Friday: Went to Long Bay for a casual barbeque/walk on the beach. Did not have enough meat to go around so ended up eating grilled ham slices and grilled bananas. After that a friend was nice enough to offer a tour of his new house and a ride in his ice cream van (Literally, he no longer need to earn his living but still scoops ice cream 3 days a week purely for the laughs. I'd love to do this after my retirement in, er, 40 years)
Saturday: Fatigued from yesterday so stayed inside to watch South Park and Nisemonogatari. A headache inevitably developed and got worse after dinner. Slept from 8pm to midnight under the influence of ibuprofen.
Sunday: Unable to go back to sleep so decided to do an allnighter. Attempted to start composing my literature review but ended up looking at random photo collections on cracked.com. Washed my lab coat and canvas bags before discovering that I had ran out of bleach; went all the way to the supermarket without realising it was sabbathEaster Sunday. And no, there was no high nor crash following that thanks to my messed up sleeping cycle.
Fitting song for the occasion, taken from a post that I started 2 years ago but never finished.
No, that's not the worst thing. I have recently decided to use Evernote again. After logging into my old account I found a couple of todo lists I wrote back in March this year. Sadly, NOTHING on that list has been completed yet.
Seriously, 2011 went in a blur. I have sorted of managed to finish a degree and contemplating another but my life is not going anywhere as we speak. I hope 2012 will bring some much needed changes.
I had to delete several draft posts that I spent hours writing yet realising in the end that I will never finish any of them. Terrible waste of effort but much better than wasting more time on it later on.
I am not desperately short of time yet - such a crisis it will come much later; however my time is badly fragmented with various commitments everywhere. This is the type of situation I am not good with, and I am still jealous of people who are able to organise their life so well.
My first successful plasmid PCR experiment.
Things are alright-ish in the lab with me moving fairly fast according to plan. Finally I can appreciate the past toiling for for the undergraduate labs; if it was not for the experience I could never have done anything with nothing but a product manual. Gatecrashing another stage III genetics paper proved useful as well - I can actually understand the techniques I am using. Working in a small group headed by a laid-back supervisor has it's pros and cons, well, I like it that way.
The entire honours thing has been somewhat apprehensive until last week when I started working in the lab and found things much easier than anticipated: People are genuinely nice when you ask for help, but they would leave your alone when you need to; having access to copious quantity of pipette tips/glassware/reagents is a nicely self-inflating bonus too(one that makes you feel more important than you really are).On the contrary, people with their PostDipSci probably all had a hard time when they started their MSc because the former had little practical content.
Yeah, every damned morning I know. Nevertheless there is one that I remember vividly. The actual content was just as laughable and absurd as the example in the xkcd comic above(namely a mixture of The Graduate, recent Gantz chapters, drunken yarns with older friends and assorted current events including the tsunami), yet I remember every detail of it because I was, for a moment in the land of Oneiroi, truly happy and I have never been overloaded with joy ever in my life.
Bdelloidea, a class of tiny aquatic rotifers that have lost the entire male population somewhere in the evolution process. In addition to the bland asexual reproduction, Bdelloidea absorb and incorporate any DNA that is floating nearby.Sound's like a Lamarckist's wet dream.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. What I really need to remind myself of:
* The beginning is probably the most difficult part. Think how you struggle to get out of bed every morning thinking that you are about to die, only to sober up in a few minutes like it never happened.
* Stop worrying that you are not doing good enough. The one who laughs last is not the best player but the one who made the least mistakes. It is always too early to give up.
I was driving home yesterday when I saw an old acquaintance.
The 1973 MiG-21 was imported in the 1980s through a third country to Australia with the intention of selling it to the RAAF for combat simulation, however the Cold War ended too soon for the jet to me put into real use. The sale fell through, and the aircraft somehow ended up in God's own country following some ambiguous circumstances.
The last time I found it in a derelict hanger in Christchurch airport, I did not have the chance to take a photo however I remember it was already in a dire condition however intact. It also did not have the BOOB 8008 marking. I wonder if the number actually meant anything.
It was put on auction last year without the flaps and some other small bits. Right now it is sitting in a makeshift pen in Penrose and missing her wingtips. I have no idea who bought it to Auckland and why, however I really suspect that it will eventually be scrapped and turned into cans and windows frames.
