Tuesday 30 September 2008

Animusic is so cool!!

Have I ever told you how much I love Animusic? It's basically a animated graphics in-sync with music. It's so cool! Here, here:







Well, those are just a few of them. Sigh... I wish I had the DVD. Anyway, I'm in the middle of making a cooking game. You'll probably know what's coming up next right? I'll probably lose track of where I've left and scrap the whole thing, AGAIN! I certainly hope not. I really want this game.

Hmm... I'm going to finish Form 1 Sejarah soon. Just a few more Chapters. Gahh! Chapter 9 is so "cheong hei", so many freaking things to study in that chapter, don't you agree? I hope I can finish up Form 1 today. Then, I can go on to Form 2. I should probably start Geography soon. Not forgetting about my BM. AHHHH!! BM!!

Monday 29 September 2008

Back from the used-to-be tin mine

Yeaps, i'm back from Taiping. It was fun. The food served during the wedding was okaylah. A lot of my relatives were there. Sadly, since I don't see them very often, I tend to forget their names and how to call them. You know lah, Chinese have a lot of callings for family members compared to English. Like, for example, "Ah Suk" and "Kao fu" can both mean uncle. The callings depends on whether he/she is in the mother or father side. I feel so bad for not remembering the names. They are my family and it's my responsibility to know all of them. I feel so stupid!!

Anyway, we've stayed in Panorama Hotel. We've chosed that Hotel a lot of times already. It's one of the best hotels. I just like it because it has a bathtub. Lol!! I love bathtubs. You can sit in there and play with water! And and, just fill it up with warm water, it'll be like a hot spring! Ahh...

On the next day, in my cousin's house, when the bridegroom arrived, erm... first there was a photo taking session. Then there was a re-enactment from tv shows. Well, sort of. You know, when the husband gets locked outside the house and he must shout out loudly "I love you" or in this case "Wo ai ni!!" until the bride can hear inside her room. Something like that lah. Poor guy. He got humiliated like mad. Lol!

After all that, and the wedding ring part, there was a tea serving ceremony.

Before we left the house, my sister, my dad and I went to see my grandma. I feel so sorry for her as she couldn't see the world. I'm not sure what happened to her eyes. The worst thing is, I couldn't communicate with her because she only understands Mandarin and Hokkien. Dang, I should learn that dialect!! She's my only grandma left. All my grandparents except her has passed away long time ago. Sigh... whenever I went to see her, I had a relapse of memories of my late grandmother. I couldn't hold back my tears. Grandparents are cool. So, everyone, love your grandparents! You won't see them forever. Man, I miss my grandma's voice. Gahh!! I better stop talking about this. My eyes are getting wet!!

Okay, let me go wash my face first ya?

......

Next, we went for lunch and then to Lake Garden. We just had a drive around that place. Couldn't take photos because the camera died.

Anyway, on the way to Taiping, I thought of learning hacking computers after PMR. No, it's not for bad reasons. I don't wanna go to jail and waste my time there. With the knowledge, I can like make my computers safer, especially the laptop. If the laptop were to get stolen (touchwood, touchwood!!), I could like lock up the laptop, so the person who stole it can't use it. Or maybe, screw up his plans for world domination!! Anyway, I just wanna learn hacking for fun. I promise I'll use it for good, not for evil.

Friday 26 September 2008

1 week holiday!!

Today's the last day of school, well, at least until the school starts again the following week. It's the Hari Raya celebration next week and I can't wait to eat lemang slapped with curry! Anyway, I know it's too early, but,... Selamat Hari Raya to all Malays!!

Tomorrow I'll be going back to my father's hometown to attend my cousin's wedding ceremony. That means, I'm going back to Kelian Pauh, erk... I mean, Taiping! The place where Ghee Hin and Hai San fought for tin ore. It's actually a very cool place. There's also a museum. It's damn freaking interesting, despite my hatred towards History. I remember seeing the real fighter jet used during the Japanese occupation. Zero Fighter, I think. Maybe not. But it's still a real aeroplane. There's also Bukit Larut, or known as Maxwell Hill, why? I dunno. But I've got to say, Maxwell Hill sounds much cooler than Bukit Larut. Speaking of "cool", it's actually quite cooling up there. I've never been there before but it's obvious that the peak is cold. During a storm, the peak could be shrouded by the thick cumulonimbus cloud. And, according to my Geography reference book, it's one of the wettest place in the Peninsula, receiving more than 2500mm of rain a year.

