at least 90% of my friends would think that is the wisest decision. Perhaps even my mother believes so.

But come on, I have passion for that thing! And you ask me to ditch that for the others that I have no interest in? Okay, I know I have to be balanced. But you and I have to agree that we do not have interest in everything that we study. Then why study those that we do not have interest in?

Academic record is the answer. But wait. Did the professors and PhD holders said that academic record does not mean anything? Even the director of the School of Medicine in Monash University Sunway Campus said that good doctors do not have good academic record.

Okay, I know. My mother is not a professor. Even if she’s a professor she will still pay great amount of attention to my results. This is totally understandable. Even if results is not everything, the only thing that can gauge us at this point is our results. If you have good results, then you’re a good student. Conversely, if you have bad results, then you’re a bad student. Simple.

Unfortunately, I’m a bad student because I have bad results. I have so many friends who are so good at studying and they have all kinds of technique to prepare themselves for the exams. They may not know the concept and the principles but who cares! As long as you try the tutorial questions, and make sure you know how to do the past year questions, you enter the exam hall and you get excited because the question is similar to the one in the tutorials and you did it rightly and you score well, that’s it.

I’ve been trying to prove that this studying method is not effective. All my life I’ve been studying basic principles and concepts to prepare myself to answer all kinds of questions. But my method is always inferior to those good students. They are just too good.

Face the fact, I’m bad at exams. Probably you’ll say that if I’m bad at exam then nobody is good at exams. Okay, fine. I know I did relatively well in my MUFY. That’s because questions are still so direct and formulae are short and easy.

Now that I’m in my second year and so many unexplained formulae cropped out from nowhere and we’re supposed to use those formulae to calculate. People like me will spend ample time trying to understand the formulae while those good students just practice and practice and make sure they know how to use the formulae. Okay, that just makes me a bad student because I’m passionate.

I used to like exam-based courses because you can score well during the finals. Now I’m starting to dislike it more and more. I don’t like exams just because I don’t do well in them, such a sore loser. I can’t just study for the sake of exams and I refuse to yield to the good students studying technique. Then I will continue to die.

Why am I talking about exams again? They are supposed to mean nothing. But hey, everybody is pay attention to results! You know cognitive dissonance? When everybody is looking at results, are you going to turn away?

Urgh, scholarship. That is another reason why I’m striving so hard. I don’t have money, and I don’t want my parents to eat roti every day. So that only means that I have to study hard and get good grades to maintain my scholarship. Okay, now results seems to be everything. If I have it, the scholarship is mine, if I don’t, my parents have to eat roti.

It’s not that I don’t want to study or don’t want to put in effort. But I’m really not the exam-guy. I just don’t understand how people can neglect understanding and just tackle questions in view of the exams. Maybe they have a point. Because what we’re studying will not be applicable in the working world anyway. At least that’s what we always hear. Not unless you’re in the teaching line. But if you know you’re not going to do research, forget about understanding.

Okay, I don’t know why I am here writing such a long and lengthy post. I have a paper tomorrow at 1:30p.m.. This unit is very difficult. My studying style is very ineffective. Good students should be very prepared by now. Who cares if you can solve Project Euler problems if you do badly in exams?

Hope my parents forgive me for my stupidity.

Edited Blog Layout

2011-06-05T02:49:00.003+08:00

I’ve did some minor edits to my blog layout. Know what that is? Surely you won’t notice that.

Starting from the most obvious one, I’ve increased the width of my posts and sidebar. Unless you’re seeing this from a netbook or from a very small monitor, or from a very big monitor, you probably won’t notice the difference. Previously I’ve tried to keep my width small so that this blog can be viewed nicely on a netbook. Since netbooks are going to be obsolete as tablets are taking over, I do not care about netbook users anymore. However, my blog is still comfortable to view at 1024x768.

I’ve slightly increase the sidebar-width to post-width ratio so that blog visitors doesn’t feel that the words part are too wordy. I’ve also made my header slightly larger than the rest of the blog content so that visitors feel that the post and sidebar sits below the roof of my header and will not be intimidated by the wordy posts.

Why did I increase the width? Well, the main reason is because I want to add the share buttons below my posts. If I don't increase the width, the buttons have to move to the next line and it doesn't look good.

But then I cannot make the width too large else people will feel that they have too much to read. Haha. So I had to make the post-width to post-height ratio somewhat proportional, at around 2/3. Well, it actually depends on the size of your monitor. So… yeah... Hahaha.

Well… Yeah that’s about it. And if you don’t get what I’m talking about here, just scroll all the way down and look at my disclaimer. You won’t even feel like reading it when you reach there. Ahahahahahaha!

Yes, I know I think a lot.

Study Week

2011-05-31T23:31:00.001+08:00

It has always been this way. My study week has always been one of the freest times I have in the year. Somehow not going to lectures and classes suddenly gave me the feeling that I’m on holiday. Probably I have to go to university to avoid having that kind of feeling.

A little bit on my history. During the first semester in Monash University, I stayed home during the study week and try to do a superman the night before my papers. For my Mathematics, I slept as early as 5 a.m. in the morning and sat for my paper at 8:30 a.m.. How’s that? Hahahahaha.

Anyway I didn’t do well in my first semester. I had only 1 High Distinction and I got my scholarship suspended.

I made a comeback during my second semester and aced nearly all my papers. Well, I wasn’t quite satisfied but yet again, who can be satisfied. LOL. I restored my scholarship and even aimed to upgrade my scholarship on the following semester.

I worked very hard on the following semester to upgrade my scholarship. But, being someone who is bad in Mathematics (Don’t argue with me. I really think I’m bad at it), I did badly in the final paper, especially the statistics and probability part. Well, I used to be okay at those topics. But when it comes to the more advance version, I cripple. Okay, I’m bad at vectors and calculus also. Ahhhhhh, I mean I’m bad at Mathematics okay?! >.< (Hey, I’m bad at Laplace and Fourier transformations as well, wink!). Besides, my designing unit also cost me a lot of marks since we will never get full marks for our design because no design is perfect. You know… Even before sitting for the paper, I’ve already lost 14 marks from projects and assignments.

Nevertheless, my results were still somewhat okay, though it was far from upgrading my scholarship.

Okay, my point is here. I did go to university to camp there and study for my previous 2 semesters and my results seemed okay. I stayed home the first semester and my results were terrible. So does this mean that my result is going to be terrible if I stay home this time? Hahaha.

I’d better come out with a schedule to assist myself lest I further waste my time doing idling things. As a short-term schedule, I intend to clean my room in the morning, clean the toilet in the afternoon, read the unit guide of my Analogue Electronics and then study as much as I can (no goal) in the evening, and preach the gospel in the night!

As for tonight, I think I’m going to chillax and read the unit guide of Analogue Electronics. Do you know, the most important thing is the unit guide? At least it is to me. Hahaha. Cheers!

Infrared Barcode Scanner

2011-05-21T04:59:00.000+08:00

Look at it ticking. Emitter is working fine. 10-1pm, last chance for us to test our receiver and to wrap up our project.

Hope everything goes well.

Oh by the way, the purple light you see is the infrared. They can't be seen with our naked eyes. But by simply using a digital camera or a mobile phone camera, we're able to see the purple color. Cool yea? Hahahaha.

Cheap Barcode Scanner

2011-05-17T00:38:00.001+08:00

Seen a barcode scanner? This is the one I made using infrared emitting diodes and infrared receivers, definitely cheaper than the laser barcode scanner. But this barcode scanner can only read up to 8 bars. Hehe.

80% of the design is just in the head and on paper. Didn't have the time to test it our and would be too time consuming to set it up on the breadboard. So we just solder it onto the PCB board and hopefully my design works. Or else...our 50 marks is threatened.

We'll have to present this on next Monday and submit our report the following Friday. Really, really hope that it works.

Built Multiplexer

2011-05-11T00:44:00.000+08:00

My friend working on the boring stuff again.

Our multiplexer. Many reactors. Haha. I had some problem rotating this image anti-clockwise. Google likes to have it this way ==

I'm always proud of my soldering skill. Wuahahaha!

Mechatronics Project

2011-05-09T22:22:00.002+08:00

The horizon.

We were bored one that and we began to snap photos of the beautiful, though not spectacular scenery. The photography is a big failure as the reflection of the lights in our lab can be seen. Haha.

Anyway, this is our lab:

Some computers…

That thing on the right is the thing we’re working on. It’s some automatic sorting and retrieval storage thingy. But our seniors somehow downgraded it and scraped the retrieval function altogether.

Anyway, this semester we’re going to replace the metal detector with barcode sensors and to work on reducing the wires.

This is the multiplexor that I’m currently working on.

After putting all the resistors so neatly I remembered that I need to add capacitors to it. Urgh! Okay never mind, do it tomorrow. Haha.

Well recently there’s nothing interesting to share besides all the academic stuffs which will bore most people. But hey! I like it! LOL

If You were God

2011-05-01T21:29:00.004+08:00

If you were God, and you want to become a man so that man can come to you and know you, how will you come? In what way will you come? Who do you want to come as? Where do you want to come?

Probably most of us would want to come in this way:

Report to the world! Tell the media! Let the world know beforehand that God is coming to be a man! Have it on the headlines of all the newspaper in the world! Put it on Twitter and Facebook! Have all the people in the world gathered in a place! Call the reporter, call the media, and prepare them to stream it live!

Come in majesty! Descend from heaven in a place where everyone can see! Come in a bright garment that everyone will know that I am God! Come in a loud voice that everyone can hear me!

Come as a tall and good looking man! Come as the most handsome man in the world! Have the red carpet rolled before me! Have all mankind bow down and worship me as I play the anthem, that all will know I am God!

Have the sky bright and clear! Make rainbow seen all over the world, so that everyone will remember this day! In places that are snowing, make the snow golden in color! In places that have flowers, turn them all into beautiful colors! Perform miracles and let it be all over Youtube!

But you know what? Our Lord Jesus came as a tender plant, like a root out of dry ground, no attracting form nor majesty nor beautiful appearance, despised and forsaken of men, man of sorrows and acquainted of grief, one from whom men hide their faces (Isaiah 53:1-3).

This surely qualified Him to accomplish redemption for us. If He was to come as a mighty man, the weak would say, “You don’t understand me”. If He was to come as a rich, the poor would say, “You don’t understand me”. If He was to come honored and respected, the despised would say, “You don’t understand me”.

Aren’t you thankful that Christ came as a lowly man? I may not understand you, but our God surely understands every one of us. Praise the Lord He is now in our spirit. All we need is to call on His name, “O Lord Jesus!”

Bible speaks about left-handed people

2011-04-28T09:29:00.001+08:00

Sometimes, people just don't believe that left-handed people are specially skilled. Many researches regarding this has been done. Left-handed people are generally right-brained and therefore has good spatial ability.

At least, there's one portion in the Bible that supports this. It was written over 1000 years BC.

Of all these people seven hundred choice men were left-handed; all these could sling a stone at a hair and not miss. - Judges 20:16

How about that?

To busy or not to busy?

2011-04-16T15:03:00.000+08:00

It has been quite awhile since I last blogged. Sometimes I don’t know whether it’s better to be busy or to be free.

When I’m busy, I feel that I have no time and I don’t know where to steal time to finish my unnumbered tasks. Yet when I’m free, I just become so relax and started to do stupid, nonsensical, useless, meaningless, purposeless, worthless, unprofitable, good-for-nothing things that obviously does not help God’s economy and definitely is not part of God’s economy.

Sometimes I think it’s better for me to be so busy that I don’t even have time to think about dying.

Sophos' Proof Without Words 6

2011-03-21T21:09:00.000+08:00

Inspired by the recent “Proof Without Words” series that Chao Lang has recently posted in her blog, I came out with a more elegant solution (in my opinion) to trounce her lecturer especially in Proof Without Words 6.