I was in Year 10 when the government pulled the plug on Bursary and my school seniors back then were the first hatch of guinea pigs fed to the burgeoning monster called NCEA. The principal of the school I went to at the time was one of the chief architect of NCEA. The other high school in the area up the road reacted by offering Cambridge International Examinations, to which the chief architect (who unsurprisingly works for NZQA now) made some rather personal and unpleasant attacks in front of the entire school during an assembly. Although NCEA formally starts at Year 11, we were given plenty of mock assessments in order to prepare for the real deal.
With a twist of fate, I ended up in the other school and took up CIE for the next three years. Hence I feel qualified to speak for the pros and cons of both.
One persistent criticism of NCEA from parents is that it is "too easy" compared to other "tried and true" systems. This is more of a misconception. Well, every system has loopholes that can be exploited to make academic load as light as possible without compromising an UE. The curriculum is actually similar and CIE is hardly more advanced than NCEA in terms of content.
Like this editorial have judged correctly, the consistency issues NCEA had has largely been fixed. Schools resent NCEA because of the sheer amount of internal assessments to manage and process. The issue is more acute in schools offering alternatives to NCEA since two details of staff must be maintained.(Initially teachers taught both, however it was soon found to be unpractical)
A more serious problem is that once the student population start going to separate sets of classes, they effectively split into two cliques, with the NCEA kids accepting some baseless inferiority. Some subjects such as art or PE maybe taught in combined classes, where the division turned into open hostility as the two groups blame each other whenever something went wrong. The bipolar-ness even seems to take precedence over the usual socio-economic or lingo-ethnic lines.
On the other hand, the real risk of taking CIE is the development of bad studying habits. Since everything that matters is this one big exam at the end of the year, it is not too hard to slack off for most of the time. Once at university, many papers have a significant proportion of marks allocated to in-course assessments, which took me almost two years to actually adjust to.
Putting things in context, the early- and mid-noughties were such a good time when the economies were soaring, the All Blacks seemed invincible and Sister Helen ruled the nation with a firm hand. Republicanism was also flying high. The shift to NCEA happened concurrently with the vote in Parliament to abolish rights to appeal to the Privy council, not a coincidence. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why Auckland Grammar, the most reactionary of public schools out there, to ditch the blighted national standard, with many whitebread high schools rallying under the same banner.
“Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of events.”
Somebody I know had the line in his MSN signature for years. Despite being a generally curious person, I have been reading this line over and over without ever wanting to know where it came from. I could have found out in a few seconds but I had always been afraid that it could have meant something totally different. Indeed, when I read the book from where this line was quoted from, it is actually a lot less powerful in context.
Anyway, I have stopped worrying about thing once I realise that it will never end.
I decided against creating any New Year's resolutions because I know that I will not be able to adhere to them. The goals I set for December was a huge disappointment: Running exercise seem to have hit a wall at 3km per day, I am still making the few staple dishes, this blog was hardly updated at all and I have made no effort towards touch typing at all.
What was the positive spirit back then must have escaped me, and I will blame humidity/government/arsenic/cosmic radiation. Apologies if this does not make any sense, it is not meant to.
Yes, I actually do. Crumpets are like beer or L&P: it tastes horrible at room temperature but like heaven when toasted/chilled.
So what are you doing here?
I am writing my first blog post in the year of 2011. The majority of readers reached this blog through search engines looking for specific information, you know, the objective stuff. I am aware that my life is not exactly Shortland Street material and this is exactly another post about someone else's life that few would be interested in.
To sound like a grumpy old man is probably the last thing I wanted to do, however I am already losing grip on things that happened in the last decade. What I have crammed so hard for my last exams has already been completely forgotten and today I opened a book only to realise half an hour later that I have read the very same title four years ago. Psychology, I have long since learned and accepted memory as mutable and unreliable, however the experience still upsets me greatly.
“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.” “But the Solar System!” I protested. “What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently: “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
You can read all about everything and still not get, in fact you will never get it until the moment you live it. The people who wrote those books are not necessarily making things up like Neil Gaiman prefers to boast, instead they are relying on their own life-experiences and a certain degree of psychosis.
"What sets the ordinary apart from the extraordinary is the nirvana of literature, the state in which the characters acquired the ghosts of their own. For the authors had no control nor prediction to what will happen the next page, they had stalked their own brainchild with restless curiosity to every minor detail of their life. From Shakespeare to Balzac to Tolstoy, the sacred womb of creativity is no different to the obsession of the lowest voyeur."
Do you remember the first time you changed your tyre?
