technology for dummies

Sunset at MacRitchie

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:07:35 GMT

Click through for the full-size images. Comments and criticisms welcome, as always

Clouds

Sun, 31 May 2009 10:25:43 GMT

Click through for the full sized image. Comments and criticism are welcome - as always.

San Francisco Panorama Take 2

Sun, 10 May 2009 10:07:31 GMT

A restitching of the panorama using Hugin for Mac OS X. Fixed some issues regarding aligning, contrast and lens flare. Click through for the huge (85 megapixel+) full-size image file. As always, comments and criticism welcome.

Panorama of San Francisco

Sun, 10 May 2009 04:05:44 GMT

Click through for the very large (85+ megapixel) full-size image. Comments and criticism welcome as usual.

Skyline

Fri, 01 May 2009 15:29:06 GMT

Click through for the full resolution version. Comments and criticisms are welcome, as usual.

Singapore River / Cityscape

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:35:38 GMT

Click through for the full resolution images. As usual, comments and criticism are welcome.

Yosemite

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 02:38:32 GMT

Click through for the full resolution version. Comments are welcome, as always.

Sunset

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:58:40 GMT

Comments and criticism are welcome.

To the College Class of 2013...

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:51:11 GMT

To the College Class of 2013:

It has been a long time since you submitted your applications to your dream universities — the next week or so will be decision days for most U.S. colleges.

Please know that it doesn't matter what the final outcome of your decision is — admit, waitlist, deny — you, yes you, are the same amazing person you are yesterday, today, and forever — whether it is before or after you received that email or checked that decision website. If a person is known by the company he or she keeps, then you have been in the company of an amazing group of students from Hwa Chong, Singapore and around the world — for colleges and universities around the world where there are simply too few seats to spare.

For most of you, you might think that the decisions by colleges will be life changing, but in reality as your parents might tell you, the only thing that is life changing is you. The day when you were born; your first day in primary school, secondary school, JC and national service; the day when you completed your A-levels. You — your triumphs, dreams, tragedies, your passions, inventions, obsessions — are not going to change because of these letters of admission or denial.

Your seniors and juniors have every confidence that you will all end up some place amazing, be it Harvard, one of Singapore's local universities, or somewhere in between. If you don't believe me, ask any one of your seniors who were rejected by Harvard or MIT whether they are enjoying their time in university — overwhelmingly, the response will be a resounding "YES". This is just further proof that no matter where you are accepted to, your gift, talent and energy will make room for you.

So thank you for allowing me to share some of this wild and crazy 6 months with you. I wish each and everyone of you all the best in your endeavors, wherever you are. Some of you will have an amazing experience at my college in sunny California, and some of you will have an equal or even better experience somewhere else — because truly, college is what you make of it.

I leave you with the words of Alexander Bell, "When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us." Good luck for the next few days!

Frank

Ray of Hope

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 11:47:45 GMT

I hope the above didn't screw up your friends' page that much.

The World in Her Hands (Pictures)

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:17:45 GMT

Pictures taken at Marina Barrage. I don't know what the statue is actually called.

Click on the photos for the full resolution version.

Comments, anyone?

Draft Letter to support our juniors in US uni apps

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:57:33 GMT

HC instituted new policy that restricts the no. of US unis our juniors can apply for. here is a letter pleading their case on behalf of them. comments?

new version: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfq58qvj_54g7j9kc3b&invite=gq8n4sz

Meh. Benchoi tagged me :P

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 12:25:18 GMT

1. (The person who tagged you is...) Benchoi
2. (Your relationship with him/her is...) Good friend
3. (5 impressions you have of him/her.)
- Rich
- Intelligent
- Rich
- Skinny
- Did I mention rich?
5. (The most memorable words he/she has said to you.) Hahahaha.... (evilly)
6. (If he/she becomes your lover, you will...) WTF?! Never.
7. (If he/she becomes your lover, things he/she has to improve on will be...) Unthinkable.
8. (If he/she becomes your enemy, you will...) Get the heck of Singapore
9. (If he/she becomes your enemy, the reason will be...) I hacked into the ERP system and made off with a ton of cash =p
10. (The most desirable thing you want to do for him/her now is...) No idea
11. (Your overall impression of him/her is...) Intelligent, rich kid
12. (How you think people around you will feel about you.) Nerd
13. (The characteristic you love about yourself is...) Straight-to-the-point
14. (On the contrary, the characteristic you hate about yourself is...) Can be quite a motor mouth smometimes
15. (The most ideal person you want to be is...) richer than Benchoi's father (or Calvin Wong's father) =p
16. (For people that care and like you, say something to them...) Thanks :)
17. (Pass this quiz to 10 people that you wish to know how they feel about you. TRY NOT TO PEEP AT THE QUESTION BELOW BEFORE WRITING DOWN THE NAMES.) (in alphabetical order)