Proof 1/4 + (1/4)^2 + (1/4)^3 + … = 1/3

142857

2011-03-05T23:29:00.001+08:00

So what do these numbers mean? Probably only a few of you know. Anyway, these 6 numbers are a magical sequence. Before I proceed, I think we should spend some time memorizing it.

142857
142857
142857
142857

Okay. We may begin now.

1/7 gives you 0.142857 142857 142857…

So you’ve just memorized 1/7.

But what a minute… You memorized more than that…
1/7 = 0.142857 142857 142857...
2/7 = 0.2857 142857 142857 14…
3/7 = 0.42857 142857 142857 1…
4/7 = 0.57 142857 142857 1428…
5/7 = 0.7 142857 142758 14285…
6/7 = 0.857 142857 142857 142…
7/7 = 1 (of course)

Isn’t this cool?

I’ve lived for over 20 years and it’s so shameful that I’ve just come to know about this magical sequence. So, so shameful. I hope that more people will be rescued from this shame >.< (Almost fainted when I heard of this)

Lastly, to those over 21 years and do not know this, SHAME TO YOU! Bwahahahaha!

Enlightenment courtesy of Joseph Chan.

Monash University Sunway Campus Orientation

2011-02-21T17:55:00.001+08:00

Today is the first of Monash University Sunway Campus’ orientation. It is also probably the first day of orientation for most universities in Australia.

Sometimes when there’re too few students, we feel sad and down. When there’re too many students, we feel inferior and shy. Sometimes, embarrassed. Nevertheless, having many students is a blessing. I also hope that more students will come to Monash University Sunway Campus to study. By the way, on average, we have about 1000 students for the February intake and probably half the figure for July intake.

Well, if you have no financial problems, I would encourage you to come to Monash University Sunway Campus. If you have financial problems, study hard and get scholarship to study here.

Jess Kang Body Mass as of 12th of February

2011-02-12T23:54:00.001+08:00

Do you know who Jess Kang is? Nostalgia Jess Kang ar… Don’t know ar? Okay, here’s her site.

She has been trying so, so hard to reduce her body mass. So as a good blog visitor, I’m here to do a shameless advertisement in respond to her endeavor to reduce body mass.

This is definitely not my weight (nor my body mass for extreme physicists). Well, even if I have that weight, I’ll still be below my optimum weight. This is Jess Kang’s weight! Bwahahahaha! Probably she was hiding some gold in her pockets… Hmm…

Apparently, she wants to reduce her body mass until she’s my weight—52kg by July this year. Do you think that’s possible?

Sarah’s laugh of disbelieve
Original post here.
_{_{PS. Sorry sister, but I’m too, too mean. Remember? Carrot and stick? xD}}

Maranatha

2011-02-11T23:16:00.001+08:00

Today I want to ~~scare~~ warn you readers in love with the word of God.

Firstly, I want to use 1 Corinthians 16:22. The American Standard Version renders:

If any man loveth not the Lord, let him be anathema. Maranatha.

The Recovery Version renders:

If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed! The Lord comes!

To all the children of God, remember that the Lord comes! After Paul dealt strongly with the saints in Corinth with strong rebukes, he ends his letter by giving the saints a stern warning.

If we love the Lord, we will share the divine blessings that He has ordained and prepared for us (1 Corinthians 2:9). However, our not loving the Lord makes us those who are set apart to a curse. What a warning!

Do not think that once you believe in the Lord you’re saved from judgment and you can live your life how you want because you will go to heaven when you die. Is this logical? As long as I believe in the Lord I secured my place in heaven? Nonsense! The Bible never mentioned that.

Have you forgotten about the parable of ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-13)? Surely all of them were believers because all of them went to meet their bridegroom. But not all of the virgins are prudent. The foolish virgins did not have oil in their vessels. They went to buy oil. When they were back, do you know what the Lord said? “Truly I say to you, I do not know you.”

Have you not read about the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30)? What happened to the wicked and slothful slave? Did he enter into the joy of his master? No! He was cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Remember Hebrews 9:27. “And inasmuch as it is reserved for men to die once, and after this comes judgment.”

So if you are not a believer you are not included? Remember John 8:24.

Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

Do not say that I did not ~~scare~~ warn you. If you do not want to believe in the Lord, I do not know who/what else you want to believe in. Harden your unrepentant heart no more; stop storing wrath for yourself (Romans 2:5)! Repent and believe in the One who is able to deliver you from the wrath which is coming (1 Thessalonians 1:10)!

I pray that as many as those who read this will believe in the Christ who died and was raised again. Not only so, but that all would love the Lord to the uttermost until the day He comes.

Maranatha!

3D Illusion

2011-02-10T12:23:00.000+08:00

Look at the image above. What do you see? Some symmetrical pattern created by blocks.

Interestingly, when lines are drawn, we'll see a 3-dimensional image.

I don't know why. But don't be crazy or feel tricked or stupid. Because I've just proved that your eyes and brain are working fine. You should be concern if you don't see the 3-dimensional image. Ahahaha.

Proud to be a Malaysian

2011-02-06T00:50:00.002+08:00

Because it is so convenient.

Spray

2011-01-25T12:33:00.001+08:00

My mum bought this spray two days ago and I took it and play around. I realized there’s a label here telling us what it can be used for.

Well, it says for iron and garden.

I remember when I was young I got too free and had nothing better to do. I took my mum’s spray and filled it with water and adjust the valve by turning the head of the spray.

I then get into the toilet and spray everything in the toilet. Wahahaha! I shoot down shampoo bottles and some other detergent bottles. Shoot the mirror and shoot everything. If you don’t know, you can actually widen the valve of the spray and it works like a water gun! Maybe more powerful, and more capacity to store water. Haha.

When I got bored, I tighten the valve so that it sprays mist. I then go to standing fan, on it at full speed and spray into the fan. Hahaha. We always do silly things when we’re young huh?

I still remember my sister and I tore paper into small pieces and put them inside the standing fan when it’s running at full speed. Hahaha. Huge mess! My kakak had to clean all the mess we did in our parents room. LOL

E-X-A-C-T

2011-01-20T17:41:00.002+08:00

E-X-A-C-T

Exact is what we all will be
In word, and deed, and time.
E-X-A-C-T, E-X-A-C-T, E-X-A-C-T.
We'll always be exact.
Our every word will be exact
You can depend on it.
E-X-A-C-T, E-X-A-C-T, E-X-A-C-T.
Each word is accurate.
Our every deed will be exact.
You can depend on it.
E-X-A-C-T, E-X-A-C-T, E-X-A-C-T.
Each deed—we'll do our best.

I actually sang this children song for the serving ones who will be serving in the coming Peninsular Malaysia Blending Conference. But I listened until very shiock. So I want share with other people. Ahahahaha.

Music and lyrics taken from here. Minor editing of the music done by me.

BrainBashers

2011-01-20T00:14:00.000+08:00

Today, I want to give you four multiple-choice questions. Try to time yourself before you start. I forgot to time myself ==

Q1. Which is the first question where c) is the correct answer

a) Q3
b) Q4
c) Q1
d) Q2

Q2. Which is the first question where a) is the correct answer

a) Q4
b) Q2
c) Q3
d) Q1

Q3. Which is the first question where d) is the correct answer

a) Q1
b) Q2
c) Q4
d) Q3

Q4. Which is the first question where b) is the correct answer

a) Q2
b) Q4
c) Q3
d) Q1

So how long did you take?

Want more of these? BrainBashers

Think until your brain juice dry. Not providing answers.

Galatians 2:20

2011-01-13T10:58:00.000+08:00

Galatians 2:20a says,” I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me;”

Paul said that he was crucified with Christ. How did that happened? Did Paul actually go up to the cross to be crucified? Was Paul on the cross together with Christ when He was crucified?

Well, that was not what he meant. When we believed into Christ and baptized into Christ, we have been put into Christ. 1 Corinthians 1:30a says, “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus,” There are also many other verses that shows we are in Christ, e.g. John 17:21, 2 Corinthians 5:17.

So when Christ was crucified on the cross, undoubtedly we, being in Him, have also been crucified on the cross with Him (see Romans 6:1-10). Being in Christ is a great thing. That means that everything Christ went through, we also went through together with Him. To further affirm my word, Ephesians 2:6 says, “And raised us up together with Him and seated us together with Him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus,”

A good illustration would have been the illustration of the writings on the paper. We being in Christ can be likened to the words being written on the paper. When the paper was torn into pieces, the writings were also torn into pieces. Were the writings actually torn? No. Yet, when the paper was torn, the writings were torn together with the paper. Likewise, when Christ was crucified on the cross, we were all crucified with Christ (Believe it or not)!

This is an accomplished fact. Paul (the author of the Epistle to the Galatians) did not say “I will be crucified with Christ” neither did he say “Let us be crucified with Christ”. But he said, “I am crucified with Christ”.

So today, we are all dead. Don’t try to be a good man. Don’t try to be a Christian (不要作基督徒). Don’t try to imitate Christ (think what would Jesus do?). “…it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me”. We don’t try, because we are dead. No matter how hard you try, you will fail. We live Christ. Let Him live in us.

All verses quoted from the Recovery Version Bible. The link can be found on my sidebar

Pneumatics Logics

2011-01-06T13:04:00.005+08:00

The first button I pressed is to extend only A.
The second button I pressed is to extend only B.
The third button I pressed is to extend both A and B (AND logic)
The fourth button I pressed is to retract both A and B (OR logic).

All instructions are independent of the current position of the pistons.

I did this a long time ago. This video is still lying on my desktop. xD There are some other videos, but their not quite good. So...

Dream Again

2011-01-04T01:23:00.000+08:00

Today I had a dream again. I’m a real dreamer.

This time I dreamt that my parents and I went to Genting Highlands. There’re many events that aren’t meaningful to me. I’ll just mention those meaningful ones.

We borrowed an umbrella from Genting Highlands. I don’t know why we did that but we just did it. We then head to the theme park to play. Well, the theme park in my dream was different from the actual theme park. The one in my dream was way cooler.

Anyway, halfway playing around, rain began to pour. My mother opened the umbrella and I hid below it; we were both sitting down by the stairs. Within seconds, about five Malay girls and a Malay guy came and bent their heads down implying their need for a shelter. We then generously raised the umbrella a little higher so that all of us can fit below one umbrella (don’t ask me how).

The next thing I know, the umbrella was torn apart and there were about three school girls in navy blue uniform and other two girls sticking next to the torn umbrella. Evidently, they were the ones squeezing below the umbrella until the umbrella could not hold any longer.

I immediately chased them and I shouted at them, calling them to stop running away. Those who were under the umbrella also helped me by chasing them. They outran them, but did not stop the girls.

I then ran faster and eventually caught a girl by her shoulder (the rain stopped somehow). I then scolded her, “If this is my umbrella it’s okay. But this is Lim Goh Tong’s umbrella!” Thinking back, I have no idea why did I say such stupid thing.

Anyway, she apologized to me and I immediately forgave her and told her to forget about the umbrella, only to remember the name of the Lord Jesus. What surprises me is that the other girls who ran ahead came back to hear what I have to say about the Lord Jesus. I led them to call on the Lord’s name again and bade them goodbye.

After I woke up, I thought to myself, why did I chase them? Why did I not preach the gospel in the first place?

New haircut

2010-12-24T16:54:00.004+08:00

I had a new haircut this afternoon. The hair-stylist asked me if I want him to comb my hair. Well, I told no problem. So he combed my hair without using a comb and that’s what I looked like. I feel so weird. My hair is poking the throne of God in the heavens. ==

Don’t worry, I won’t comb like that.

Plants vs. Zombies

2010-12-24T13:54:00.018+08:00

Okay. Plants vs. zombies. This is a nice game. Its graphic is quite good. Suitable for young children to play, and also challenging for kiasu people. Last but not least, it’s very time consuming. This game is a great swarm of locust that devoured all my time.