One's life is not complete without a tyre change, but that is not my point. The first time I changed a tyre I did so without help, which is not too hard anyway. You park the car on a flat piece of land, jack it up to free the wheels, remove the cover, unscrew the bolts and the rest should be self-explanatory. It would not have been such fond memory if it happened with someone's aid.
Asking for help is more humiliating than begging for money. I can read and search all night for the solution, however the acts to call for help is to admit that you have failed to figure out yourself. Classroom learning is an issue, for teachers are hired to teach and a student's occupation is to learn; similarly I have no problems whatsoever calling a plumber because he get paid to get his hand dirty in my place.
For some reason people often come to me with their questions, and on numerous occasions these questions were so basic that I am annoyed and astonished at the same time, not only because the answer can be found on the first page of a relevant google search, but also they don't see anything wrong with a (by my standard) stupid question. I would have been able to get more done with the same amount of "shamelessness", right?
A “critic” is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased—he hates all creative people equally.
This is not quite the case: I don't hate creators; I am jealous. Not because they are better at what they are doing (some of them are, the others are not), but all for their seemingly inexplainable confidence in what they are doing.
Or probably we are all the same, just hiding it so well that we cannot tell from each other's faces.
If someone had told me that at the time, I would have laughed at him. Being unpopular in school makes kids miserable, some of them so miserable that they commit suicide. Telling me that I didn't want to be popular would have seemed like telling someone dying of thirst in a desert that he didn't want a glass of water. Of course I wanted to be popular.
But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things.
At the time I never tried to separate my wants and weigh them against one another. If I had, I would have seen that being smart was more important. If someone had offered me the chance to be the most popular kid in school, but only at the price of being of average intelligence (humor me here), I wouldn't have taken it.
The predicament for me and the likes of myself is that we assume everybody else think and behave just like us: sensitive, considerate and calculated, yet they are not.
We all know that the world does not cease to exist when we close our eyes, however I suspect there had been plenty of thoughts and prayers, from people who lost all their will to live, that the sun shall not rise tomorrow if they die today.
I am not suicidal or trying to be vague-smug. Sometimes there are so many voices in your head to be let out. I must write these down, hence I write.
Hello again my crippled blog. Life has recently become very hectic with day jobs taking a larger cut of my time than expected and few other things keep holding me up. Exactly two week ago I pledged to update this blog more often, well...
Partly because Part 3 of my mobile network series is taking much longer as I have underestimated the amount of research. Besides, I have been distracted with the temporary ownership of an iPhone 4 for which I took the advantage of carrier subsidy to buy as a Christmas gift for my dear father.
I have had ample opportunity to fiddle with other people's iPhones before which were not all that impressive: The plastic chassis feel cheap, the screen is mediocre and iTunes is a pain to use. The iPad failed to please me the same way with its general lack in productivity features, which even MacFags do admit.
You see, the smoothness of iOS is often achieved through deception. Deliberately disabling multitasking is one thing, for Apple is a clever social engineer to make things appear better than they really are. For example, Safari on the iPhone only render the visible portion of the active tab plus a very small adjacent area to reduce the processing overhead. If you scroll too fast you will be greeted with blank areas cleverly disguised as transparency layers before the system catches up. The interface also tricks people into suspending processes rather than properly killing them, resulting in a seemingly fast launch time when the same process is called again.
However the iPhone 4 is actually quite agreeable. The slim construction of double glass panels and external antennas, despite its susceptibilities to breakage and attenuation, is quite pleasing to sight and feels substantial in your hands. The much-hyped retina screen is also pretty nice, even for someone already accustomed to a high quality screen on the Milestone. Apple have chosen the right resolution that existing apps that were smart enough to uemploy vector graphics can be scaled up without any intervention.
Taiko no Tatsujin looked so good that I almost thought it was developed natively for 960x640
The added RAM helps to make multitasking possible without sacrificing responsiveness. And the camera deserves special mention too for being exceptional. in such a small package. While I did not regret giving it away, I am looking for a locked 32GB one for entertainment. Overall, it is a glorified and augmented iPod Touch rather than a communication device, for I cannot bear the lack of physical keyboard, notification light and interchangeable batteries found on every other phone.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the history of Apple shows clear continuity from Day 1 while Microsoft's products were often refreshed to the point that it no longer resemble their ancestors. The latest Macs still have some of the quirks of Apple II where critical system timings were taken directly from the bus clock, so binaries not complied with such systems will fail to execute.
