Back to School

The tennis courts at NIE have all been resurfaced, according to schedule. NUS has still to get its act together regarding the tennis courts.

The school term has begun again, and there's less tennis for me this time around. I'm on the NTU floorball team, and our first IVP game is this Wednesday night against SMU.

At least, with floorball, the rain can't stop us!

Also playing for NTU Hurricane in the Singapore Floorball League (Division One). There's a match practically every weekend.

I guess this also means that the holidays have ended, and I have to confront the fact that I have done almost no programming over the holidays. All I did was write a Bash script to rename files in a folder (e.g. DSCN0045.JPG becomes DSCN1045.JPG if I want an "offset" of 1000).

Now to write a lesson plan to teach the multiplication rule for probability (for independent events).

By the way, I bought a floorball stick. The picture there is pretty small, but that was the only one I could find online. Feeling a little too lazy to take a picture of my stick. I had it shortened by about 4cm because the 101cm shaft was too unwieldy.

For these five weeks before the teaching practicum, I have classes at 8:30am for four days a week, except Thursday, which starts at 10:30am. But classes all end by 12:30pm every day!

Holidays

It's been about three weeks since I last posted. Happy Thanksgiving!

The busy period was supposed to be over in the end of October, but i guess it actually spilled over quite a bit. Can finally take quite a good breather now, last assignment was due on Monday.

My ambitious goal for the holidays is to do some programming, be it learning to develop code in C++, Java, Perl, etc., or perhaps even contributing to open source projects like Debian or Gnome.

There are some possibilities. One is developing a visual interface for GNU Robots, another might be learning to write dynamic web applications using the Google Web Toolkit. The Google thing seems rather appealing, since in many ways the web is becoming an operating system, with programs written for it. Everyone could use a proficient web designer.

Also thinking of perhaps generating lesson ideas for teaching physics and maths, and putting them up at those websites I've just created. In case anyone is interested, I've also put up rather amateurish videos of stuff burning: matches and cotton wool.

And I could continue reading what I was reading, or perhaps start writing again, for example, writing on this blog. But there will be a lot of writing next month, just a matter of what kind of writing.

I have lots more to write about here, but will conclude this post now. Need to publish. Cannot write and write without publishing. Otherwise I'll keep having to edit the time-sensitive content.

Anyone notice that I'm now using Blogger beta? The look of the site has changed slightly, and the interface I'm using now to write this is quite powerful. I can even upload photos seamlessly. And there are post labels. And I'm logging in to it with my Gmail account.

apt-get update

I want to post but there's so much accumulated things to say and I'm lazy. But I guess starting is the hardest part, so I'll go on a little more.

Didn't actually run today, it was drizzling. Stayed back late, well, there was work to do too, then went for dinner with CO and another officer from the other branch. Planning to run after work tomorrow.

Anyways, I really didn't have to worry about not having work to do. Showed the website to bosses and now there's more to code.

Going to play basketball next Tuesday after work, yay. My boss casually mentioned today that I can look into clearing off if I want. Will ask about that tomorrow.

Reinstalled WinXP for Jasper on his laptop. Had to manually load device drivers, and somehow the install didn't complete cleanly, I suspect something wrong with the CD that NEC provided. Because I tried it more than once, with the same results.

The laptop looks ok now, still have to install some software and stuff. Can also try out the wireless since Aaron's got a new wireless router at his house. One other thing about the NEC CD was that it provides no options at all, I tried to fdisk before install but that seemed to screw it up.

Last night's CSI was the first episode I've seen that was "To be continued...". It was really disturbing, seems this couple would lure another couple for an orgy or something, then what would happen is that the guy would kill the girl, and then the guy would get killed. Something like the guy is made to slit his wife's throat otherwise they both die, or to slit her throat to prevent her from dying horribly. But turns out the guy doesn't get to live either...

Had a weird error with Excel macros, turns out it was because I had a UserForm and added some controls that referenced some libraries. When the control is deleted, the reference to the library persists, so when the file is ported to another computer, there's an error message about a "missing project or library" when a macro is run. Solution of course is to remove the unnecessary reference.

At dinner at Adam Road, a group of perhaps JC students were there after hockey training. Used to go there last time also, after training at SPE (School of Phys Ed). Seem to see people carrying hockey sticks quite a lot. Wish I could play but it's difficult because you need several people, and it's not even like soccer where most people can play...

It's quite fun to do a little dribbling in my room, though. The space is pretty limited, but still ok.

Jiahao was mentioned in the New Paper on Monday. It was a second page feature on bond breakers, the who and why. PSC certainly screwed him over big time.

I got quite sunburnt on Sunday at the pool. I think I kinda fell asleep for a while in the water (with my head and hands resting on the edge).

April Fools' Day was pretty fun, that was last Friday. We went for breakfast in the morning, then left work early to go for high tea at Marriott. The food was good, especially dessert, as always. There was a chocolate and nut cake that was just divine.

Went shopping after that with the guys, to kill time before we went to watch Miss Congeniality 2. The movie was OK, not bad. But what made the day so great were the stories Eugene and Sam told over tea. Very funny. Laugh like crazy.

The week is whizzing by. I need to start working on my poems again. Soon I'll be flying to LA. Yay!