You can download this game from PopCap’s official website here or you can download from somewhere. I don’t know where.

Anyway, I‘ve retired from this game. There’re things that I failed to achieve. But I can’t spend any more time to attain to something that I will never bring to my grave. Hahaha.

I’ve finished the Adventure 4 times. Wanted to make it 5 times. But the thought itself was killing me; so I left it at 4.

I’ve gotten all the plants.

I’ve met all the zombies too, even the ostensibly rare Yeti.

I’ve finished all the mini-games.

I’ve finished all the puzzles. I’m still proud of my 21 streak for vasebreaker and also the 13 streak for I, zombie. Anyone can beat that? Hehehe.

I also finished all the survival games. Currently I completed 600 flags for the endless survival. It’s really endless ==

And now, coming to the best part…

Although this is not the complete collection (by the way, we don't have enough space for the complete collection), I collected the cute plants and their mirror. Right now I’m lacked of the snow pea and the peashooter. I was also considering removing chili to make way for the sunflower in my cart. Sunflower looks cute! Hahaha. Is my Zen Garden impressive? Hahaha.

I also have the complete collection of the night plants.

And of course, the aquatic Zen Garden is complete.

Finally, this is my Tree of Wisdom. It’s only 1234 feet. The last wisdom is at 1000 feet. So I thought that there was no point to further increase its height. So I kept it at a beautiful number. Hahaha. Well, I still have enough money to grow my tree about another 300 feet (you can see that at the earlier screenshots)? Hahaha.

Okay, you can have my Plants vs. Zombies saved files. Saved files.

All you have to do is to extract it into the directory
C:\ProgramData\PopCap Games\PlantsVsZombies (for Windows 7). For other operating system, you find it out yourself, yea?

My final advice, don’t spend too much time killing yourself. Ahahahahaha

Thrill Dream

2010-12-02T12:35:00.012+08:00

I had a very interesting and exciting dream yesterday. I love dreams!

One fine day, the six of us: Fatcow, Reng Kwan, Summer Saw, Shea Yuin, Sheryl and I, went to some recreational park.

Okay, probably the only person I spoke to is Summer Saw. Shea Yuin and Sheryl didn’t speak a word and they’re pretty blur in the dream.

Anyway, we spilt into two groups: the girls and the boys. We both bought two packets of mystery mines. They were around the size of a 50 cents coin. I then overheard someone saying that the packet of mines the boys bought has a real mine in it, a nuclear mine! That was a great jackpot.

We then head to some event circle. By the time we reach, the girls already started planting mines and they already covered almost 80% of the circle. I just stood beside and observed them.

Suddenly Fatcow took out a match stick and lighted the match and threw on the ground in the circle. I backed off and hid behind Reng Kwan, thinking that by doing that I’m able to be safe from explosion.

In few seconds time, the whole circle was on fire. I remembered how dangerous nuclear explosion is. I’ll be so contaminated by the radiation even if I do not get blew up immediately.

I quickly alerted the others and started running. It was so 乱水 and all I remember was Reng Kwan running in front of me, and Summer Saw running behind me. Gosh, Reng Kwan ran super fast!

There were several boxes or rocks and some kind of obstacles in our way. I ran and jumped like a professional athlete and even jumped over huge blocks like a gymnast. Then I heard Summer Saw’s voice from behind calling me to wait for her.

Well, to be honest, I thought of leaving her there and keep going. But that would be too selfish. I turned my head back and I was so drowsy that I can’t see her clearly. Anyhow she caught up and we both continued to run and jumped across some roof and some big drains.

I went back into reality awhile and my heart was pumping really fast and then I went into sleep again to continue my dream (I don’t know how that happen don’t ask me). We (Summer Saw and I) then reached a huge drain where Reng Kwan already jumped across earlier. It was really deep, like 2.5 metres? I was thinking so hard for ways to get over the other side. It was also then my sole felt pain. Apparently I was barefooted.

Okay, I didn’t jump across that drain. But I think it was long enough for the bomb, if there is any, to explode. Since there was no explosion, I told Reng Kwan and Summer Saw that we can go home already, no need to run anymore.

We jumped our way down and the next thing I know, I was in Summer Saw’s car and the five of us were relating our experience to each other. Apparently Reng Kwan drives himself home. LOL. Sad.

It was a weird dream. But I still like it! Ahahahaha!

Taiwan Sausage @ Ming Tien

2010-11-24T00:14:00.009+08:00

Some time ago my friend brought me to Ming Tien in Taman Megah. He then challenged me to eat the super spicy hot dog. If I can finish the hot dog, it’ll be free. If I fail, I’ll have to pay him for the hot dog.

Well… I accepted the challenge, partially because I like spicy food. My friend went to buy the hot dog. A spicy hot dog costs RM2. A super spicy hot dog costs RM2.30. Mine was RM3. I only knew that later.

I anyhow ate the whole thing. It was so choking spicy that I don’t know where to place my tongue! My lips were swollen and tears cannot stop flowing out from my eyes. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever ate!

This is a picture taken by my friend. LOL.

The worst thing is… I suffered from gastric that night. It was so severe that I woke up every hour. I drank water and ate biscuits with the hope that the pain would be relieved.

Anyway, the next morning I asked my dad to buy some antacid to relieve my pain. Because of my kiasu I hurt my stomach ==

Still, I’ll continue to eat spicy food! Hahaha. You wanna know why? Read this.

And for all those people who think that they can eat very spicy food, please prepare antacid before you challenge yourself to eat the spicy hot dog. The gastric is crazy.

I managed to smile after I finished my hot dog =)

This is it.

This is the stall…

…and the villain.

Shah Alam's i-City

2010-11-17T18:49:00.010+08:00

I went to i-city like very, very long ago; like two months ago?

Exam was coming then and I didn’t have the time or the mood to blog about it. Sounded like a lie, right? Have the time to go to i-city but not the time to blog about it. So fake.

Anyway, i-city is all about seeing LED lights that are artistically designed to attract people and of course, ultimately to earn money. The lights are somewhat beautiful though I expected it to be more spectacular.

Anyway, here are some vain pictures of myself taken by Fatcow:

Tupai

Summer butterfly. Ahahaha!

Summer butterfly-to-be.

Peacock!

My green tree.

My orange tree.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

2010-11-10T00:53:00.000+08:00

I have obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), at least when I study. Well, I’m having compulsions basically and I don’t think I have obsession. Especially when I study, I must follow rigidly to my strict rules. I also think that by doing such I can prevent dreaded events and situations like failing or not knowing how to answer questions during exam.

So what are my compulsions?

1. I must start from A and end at Z when I study.
2. I cannot jump in halfway.
3. If I stopped at K, the next time I study I still must start from A.
4. I cannot try questions before finish studying.
5. I must read notes.
6. I cannot learn from tutorial questions.
7. I must make sure I know everything in the notes, even if it won’t be tested.
8. When I do past year papers, I must time myself.
9. I cannot look at the solutions without adequate trying.
10. If a question is no longer in syllabus, I must learn it anyhow.

Okay, that’s ten compulsions for a start. Hahaha. Sometimes these compulsions caused me to have not enough time to study everything. Well, those are the times I had to go against my OCD. I had to just strike past year papers even without finish studying and just try my best to learn from it.

Ahhh, you know, I’m having my last paper on the 11^th of November. Number of blog post decreased greatly. Hahaha.

Project Euler

2010-10-12T22:22:00.004+08:00

I’ve many things to blog about actually. But I just lack the time. However, to say I’m really busy is also incorrect. Haha. At least, for the past two days, I was busy with Project Euler.

If you’ve never heard of it, your life is incomplete. Hahaha. Click on the image above! Well, I just knew about it yesterday when Chao Lang introduced it to me.

I got so addicted that I practically spent the whole night yesterday, and the whole day today, to solve at least 22 questions. Hehehe. I actually abandoned all my other assignments and lab work for this. Haha.

Currently, I’m ranked 30 in Malaysia. Hahaha. Sounds like a kiasu, right? Hopefully someday I can climb up to top 10 in Malaysia.

Well, what is Project Euler all about? It’s about solving mathematics questions that are too complicated that you can hardly do it even with good programming skills. Okay, that’s exaggeration. But just a simple illustration…

What is the largest prime factor of the number 600851475143?

Well, I don’t think anyone can do this without programming language… At least I can’t do it without one. Hahaha. Anyway, the questions there are really interesting and challenging. It’s rare to see me enjoying inducing stress into myself.

For now, I’ll have to do my lab work already. For others who are also interested in Project Euler, come on! Join us!

Oh, by the way. I use the powerful Matlab to solve all the questions. Of course, you can use whichever programming language that you’re comfortable with. Perhaps, paper and pencil? Hahaha.

Well, Chao Lang has been promoting very greatly her R language that I have no choice but to download it lest she cries throughout the night. Haha. Well, R is free and open-source (unlike Matlab). R is very promising in terms of longevity. Besides that, it is very good for statistics and easy to learn. Yeah, I know, Matlab is not very easy to learn. But… Oh well, that’s the only language I’m comfortable with. R? Won’t be too soon…

Police or Security Guards?

2010-09-25T00:49:00.001+08:00

Do you trust the police more or security guards more?

I trust security guards more than the police for the following reasons:

1. Police thinks that they have a lot of power.
2. Police thinks that they can do what they want.
3. Police thinks that everyone should be scared of them.
4. Police thinks that nobody should question their actions.
5. Police thinks that they are right every time and we are wrong every time.
6. Police thinks that carrying a gun means that you must listen to them.
7. Police belongs to the government.
8. Police can issue summons.
9. Police likes to ask “So how now?”
10. Police likes to drink coffee.
11. Police likes to collect money from under table.
12. Police becomes diligent when big festivals come.
13. On the other hand, security guards do not have much power.
14. Security guards listen to us.
15. Security guards bargains with us.
16. Security guards greet us.
17. Security guards cater to our need.
18. Security guards are paid.
19. Security guards don’t ask “So how now?”
20. Security guards don’t drink coffee.
21. Security guards don’t collect money from under table.
22. Security guards are always diligent.

I see no reason why a police should not lie to us.

Anyway, not all police and security guards are like what I described earlier. Haha. Though, they may be able to represent the majority of them. Hahaha.

Rare Sight in Monash

2010-09-19T02:05:00.006+08:00

Rare sight in Monash University Sunway Campus. It was raining so heavily last Friday. Everyone left their umbrella in front of the library for a good photography.

Doesn't always happen.

Truly consecrated man

2010-09-16T12:39:00.000+08:00

A truly consecrated man is a man who has given up his future. He no longer has hopes for himself in anything; all his hope is in God.

He lives purely and simply in the hand of God; he is what God wants him to be and does what God wants him to do. Whatever the outcome may be, he does not know and does not care. He only knows that he is a sacrifice, wholly belonging to God.

- Witness Lee

Know, Experience, Living

2010-09-14T00:37:00.000+08:00

What we know will be our experience. What we experience will be our living.

Everything begins with knowing. A young child does not have much knowing. He just knows how to cry, how to be hungry, and how to sleep.

But as the child grows older, he began to know that chocolates are sweet and tasty, while vegetables are a little bitter and not pleasant to eat. The more he experiences the taste of chocolates, the better knowing he has. The more he knows, the more he eats them. Soon, it becomes his living.

He then experiences watching TV, and likes the cartoon he watches. He then knows that watching TV is a wonderful experience. Soon, it becomes his living.

A young child would usually experience something accidentally before knowing what it is. As a grown up, we know things before experiencing them.

A curious kid would learn about cigarette from his peers. He would then experience smoking. The more he does it, it becomes his living.

We know about the internet from our friends. We then began to experience internet. Soon, internet became part of our living. A day without internet is like a day without a meal.

We know about cell phone and its convenience in contacting people. We then get ourselves a cell and use it to call our friends. Soon, handphones became part of our hand. We would even go back home to take our cell if we forgot to take it with us.