The present iOS vs. Android race is an exact duplication of the old PC vs. Mac rivalry. Apple, by controlling the range of hardware, can effectively control the user experience, while their more open opponents must deal with all sorts of segmentation and compatibility issue.
To better explain this, let's look at a recent example. Everybody loves Angry Birds however the initial Android release was unplayable for most people. Simply because with iPhone there are only two hardware branches and one or two OS to maintain, while Android comes in at least three versions, a variety of screen resolutions and a continuum of processing power, which is something that developers, having been spoiled by the iPhone, cannot no longer cope with.
BTW, this game, along with many others, are free for Android but paid in the App Store...Hint hint.
The same issue plagues most apps ported from iOS, where it works poorly with handsets of limited hardware.
This, however, still leaves one question to be answered: Does Apple make people stupid, or are stupid people attracted to Apple?
The answer is, it does not matter, for there is a demon darker than coal trapped in every iDevice. BlendTec has proof.
Blogger Stats has not been working for some time and I have put it down to the ineptitude of Google's admins (blogspot.com has been on the downhill road since the takeover by Google), however a recent visit to the message board revealed that the function simply stopped working with Firefox, or any gecko-based browser altogether. Google Analytics, the background service that powers Blogger Stats, are also reported to have many issues with Firefox, including some reports that it does not register visits via Firefox at all. After many years of mutual support, the rift between Google and Mozilla is finally beginning to show.
The period from 2001 to 2005, following the first Browser War, are the dark days of the web with the lamentable Internet Explorer 6.0 dominating the market with only two minor update in two years. Alternatives were available however since most sites are written to support IE, the average layperson are unlikely to use it.
Fortunately the stagnation did not last forever; Firefox came out with Gecko, a brand new, standardised rendering engine, a smooth interface with tab browsing and much better security features. While its market share was never beyond the 30% mark, the real change brought along my Firefox is the renewed competition of development within the browser market.
I thought that Firefox was the forefront of web standardisation however this seems to be no longer the case, and I have similar personal experiences where a KHTML page I authored refused to be rendered correctly in Firefox; Trident renders it correctly only 50% of time however Webkit i.e. Chrome and Safari rendered it without a hitch. I ended up making static versions of the affected pages with a redirection script, which is easier said than done since every browser pretends to be Mozilla.
As for the software itself, it has become increasingly bloated and crash-prone from 3.6 onwards (hence the author is still staying on 3.5 for the remainder of its support lifetime), nor is the 4.0 beta anywhere near ready. Once the developers start to embrace Chrome en masse, there is little advantage left for Firefox.
Unlike Microsoft which has virtually bottomless resources to promote their browser, Firefox had to enter into an agreement with Google which trades search traffic for financing. While this income has allowed Mozilla to keep up the fight in the darkest of days, it is getting less secure because of the inherent conflict of interest.
Finally compared to Opera which successfully captured the niche market of mobile web browsing, Firefox was too dependent on mainstream x86 platforms; Camino was hit hard when Apple defected to x86 and was never really completed, while Fennec is still stuck in beta at the time of writing.
A losing battle from the beginning
With a sad note, I must say that Firefox is losing on all fronts and shall fade away within five years just like its Netscape fathers, not for its own wrongs but a combination of complacency, lack of focus and sheer bad luck.
Today marks the proper beginning of summer as well as my three-month study break. Exam results was released a few days ago and they are probably the best for the entire three years at uni.
There is no magic about getting a better mark apart from actually paying attention in class and taking time to swot. Befriending lecturers also help, a lot of legitimate help will come with way.
The perpetual B student has moved on. Looking back, I wish I have tried harder, not only for the past semesters where I....utterly failed myself, but also the recent ones. If I have tried harder, I should rocking cut-edge science in the air conditioned labs over the holidays while enjoying many elite privileges such as free coffee and unmetered staff internet. Instead I am earning a meager wage three days a day in a small kiosk that feels like the defendant dock at the high court. Fingers crossed that I will get the project I wanted for my honours year.
On the bright side of mundane affairs, missing out on my summer studentship may actually be a kind of blessing since it should give me time to do the following:
Scale down. Since the plans for London fell apart, I have resumed the old habit to acquire too much property and I still do despite my best effort. Getting rid of things is not easy, especially when it comes to your childhood treasures and books. However, things will need to go, for me all die alone and empty-handed.
