Saturday, April 28, 2007

unicorns exist

If there is one thing I have to let you know today, this would be it: Unicorns exists.

Apart from being quoted in the bible in three books (Psalms, Job, Numbers), there are large numbers of cross-references to the unicorns spanned over different geographical locations. Some of these civilizations and cultures have not even made contact with each other when sightings are recorded. In addition, unicorn never appeared in greek mythology, but only in accounts of greek natural history.

More importantly, there is a main difference between unicorns and other legendery creatures: Unicorn is not conceived out of the fears of human beings. Dragons, chimeras, phoenixes are creatures so powerful that they can destroy civilizations. It is understandable that human fears can lead to such vivid imaginations.

Unicorns are such solitary, selfless and majestic creature. It exists!

- Anonymous (0) 4:59 PM -

finish line

after 12 days of intense racing flippers-to-flippers with each other, the first turtle has reached the finishing region!



billie is sponsored by "offshore center for billfish studies". it will be interesting to see the finishing order for the other turtles. i was kind of rooting for turtlocity so hope it does not turn its back on me literally, and swim in the wrong direction.

on a side note, i am down with a cold, cough and sort throat at the moment. hope it gets better by monday when i reach my own "finishing line" - the last exam paper!

- Anonymous (0) 3:38 AM -

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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

non-original research?

as a person who might be involved in possible academia research in the future, i feel inclined to cite references even for something as casual as my blog hehe. hence, i will try to add an "alt" tag to all my pictures, which becomes visible on mouse over, citing reference to the source in the APA formatting and style guide.

maybe practicing this constantly can improve on my thesis writing a bit :) and yes i am a geek.

- Anonymous (0) 10:06 PM -

great turtle race

i found this interesting website about the conservation of leatherback turtles. do take a look and support, by voting, for your favourite leatherback turtle in the great turtle race. the leatherbacks will swim from costa rica to the galapagos islands. they even have a live update on the website every ten minutes to see the current leaderboard!



View Full Size

these magnificant creatures used to swarm the playa grande beach in the hundreds. their population spanned throughout the pacific region from costa rica to malaysia in 1990. now you have to wait for days just to see one coming up the beach to lay eggs. the turtles in the asian side of the pacific ocean are practically extincted.

as an adult, their gigantic size makes them almost invulnerable to any natural predator. however, their numbers are dwindling extremely quickly due to human activities. they ate plastic bags thrown into the water by humans which they mistake as jellyfish, their favourite food. check out the difference between the two, and imagine looking at them in the water hundreds of meters deep:



in addition, they get accidentely caught by large commercial fishing nets easily and left to die on the fishing docks. the consequences?



the race slogan is a pun with deep implications: "they are going faster than you think"

- Anonymous (0) 9:24 PM -

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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

tinkering

i have changed and added a few new features to this blog. the contents in the tabs do not make much sense at the moment, but they serve as a placeholder for future developments.

feedbacks will be much appreciated!

- Anonymous (0) 6:39 AM -

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Monday, April 23, 2007

the abc song

today, i am so going to embarrass myself for the sake of de-stressing any of my friends who are mugging for the exams right now. i recorded a short track on my zen micro. it sounds pretty crappy due to one of more of the following reasons:

1) it is recorded in my room (raffles hall) with poor acoustics
2) zen micro recorder always produces echo-y output
3) i sound like crap anyway



i kinda refrain from putting media up on this blog as i take pride in ensuring as fast a loading time as possible. so if it is affecting the loading time quite a bit, do let me know.

more importantly, you HAVE to sing along if you can. *grin*

- Anonymous (0) 10:00 PM -

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Sunday, April 22, 2007

idiom demystified

this is something golden which i saw on jinghao's personal message. inspired me to draw a mini comic for it (forgive my awful drawing).

depicts some of the hypocracy in the society, and the ignorance of our own shortcomings when we criticise others, in a light-hearted manner. pays tribute to one of those age-old words of wisdom too.