Likewise, the more we know the will of God, the more we will be led to experience the will of God. As we experience it, it will become our living.

The will of God is Christ and the church. God wants to make Christ everything to us that we become the expression of Christ corporately as the church. This revelation will lead us to live Christ, grow Christ, express Christ, and propagate Christ. Eventually such an experience becomes our living.

However, we may know something, yet not experiencing it nor practicing it. Knowing is one thing, but practicing and experiencing can be totally a different matter.

We know we need to eat three proper meals a day, yet we may not practice it. We skip breakfast sometimes, have late dinner, and drink some coffee before bed.

From the perspective of a student, we know we need to study hard and do well in exams. Yet we sometimes feel lazy and still do badly in exams.

Then again, practice without a vision is empty and not sustainable. We may force ourselves to eat vegetables every meal. But without the vision of what we’re doing, we may give up after a few weeks.

Seeing a vision will change our concept of value. Our concept of value is important. It affects our decision. A person who values a Picasso painting will save every single cent he could to get hold of a famous painting. Some of us would not even want it even if it’s sold at a few dollars.

While others may think that Christ is valueless, a believer who truly sees the preciousness of Christ will rise up to experience Him and gain Him at any cost.

May the Lord revolutionize our concept of value that we will be those who live Christ everyday!

Experiment

2010-09-08T00:54:00.003+08:00

Experiment is the step in the scientific method that arbitrates between competing models or hypotheses. An experiment can be carried out using the scientific method to answer a question or investigate a problem.

First an observation is made. Then a question is asked, or a problem arises. Next, a hypothesis is formed. Then experiment is used to test that hypothesis. The results are analyzed, a conclusion is drawn, sometimes a theory is formed, and results are communicated through research papers.

The Chinese in ancient times observed that the dog is eating the sun during a solar eclipse. The sky turns dark and the sun seems to be eaten up gradually.

The Chinese asked of what they should do. A problem arises; the sun is going to be gone forever. Something must be done to prevent that from happening.

The Chinese formed a hypothesis saying that if they would make a lot of noise on the Earth, they might be able to chase away the dog, returning the sun to them.

They conducted the experiment by playing loud drums in a quick tempo and crying out loudly each time they bash the drums. The noise they make reached a crescendo when the sun is completely swallowed by the dog.

Few minutes later, the dog left, leaving the sun behind for the Earth. The Chinese analyzed the results. The sun seems to be the same without any changes. The sun is as bright as before. The effort of chasing the dog with loud noise is not in vain.

A conclusion is drawn: By making a lot of noise when the dog is eating the sun will chase the dog away and have our sun back.

This theory is then communicated to all the Chinese.

Two things I can say here. First, a control sample is very important. Without a control, it is difficult to tell that the outcome we get results from the things we do. Second, an experiment may draw a conclusion, but that is not always correct.

Grow Valley

2010-08-31T08:35:00.000+08:00

Grow Island creator made a new game called Grow Valley.

Similar to Grow Island, Grow Valley has several systems for you to develop in a sequence. Grow Valley is simple and easy to play. When I say easy to play I don’t mean easy to choose the right sequence. I mean just click and play. Hahaha.

One improvement made is that now you can fast-forward the animation if you’re only interested to get the final ending. It’s pretty interesting and I prefer this to Grow Island. I also find the music and sound effects very entertaining.

Perfect ending.

This is the secret ending. The sequence of development is entirely random and it does not make any sense. I googled to get the sequence. Haha.

Anyway, can you spot Waldo? Hahaha.

That is ENGINEER!

2010-08-28T17:33:00.003+08:00

Engineers are problem solver. Hahaha.

Self-control is Exhaustible

2010-08-18T15:20:00.000+08:00

I read an article about self-control. Psychologists have always been proving that self-control is exhaustible.

An experiment was conducted. Cookies that smell so good were brought into the lab. Two bowls were placed in front of students: one with the cookies, the other with radishes. Some students were told to eat only cookies and no radishes, while the others were told to eat only radishes and no cookies.

The researchers then leave the room to tempt the radish-eaters from picking a cookie. The radish eaters showed admirable self-control; none of them eat a cookie. And meanwhile, the cookie-eaters did not experience any temptation.

The subjects were then asked to do a second task which is seemingly unrelated to the first one—trace a complicated geometry without lifting the pencil. They were not told that the puzzle can't be solved.

Interestingly, the cookie-eaters, on average, lasted for 19 minutes before giving up. While the radish-eaters, yielded after 8 minutes. That's less than half the time the cookie-eaters spent!

Guess what? They ran out of self-control. Self-control is exhaustible and very mentally draining.

I have scoliosis. I was told that I must sit upright, stand straight, walk straight, and sleep straight. After sitting straight for an hour, I began to have problems concentrating. I can’t study, I can’t think, I can’t read, I can’t even sit still for 1 minute. I had to walk around, lie about… Now that I don’t practice that so often, it’s much better. Haha.

If you think of playing, just succumb to temptation. Probably you’ll have twice the concentration if you’d practice self-control. Hahaha. But of course, I don’t mean you go on the street raping people because you don’t want to practice self-control. ==

If you think playing is a waste of time, then don’t tempt yourself in the first place!

Skip Class Calculator

2010-08-17T11:08:00.001+08:00

Oh! This is cool! Check it out!
Skip Class Calculator

I skipped a lecture yesterday. According to this calculator, I’m safe. Hahaha.

Common Cathode Display

2010-08-11T22:57:00.007+08:00

Haven’t been updating my blog too much recently due to more than several reasons [and excuses]. Probably these pictures will explain why.

Okay, probably this was too lame for anybody to take interest. We had to setup this spider web just to make the output 0 1 2 3 and 4. I wonder what Mr. Alfred can do if he doesn’t want it to be a spider web. Hahaha.

It’s so terrible that when your circuit doesn’t work, you’ll blow your head just to figure out where the fault is. This work is so tedious! Thankfully today’s the last lab for this! Now I know how crazy analog can be. Welcome digitals!

New Background

2010-07-27T18:38:00.002+08:00

Spent few hours to do my new background. ==

Finally, finally, finally, I managed to make my background image resize accordingly to fit both different monitor resolution and different window size.

That also means that even if you view my page with a 1920x1200 resolution or a screen as small as 800x600, you'll see my perfect with the full length of blue threads. Bwahahaha!

Try resizing your browser to test my page. Hahaha.

Monty Hall Problem

2010-07-26T23:07:00.006+08:00

"Monty is saying in effect: you can keep your one door or you can have the other two doors." – Cecil Adams
I watched the film 21 not too long ago and there was this problem posed to a student in the show. It’s the Monty Hall Problem.

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

I’ve tested my parents and both of them chose to stay on door No. 1 and not to take the switch. Well, the answer is to take the switch.

Many people, including my dad, would think that the chance of getting the car to be 50:50 after door No. 3 was opened.

Of course, when solving this problem, we need to make the assumption that there is an equal chance of the car to be hiding behind each door.

Most people can easily tell that there is a chance of 33% for the car to be behind each door initially. However, after door No. 3 was revealed to have the goat behind it, most people would recalculate the chance of the car behind each door and concluded that there is 50% chance for the car to be behind each door.

Knowing that the game host knows where the car is, most people would think that the game host is trying to trick them into choosing a door with a goat behind it. Surprisingly, in one study, only 13% of the subjects chose to switch.

Initially, the chance of the car being behind door No. 1 is 33%, while the chance of it being behind the other doors is 67%

But after the game host opened door No. 3, which has a goat, the probability of the car being behind door No. 2 became 2/3 while the probability of door No. 1 remain unchanged.

My dad argued that if the car was in door No. 1, switching would take my car away. Of course switching will give us an advantage. But then it does not guarantee us the car.

My counter-argument is: what if the car was in door No. 3? Then the game host would have to open door No. 2, which has a goat behind. So switching to door No. 3 will win you a car.

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Quoting 21, “Always account for variable change.”

Man cannot be satisfied

2010-07-16T05:04:00.022+08:00

Ever since I got real serious in my studies, I began to become really nervous the moments before the results are out. My nervousness grew as I invested more effort in my studies, exponentially.

As we plant more effort into our studies, we naturally have higher expectations of ourselves. Nobody work for something, yet do not expect for anything.

A mother nurtures and educates her child very patiently, with only the hope that her child would one day grow up to be a great success.

An athlete trains diligently every day, with only the hope that he will win the gold medal at the next Olympic Games.

A pianist practices his piano two hours a day, with only the hope that he’ll one day be able to perform in the limelight.

No mother will bring up a child having no hopes for him. Neither will an athlete nor a pianist practice without a goal to achieve. They all have high expectations.

When our high expectations are not met, we get disappointed, depressed. But then, even when our expectations are met, many times we still feel that we could’ve done better. My son could’ve been a CEO of 3 companies; I could’ve also broken the world record; I could’ve performed here 5 years ago if I practiced more seriously. We just simply can’t be satisfied.

As I grew up and took education more seriously, I have high expectations for myself. Of course, not all the time I will achieve what I hope for. Those times were hell to me. Imagine that you’ve studied for one whole year to get the results that you didn’t want. That’s like 5% of your lifetime gone, if you’re my age.

But even when I achieved what I expected, it’s difficult to say that I was never disappointed; I just wanted more! The times that I won, I will still feel that it was not enough, the victory margin. I will regret for not doing improvements that would lead to a landslide victory.

I was never satisfied. All the times I endeavored to meet my hungry expectations, only to be brought down into dissatisfaction. I finally come to know that man cannot be satisfied.

What shall satisfy a man? Shall money or position or fame or victory or knowledge or love? Deep within man is a hunger for eternal, something that would last forever. Everything under the sun is just temporal and can never satisfy man; only the eternal God, who is Christ, can satisfy the deep sense of purpose in man’s heart.

Because we do not regard the things which are seen
but the things which are not seen;
for the things which are seen are temporary,
but the things which are not seen are eternal.
– 2 Cor. 4:18

Color IQ Test

2010-07-14T22:25:00.004+08:00

I saw this in Joy ’N’ Escapade. She has a score of 10. Being a typical kiasu, I took the same test and I got ZERO! Perfect score!

A lower score is better, with ZERO being the perfect score.

Anyway, their just promoting their X-rite thingy which also means that I had perfect score because my monitor is properly calibrated. ==

What makes a man a man

2010-07-14T22:16:00.005+08:00

My mother texted me today telling me that my name appeared in The Star newspaper. Well, my name appeared in the Stuff@School section, in the article named “The great divide” by Eileen Woo

Actually, I read in Eileen’s blog that The Star will be featuring her article on the 14^th of July. But I didn’t know she actually quoted me. Anyway I’m a “her” in that article. ==

She asked me what makes a man a man. That was three months ago. I told her that a man is someone strong, capable of doing things, doesn’t get tired easily, muscular, can fight well, and is not timid.

My mum told me that I have none of the qualities mentioned. Well, that means I’m not a man, especially when I myself give the definition of a man. Hahaha.

So, what makes a woman a woman? Well, this question is actually not a valid one. A man can be used to describe a guy’s character: “That guy fought with the robbers like a man!” But we don’t say: That girl sweeps the dirt on her sleeves like a woman. It just doesn’t work that way. And often when we say like a woman we mean like a rough old lady.

Interestingly, we do describe a guy this way: “You can’t even lift that thing. You’re just like a girl!” Like a girl is simply the opposite of like a man, weak, useless, incapable, slow… Guys are supposed to be able to do everything, and do it fast, productive and efficient.

A girl, on the other hand, has to be feminine, sweet, polite, talk with a soft voice, walk with elegancy, and sit with their legs neatly crossed. Besides that, there’re not much demands for a girl. Unlike a man, he has to learn to take up responsibility, earn money, feed a household…

Well, questions like “What makes a man?” or “What makes a woman?” are far too superficial. I’m like consoling myself, right? Hahaha. But the truth is that nobody will choose his/her mate simply based on these physical qualities. So I’m saying this because I have bad physical qualities? Hahahaha.