1. Mai Yifan
2. Christina Ng
3. Koh Zi Chun
4. Wu Defeng
5. Yang Zeqi
6. Liew Meihui
7. Anne Marie Ang
8. Chu Yan Long
9. Leong Wai Peng
10. Foo Chuan Yu

(Who is no. 6 having a relationship with?) Calvin Wong Yun Sheng apparently =p
(Is no. 9 a male or female?) Male, and a slutty one at that
(If no. 7 and 10 are together, will it be a good thing?) 7 will try to hug 10. I am not sure whether 10 thinks thats a good thing or not. Maybe he is deprived too =p.
(How about no. 8 and 5 ?) I don't think they know each other.
(What is no. 2 studying about?) Chem/Computing/Math/Econs
(When was the last time you had a chat with no. 3 ?) Yesterday?
(What kind of music band does no. 8 like?) S.H.E etc, lots of chinese songs.
(Does no. 1 have any siblings?) Mai Yishan
(Will you woo no. 3 ?) No.
(How about no. 7 ?) Better than wooing No. 3 but still no.
(Is no. 4 single?) Single, desperate and ugly(?) =p
(What's the surname of no. 5 ?) Yang
(What's the name of no. 10 ?) Foo
What's the hobby of no. 4 ?) Playing piano, choral music.
(Do no. 5 and 9 get along well?) Yeah. 9 corrupted 5's (and a whole lot of other people's minds) in GEP in Sec School =p
(Where is no. 2 studying at?) HCI-College
(Say something casual about no. 1) myffie
(Have you tried developing feelings for no. 8 ?) No
(Where does no. 9 live?) Somewhere in the East.
(What color does no. 4 like?) Blues and greys?
(Are no. 5 and 1 best friends?) Good friends definitely. Science Quiz FTW!
(Does no. 7 like no. 2 ?) They don't know each other.
(How did you get to know no. 2 ?) Ne2twork
(Does no. 1 have any pets?) Doubt it.
(Is no. 7 the sexiest person in the world?) Nope.

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:25:43 GMT

God commands all mankind in the TEN COMMANDMENTS to: "Honor your father and your mother," "You shall not murder," "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not steal," "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor," and etc, (Exodus 20:1-17). Is any atheist, agnostic or unbeliever foolish enough to publicly deny the decorousness of those laws?
OK, there's no disagreement with the fact that those Laws are righteous and honorable.

But since atheists deny God's existence, they don't have the ability to realize that God is the Author of the TEN COMMANDMENTS. This forces them to attribute their authorship to a human. But since atheism is opposed to the decorous TEN COMMANDMENTS, even while being force [sic] to deceptively think they were authored by a human, this clearly shows evidence that atheism was and is incapable of authoring, realizing and honoring such decorous and noble laws. If in the view of the atheist the TEN COMMANDMENTS were authored by a human, and since it is rightly established that those laws are decorous and honorable, but are hated by atheists, and atheists are said to comprise the most "educated" segment of the human race, then it would have taken a more decorous and honorable human to author them than even the most highly educated atheist.
--from http://www.tencommandments.org/heathens.shtml

From: http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/new10c.html

1. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

2. In all things, strive to cause no harm.

3. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

4. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

5. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

6. Always seek to be learning something new.

7. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

8. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.

9. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

10. Question everything.

Perhaps these are more relevant in today's world?

If Economics was a religion....

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 15:40:19 GMT

Adam Smith would be Moses, because he brought the Word (aka The Wealth of Nations) to the masses. Stuart Mills, Karl Marx and Ricardo would be the old testament prophets. John Maynard Keynes would be the saviour, who saved millions from sin (aka The Great Depression) and died at a young age.