Then there's Lake Garden. It's very beautiful. There's one stretch of road where you could see trees growing from an incline. Dang, it's very hard to explain, you've just got to see it yourself. The trees arch up and stretch all the way to the other side of the road. Those trees are quite old actually.

Last night, I wiki-ed up about Tom and Jerry, and in one of the shorts, Tom was playing the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt. Everytime I see that "chapter", I'm always amazed. The music is nice. So, I went to youtube, and this came out:


This is the "comedic" way of playing Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Amusing.

Next, this is from Tom and Jerry:


And then, this is from Bugs Bunny:

I admit, the starting was quite funny. When Bugs was gonna play, a guy coughs. Then he had his last cough. Lol!!

Because both of them have the same plot and same music, Warner Bros and MGM accused each other of plagiarism.

Here are some Wiki links if you wanna know more about both shorts.
Wikipedia: Rhapsody Rabbit
Wikipedia: The Cat Concerto

Anyway, here's the real thing:


God, I'm freaking hungry now. Haven't eaten my lunch yet. Ciao.

Thursday 25 September 2008

The clock is happily ticking away...

PMR is coming closer and closer... I'm getting so worried about BM now. What if I get a B?? Do I still get to go Pure Science?? Dang, what if the thing happen again??

"The thing" refers to what happened last year, during the mid terms. I got a D (49%) for BM because my Bahagian B is horrible and my Bhg C is totally out of title. Then, because of sympathy, my BM Teacher gave me 1 mark to make it a C. It was a very disappointing moment for me when I knew my marks. I remember going to the staff room and asking her, "Cikgu, saya dapat berapa untuk BM?". Then she showed me the thick book. Searched for my marks, then suddenly, I see a D!! I stared at it for a little while. I just couldn't believe my eyes. When back to class, and when someone asked me about my BM, I broke down. It was horrible!!

Tuesday 23 September 2008

But I don't wanna clean my room!!!

Let's talk about antibiotics. Now, what does antibiotics got to do with a messy room? Well, you'll be surprised.

Antibiotics was first discovered by a man named Sir Alexander Fleming. It was a normal day at his messy laboratory. Every where, you could see petri dishes filled with bacteria. I'm not sure what was he trying to do. Then, on one surprising day, something he didn't plan happened. In some of the petri dishes, the growth of the bacterial colonies were interrupted by some kind of a mould. It seems that the mould secretes some kind of substance that was inhibiting bacterial growth. And that mould is none other than Penicillium notatum, or penicillin for short. It's the miracle cure for that time for many bacterial infections.

"When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer," Fleming would write later, "But I guess that was exactly what I did."
-Sir Alexander Fleming


So, the next time your mum asks you to clean up your room, tell your mum that a antibiotics was found by accident in a bacterial-filled room.

Thank you, Sir Alexander Fleming, for your wonderful discovery of the antibiotics. Without it, imagine how many people would have died by now.

Saturday 20 September 2008

Lempel-Ziv-Welch? What the hell?

Okay, I've been too free today, so I've been researching about data compression methods. At first, I came across this method called Huffman's coding, which is quite smart. It creates a tree with all the data that needs to be compressed according to the "weight" of each data or how often each of the data occurs. The problem is, I couldn't really implement it in C# quite nicely.

So, I scrapped it and went on searching for some other compression methods. Then, Wikipedia showed me LZW, Lempel Ziv Welch. It's a widely used compression method for graphics. So, I thought, why not give it a try. It's quite simple.

