face the music in exam hall

It doesn't matter how many times you have heard the same old Invigilators' Instructions to Candidates, some candidates just have to leave their mobile phones on and let the ringtone play in the midst of an examination. Just yesterday I heard Don't say you love me playing while I was writing lame composition. Aite aite I got the message.

Some put their mobile phone on silent mode, but that didn't help much, cos I could still hear the vibration. I bet you can hear a grenade's safety pin drop in the examination hall environment.

Ah, I still love the instructions from Associate Professor Brian Farrell from History Department. He would say, OFF means OFF, and if he hears any sound from the mobile phone in that heap of school bags, he will just jump onto the bag where the sound comes from. Poor bag. Better to keep the phone in your pants pocket. But then, if it beeps, the prof's gonna jump onto you.

n95 selling hot

I'm not talking about a mobile phone model from Nokia, but rather the model of mask from 3M. With the outbreak of swine influenza in Mexico, I heard that there is a shortage of N95 mask in Hong Kong as people rush to stock up from pharmacies.

People, don't panic. Just watch your hygiene, remember to cover your mouth and nose when sneezing or coughing, wash your hands frequently, don't dig your nose, and if you are concerned you can follow up at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for updates.

Stay healthy.

smoking breakfast

This morning I was having breakfast at a coffee shop, then I saw this man in his 50-60s. He had a bowl of dessert (or porridge), and cup of coffee at the table. Then I saw him going around the tables with a 50cents coin in hand, asking other customers if they were willing to sell him a stick of cigarette.

=_=

He didn't look like those financially desperate old man. Clean polo-tee, bermuda, metal frame glasses, nice tidy hair, but the way he asked around for cigarette was like begging. Even a table of road sweepers rejected him. Finally, after 10 minutes or so he got a stick of Texas 5 from a 70+ years old man. The way he held on to the 50cents coin was as if he was hoping the owner would offer him for free. He couldn't wait to light it up on the spot using the seller's lighter.

Addiction of any kind is bad.

con-air or air-con

Please read instruction before using air-conditioner.
With the temperature hitting 35 degrees Celsius, you can expect both electricity consumption and sales of air conditioner to rise. Just yesterday I saw someone keeping the Coca-cola fridge door open and standing there enjoying the cold air at a store. For better effect, try supermarket's ice cream fridge and dip your head inside.

One thing, I'm not really an air-con kind of person. I have a high threshold of heat but not so much of cold. When I travel in an air-con bus I usually turn the nozzle away. And I can't sleep when my brother turns on the air-con in our bedroom. I just can't stand the static quietness and lack of background sound from the surroundings. But I can take the heat.

Somehow I believe that the rising temperature is not unrelated to global warming. I don't recall having such hotness a few years back. When we try to battle the hotness by turning up the aircon, we are actually making things worse. Let's say that aircon uses electricity and with each kWh of power, 0.56kg of carbon dioxide and other emissions of various amount are emitted. Just pop in your air-con's power rating and the duration of use and you will get the global warming potential. Even my European classmates can't stand the way we blast aircon here in Singapore.

When I really can't take the heat, you know what I do? I fill a pail with water and stick my feet inside. Learned it from Japanese cartoon.

have eco-car will travel

Recently the National University of Singapore launched the first hydrogen-powered Eco-car in Singapore to compete in Shell Eco-marathon this year.

Officially named KRUCE (Kent Ridge Urban Concept Ecocar) and unofficially called Eco-2, it is the 3rd eco-car to be made by students of the Mechanical Engineering department. Some local media said it's the first, while another news said it's from NTU. Wrong wrong.

I know some of the team members personally and sometimes over lunch or during bus rides we would chat about the project, the progress, the machine, etc. They used to say the FSAE race car is the pride of the NUS Engineering Faculty, now I guess we have another pride to add on. And to those who think that NUS loses out to the other university in terms of hands-on, now beat making a car from scratch.

And did someone say engineers and environment are incompatible?

(image from http://serve.me.nus.edu.sg/ecocar/index.html)

inspiring action

It is Earth Day today and Greenpeace is recruiting 3 million online activists.


It isn't that difficult to do something for our Mother Earth. For example, you can help urge world leaders to attend the United Nations Climate Summit held this December by signing this online petition.

There is so much one can do for our Earth.
(should I wear my mushy Greenpeace shirt out today?)

ethical hacking

When people talk about hackers, they usually have that negative image in their mind. Things like online terrorist hacking into banks to transfer funds or hacking into government database.

Actually not all hackers are bad. In fact, a lot of them are in the IT Security industry.