Practice touch-typing. I am sure everyone has noticed (but had been too polite to point out) that I type with two fingers, which probably does not match my current job description and geek status. Definitely need some time to practice.
Get more exercise. Something I have planned for but ultimately failed to act on during the year. Well right now I no longer have any excuse to slack off, and summer should be a great time for losing weight.
Inspired by the sheer awesomeness of Amy AdamsJulia & Julia, I have decided to carry out a similar, however less fancy version of kitchen quest with the quintessential classic: The Edmonds Cookery Book. At the rate of two to three dishes per week I am in good position to finish the entire thing before uni starts again. Other meals will be back up with my standard (lit. Atkins) diet of red meat and raw salad, supplemented by the occasional junk food and things that came out of a cardboard box.
Finally update this blog more often, I have always been in requirement of writing exercise and this blog served me great on this purpose. I am also delighted, as the visitor stats of this blog points out, that my babbling did help other people looking for answers to their various questions. A big thank you to all my readers past and present, more content is always on their way.
You would have guessed these ambitions are parts of a larger plan to make myself more capable and independent. I used to spend too much time lamenting my woes, now I know that I only need to spent time to deal with them, one at a time.
This is for the record, I wish for all kinds of help that I will be able to come back to this post 99 days later and cross everything out with a smile on my face.
P.S. Got the first paycheck since starting the new job, hooah!
The end of my undergraduate degree is not "in sight", it is here to be felt.
On Monday there was a exam review tutorial which went so well that I became somewhat depressed towards the end since it ended so abruptly. We shared some food and drink in the end, and one of our tutors even baked miniature cupcakes for us with cheeky messages and self-promotion attached, bravo!
Rachel is the nicest person I have ever met
Then a friend organised a shared lunch on Wednesday which was good fun filled with nice food, bad jokes and photos with stupid faces.
Thanks to all the awesome people I met at uni, you have been an inspiration to me.
Apparently Grafton campus will become a mini-limbo from next week on with construction, and with all my exams in either City or Tamaki today will be the last time for me to be on Grafton campus in a long time. I went to the last undergraduate lecture, which had a disappointingly low turnout.
Well, they totally missed out on Graeme Finlay's review session which could not get any better.
After the lecture I printed my last assignment after adding some finishing touches while laughing at my friend's ineptness in starting a lab report that was due on Wednesday. I then went to the aforementioned tutor to talk about exams before going home on a bus which I managed to catch just in time.
Yup, I know the bus stop outside Auckland hospital has always had some construction on during the semester and the bus time display has been having issues before it suddenly disappeared overnight. Nevertheless I was able to check real-time bus arrivals on the web via maxx.co.nz, with the stoo number 1028. If you need an idea for Christmas gifts, I highly recommend getting your loved ones smartphones, which will transform the way they go about your daily lives. :P
Anyway, the rest of the day was spent on daydreaming, eating melon-flavored ice cream, reading RA Weinberg's cancer bio on my kindle to the realisation that everything I thought to have learned from a semester's work in cancer biology is already summarised in the first fifteen pages of this great textbook.
Another few changes that happened to my life this semester:
Craccum magazine and talkback radio have quit my life entirely. The former due to lack of time and the latter because my new phone did not have a usable FM module and I am too lazy to get a standalone FM receiver. I did manage to discover the infamous ND magazine for the medics and found them good read for they have absolutely no serious content.
No more new books/games/movies/etc before I could clear out my existing pile. I have too much property and I still have too much after actively trying to downsize for much of the year.
I have been wearing boots for so long that regular shoes are no longer comfortable; I wore my suede sneakers today for a change and my ankles almost broke down after a short climb uphill to home.
Takeaway lunch became a regular feature of my routine, especially the chicken wrap and pork turnovers from the bakery on Park road. Spending on food did not help with my wallet however it had a spectacular effect on my wilingness to study, and I could have not made to every single lecture this semester without sustenance.
I actually began to enjoy reading journal articles; some reviews are so well written that they answer a many lectures' worth of questions in mere minutes. Note it was before I bought my kindle and this statement is the cause, not result.
Ever since my first year I realised it is possible to go into any lecture without being asked who you are. However, I did not begin to informally audit lectures till this semester for a paper I could not take due to timetable clashes. Some of my new friends in class were shocked to find that I am not actually enrolled in the course, despite turning to lectures regularly, answered a bunch of questions and even prepared a presentation in front of the class. Looking back, I really should have done this earlier, especially in the first semester when I had a huge gap between my morning and afternoon lectures. I have already made loose plans with a friend to co-appear in random undergraduate lectures next year to make full use of our time.