So, I spent about 2 hours coding the algorithm, and in the end, it works!! I simply made a file, which is about 1.67 KB in size. Then use it on my implementation of LZW, and it successfully halved its size! That's quite a major achievement for me, since I'm not really good at these things.

Now, I'm making a decompressor for it. If it works out, then I can build my own installer, so I don't need to rely on third party installers next time. My Mr Ball Arena is actually using a third party installer now.

Wow, learning new things can be quite fun!

EDIT:
Okay, so I tested mt decompressor as well, turns out my compressor is highly flawed!! I didn't know there were so many freaking glitches!! I guess my implementation is totally wrong. Sigh... back to the drawing board!

Yesh!! The bleeding has finally stopped!

I guess the blood has clotted at the wound. The stitches are a little annoying to my tongue though. The wound is still quite sensitive. Dang, I can't use Listerine!! The dried blood is giving me halitosis (bad breath). Not very nice. According to some sites, I shouldn't drink very hot water as the blood clot could "dissolve" away. I would do anything to not let my blood clot go away. Because, according to Wikipedia, dislodging the blood clot could cause the formation of a dry socket. It's a very painful thing, and I don't afford to suffer more pain.

Friday 19 September 2008

Dang, that was unpleasant

Finally, I've successfully jumped over quite a big hurdle in my life. Eventhough the surgery's over, I should still worry about the extraction site. I must be careful not to infect that place because it's still quite soft and there's a lot of blood. It's still bleeding now and as my numbness starts to wear off, the pain's really kicking in. Despite all my friends moral support (thanks guys!!), I was incredibly nervous on the reclining chair. I was really shivering!

It's actually quite painful, even after administering the anaesthetics. I have to admit, the injection part is actually the most painful part of the whole surgery. Then, as the surgery reached it's "climax", it got a lot worse.

According to how I felt, the doctor had access to my tooth. Surprisingly, that tooth was not the tooth I expected to be extracted. The tooth that the doctor extracted hadn't even came out yet! That tooth was hiding under my gum the whole time! Yeah, so as I expected, he cut open my gum, then he started poking around with the erm... tools. He really pushes hard. And it's that push which made me scared and really caused quite a lot of pain. I'm grateful that I had anaesthetics, if not, it'll be even worse! Trust me, you wouldn't want your wisdom tooth to cause you problems. Yeah, so after an agonizing 10 minutes, a loud crack sound was heard. I was so happy that my tooth came out.

Oh wait! Not yet. That's only half of it!! So, he continued poking here and there. Took a pair of calipers, then held onto my tooth. And then he twisted to the left, then to the right, and suddenly, another loud crack sound was heard. It was traumatizing. It went like "Braaaak!". In my mind, I was like "OMG WTF!!!".

So, he took out the other half of the tooth. But, the operation was not over yet. Oh no. He had to stitch back my gum. Well, the stitching wasn't all bad. I'm having another appointment at 11th October, a few days before PMR to remove the stitches.

In the end, I was given a few painkillers and some antibiotics. God! You wouldn't want to be in there with a problematic wisdom tooth!

I'm so happy the torture was over. I actually thought of filming the entire operation, but it was a little troublesome.

Here it is, my dreaded day

Just 1 hour and a half left before I go for the surgery. I'm so freaking nervous now, so nervous, I could break down at any moment now. Anyway, I hope it's not that painful. The thing that scares me the most is the scalpel. It's something like a knife. God! Please be at my side later! Uwahh!!

Well, then, good luck to me!

Thursday 18 September 2008

...

It seems that I've been posting about an average of 2 posts per day! This is odd.

Right, I'm gonna post something that I really dislike. Polluters and Smokers! I despise them a lot!! I don't care who is it, whether he/she is my family or my friend, if he/she smokes or seriously pollute the place in front of me, I can really naik darah! Seriously, do these people know that smoking is a one-way street to death? I don't think they know. Obviously, if you try nagging at them to stop smoking, they'll usually fight back, because they are scared to know the truth and wanna continue smoking. It's not that I don't care about these people, it's just that these people don't care for themselves. Don't they know that they only have 2 lungs, and they are harming both of them? And polluting the environment by burning garbage! My god! There's one house in front of my school burns garbage. Well, they don't really burn much now, maybe because they ran out of stuff to burn. Gah!!