With the increasing use of information technology in our life, network security plays a very important role. To tackle the bad hackers, you need the good hackers. I have a hacker friend who used to work in an auditor firm, and now he has moved on to another internet company. It sure sounds scary whenever he talked about hacking into your network and retrieving your files or stuff like that, but it also puts some ease at mind when you know that these people are also making sure that the bad guys can’t invade our systems.

EC-Council offers online courses on IT security and students are able to learn according to their own schedule. They offer courses in categories such as Security Fundamentals, Ethical Hacking, Penetration Testing, Computer Forensics, Disaster Recovery and Secure Programming

Security officers, auditors, security professionals, site administrators, and anyone who is concerned about the integrity of the network infrastructure, this course may be interesting to you.

tv turnoff week

The week of 20 April is International TV Turnoff Week. The campaign calls for people to switch off the television set for one week and go enjoy other fun stuffs such as joining a political party. Hur hur.

Too bad I already switched on the TV just now to catch the news. But other than that, I'm not really a drama-mama kind of tv person. Anyway, some local shows are really turnoff :S

what is wan

SingNet techinican: What is WAN?

Seriously... I don't specialise in network or communication but I could answer him. Wide Area Network. He was looking at the setup page and asked me such stuff.

My ADSL was having intermittent connection and so I called up their hotline. They sent a technician the following day.

What made me feel uncomfortable was that the technician did not carry any form of identification. No doubt SingNet outsources the technical support to external companies, but still I feel that the service personnel should carry some form of identification bearing words like "authorized support" or something. Even the contractor who waters plants in the park has such signs. C'mon, didn't the crime prevention council put up advertisement at bus shelters warning people of conman and such?

Another thing that amused me was that while troubleshooting, the technician asked me to call up the hotline myself on the spot to reset my connection. Why couldn't he save me from the layers after layers of the voice recorded stuff, by calling straight? I'm sure he has direct access to the support centre or something.

And he was saying my 3-year old router is about time. Huh? But the problem wasn't with my router. Must have saved him much trouble had I just gone along his story that it was my router's fault. It's like your road is broken and you blame my car.

bus driver

Sometimes you see me bitching about the bus services, things like driver decelerating in front of a green light, bus running late, bus driver stamping on the brake, etc etc. But have you ever considered yourself sitting behind the steering wheels?

Well maybe not the steering wheels, but your computer keyboard. Recently I saw this computer game called Bus Driver. You basically drive a bus, how exciting. But after playing the game I came to appreciate some of the "silly" and irritating things bus drivers do.

For example, decelerating in front of the green light. Owing to its mass and larger inertia, a bus requires a longer braking distance compared to normal cars. So would you rather the driver step hard on the brake and send every standing passenger flying, or slowing down in front of the traffic light in case it turns red? And yes, blame the person who flags the bus last minute if the driver brakes hard at the stop. Also, a bus has a larger turning radius, so turning and staying in lane isn't as easy as your Daytona.

This game isn't for you if you are the fast and furious type. But if you want to hear passengers screaming in horror, you can give it a go.

central library mcdonald's subway

Where is Central Library McDonald's subway?

OMG there's an underground civilization!

magic pot

While at the market I saw someone promoting this "magic pot" (or in Chinese, 神奇锅) They claim that the pot is able to keep the water boiling for 45 minutes after removing from the stove, and they did demonstrate by boiling water with a normal pot vs boiling with their special pot. True enough, bubbles disappeared the moment they removed the normal pot from the flame but not for the pot they were selling.

So what's special about the pot? On the bottom there's this funny piece of metal, seems like it's made of a different material from the pot body itself. So I suppose it is of a higher specific heat capacity, and as such it can "store" heat for a longer time.

However, basic law of physics (or thermodynamics) would also say that it takes as much time and energy to heat up the metal for it to stay hot over a long period of time. I wonder how many of the housewives and aunties crowding around would understand this.

Oh, they claimed that it's made in Korea, and yes the box and the sticker is full of Korean words. But I saw a small print at the bottom corner of the box: "Made in China".

sweet harris girl

Cheapo me was browsing some magazines at Harris at Changi Airport T3. Halfway a female staff came over to do some shelving, and as she walked pass me in a very sweet and non-intrusive manner she said "Good afternoon! If you need any help do let me know!"

After thanking her, I was thinking, was that a hint or a subtle way to say "no browsing is allowed"? Hmm...

I must be thinking too much. So anyway after looking at a few more shelves I took my leave. I bumped into the same staff on my way out of the store and again in her sweet voice she said "thank you!"

Please don't go and stalk her.