What can you do if you have bad physical qualities? Work on your mental qualities.

Driving Experience

2010-07-11T23:22:00.001+08:00

Last week I went up to Cameron Highland. This trip itself gave me several first-time experiences. It’s the first time I drove for long distance, first time I drove up Cameron, first time I drove an auto-gear car, and also the first time I had a good way to use my hypermilling skill. Okay, not exactly the first time I drive an auto-gear car. I drove Reng Kwan’s Wira from Sea Park to Kelana Jaya and back to Sea Park again last year. Oh ya, it’s also the first time I drive a car without a P sticker. Hahaha.

Well, driving up to Cameron isn’t as difficult as I thought; in fact it was really fun. The road from Simpang Pulai to Cameron was well made. What I mean is that the road is logically made according to physics principles. When cornering left, the road is slightly tilted to the left to prevent cars from flying away. Ahhh, if you don’t get it, it’s okay. The roads are just so suitable to race. *Grins!

Auto-gear isn’t something difficult after all. It’s like I’ve been driving manual gear all my life and one fine day I’ve to drive auto-gear up to Cameron. So nervous, you know. Well, auto-gears have only 4 gears compared to manual that has 5. Auto-gear definitely has to spend more fuel. The bad thing about it is that the engine has to rev up to about 3000-4000rpm before changing gear. It’s gonna drink lots of fuel!

Of course we can drive an auto-gear car like a manual. We can simply off the overdrive to use 3^rd gear or to simply push down the gear stick to downshift to 2^nd or 1^st gear. The bad thing is that we can only manually change to a lower gear ratio but not to a higher gear ratio.

But one good thing about auto-gear is that when you release the gas pedal, the rev will drop till about 1500rpm. Unlike manual gear cars, when you release the gas pedal, the rev will remain high and continue to consume your fuel while at the same time reducing your speed, forcing you to depress the clutch or to engage neutral gear to save fuel which is rather annoying.

Two Avanza went up to Cameron this trip: one carrying 6 passengers, while the other carrying 5 passengers and all the luggages. I carried 6 passengers and we opened the window to enjoy the cool air in Cameron Highland while the other Avanza had their windows closed all the time. Guess what? I spent an extra of 4 ringgits on fuel because of that >.<

On the way back to Subang Jaya, I applied the pulse and glide theory. That also means that I drive up to 120kmph and release my pedal letting the car glide until about 100kmph and pulse it to 120kmph again and letting it glide again and so forth. Upon reaching Subang Jaya, we both refill the petrol and I beat Guo Yi by a small, small 50 sen margin. Hahaha. Oh, by the way, I took 7 passengers back, versus his 5 passengers and luggages.

It was so tiring to drive for so long, you know. Now I know how important it is for drivers to have real enough sleep the night before. If you’ve not enough sleep the night before the trip, it’s still okay since everybody will be too excited to sleep on the way to our destination.

But when you’re driving home after the trip, even with adequate sleep is also difficult stay energetic since the whole car will be sleeping and you’ll feel drowsy due to peer pressure. You know, I had to like sit up straight and play Mozart in my head to keep myself alert.

One important lesson I learned is to always entertain the driver especially when I’m sitting in front and also especially when we’re travelling home after a trip. Well, you can actually sleep only if you’re confidently sure that the driver has more than adequate sleep or you think that your sleep is more important than your life. Hahaha.

Well, since I don’t think anybody who was in my car will read my blog, I’ll say this here. Hahaha. I was so sleepy you know! Haha.

Hmm… My P expired a week ago. Now I’m driving illegally. Oh well. Hope to visit JPJ soon.

Fallen Man

2010-06-20T01:25:00.003+08:00

Every man is a fallen man. Countless times we tell ourselves that we do not want to greed but can’t help but fall into temptation. We’ve determined to not be lazy yet we’ll find ourselves excuses to slack off. We always regret losing our temper and engaging ourselves into unnecessary arguments. Yet we’re so easily provoked and so naturally engaged into fierce arguments. Many times, our endeavors to be a better person are tenuous and end up in disappointment and failure.

We, believers, although have been saved and have God’s life within us, yet the element of the fall still remains in our attitude, motives, intention, thinking, loving, hating, decisions, temper, disposition, and in many other matters.

I’ve always wanted to wake up early in the morning to contact God. For that I’ve always tried to sleep as early as possible. The clock tells me that it’s time for bed, but I don’t want to do so until I’ve checkmated Chess Titans just one more time. 90 minutes later, I’m still using that same excuse.

We’ve all been there: intended to watch only one episode of drama but ended up watching three; wanted to sleep after completing another level of bejeweled but ended up five; brushed our teeth and prepared for bed, an hour later we’re still instant messaging our friends. Although it may not seem wrong, there still may be the element of the fall in them.

In my emotion, in the way I love, and in my conversation, there is also the element of the fall. My love is biased; loving only the cute and smart kids and neglecting the others who needed love most. My speaking is fallen too; always speaking venomous words that would provoke people.

Not only my attitude, emotion, and speaking is fallen, even my motives and intentions are fallen. No man does anything from a single motive; there are many reasons for everything. Many times when I do things I have ulterior motives to it.

As students, it is certain that our sole responsibility is to study hard. Coming from an average household income family, we’ve to struggle to cope with my sister’s expensive ACCA examination fees and also the escalating Monash University fees. To lessen the burden of my parents, it’s my responsibility to work hard to obtain and then maintain my scholarship.

I didn’t do well in my examination last semester, causing my scholarship to be suspended from 50% to 20%. With the intention of restoring my 50% scholarship, I’ve put in extra effort in my studies this semester. But I’ve to admit that I’m actually feeding my ego. I’ve always wanted to be the best, to be the top in everything. The many times that I failed did not dampen my spirit but rather fed my ego with a solid ambition to rise up stronger and trounce my competitors off the throne.

Being proud, egoistic, and ambitious is my natural disposition. I always gain confidence for myself in the midst of others’ despairs. I always think that I’m better than others in everything I do. Even though statistics and history may show that others are better than me, inside of me I will still renounce that fact and strive to prove otherwise. Such a strong disposition is nothing but fallen.

It may seem to be one good trait of mine that pushes me to excel in everything I do. Yet again, in it is the element of the fall.

----------------------------------------------------------
Knowing how fallen I am only shows that I need the Spirit of life to deliver me from my fallen nature. Day by day I need more and more deliverance in all these matters. I need the Spirit of life to saturate me with the life and nature of God till the extent I am glorified in His glory. You too!

"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" - Romans 7:24
"For the law of the Spirit of life has freed me in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and of death." - Romans 8:2

First Paper

2010-06-16T22:34:00.002+08:00

Hah! As expected, the whole flock came super late to Monash this morning. Even our booked discussion room in the library was given out to others. Hahaha.

We all came at around 11am, if not at noon. We had revisions on lame things that nobody will pay attention to. Things like, the inverse of impedance is admittance. Hahaha. The detailed things we discussed simply causes Chew to be so restless. Haha.

Anyway, we took an alternative route to the exam hall and saw that there was no paper pasted on the door of that tutorial room today. Hahaha!

Anyway, the exam was crazy hard; it was nothing like the past years we did. I had to even learn them on the spot to be able to answer the question. Squeezed all my brain juice until dry dry ar.

Some more our lecturer told us that the paper will be based on 2009 semester 1 and 2009 semester 2. Boy, those papers were easy! She even said there will be no novelty in the questions which is totally untrue.

Even my favorite superposition gave me problems. Though, later I thought that I did that question rightly, yet I can’t find a single soul to confirm that what I did was right. Urgh…

Thankfully it’s a three-hour paper; I had plenty of time to think about those novelties ==

Process System Analysis paper is two days from now. It’s not a paper that I like. But I don’t think there’ll be novelties in this paper.

Well, on the one hand, I dislike the fact that I actually lose marks because of these novelties. Yet on the other hand, it’s kinda fun to be able to answer some novelties when others can’t even answer any of them. Hahaha. Very evil, right? Pray hard that your professor ain’t like me. Hahaha.

Monash Tutorial Rooms

2010-06-15T22:24:00.019+08:00

Examinations in Monash started last week. We’ve a number of tutorial rooms opened until midnight for nerds who can’t study at home to camp in Monash.

Two days ago on Monday, we’ve been making tremendous noise in a tutorial room that was shared with some other people. The pioneer of the room got annoyed and tried to give some fierce stares at us with the hope that we’ll shut our trap and do our work.

Talkative chatterboxes like me can’t live without a minute of silence. Every now and then I’ll talk about the sky, the sea, alligator, turtle, papaya, banana... While Simon and Sie Khai can’t keep their tone down as long as the Chinese Chess set is spread on the table. Besides, Phaik Joo and Mei Xin kept on going in and out the tutorial room without failing to slam the door each time.

Despite numerous stares from the fierce wolf, we’re barely toned down for more than 5 minutes. Perhaps she would be better off if she uses the time to stare at us to do her work.

Her efforts were in vain. But she didn’t stop there. She carried on doing this the next morning:

She pasted this on both the tutorial room doors. Hahaha.

We felt so depressed, suppressed, oppressed, but not impressed. After a long repression, we’re finally able to express ourselves when the lone wolves went for their lunch! …Beginning from You Liang.

Followed by Sie Khai:

Ahhh, this is Sie Khai imitating the warewolf’s fierce stare. Haha. Oh yes, that’s Reng Kwan in background.

This is Simon Tin with his thumb-up before going to sit for his Chemistry paper. Haha.

And finally, this is me. Hahaha.

We ain’t a quiet flock who allows the lone wolves to attack us and gain the whole victory in the psychological world, of course.

It’s just a tutorial room okay; not a library [anyway]. If you want silence, the library is open for you all the time. Not to mention, the quiet area in the library is almost empty every day.

Library is a place for quiet study, but tutorial room is not a place of compulsory silence. In any case, all tutorial rooms [unless prior booking] don’t belong to any lone wolves after all.

Now the atmosphere is quite thick and in high tension. Haha. It’s like altogether a psychological war raging between the lone wolves team and the flock team. Hahaha.

What’s worsening is when the flock jested in the face of the lone wolves that they’ll come as early as 8am to hog up all the tables in that tutorial room. Ha Ha Ha! Ya right, any of the sheep will wake up that early.

Look, what’s the point going to tutorial room and study if you don’t want to talk to anyone? Just head to the library next time. Think about it: if both the library and the tutorial rooms are quiet areas, where is the discussion area? We’ve less than limited discussion rooms in the library and to ask us to go to open areas would be unfair. By logical deduction, tutorial rooms are discussion areas.

Anyway, there’s something interesting pasted on the door of the next tutorial room too!

It reads “Discussion Room ~study study~ =D” And a little note at the bottom reads “~will be noisy sorry~”

Hahaha! Looks like we’re not alone. Wahaha!

New Toy

2010-06-12T14:06:00.002+08:00

Hoho! You would’ve probably found out that my exams’ coming real soon. It’s like next Wednesday? It’s not like I’ve done any intensive study. Hahaha.

My blog's been idle for quite some time. Probably it’s because I don’t have any specific topic to blog yet. Anyway, I’m going to introduce you to my new toy.

A 5x5x5 Rubik’s Cube...!!!

Okay, maybe none of you are interested. To be honest, solving a 5x5x5 Rubik’s Cube isn’t as difficult as anyone would’ve thought.

Actually that’s not my cube. It’s Hana’s. Since she doesn’t know how to solve it and don’t dare to scramble the cube, I kidnapped her cube. Bwahahaha!

Anyway, I’ll only have that toy with me for a week. Hana must be hoping that I fail terribly in my exams. Hahaha.