Cellphone bills skyrocketed, partly due to the $20 mobile broadband which I could not live without anymore, but most of it is actually due to text messages and calls to friends. Next year I will consider going on account, 3GB data per month for $40 is just too good to be missed.
I am a happier and more sociable person in the second half of 2010. It is true that I still get the occasional bouts of depression and anger, however I am doing much better than before like I said in several previous posts.It is time to believe that you are having a positive effect on others; even if they don't seem to reciprocate your feelings, it does not imply that you are abandoned by the world.
It seems that people only came out of their shell and began to know each other before they are about to get on their own ways, and I shall be grateful that I am definitely heading back to the same place next year as a postgraduate student, hopefully for my BSc Honours. Meanwhile, I should get ready for my exams which are both close (first one on the 28th of this month) and clumped (three exams in four days, huh).
Finally a little update to the kindle post I made last week.
Apparently I overlooked the fact that my Kindle DX is the international version (serial number starts with B0005) and actually has free wireless service in NZ. I was not able to use the browser due to some problem with region settings but finally managed to get it working.
It is a very generous for amazon to provide free 3G web access; it cost them US$0.12 per MB transmitted in the US and probably more for my AT&T powered Kindle to roam here. Would I use my Kindle DX to surf the web more regularly? Well no, and there are technical reasons apart from being unwilling to abuse Amazon's generousity: The browser on 2.5.x firmware is poorly coded in Java; it uses an obscure rendering engine that is not suited to large screens and probably does not render most web pages correctly anyway. It is a "nice to have feature", however Kindle 3 is much better in terms of browsing websites.
In more flattering note, I have managed to jailbreak the system to replace the stock Caecilia font with sans-serif Droid Fallback which is much sharper and easier to read, especially for the (ridiculously) smaller font sizes. This also brings the much needed CJK language support.(Not needed for K3 which support CJK characters out of the box, with some rightfully ugly Korean font)
The default screensavers are a mixed bag, which has since been replaced by my favorite paintings converted to the Kindle format.
The jailbreak is well documented and very easy to carry out, if you are keen please find instructions here, however take full note that this may brick your kindle and Amazon will not be happy when they find out.
I have attempted to use the kindle as a classroom tablet (very good, however you cannot take notes with pdf files) and read under direct sunlight(bad idea, the white borders had too much glare)I am also experimenting with the root shell access and see if I could get more from the device. Right now everything makes me want to actually learn Linux, did you know that you can manipulate people with shell commands?
Three weeks to the end of semester. Instead of pulling my best effort in a heavily weighted lab assignment, I decided to take some time off and watch Bergman's classic The Seventh Seal.
It's good, I mean seriously good. The acting may seem crude and melodramatic at some point, but the bleak atmosphere is perfect. Remember this was made in 1957, the height of thermonuclear doom and gloom, slightly out of touch for people like me who grew up in the 90s; however Bergman managed to capture the pessimistic tune and present it. They did not bother too much about historical accuracy and the actors look too clean for an infamously crusty period in history, still these should not detract viewers from the plot which is very concise and well-written.
The theme is philosophically complex however may be condensed into one Orwellian line: "Ignorance is Strength". In the end, every person who is aware, whether idealistic or cynical, with good intentions or malice, face the same bitter end while the blessed fools carry on with their normal lives undisturbed.
This also echos with Lovecraftian stories, where the characters are nearly always driven in insanity and death through their insistence to knowledge that are better kept in the dark. If the divine one turns out to be the indifferent architect, who people still believe him?
On the other hand, I am delighted to report that my stress management appears to have improved. Unprovoked emotional outbursts still happen but are less severe and further in between. Let's hope this upward path carries on into my next year.
It is scary to think that there is only three more weeks to the end of the semester and my undergraduate courses. Not to mention I have heaps of assignments due before the exams. Although the recent test results revealed a rather alarming lack of improvement, I think I will do better than my last 5 semesters combined.
Next year I will probably do BSc Hons, if my exam results convince the study committee to let me in. I went through the list of available projects and could not decide between 18 equally interesting topics. The use of RNAi to treat neurological disorders seems quote promising, so is the isolation of anti-necrotic proteins in maggots. Even if I don't get in, I will probably carry on with BioMedSci and find out whether I am meant to work for science.