And also, I just wish that, somehow, there's a technology which can totally eliminate the carbon monoxide from the vehicles. I'm exposed to it everyday, whenever I walk to school. I'm forced to take out my handkerchief and use it as an oxygen mask! You know how stinky is it? Sheesh! Stupid vehicles!

Want some more? There's this no-entry sign in front of the junction towards the road behind my house, and yet, the buses and cars still go that way. Every time when there's a bus, my whole kitchen stinks with exhaust fumes! Harming my family's health for nothing!

Argh!! Sometimes, I wish the cigarette was never invented. It's stupid. Sure, it's very relaxing to smoke, but is it relaxing to suffer from smoke?

Yes! Trials have ended!

It's Merdeka!! Yay! But wait, hold on, it's not merdeka for me yet... Tomorrow's my dentist appointment! What to do?? I'm panicking already! What's he gonna do? Cut my gum and do something to dig out that wisdom tooth??? Gosh, I sure hope I won't have high tolerance to Novacaine. Or else the scalpel will be my worst enemy. I wonder if he's gonna administer laughing gas during the operation? I doubt it but it sounds cool. It's a type of anesthetics as well.

Then, there's 1 more month till the doomsday for all Form 3's! Oh no! My BM!! Once I finish BM for PMR, I'll jump for joy!! BM's my nightmare now.

Oh and here's some screen caps of my Objective Paper Reader in action!

Firstly, this is the program on the paper:

For now, the only parts that can be read by my application is the answers part, the ABCD part. Looks complicated? Well, no actually. Fine fine, yes. This is just a very simple program. It has 1 instruction. The instruction is the first line of the program "1 A D". I made AD as the command for showing a message box on the screen. Then the lines following line 1 would be the message to show on the screen. Each letter of the text uses 2 lines of code. Let's take an example: The first letter, J. This letter is defined by line 2 and 3, "2 B" and "3 A C". The application uses this as a binary number. So, 2 B and 3 A C becomes 01001010. The first 4 digits in the binary number is from the first line, then the other 4 is from the second line. Since in the first line, only B is shaded, this gives 0100, and the same applies for the second line. Whatever is shaded is a one. After that, the application changes 01001010 to a base-10 number, or a decimal number, the kind of number we use everyday. I'm not going to go through, in detail, how to convert from different bases of numbers, if you wanna know, go google it.

So, 01001010 = 2+8+64 = 74
Right, how can a number like 74 define a character? There's a list of characters call the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). You can see all the characters ranging from 0 to 255 over here: ASCII Table. Just look for the Decimal Number 74, that will give you the letter J!

Anyway, after scanning the objective paper into the computer, just load it through the application:


Then, it'll automatically run the program:


I know, my application isn't really that user-friendly-looking. It's just for me to use, anyway. No one else's gonna use my application.

Wondering how I translated "J S Mason is really Ong Bee Lee!" into ABCD language? See the textbox and the "To ABCD" button up there? I just type my text in there and it'll crank it out, in ABCD!

This application is heavily flawed by the way. How? There's no error checking in it. So, if there's anything wrong with the program you shaded into the paper, it might cause problems to the application. And, if the dimensions of the scanned image is not right, it'll cause inaccurate reading.

Wednesday 17 September 2008

Ooh?

Finally, my one day of effort paid off! I successfully made an objective paper reader! I could give the program to the school to mark papers, but then I decided to use it for fun. In my previous post, I talked about how I'm gonna use the data efficiently. But I found a better way to use the data. Just use the objective paper as a sheet of binary code! The code that the computer speaks in! So every shaded box would represent 1 and not shaded would represent 0! Using this, I could store a maximum of 40 bytes of data on 1 sheet of paper!