And once again, Congrats to Sheryl Moh Cha Cha for regaining the “Top Scorer” title for ENG1020!

Okay, I’d better get back to my studies or I’ll earn myself the “Bottom Scorer” title for ENG1010.

Electronic Thermometer

2010-06-02T10:28:00.013+08:00

Okay. This is what we did for our final ENG1030 Electrical Systems lab. It is just a simple circuit with some resistors and transistors, a few light emitting diodes, a thermistor and an IC. 3 green LED and 5 yellow LED lighted after the switch was turned on. That means the temperature in the lab was 24 degree Celcius.

So here’s a better view. We just have to follow the instructions blindly as to where to put the resistors and all. There, you can see that our thermometer is only accurate to 4 degree Celcius.

This is the back side of the circuit board. See? They even had “MONASH University” printed on it.

Maybe my soldering may not be the best in the world; but it is one of the best in the world. Bwahahaha. Okay, I’m just imitating the guy who did the demonstration video for this lab. But don’t you think it’s well done? Hahaha.

Okay, okay. I know there’s some imperfection in the center of the board. That’s because I put in the wrong resistor! I read 2.2k as 1k. == Blame the 5 strip resistor because we were taught only to read 4 strip resistor.

During a hot day, we’ll easily hit the red LED, 32 degree Celcius.

But we don’t have cold days here. So I decided to bring it to the fridge.

Woops! It dropped to 20 degree Celcius just after a few seconds.

But I couldn’t wait. So I bring it to the freezer to test the limits of my thermometer. Haha.

It went down to 8 degree Celcius.

It continued to drop to 4 degree Celcius.

Finally! 0 degree Celcius! I spent like 15 minutes just to snap this photo. I had to close the door of the freezer, and read newspaper for a minute to wait for it to drop to 0 degree Celcius. The moment I open the freezer door, I had to press the switch and snap the picture immediately. If I fail, it’ll raise back to 4 degree Celcius the next time I switch it on. That also means that I have to put the thermometer into the freezer and read newspaper for another minute ==

Anyway, when I took it out, water condensed everywhere on the board and also on the components. But after a few minutes, it’s back dry and still working. Hahaha. Probably I should try on dry ice next time to get it to -4 degree Celcius.

Winning Tower Competition

2010-06-01T11:19:00.004+08:00

The highest reward of man's toil is not what he gets from it but what he becomes by it. - John Ruskin

Okay. The results of the tower competition were out a few weeks ago. My group did actually won the Tower Competition.

We actually received some small gifts from Monash. They’re all not exactly very useful actually.

I was actually quite surprised to receive a… Urm… What do you call? Certificate? For such a small project we’re also given certificates. ==

Oh yes, that super short mini tower made by Sie Khai won in Category A and their group received certificates too.

Well, we spent countless hours building our 5-marks-worth project and ended up getting 5 marks with some other rather useless things and a certificate. While others who built their tower overnight easily get 3 to 4 marks.

But it’s not the reward that matters; the process matters. I’ve learnt a lot through the process of building the tower. Although it may not be applicable for my future studies, it’s surely good to learn something still!

Okay, all my assignments are done, and we’ve no more lectures (only revision lectures and tutorial classes) for the rest of the days until my finals. I’m feeling so relax. Hahaha. Anyway, our spirit is life (Romans 8:10)!

Area of Circle

2010-05-25T10:23:00.009+08:00

pi is one of the most mysterious irrational number.

We first learn it as 3.142 and as 22/7 as close estimation.

Later it became 3.14159 and 355/113 to me.

But for Joseph-chan...

pi was introduced to us as the ratio of the circumference of a circle over its diameter. That makes

Circumference of circle = 2*pi*r

But then another formula was introduced to us.

Area of circle = pi*r^2

But where did it come from?

The area of the circle can be approximated as the area of the polygon. The total area of the polygon can be calculated as

Area of polygon = 1/2 *L * h * N

where L is the length of the base of the triangle, h is the height of the triangle, and N is the number of triangles (or simply number of sides of the polygon)

Interestingly, h * N is the perimeter of the polygon!

Area of polygon = 1/2 * perimeter of polygon * h

So if we were to improve that approximation by drawing a polygon with more sides...

We will get

Area of circle = 1/2 * Circumference of circle * r
= 1/2 (2pi*r)r
=pi*r^2

Brilliant!

Tower Competition

2010-05-16T17:40:00.013+08:00

Last week we had this tower competition. Our objective is to build a tower as tall as possible (up to 1.2meters), as light as possible and being able to take as many loads as possible (up to 20kg of weights), using only newspaper and glue of our choice.

As a typical kiasu who wants to whip everyone in his cohort, I led my group to make super thin sticks that can carry 20kg. Most people are so terrified by the weight of 20kg and used up till 3 sheets of newspaper to make super thick sticks that can carry the weight of Enoch (You will know who he is in a moment).

This is our testing tower that was built with 12 sheets of newspaper.

And this is our another testing tower that was built with only 9 sheets of newspaper. Oh gosh, my cohort is so gonna kill me.

These are my broken testing towers who fought gallantly before collapsing. The one on the left died at 11 cancer books (3.8kg each) and the one on the right surrendered after carrying 8 cancer books for about 20 seconds.

This is my group: Wei Thung, Wafa, and myself. Thankfully everything went well, although Wei Thung almost pass out moments before the loading takes place. Hahaha. Ahh… My elegant, thin, slim and tall tower, just like me. Hahaha.

Since my tower is super unstable, dangerous and risky, I also had another backup team. Hahahaha. In case I don’t whip my whole cohort, at least my backup team will. Hahaha. That shows how kiasu I am.

My second group. Hahaha. This tower is still graceful yet much more stable and can carry up till 30kg effortlessly.

Okay, this is Enoch and Sie Khai. It was the daredevil Sie Khai’s idea to build a short tower with super-super thin sticks. He just used 5.5 sheets of newspaper to build that. Oh my-my. By the way, they just finish building that tower that morning!

Anyway his tower endured a maximum 20kg for 10 seconds before expiring, crushing the other groups who competed in his category.

Anyhow, it was a rather great day for all of us after countless days of head-cracking and brain-juice-squeezing, thinking how to punish all the other groups for using thick and fat sticks that can carry an Enoch if not two Enochs. Hahahaha.

See? Now you get what I mean? Summer Butterfly’s jaws were gagged with joy and had problems closing them while her eyes can barely be seen. Hahaha. On the contrary, the jaws of the punished were never apart for more than a second.

Thankfully God did not confound our language while we build the tower of Babel. Hahaha.

The Marble Problem

2010-05-09T17:40:00.011+08:00

This problem was not initially called The Marble Problem. It was actually called Malfatti’s problem, or sometimes known as the circle problem.

Malfatti’s problem is to put three circles into a triangle in a way that each circle touches two sides other triangle and touches the other two circles. He then published his solution at 1803, conjecturing that by constructing three circles in such a way, it maximizes the area out from a triangle.

For over a hundred years, people believed that by constructing three circles to touch two other circles and touch two sides of the triangle will give you the maximum area.

It was only in 1930, Lob and Richmond showed that Malfatti’s conjecture was wrong. Although Malfatti did solve his problem [of constructing three circles with each one touching two other circles and two sides of the triangle], but that was not the way to achieve maximum area.

So a new problem comes: how do you construct three non-overlapping circles inside a triangle so that their total area is as large as possible? (The Marble Problem)

Lob and Richmond used a big circle that touches all sides of the triangle and two smaller ones. With this configuration, they managed to do slightly better than Malfatti. They’re configuration covered almost 74% of the area while Malfatti’s cover less than 73%.

35 years later, in 1965, Howard Eves pointed out that Malfatti’s solution is incorrect in numerous other cases.

Especially when the triangle is a thin and long one, Malfatti’s solution is rather obvious to be incorrect.

Doing what Lob and Richmond did earlier wouldn't bring you far. At this point, by the intuition of a kindergarten kid, you can tell it’s:

Even without any calculation, this configuration is clearly the best.

Finally, in 1967, Michael Goldberg demonstrated that Malfatti’s solution is never correct, whatever the shape of the triangle may be. The optimal solution is always either one of this configuration where the biggest circle has to touch all three sides of the triangle:

It was just a simple Euclidean geometry problem that everyone can understand. Yet it took over a century before anyone notice the problem. It is not that the Malfatti’s solution is just wrong for some shapes of triangles but it turned out that the Malfatti’s solution is always wrong no matter what shape of the triangle is! There is absolutely no triangle where Malfatti’s solution is optimal.

Even when the mathematics community knows about it when Malfatti published his solution, it took 126 years before anyone discover the holes in Malfatti’s solution.

What I’m trying to say here is that a mathematical [or scientific] equation or law or theory or principle is not determined by the mathematics community. That is why mathematics [especially] needs proof.

How many of you uses the Pythagoras Theorem without proving it?

It is so easy for us to get things badly wrong; even great mathematicians. That is why we need proofs.

The Need for Proof

2010-05-02T19:28:00.005+08:00

We need proof for everything we do—that is how a guy’s brain thinks. That is why there often rage a fierce fight between the girls and the boys in a group project simply because girls tend to come out with countless ideas without supporting statements to convince the boys and thus are often ignored even when their ideas are very logical at times.

Mathematicians do need proofs too. I shall continue my Mathematics-posts streak.

Okay, this is a circle with a line joining from a point on the circumference to another point of the circumference.

So this line divides the circle into two regions.

Now mark 3 points on the circumference, and join them all with straight lines. We have divided the circle into 4 regions.

If we continue to do this with 4 points, we’ll get 8 regions.

Now we can start to guess that if we mark 5 points and do the same thing, we’ll get 16 regions.

Bingo! Indeed it is 16 regions.

At which point, we quickly conclude with confidence that when 6 points are marked on the circumference and are joined by straight lines, there’ll be 32 regions.

Happily we found the formula for the number of regions:

Number of regions = 2ⁿ, where n is the number of points marked.

Little did we know…

…it isn’t. There’re only 31 regions.

That is why mathematicians need proof.

Proving Pythagoras Theorem

2010-04-26T21:20:00.014+08:00

a² + b² = c²This is probably the most famous theorem where all school children will learn. The most basic thing to learn in geometry is the Pythagoras Theorem.

The square of hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of both the other sides of the triangles if it is a right-angled triangle.

Most people simply apply the formula without proving it. And we were told, in our high school, to memorize common lengths for a right-angled triangle, like 3² + 4² = 5² or 5² + 12² = 13² or 8² + 15² = 17².

There are countless ways to prove the Pythagoras Theorem. Today, I’m going to demonstrate one of them.

The green square area is c².

If I would rearrange the four white triangles in this way. It’s very clear that the area of the green square is equal to the total area of the blue and red squares.

That makes a² + b² = c²!

I can’t say which way of proving Pythagoras Theorem is the best. But this is one of the easiest to understand.

But then, I my favorite can be found in Doraemon’s blog where Prof. Akiyama proves Pythagoras Theorem without words. Very interesting and entertaining.

Mind Reader

2010-04-25T00:15:00.002+08:00

Choose any three digits number and keep it in your mind and don’t tell me what number you chose.

But on one condition: The difference between the first digit and the last digit of the number has to at least 2.
For example, 446

Now, reverse the number.
446 >>> 644

Find the difference between those two numbers.

Reverse the number again.

Now add them together.

Tell you what, I know you got 1089!

You may think that the result is dependent on the three digits you chose. But interestingly, no matter what number you choose (as long as it satisfies the condition), the answer is hundred percent 1089.

I got this from a book, 1089 and All That - A Journey into Mathematics, by David Acheson.

It all started when the government requires my mother (who is a teacher) to read 7 books a year. She asked me to borrow books from Monash Sunway Campus’ library. I walk around and found this interesting book.

Well, I borrowed it and my mother read like a chapter or two. Turn out that I’m reading it.

Anyway, 1089! Isn’t it impressive?