Despite the exams looming on the horizon, I have applied and got a new part-time job. It is not for the money, but just to keep myself in contact with people while having nothing planned for the summer.
On Tuesday I was made an honourary member of World Jewry, together with two other (non-Jewish) friends for helping out at the Jewish Awareness Day, which involved putting up posters of Somali Jews and Israeli swimsuit models around the quad, as well as handing out free Israeli food: Crispy falafel, fresh couscous salad and lots of hummus.
I am not sure if the event helped to raise the profile of Jews in the land of long white cloud, but it was good fun. Somehow we found ourselves right next to the Meat Club's weekly barbecue of a gigantic pile of sizzling sausages and bacon. And behold, they got extremely uncomfortable and one of them went as far as getting someone from AUSA to ask us if we had permission to be there. This amusing minor incident reflects on the society in general where the atheistic/agnostic/apathetic are more easily upset than genuine believers.
56k warning: This is a video heavy post and I recommend a fast internet connection (with some dedicated reading/listening time) to make the most of it.
Maybe it is just me, but certain tunes always remind me of a bygone era. Here I have complied a small list of songs for each year since 2000. Some titles included here may be of rather poor taste and rather embarrassing, yet my memory remains unapologetic.
1997
WANDS - 世界の終わりまでは/Till the World's End
Assuming you grew up in the 90s, your life is not complete without Slam Dunk. I mean it,full stop
While not a real fan of any competitive sports, I am still able to polymorph into a hooligan every for years for just for the FIFA World Cup. I guess this is where everything started.
Nevertheless, if I could only choose one Ricky Martin song to listen to for the rest of my life I'd go for Linvin la Vida Loca; for HG.
Dad gave me a (rather flash back then) Onkyo brand CD/MD player for 10th birthday and some albums that only people of his age would be interested in. I had no alternative and ended up listening to a lot of doo-wop, jazz and pop standards, many songs I am still fond of.
By the way, the movie in which the song had an honourable mention was fortunate to have been filmed before the Katakana plague of the 90s set in. While Melody will always be cherished as 小さな恋のメロディ, poor kids nowadays have to watch stuff like ロード・オブ・ザ・リング(I shall refrain from any attempt to pronounce or it might give me a heart attack.).
Another twist of the story is the device itself, which had MD player failures every six months. We had it repaired several times under the warranty but eventually gave up after the third claim. Never bought any Onkyo equipment again.
This one is especially notable because of the music video above. Admittedly, I have seen no movies back then and it totally blew my mind. It took me years to realise they ripped the idea off Run Lola Run. Well, I can forgive their deadly sins for the music.
Also, I have not met any Bon Jovi fan in years, not a single soul.
Jay is probably the last M-Pop (no, he does not do R&B) musician I have paid some attention to. He continued to produce exceptional songs in the upcoming years however his second and third album will always be my personal favourites.
Fast and catchy, something that suits pubescent teens. It is actually of little relevance to my life but somehow got imprinted into my mind every time I think of 2002. Maybe whoever in charge of the student TV back in BBI played it too often.
For some time between 2002-2004, my best friends all belonged to this Sakura Taisen fan club. Looking back it is kind of scary since many of them are Takarazuka fans in heterosexual disguise. I spend most of my time not caring about the theme but talking to whatever normal people present and trolling the lesbos.
To this day people from the group still make up over 50% of people on my MSN contact list, although many of them never appear to be online. I remember one, to whom I had a rather exciting conversation with one day only to find her blocking me from the next day, still have not figured out why but I'd probably blame PMS.
Folks, I don't know where are you or what are you doing, but I appreciate everything you did for me:
Thanks to V-gun for listening to my pointless rants.
Thanks to legato for sending me all the episodes of Last Exile, although I never had time to watch it.
Thanks to toby for cheering me up at the hard times, I wish you will find your dreamed one soon.
Thanks to xephon who kept contact with me till this day. I pass through your city almost every year without stopping and I really hope to meet you again some day.
My aptitude for Anime peaked around this time and my selection became rather Anime-centric. I would not normally listen to L'arc~en~ciel or any Visual-kei band but this song was in the first FMA anime series. So be it.
It was a rather pleasant time. I transferred to another school and everything appeared to be on an upward track. My interests also shifted and I was once again, back in love with easy listening mainstream pop.
Things were still holding out fine and I decided to give Anime one more chance. Rather than following new series on a weekly basis, I bought several completed series and watched all episodes in one sitting during the winter holidays.