The Nobel Prize Laureates would be the equivalent of Saints and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences would be the College of Cardinals. The promised land would be the United States (where an awful lot of economists live and practise the faith), and the Pope (aka Chairman of the Federal Reserve) presides and wields its powerful staff (Read: Interest Rates) over all nations of the world.

The priests (aka Teachers and Professors) would go out to preach the Word (now corrupted into sects) to the unsaved (Read: Students).

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 03:12:16 GMT

Rap Music Translated into Plain English Courtesy of Bill Maher

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pm2wTGgYAw

This evening we won’t be dining, we’ll just be having intercourse.
You’ll surely appreciate my stamina, and the fact that I own a late model European sports sedan.
If you shift in position you will have a better view of our intercourse.
I appreciate it when we have intercourse with increased vigorous velocity.
This evening we won’t be dining, we’ll just be having intercourse.

I was talking to a sibling.
This African-American was telling me that a business transaction involving pharmaceuticals went awry.
One of the participants apparently being underfinanced, unable to raise the necessary capital, he decided to abscond with the products.
And needless to say, the first party of siblings wants him to reconcile this debt, and I’m afraid to say may include the use of firearms.

Hello everyone! Perhaps you are familiar with my work, I’m Eazy-E.
I shoot people and leave promptly so as to avoid incarceration.
I see there are some women in the audience here tonight. Y
ou’d probably thinking you’d enjoy having sex with Eazy-E.
Yes, yes you would.
You see I’m the type of African American that was designed for durability.
And if you disagree with me I may launch my foot in your rectum.

Random Stuff

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 13:47:50 GMT

1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a colour that I associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your blog

Cell Microprocessor

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 15:18:55 GMT

I can't stand the hype that the Sony Cell microprocessor is getting seeing that they had lied their asses out for their last 2 consoles (Hm, emotion engine? I don't see any true emotion in any PlayStation 2 anywhere).

Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to Cell. The Cell processor consists of 1 “Power Processor Element” and 7 “Synergistic Processing Elements”. The PPE consists of a 64-bit integer unit and a VMX (think MMX for POWER architectures) for the Cell PPE. The SPEs are RISC processors with a single-precision SIMD organization.

Forbes Magazine is saying that “Cell is going to enable PS3 developers to create movie-quality games with blazing-speed graphics. Applications in other areas are also considered”. Well, if the CPU of PlayStation 3 can provide high-quality graphics, why do they need an nVidia G70 GPU for? Because they realized that no matter how good Cell is, it cannot be compared to the floating point ability of nVidia and ATi GPUs.

Not that it matters because the games that run on the PlayStation 3 aren’t going to have very good AI either. Current game AIs are usually single-threaded and rely on a lot of integer code and branches, at best a neural network or 2 for the most advanced of games. Without a branch predictor, the performance of the Cell CPU would not be very good in this respect either.

Most games, including the ones on XBOX 360 and the PC, run on one single thread, and would be hard pressed to split the game code into multiple threads. Recent multi-thread patches of Quake 4 and other games yield no or negative performance gains at the resolution which the PS3/X360 (i.e. at 1920x1080 @ 30-60fps).

I personally think that the design for the Cell CPU in PlayStation 3 is to create problems for developers and prevent them from porting games into other consoles (XBOX 360 and Revolution). Developers were frequently told, "We see middleware becoming a huge industry on the PS3" and "This new platform should give rise to many new and powerful programming models" - to them this means, "It's really, really powerful, but we've absolutely no idea how to get data either in or out!".

Not that the Cell microprocessor itself is unredeemable. I believe that it has great potential in massively multithreaded floating-point threads, like decoding of MPEG streams (in fact, Toshiba demonstrated a system that can decode 48 MPEG-2 streams simultaneously).

Windows Codename "Longhorn"

Sat, 23 Jul 2005 06:03:39 GMT

Windows Codename "Longhorn" is now Windows Vista™

Clear, Confident, Connected. Bringing clarity to your world.

The Crazy Ones

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 05:01:46 GMT

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Temasek Holdings invests in Neopets

Sun, 22 May 2005 07:59:16 GMT

"NeoPets Asia, a division of NeoPets Inc, is wholly-owned by Green Dot Capital, an investment holding company.