Cutting Cake

2010-04-19T20:21:00.002+08:00

Leon Blanc has successfully solved the question regarding dividing a gold bar in the previous post. He revealed the answer in the comments section and he proudly announced that he cheated.

Well, I did a google search on that and I’ve actually got tonnes and tonnes of results telling us the answer.

I’ve prepared another question to bend his mind. I’ve did a couple of google search and I also found the answer very easily. I tried to change some words like “cake” into “pie”. Even then, plenty of results are shown.

Well, I don’t encourage that kind of lazy work. You’ve to work your brain now and then. Tapping on a calculator every time when you want to count something merely reduces a chance for you to exercise your brain.

I don’t know how well I can count mentally. So I use these chances, like counting the amount I’ve to pay when I go dutch with my friends for meals up to the exact cents, taking into account service tax and discounts, just to know how good I am.

You’ll have to push yourself to the limit. It works the same for physical exercises. If you don’t push yourself to run faster, to run further, to jump further, or to jump higher, it’s difficult to see significant improvement.

Anyway, here it is:

Okay. You’re given a cake. And there are 7 friends of yours in your house tonight. You’re supposed to share the cake with 7 of them, and also yourself. But you have only 3 cuts available. So how are you going to divide the cake that everyone (including yourself) will have an equal portion?

Dividing gold bar

2010-04-17T23:17:00.005+08:00

You have a gold bar. You've to pay your worker 1/7 of a gold bar a day for a week. You have only two cuts. How will you cut the gold bar?

This is not an illogical and nonsensical question. The answer is very logical.

Hint: Computing students should know the answer. Or you'd better stop telling people you studied computing.

Be Diligent

2010-04-08T00:39:00.011+08:00

Be Diligent
Be diligent (2X)
Be diligent children
Be diligent children of God
We are all diligent
Someone said that my singing spoiled the instrumental. So I should also give the only instrumental one here also. Enjoy the music and sing it yourself!

Spent a great deal of time to write the notes of this 13 seconds children song and spent more time to sing and harmonize. Just want to post it up.

Half of my midsem break is gone and I'm in contrast to the children song I just sang. I’ve barely did any study and my mum’s asking me whether I did study. Of course I can’t tell a lie. So I just told her I haven’t (not didn’t).

She then brought up the last semester matter where I didn’t do well enough and things like that… Well… I’m speechless.

I just want to bring this quote up from Hilter:

If your win you will not need to explain; if you lose you should not be there to explain.

Well. In my case, I lost. So I won’t be there to explain; I just eat all the bitter herbs from my mother.

What can I do? Win.

What is a leap year?

2010-04-05T01:38:00.009+08:00

I thought of delaying this post. But since the Law of Diminishing Intent doesn’t allow me to do so, and Nostalgic Jess Kang is so eager to read about it…

So what is leap year? Leap year is the year that is divisible by 4.

That is what the kindergarten teacher, or the primary school teacher, or even the high school teacher, or even a university graduate can tell you.

I’m gonna make my teachers pay for teaching me the wrong thing! The most shameful thing for a teacher can do is to teach something that they don’t know and even worse, wrong facts.

So back to the question: What is a leap year? And why do we have leap years?

The kindergarten teacher would explain that the Earth orbits the Sun for 365 days and 6 hours. So in order to compensate in that lack, we have 365 days for 3 years and 366 days for 1 year. So a leap year comes every 4 years.

Hmm… Apparently, that kind of explanation is logical, acceptable, and correct.

But the main reason we have to take that [apparent] 6 hours into consideration is that because we want the equinoxes (or solstices) to happen at specific moments in time. To make it simple equinox is the time where the Sun is directly shining at the middle of the earth and the length of day and night is the same for all countries for a day or two.

If we measure the length of time for the Sun to return to the same equinox, it’ll take 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 1 second (in 2000). This time is also known as a tropical year.

Actually, we can’t be exact about how long a tropical year is. Because the time for the Sun to return to the same equinox is different from the time it takes for the Sun to return to the same solstice.

What’s more major is that it changes every year! At about 2 centuries BC, mathematician and astronomer Hipparchus measured the time taken for the Sun to return to the same equinox. It was 365 days, 55 minutes and 12 seconds. That differs from modern estimation by about 6 minutes (That is a lot!).

Mathematicians always strive to achieve the closest-to-accurate value if they can’t get exact value. (Just like pi is no longer 22/7 to me but 355/113. You’ll get up to 7 significant figures right with that.)

So what they did was they calculate the mean solar year between year 0 and year 2000 and what they get was 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 45.19 seconds or simply 365.2421897 days.

To take into account the 0.2421897 days into account, we have leap years now and then. But if we have 1 leap year every 4 years, we’ll have “extra” 0.007810301 days (11 minutes and 14.81 seconds) every year.

If we continue with that, we’ll have a full extra day within 128 years. So to solve that problem, we should have “break” from leap year every 128 years. However, that would cause many problems and great confusion as to where should we begin to count the 128 years from and teachers would suffer when students bombard them with questions about the weirdness of the calendar.

So to solve that problem, mathematicians came out with a better proposal (probably). “Why not for every 100 years we have a leap-year-break?”

But by doing so, we still have an extra 5 hours 15 minutes and 19 seconds every century. [Kiasu] mathematicians are still not satisfied with that. They want to make that value even smaller.

Logically, by not taking a leap-year-break on the fifth 100 years would greatly reduce the additional time to 2 hours 16 minutes and 35 seconds every half a millennium. It’s a fairly decent compensation.

We’re just in the fifth millennium, so we’ll approximately have just 0.379398 day extra (9 hours 6 minutes 20 seconds). Probably mathematicians are so proud of their calculations and improvements and they think that they can start selling their “calendar”.

But they had a thought that most people who uses the calendar ain’t mathematicians and might not understand why on earth did they made the calendar to have leap-year-breaks every 100 years and yet not on every fifth 100 years.

Since they had a good achievement of minimizing the error to 2 hours 16 minutes and 35 seconds every half a millennium, they think that they can compensate further by not taking a leap-year-break on the fourth 100 years instead. They thought that since leap year comes every 4 years, it’ll also be easy to remember that every 400 years we don’t take leap-year-break (or, we have leap year for that 100^th year).

With that compensation we’ll have 2 hours 58 minutes and 44 seconds less every 400 years. So what if we have a bigger error? Anyway, what’s in mathematicians’ head is money, money, and money. (Doraemon is so gonna kill me if he sees this.)

So what is a leap year now? A year that is divisible by 4? Nope.

If year can be divided by 4, and cannot be divided by 100 or can be divided by 400, it is a leap year. (It took me so long to put this determining rule into one sentence!)

In pseudocode:
If year can be divided evenly by 400, is it a leap year
else if year can be divided by 100, it is not a leap year
else if year can be divided by 4, it is a leap year
else it is not a leap year.

This means that 1800, 1900, 2100 are not leap years, whereas 1600, 2000, 2004, 2008 are leap years.

Why do you think we have that Y2K problem? It is because years that are represented as 2 digits in digital products take the first two digits as 19. Programmers at 1970 have no good reasons to think that their device will work until 2000. So at 2000, the dates were read as 1900, and there was no 29 February. Of course there are other problems as well.

All serious mathematicians must know this. What a shame it is to tell your child that a leap year is a year that is divisible by 4!

To all teachers, never ever tell your students that a leap year is a year that can be divided by 4.

_{*Thanks to ENG1060 lab assessment and Enoch Loh for pointing out this or I’ll shamefully continue to tell people that a leap year is a year that is divisible by 4.}

The Law of Diminishing Intent

2010-03-30T22:14:00.012+08:00

I’d better write this blog post before the Law of Diminishing Intent activates itself. Hahaha.

Okay, I saw this at Joycescapade's Twitter quite awhile ago (Oh ya you didn't know I have a Twitter?) and wanted to blog about this probably a few days ago. Actually today I’ve got to design and calculate to see if my stadium fails. But I think I should still write this blog post first before my intent diminishes. Hahaha.

So what is the Law of Diminish Intent? Ron B. states here:

The longer you wait to do something that you know we should do now, the greater the chances are it will never actually get done.

Explaining the law, when we intend to do something our emotion is high. But if we don’t soon translate it into action, that intention quickly diminishes. A month later the passion is cold, and a year later it could no longer be found.

That kinda explained why I’ve over 40 tasks listing in my mobile and it barely reduces.

Being aware of this psychological law, the way to turn it around is to take action NOW!

Sometimes we just can’t because we have too much passion for so many things at one time that we can’t do all of them at once. But I’ve seen one of my peers actually uses a good way to fight against this problem; he simply starts all of them together at once instead of doing Task 2 only when Task 1 is completed.

It is rather difficult for people like me where I want to do something from the beginning to the end while my passion is still hot. So I’ve to compensate on my hot passion on other tasks.

Someone told me that the Law of Diminishing Intent is not exactly true when priority comes into the story. But tonight I proved that it’s not so. My highest priority tonight should be designing and calculating my stadium trusses. Turned out that I actually blogged. Probably my passion for the stadium is cooled. Hahaha.

Recently I’ve been checking with myself to see if my passion of any particular task is diminishing. But this law is simply too strong! I’m still trying to rekindle my passion for all the over 40 tasks on my list.

I know it’s pretty impossible. Alas. I’ll just do what I am passionate for at the moment. Difficult lar…

Probably the best way to resuscitate my passion is to hit my kiasu button. Hahaha. Why do you think I so semangat (full of spirit) to do my stadium? Wanna make Krystel regret joining Chew's group ma. LOL super kiasu wey.

Electrical systems filled my head

2010-03-25T23:43:00.007+08:00

I’m not going to do any studying tonight for a few good reasons. Firstly, I’m tired, and it’s late. Secondly, I want to blog.

Today I did my Electrical Systems quiz. Okay, maybe I didn’t do it, the girls did. The so confident Shea Yuin, Sheryl and Summer Saw did all four questions in a twinkling of an eye.

Okay, they’re supposed to finish it within seven minutes but they obviously failed to do so after I challenged the validity of one of their answer. However, their confidence built up again when the three of them agreed with each other’s method. They even said that if they’re right then I have to treat them a bubble tea each; while they’ll buy me lunch if otherwise.

Well, it sounded like a fair bet. Since I’m also very confident with my own answer I did not hesitate to accept the deal.

I immediately submitted my answers upon accepting the deal. Four pairs of eyes then stared at the monitor, impatiently waiting for the results. Oh well, I lost. The three confident girls then screamed in excitement as if they won a million dollars. Perhaps it’s the joy of being able to beat me.

Well, as a typical kiasu guy, I took my second attempt, and I calculated the same question using my method. Bingo! I got it too! Although I was stubborn to not accept the other method the confident girls used, but I anyhow managed to show that the method the girls used is inaccurate.

Anyway, we began to have doubt in the “marking scheme” of our online quizzes. Since each of us have two attempts this time, I used up everyone else’s remaining attempts to do an experiment.

Jumping to the conclusion of our experiment, we discovered that our answers can have an error up to 5%! This means that if the exact answer is 40, you can submit 42 and you’ll still get right. And, decimals are unimportant.

I got so kiasu that I raced the hyper Sheryl and Summer Saw in calculating the answers for the question we used for our experiment. I felt so lame and childish. Even small things like typing calculator also wanna compete. Mei Xin took a video some more ==

Okay, since I want to sleep soon, and since you are already yawning after reading such a long and boring blog post, I’ll quickly end it.

An additional three hours of this afternoon’s time is spent tutoring those two monkeys about operational amplifiers (op-amps) that with the words I spoke alone, I can even write a thesis about it. Okay, this is exaggerated. Hahaha.