"a pot calling a kettle black"

View Full Size

- Anonymous (0) 12:13 AM -

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Saturday, April 21, 2007

love affair with the dough

i went to clementi for dinner with daniel, anson and kaiurn today. apart from the usual hawker fare, i have decided to pamper myself a bit and take away one of my childhood favourte: lasagna from pizza hut.

i have fond memories of this heavenly pasta filled with loads of cheese and delicious fillings. i only get to eat them on those really really rare treats to pizza hut by my relatives and parents that occurs once in a blue moon. somehow that experience did not come back.

is it really that tasty? or just the extra sweet feeling of receiving a treat by someone who cares? perhaps a gift from someone close to you would be more cherished than one that you bought yourself.

okok. </emo>

- Anonymous (0) 11:32 PM -

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Friday, April 20, 2007

nofx live in singapore

the punk rock legend nofx is finally coming to play live in singapore tonight at far east square. yay! except i'll be having my first paper tomorrow (phase transformation and kinetics if anyone cares to know the details).

so it seems like i will probably not get to see them for the rest of my life, since i doubt they are coming back any time soon, especially when this is their first show here in over 24 years as musicians.



the consolation prize is that i get to save $60.

- Anonymous (0) 10:04 PM -

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Thursday, April 19, 2007

3d animator vs animation

probably not done by the original author of the animator vs animation series, but this one is pretty cool. it gets better towards the end so endure through the pretty slow start.

- Anonymous (0) 9:44 PM -

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

bring your own bag day

went for a short shopping trip to ntuc fairprice today. found out that they are running a campaign organised by the national environment agency called "bring your own bag day". basically you can:

1) bring your own bag
2) buy a reusable bag
3) donate 10 cents for every plastic bag taken at the counter



it was funny to see a number of people taken aback by this campaign. they should have seen this coming. anyway this campaign will run every first wednesday of the month from today onwards, which is definitely not sufficient. hopefully if the complains on straits times tomorrow does not cause too much of a commotion, they might extend it into a daily thing :)

- Anonymous (0) 10:25 PM -

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Monday, April 16, 2007

blink free photos

how many times must you take a photo to ensure a 99% chance that no one blinks? some phd folks from australian commonwealth scientific and research organisation actually bothered to do the maths under the following assumptions:

1) a person blinking does not influence others to blink
2) blinking is random



seems like if you are taking a photo of over 50 people, the candle is going to melt completely before the perfect photo is taken. you can read all about it here.

- Anonymous (0) 11:43 PM -

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

chapter 1

its time again for exams preparation and today is officially revision day one. i have drafted up a revision time table and first up on the list is cm1121 basic organic chemistry.



for those who are wondering why am i actually doing chemistry, i have no idea either. i disliked chemistry in secondary school, i didn't take chemistry in jc. after i graduate, my course allows me to teach a-levels chemistry. ironic.

- Anonymous (0) 1:04 AM -

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Sunday, April 08, 2007

centennial light

this light bulb has tourist coming all over the world just to see it. ripley's believe or not has even featured it in one of its episode. this hand blown light bulb in livermore pleasanton fire department has been burning continuously for 106 years now (except for power failures and moving to a new station location 3 times), and its the longest working bulb in the world.



they have set up a webcam now to show its live footage every 10 seconds... chances are the camera is going to stop working before the light bulb.

you can check it out here.

- Anonymous (0) 7:43 PM -

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Thursday, April 05, 2007

ippt

my ippt results for this year...



have only been doing a few upper body workouts in the rh gym but never practice on real pull-ups itself. certainly not a good tactic it seems. if only benny is still forcing me to do pull-ups every tuesdays and thursday hehe.

gotta buckle up on this station if i want to sign on as senior police officer lo. seems like i won't make be able to make it by my ippt window which closes next week but nevertheless training starts today :)

- Anonymous (0) 11:06 PM -

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

good morning revival

bought the latest good charlotte album at music junction tampines mall over the weekend.



this album sounds much more alternative compared to their first three punk/emo rock album. perhaps even as some bad childhood memories lingers, time does heal a bit. afterall, they cannot be forever angsty especially now that they can afford mansions and stuff. some riffs do sound pretty familiar and could be inspired by other artistes. overall i am glad they enjoy the music they are making now though i kind of miss some of their old music style.

songs that catch my attention on initial listening are:

dance floor anthmn
where would we be now
keep your hands off my girl
march on

- Anonymous (0) 9:45 PM -

phd comics

just like to share one of my favourite comic series phdcomics. i'm not a fan of reading comics strips but nerdy ones like these do catch the attention of nerds like me.



i've added a dynamic panel that shows the latest edition of the comic strip in the left navigation bar. enjoy and tell me what you think about it!

- Anonymous (0) 3:19 AM -

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Monday, April 02, 2007

visual dna

saw this on benny's blog and it looks interesting so i did my own too :)

- Anonymous (0) 6:03 AM -

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Latest Comics from: 01/15/21 - NEW BOOK! Out of Your Mind! 08/31/23 - New Book! Oliver's Great Big Universe!

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