*PS, that's Changi T3 Harris in the photo, but that's not me.

last lecture

Today I had my last lecture for MT4003 Engineering Product Development, which also happened to be my last lesson as an undergraduate at NUS. Our nice Englishman lecturer brought a tin of biscuits into the class and passed around... really sweet of him.

I'm sure he wasn't doing any engineering "testing" as shown in the slide, while opening the tin of Danone All Time
This course is really one of the modules which I enjoyed the most during my 4 years in NUS. No bolts and nuts, no hardcore formulas and equations, but rather how engineering is being managed and how the real engineering world works. Our German and French classmates also shared about their experience, be it engineering or just beer drinking :P

Of course, we have cool stuff like a group of classmates presenting on condoms. I mean, presenting on the topic of condoms.

after fyp oral presentation

then you have achieved your project's objective
-- my FYP examiner

Woohoo~ I had my FYP oral presentation this afternoon and it's history now!

It was really a fun (and funny) experience, something like my supervisor and the examiner catching up, chatting and me this kiddo joining in the chit chat. First thing first, my examiner just landed at Singapore 2am this morning, so it could take a bit of effort to capture his attention during the presentation (that is, if you want to have his attention). At least he helped keep himself awake by interrupting me here and there with a question along the course of the presentation.

Then along the way we talked about property price, seasonal wind, urban planning, etc etc, until the 2 adults have to say "let's get back". =_=

Some food for thought: you can either "smoke" your examiner, or just be frank for the spirit of scientific excellence. If you decide to smoke, beware that some examiners can see through your "smokescreen". If you bulldoze through, make sure you have enough "body armour" to defend yourself and enough ammo (ie, know your stuff) to shoot back. You can think of it this way that they shoot you question to give you chance to answer and score points, and not to shoot you down.

It is always more heroic to fight fire than to prevent fire. Of course, someone has to answer for stocking up the flammable stuff in the first place.

to be lame in LAM

The oral presentation marked the last tutorial A for my LAM1201 Malay 1. I remember I used to dread going for the tutorial as the tutor likes to call us by our telephone number IN MALAY and often caught me off guard. But along the way I sort of feel touched, as the tutor remembers our names. Not often do you find tutors or teaching assistants remembering students' names.

Soon I began to say lame stuffs in class :P

Ah, for the oral presentation we were supposed to do a skit. It wasn't easy to come up with a skit in a "foreign" language, much less to remember the lines. And thus, the cue cards. I acted as a lame and dirty-minded undergrad trying to speak Malay :P

Along the way the ice among us in the class melted, as we began to chat, say hi when we bumped into each other in the corridor, etc etc. Ah, there are a few cute girls in the class. Forgot to ask for their nombor telefon :P

fyp presentation

The Department of Crappy Engineering will be presenting to you on the end of life performance of biodegradable and non-biodegradable polymers on 14 April (Tuesday) 3:30pm at EA-01-06. All are welcome.

Here is a little snippet of what will be presented: (which is basically, my interim)

interim presentation

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design polymers)

Do you guys have the habit or practise of inviting people to sit-in for your final year project presentation? A friend of mine from the Maths Department did invite me to his FYP presentation.

Somehow I feel that it can be a good sharing / learning experience, and a chance to support your peers.

packaging easter egg (and bunny)

Tomorrow is Easter, have you gotten any Easter eggs or chocolate bunnies?

Food packaging accounts for a significant amount of waste generated. It is said that in some chocolate the stuff you can eat makes up only 9% of the total weight of the whole package you buy. Huh? So 91% of what we are paying for will end up in the waste basket? (provided you don't eat the wrapping)

With increasing attention placed on the environment, some of the producers are reducing unnecessary packaging in their products. For example, the following shows the bunnies from Marks & Spencer. Photo from Guardian.

The one on the left is last year's bunny. The one on the right is his one year younger sibling. Seems like less packaging material is used this year, It is reported that packaging has been reduced by 30%.

"Clothes make the man". Do you think consumers are willing to accept less "clothes" in products?

Maybe, "less is more".

quote of the day

engineer got pride meh
onli specialist got pride
--yk

the deep dive

During MT4003 Engineering Product Development lecture, the lecturer showed us a video clip of ABC's Nightline episode "Deep Dive" which talks about IDEO, a famous design firm. Following the whole design process of a new supermarket trolley, the programe shows the unique working environment inside IDEO.


Part 2/3
Part 3/3

What strikes me a lot is the term "focused chaos". The design team consists of members of different background. They have linguist, biologist, marketeer, psychologist, etc etc. It dawns on me that you don't need purely design engineers to form a design team, and that people with different background may be able to offer views from a different angle.