Those two monkeys like to mimic me saying “I agree with you.” or “This makes sense.” == Well, that’s the way to put confidence into the person you’re having discussion with what. If you don’t impart confidence into them, eventually they’ll lose confidence in their own stand and your discussion will be entirely unfruitful ==

Those long hours of op-amps made my brain can’t stop thinking about op-amps == Now I understand how Doraemon do Math in his head while waiting for the traffic light to turn green. ==

Since I’ve achieved quite a lot today, I’ll not do anything more. HAHAHA! Like that how to crush *ahem* la. Anyway, nights! Panda liao.

Electrical System Lab

2010-03-20T11:51:00.001+08:00

Okay. This is a two days old post. But I still want to post my discontentment. Ahhh, but what I can do la.

I had my Electrical System Lab two days ago. As expected, I got 0.5 (full marks) for both my preliminary lab. Those are the work I need to do before entering the lab.

After doing a few experimental works, we are supposed to answer some questions in the Lab Manual. There were a total of 7 questions.

The absentminded me forgot to do the entire question 1. And my answer to the last question deemed to be questionable.

Well, I should’ve got 0.35 [out of 0.50] or at least I believe so. But she gave me only 0.25! What?!

I can’t just sit back and do nothing right. So I argued that deducting 0.2 marks for not answering a question is inappropriate because we have a total of 7 questions.

Ahh, she replied that she could’ve said the first question worth 0.4 marks and told us not to question her authority. Not to mention, she marks them without a scheme. I felt I was ruled under a dictatorship.

Oh wait, I’ve a way out. I could present something about electrical system on Thursday. With that, I can replace my worse lab marks with a perfect score.

Only one person can present something about electrical system in a week. We have 13 weeks per semester. That means only 13 people will be granted the bonus token to replace their worse lab score.

This is the third week; 10 weeks more to go. Someone talked about tablets this week. I was expecting some interesting explanation about different types of resistive touchscreen and capacitive touchscreen or even optical imaging technology.

To my disappointment, he was yet another Apple fanboy. He barely touches the surface of touchscreen technology, let alone the physics behind it.

Almost 90% of the time he’s promoting Apple’s recent iPad. He showed us tons and tons of images of iPad and told us about the specification of iPad, the size of it, the thickness, the date of release, the price, and even how to purchase it! He’s better-off studying marketing instead.

Oh gosh, I wonder how much Apple pays him.

Since my lecturer gave me such a bad grade [on purpose], it’ll be safe to say she’s expecting me to present. Should I insult that Apple’s employee by choosing Touchscreen as the topic for my presentation next week? I’ll show the class what touchscreen actually is! Probably I should hire a claque to support my topic on Monday and also to applause at my appearance on Thursday. I shall rip off the face of that Apple marketer.

Forget it; Touchscreen didn’t pay me to do that. Why charity? Hahaha.

I’m still thinking for an appropriate topic… Hmm…

Congrats 214 Excellent SPM Student

2010-03-12T15:51:00.002+08:00

The Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) results came out yesterday. And congrats to the 214 students who scored above 90% (A+) in all their subjects.

Congratulation Gladys Tan Yee Kim, who was the best student in SPM 2009.

Well, reminding me about SPM compelled me to write about my kiasuness at that time.

I still remember everyone was complaining about how irrelevant and useless Pendidikan Moral (Moral Education) was. We even complained about how ridiculous Sejarah (History) was because almost half of it is the Islamic History.

But as a kiasuean, I think differently. I even motivated my friends to study for these subjects. I’ll go like, Since the government purposely use these things to make our lives harder, we should exploit this opportunity and get additional A^s with these subjects!

This is kiasu in the highest level. You can’t believe the effort me and my friends put in to study these two [useless] subjects. We were like wanting to prove that no matter what changes the government does to make our lives difficult, we will prove that we will make it.

Okay, I’m not against the government. Well, all authority has been given by God (Romans 13:1). But this just shows my kiasuness.

Despite my great efforts, I got a 1A for Sejarah and just a 2A for my Pendidikan Moral. Awww… That’s sad isn’t it? ==

Tasks

2010-03-06T22:48:00.002+08:00

Inspired by Hui Linn’s Typical Rant, I’m gonna write about mine.

Well, it’s Saturday night. I have to prepare for tomorrow’s prophesying so that I can be a dispensing steward tomorrow.

Tomorrow there’ll be another two messages of video training to attend. I’ll be so tired but then I’ve to prepare for the Bible study group that commence on Monday.

I’ve to continue working on the children attendance statistic and finish it by the end of the month. Not to mention, I’ve to continue translating spiritual books into Bahasa Malaysia or the Bahasa-Malaysia-speaking-saints would’ve starve to death. Ahh, I’ve to start reading my tatabahasa book.

Oh ya! I skipped at least 3 classes last week! I’ve to read up and catch up again. Oh no, I’ve been lagging in my spiritual book pursuit. Have to recover that also!

Aiya, I’ve to start working out my available time to receive treatment for my backbone again.

Ahh! I just remembered I've to write the music notation for the children hymns too! Gone, gone...

What am I doing here? Better get going.

Thank the Lord for so many tasks to do. Praise the Lord that the High Priest cares for me!

Too Little Sleep Make You Fat

2010-03-05T12:21:00.002+08:00

I’ve always knew that sleeping too much will make you fat. We often hear people saying that if we sleep after we eat, we will grow fat. So naturally, fat became associated with eating and sleeping too much.

But today I read an interesting article that says sleeping too much or too little will increase your belly fat!

Sleeping too much means sleeping more than eight hours per night. And sleeping too little means sleeping less than five hours per night.

Ahh, maybe I sleep about six to seven hours. That’s why I’m so thin! Hahaha.

The article says that those who sleep too much and those who sleep too little consumed more calories than those who sleep six to seven hours.

The researchers suggested that maybe those who sleep too little eats too much and are too tired to do vigorous activities caused them to be fat.

But if you’re over 40 years of age, you can forget all these because it doesn’t apply anymore. If you’re fat, then sleep six to seven hours in the night. Hahaha.

So if you want to wake up 6:30am in the morning…perhaps you have to sleep at 12am. Hmm…

Nightmares III

2010-03-05T12:07:00.002+08:00

This morning I dreamt that a girl threw a marble at my glasses twice. That made my left nose pad to be crooked. I wasn't angry because she threw a marble at me. But I was angry because she made my nose pad crooked. So swt!

My [ugly] human side

2010-02-27T00:55:00.005+08:00

Perhaps not many people know about my [ugly] human side. Maybe it isn’t ugly to you… But anyway… yea, my human side. Haha.

I had a long thought about my kiasu personality. I’m a very kiasu person who deserves a class by myself above all other kiasus. Hahaha.

I actually tracked back until the first known time when I’m kiasu. Almost at that moment, I kind of mixed up the differences between kiasu and ambitious. ==

I’ll go from my first [known] kiasu event all the way until my most recent kiasu event. But of course, I might miss out some of the important events accidentally or purposely. Anyway, it doesn’t matter xD

I think the first time I actually got kiasu is when I played my first few matches of chess with my uncles. One of them did the three-moves-checkmate trick on me, while the other did the one-queen-checkmate trick on me. Ever since, I vowed to learn chess well until the day I can beat both of them. It’s amazing to know how young I joined the tribe of the kiasueans. I was nine then.

Every time I enter a bookshop, the first thing to look for is chess books. Every time I enter a video game shop, the first thing to look for is computer chess program.

The greatest joke of the day is that I demanded my father to play chess with me whenever I helped out with the chores like washing car. So I’ll go like, “I wash car! 3 times chess.” LOL probably I played with my dad over 200 matches of chess. Hahaha.

Of course that childish act stopped when I was 13, and I never play chess with my father anymore since then.

Boys will always be like boys, competing against each other in almost everything. This pretty much summarize my time during my primary school days. Hahaha.

Not long later, online games were introduced into my world. Gunbound, Ragnarok… Competition then expanded into the virtual world.

O2jam was introduced later and I can’t stand being a noob. I played so hard all day just to train myself to improve my hand-eye coordination. So kiasu. I managed to beat most of my friends and can even play difficult high level songs. Ahh, I was 15 then.

During my secondary school times, I represented my class a number of times for quiz and some other events, winning almost all of them.

I was among the back classes in Form 2. No one seemed to bother to participate in any events. So I just simply signed up for the competitions for the Science and Mathematics week.

I can’t remember the name of the game I played for the Mathematics competition. I also can’t really remember the 6 science puzzle given for the Science competition. All I remembered is that I was so kiasu. Everyone was like joining for fun (because every class has to send students to participate) but I was like squeezing all my brain juice, winning both of the competition putting the top classes’ students into shame.

Ahh, I still remember one of my most kiasu moment in secondary school times. There was this exhibition in the library about the civilization of Mesopotamia. Each day there’ll be a quiz of 5 questions. There’ll be a winner a day, and a grand prize for the week.

To do the quiz, we have to pay 10 cents to buy the quiz paper. Me and my kiasu tribe bought plenty of quiz papers each day and read up EVERYTHING in the exhibition and even used our mobile to called those who reached home early that they can search the net to give us the most probable answer. So what the heck, right?

Until now I believe we got right for all of the quizzes that earned us the grand prize. Okay, it was just a silly radio that we left in the classroom to “share” with all those who contributed. It was just a week later the radio spoilt after excessive heavy usage. Hahaha.

Okay, it wasn’t about the radio but the fame. Hahaha. We were in the last science class actually. Hahaha. Shame to the others!

The kiasu elements in my friends and I didn’t stop us from doing stupid things. We even compete against each other in small and lame matters like eating chilies. Those kiasu days were so funny to think about. Hahaha.

It didn’t just stop there. It went on to my college life. Being the more competent student, I’m often asked to teach my friends how to do this and that. I was seemed helpful helping people all around. Perhaps it was my passion in teaching.

But deep within me, I’ve got this kind of aspiration that one day the people I teach will be as smart as me or even smarter than me. You won't dare to ask me to teach you anymore after reading this. Hahaha!

Somehow at some point of your life, you will think about your future; I thought about mine. After a long thought, I wanted my house to have a library. I love books (not novels). And probably I want my children to like books as well.

Since then, every time I visit someone’s house, I will see if any room is suitable to be a library. It seems that most houses don’t have that space/room. Well, including my [parents] house. So I guess I’ve to get a bigger one. HAHAHA. How ambitious.

There’s also this incident where my friend tried to get me into some direct selling thingy. He said after how many how many years later you don’t have to do anything already; you can just sit back and claim income. I turned him down. But within me, I said to myself, I’m gonna show you that I can do it with my robotic inventions next time and earn more than your little direct selling.

For those who don’t know, I’m actually studying Mechatronic Engineering. The reason I chose this course is a long story, but it is definitely got to do with money. Ahh, it’s really a long story.

I’ve also heard of a guy who said he wants to be a billionaire and is very motivated to be one. I laughed with disbelieve and contempt. But I said to myself, I’ll show you who the real billionaire is. How ambitious!

This is crazy. kiasu and ambitious doesn’t seem to be a good thing to have. But I guess there’s where my determination builds up.

Determined to beat my uncles in chess, determined to master in online games, determined to put the good classes to shame, determined to mold my “students”, determined to earn big money… and the list continues. Hahaha.

When you change kiasu and ambitious to determination, it suddenly sounded positive. Haha. I realized not many have strong determination in things they do.

Nevertheless, ambitious is a seriously ugly thing. O Lord, have mercy!

Okay, maybe some of you think that being ambitious is very good. But I would like to end this [long] post with a question.

Is what you are living for worth dying for?

Nightmares II

2010-02-20T08:06:00.001+08:00

Yesterday (or this morning) I had a dream again. This time I dreamt that my glasses melted. The two legs that rested on my ears were like crooked and cannot by twisted back to its original shape. Eventually, it broke like candle.

What’s with all these glasses-breaking dreams? == Don’t tell me I’ve got to bear this until I changed to a cheaper pair. ==

But the weird thing is that I appear to be calm in my dream. ==