Green Dot Capital is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings, the Government's investment arm."

- The New Paper

Why C/C++ Sucks

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 05:01:08 GMT

Memory Management
C++ doesn't have a memory management system, which forces the programmers to come up with abritary programming for memory management system or even no memory management at all. For a memory management system to work, you must allocate some memory, initalize the object, keep track of the usage of the object and dispose of the object and free the memory. Any slight mistake causes either bloated programs that use too much memory, or programs that crashes when memory is freed before the program is finished with the object.

Objects
Talking about objects, that brings me to the erm, "object-oriented programming language" of C++. The problem with the object-orientedness of C++ is that it doesn't have any. Once a C++ program compiles, the object you declared loses all meaning to the run-time program and is treated like a struct of data. This is also a problem for memory management as the runtime program cannot determine what type of object it is, and whether any one is using it.

Syntax

double qdiv (p, q)
double *p, *q;
{
return *p/*q;
}

What is the above program supposed to mean?

Strings
C/C++ doesn't have any native string types (granted that there is STL strings but still many programs deson't use it). Instead they have null terminated character arrays. There are quite some problems with this kind of implementation of strings, which i will list out.

Buffer overflows

Trying to allocate enough space for functions which return arbritarily large string results.

strlen() has time complexity O(n)

and some more... but then i need to go to eat so would post some time later

OS-tan??

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 08:03:41 GMT

This is very disturbing....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-tan

Next Generation Operating Systems

Fri, 29 Oct 2004 07:13:37 GMT

Heres what I think a next generation operating system should have. Both the Windows family and the Unix family of operating systems are inadequate in these areas.

Advanced User Authentication Services
Current operating systems only support password based authentication services for authenticating users and hacks are often needed for other types of authentication (SecureID, Biometrics). New operating systems should support native APIs for these advanced authentication services.

DLL Hell Avoidance
DLL hell avoidance is needed for future operating systems. All libraries should be dynamically loaded and the entries should be stored in a central database maintained by the OS. When the application calls a function in a library, the OS shall retrieve the database, and point the application in the right direction.

Advanced Unified Presentation Subsystem
An advanced set of 3rd generation APIs are needed for rendering of increasingly high resolution desktops. Current GDI+ and X11 systems are inadequate. Note that I said presentation and not just Graphics subsystem. This means that the APIs should incorporate Sound and other (E.g. Force Feedback for Game Controllers?) APIs into the system. Unix and its X11 system especially needs attention.

Managed Application Frameworks
Managed application frameworks should be included within all applications and OS suppliers should ACTIVELY encourage developers to use these frameworks. (Framework examples are Java and .NET). These frameworks use active garbage collection system and have features that prevent applications from wrecking havoc even though it might have crashed/buffer overflowed, etc...

Managed Wrappers for Non-managed Applications
All User mode programs running above the operating system should have a managed wrapper for the all non-managed applications. This will prevent buffer overflows as all requests would have to go through the managed application framework before getting to the operating system itself.

Nonpaged Kernel
All kernel should be nonpaged, i.e. loaded into memory at bootup and does not need disk access to function. This would allow the operating system to continue to operate even though the root disk of the operating system might have been unmounted. Windows needs attention in this with the Windows Embedded stuff and what nots

Data Security Services
All operating systems should come with a default file system that supports granular access configuration and data encryption services. Windows NT already provides these services with its NTFS/EFS filesystems, but it is still inadequate. Unix needs attention in this respect.

Access Control for Applications
Users should be able to specify trusted and untrusted applications. The accessible APIs for any untrusted applications would not be as many as trusted applications. This would solve the problem of spyware and what nots infesting the computer. However, the only way to change the status of an application would be for the user to manually change it. NO APIS SHOULD BE PROVIDED TO CHANGE THE STATUS!

I shall post more later.

Kohkt manages to sell EMB?!

Thu, 07 Oct 2004 04:43:04 GMT

... dunno whether to laugh or to cry ...

http://www.embme.com/smb/jss/
http://www.embme.com/emb/jss_student

I believe there are many better communication platforms out there, phpBB, phpNuke, ClassServer, ELF and this Jurong Secondary School had to choose EMB!!!