Also, the kind of openness in the working environment is something I really am envious about. It's not like everyday 9am go to your desk and start staring at your Excel spreadsheet or something. Seriously, how many companies here can work like that? Talking about creativity when our working culture doesn't seem to support or encourage it.

Do you want to work in such an environment?

conforming to non-conformity

Yesterday I went to my FYP supervisor's office to discuss about my draft report. He told me I'm the only one who didn't follow the template.

I was like, what the? Me being the obedient student, had followed everything stated in the department's website.


So I told him I had followed the official template. Seeing that I wasn't convinced, he showed me a pile of reports submitted by other students and guess what, all of them did not follow the template. Some had coloured covers, some even had the cute lion (aka university logo) on the cover. Hello, since when did the department include the logo in the template? (so, I'm like the only one who followed the template)

When everyone else spoils the market, he who follows the market rules becomes the market spoiler. I'm stupid enough to follow rules.

crib shit

For some of our tests and exams, we are allowed to bring in a piece of crib sheet (or cheat sheet, as some lecturers call it) for reference.

I just came out from a test and I spotted some of the classmates having horrible crib sheets. (no I wasn't peeping during the test, don't worry. Not really interested in the girls) Within the real estate of a double-paged A4 paper they practically cramped in the whole syllabus worth of materials! How did they do it? Must be a printer with nano-technology.

I for one sucks at making crib sheet.

I remember there are some modules in which the lecturers specified that crib sheet must be hand-written and not printed or photocopied. I don't know what's the rationale behind, but I guess they want us to prepare the crib sheet ourselves, and afterall how microscopically fine can your pen/pencil tip go? If you cramp in everything, might as well make it an open book exam.

I don't exactly like test and exam with crib sheet or open book ones. C'mon, in an exam environment, if you dunno the answer, you hope others dunno too.

caught red-handed

I was at Suntec today. I was throwing my sweet wrapper into the bin, but somehow it missed (or should it be, I missed?) I wasn't doing those 3-pointer shot, more like point blank range, but somehow the turbulent flow from the ventilation system blew the wrapper away from target. Yeah yeah, excuses.

So I bent down, picked up the wrapper and threw it into the bin again.

After walking a few steps someone tapped me on my shoulder. In my heart I was like "oh crap, what bad deed did I get caught for this time round?". I turned around, and saw a man who looked like the mall's staff saying "thank you" to me.

Hmm... was he thanking me for bending down?

cnc lathe pencil sharpener

I took the module ME3261 Principles of CAD/CAM last semester, and by right I've learned how to write G code and M code for CNC machine.

How about writing a CNC programme to sharpen pencil?

standing high

On a few occasions I saw passengers standing on the upper deck of a crowded bus. I remember seeing sign that says No standing on uppder deck, but on well, you think people are really that obedient?

Simple physics. As the number of people increases on the upper deck, the centre of gravity of the whole bus shifts up. In the event that the bus needs to turn a sharp corner or do an elk test (unlikely though)... ok I can't imagine. The bus will just topple on its side.

Of course safety factors would have been included to consider people walking in and out the aisles on the upper deck, but standing there like standing space is just not the way it's designed to be. Further more, each bus is licensed to carry a certain number of people standing and sitting on each deck, so I think the bus driver should at least stop the bus and tell the upper deck standing passengers to get their ass down.

If bus drivers can get out from their seat to chase for people who didn't tap their card, I don't see why can't they do something for safety hazard.

PS, take a look at tilt test done on bus.

wave theory at henderson waves

After all the hectic weeks leading to the FYP draft (and redraft, thanks but no thanks), I decided to take a break and explore the unexplored part of the Southern Ridges of Singapore. So after class yesterday I took a bus to Hort Park and started my walk from there. Yeah I know it sounds like playing cheat skipping Kent Ridge Park, but hey the stretch from Alexandra Arch to Henderson Waves is the only portion that I haven't gone to.

2pm in the afternoon sun. Armed with my backpack with Casio calculator and lecture notes inside, plus my trusty Nalgene bottle and Teva sandals, I started my impromptu walk into the afternoon buzz of cicadas (I could be wrong on the insect). Being a weekday and early afternoon, there were hardly any visitors along the way. It's like you own the whole hills and forest. So I walked through the Forest Walk, hunting for insects, searching for lizards, walking into spiderweb, and taking in the smells of green. At Telok Blangah Hill Park I even spotted 2 monkeys, one going past the NO ENTRY sign. And finally, the Henderson Waves. If you look carefully, you may find interesting words on the wooden floor.

I call it making love with nature. Sure helps to clear the mind.