Turns out my selection was rather good: Mai-Hime, Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG, Speedgrapher and Cowboy Bebop. Nevertheless by the end I was kind of turned off by too much Anime goodness, knowing that I will never be the old fully-fledged otaku again. I still watch occasionally but mostly moved on.
P.S. Had to copy and paste that star, why some songs must contain un-typable symbols?
Dr Colin Quilter introduced country music to me, an genre that I had previously neglected. Above all, country music reinforced my reactionary tendencies, and Johnny Cash convinced me that it is feasible to do drugs and get away with it.
Taylor Swift came into the picture a bit later but just like Jay Chou, she is doing a fine job albeit on something different, certainly not country.
Stop seeking answers in the stagnant scenery!
Right now a new light passes through the muddy water
Destroy the things that have piled up
Get rid of the things that weight you down
Riding a parabola of many dreams
We're definitely always going to be boys with all of our might
I will be the one to open up the world
My eyes also become clear
Finally, getting back on terra firma. Looking back I wish I had done things differently, but it is all of this big thing called life.
In other news, today marks my 9th year living in New Zealand. Still lovin' it.
You are time. Foul time, who steals the gold from a maiden's hair and takes the sapphire from a child's eyes. Dark time, who has stolen from every thing there ever was all the things that it held precious and divine... And left nothing but ashes and memories and the grave.
-----Neil Gaiman
Five more weeks, the three unremarkable years of my life as an undergraduate student will be over. What have I achieved in almost three years apart from passing all my courses with mediocre grades?
To be honest, not a lot. What I have picked up were mere facts that can be gathered in no time with the right tools; the rest that mattered hardly moved at all in three years.
You know what it is? I just don't think about it
Your misfortunes are nothing but the result of your negligence with time; what are you doing now and what you should be doing?
What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere.
---Don Cobb
I quote from movies all the time, however the one above stands out because something I witnessed today.
We were about to start a routine toxicology lab and the lab supervisor was going over the safety procedures. After some politically correct information about ethics, he mentioned "...one of the problems we had in the past years was people fainting, so if you are known to faint to blood don't sit on the stools and fall to crack your head open..."(I did not chronicle word for word but the meaning is close). At this moment, the noise of a soft object hitting the ground was heard. Someone actually fainted; fortunately he fell forward and did not hit anything. When he came to, he had no recollection of events before the blackout.
Later, several people had fits of malaise both before and after taking blood samples, including my lab partner who had to spend several minutes sitting on the floor before work resumed.
The affected appear healthy and in sound mind. None of them is known to be haemophobic or have any other related phobia (Trypanophobia, traumatophobia....I am sure one can spend a lifetime counting phobias.). Blood sampling is not novel either; the same has been done in one of the bigger labs last year using the same equipment, and nobody showed any adverse reactions.
So what went wrong? First, the speaker suffers from self-admitted Stage IV pessimism, which definitely did cast a bad outlook on this lab. The language used was also suggestive (If you are......) and came from someone of authority(He's a professor so he must be right), which tricks the subconscious to believe the possibility of fainting(This can happen). The ideal parasite grows, traveling up the vagus nerve to shut down conscious. Although only one person came down initially, the event itself reinforces its presence in others and the cycle keeps ticking.
Inception, self-fulfilling prophecy, massive hysteria or whatever, it is working in our subconscious to deliver some surprises.
Before I close this topic, I must mention that yawning is contagious. Yeah, seeing, reading or even merely thinking about yawning is enough to induce yawning, again unconsciously. Next time when the chain reaction start while you are giving a speech, try not to blame them.
Former PM Kenvin Rudd is appointed the foreign minister following the formation of a minority Labour government from the (still hung) 43rd Australian Parliament.
Weston Cage, best remembered for his cameo appearance as the young Ukrainian mechanic, is now a metalhead. Unfortunately his musical talent is approximately on par to his father's theatrics.
Bought a CL from Jonathan B of Cream TV with the intention to shoot some film, he gave me a homebrew SR44-PX625 adaptor despite the camera has a non-working meter. It was a good deal.
A piece of advice I often give to others but rarely heed well myself
It would be overt generalisation to say that men are incapable of multitasking, but maybe it is good to be taken with a grain of salt. I don't handle stress well and I always knew it. The mere thought of a looming deadline(still below the horizon but somehow visible) is enough to drive me mad.
Well, it is just an one page abstract, how much harder could it get?
“But the Solar System!” I protested.