I wasted most of my time debugging the application that reads the image of the scanned objective sheet. A lot of times it had problem finding the shaded areas. This is because I only marked specific spots to be scanned for shaded oval. 1 pixel to check for each oval, that is. It wasn't good. So, instead of 1 pixel being checked for every oval, I also checked the 8 pixels around that pixel. If any of those pixels show sign of a shaded region, then it is a shaded oval. I wonder what can I do with this "technology"?

I can tweak it to turn it into an answer sheet marking application! It's not that hard to do it. Just a few adjustments here and there only. Then, it's just a matter of scanning the paper into the computer and letting my application do the checking!

Punch cards?

I dunno why, but I suddenly thought of the wonderful punch card. But what's a punch card? Last time when, transistors have not existed yet, and they have many machines to operate, the people wanna find out a way to automate the machines. You can say that the modern computers were based on that. Machines were made to read punch cards, which were cards with holes representing data. So, the machines can be reprogrammed. The awful thing about punch cards is that to operate a complex machine, you'll need 1 humongous bundle of punch cards.
Here's an image of a punch card I got from wikipedia:


Okay, I know this sounds kinda weird. I thought of implementing the punch card thingie on my comp. But instead of punch cards, I'll use the objective answer sheet that I can get from my school. Then I can scan it into the computer, then make a program to read that scanned image and decide what to do with the data. Hmm... making a computer do something by shading a paper... sounds kinda cool to me. I should start doing it!!

Because the options for the answers range from A to D, one line of ABCD can represent 4 different data. 2 rows can represent 16 different data. 4 rows of ABCD is equivalent to 1 byte of data on the computer (256 different values). And since there are 80 rows that can be used, 1 objective answer sheet can represent 20 bytes of data! If you were to make a 1 MB program just from that objective paper, you'll need around 52 429 pieces of it. It's a very impractical way of developing a program for a computer in this modern era. Obviously, I won't even try to make 1 very complex program. I'm just gonna do it for fun. Hmm... 20 bytes on 1 paper, what can you do with it anyway?

I'll to fit as many data as possible into 1 sheet of paper. This is how I'm gonna do it:
  1. I won't be making 256 different instructions, so, I don't need to use 4 lines of ABCD. Maybe 2 is enough. 16 different instructions, including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
  2. A byte can have values ranging from 0 to 255. A small part of it consists of the usual alphabets and numbers. So, it won't be necessary to use 4 lines of ABCD to represent the letters of Alphabets and numbers. There are a total of 26 alphabets and 10 numbers (0 to 9). I think 3 lines of ABCD would be enough to suffice that amount of alphabets and numbers. Let's see, 4x4x4=64. I can even throw in another 26 alphabets! 26 for small letters, another 26 for capital letters. 64-(52+10)=2. I guess I can add the comma and the full stop punctuations for the extra space.
  3. But for real numbers, I don't need 3 lines at all! 2 lines would be enough. 2 lines represents 16 different values, and that's more than enough to hold all the values between 0 to 9.

Tuesday 16 September 2008

Finally, just got my new specs!

Yup, like the title said, I got my new pair of spectacles, and I love them!! Too bad though, I've got to get used to them. I'm feeling a little light-headed now. Haha! Symptoms of changing to a new specs. Here's me:

Dental appointment is coming closer...

This Friday's my dental appointment. It's my surgery day!! Nooo!!I'm gonna have to say farewell to my beloved and ANNOYING little wisdom tooth.

Today, I sat for Sejarah and KH test (it'll be so cool if it's Kingdom Hearts test, but its not). It's okay lah. History was a killer.

Now, some facts:
Here are some things you may not know about your mother advices.
1) Have an umbrella ready before the rain comes. This is the same as "Sediakan payung sebelum hujan" proverb in BM. But if there's a thunderstorm, your umbrealla's more like a lightning rod than a harmless shelter. You'll have a higher chance of getting struck by lightning. So, do you still think that's a wise proverb? Might as well not use umbrella during a thunderstorm. Sure, you might get exposed to low temperatures like 20 degrees Celcius or less, but if you get hit by a lightning, we're talking about a temperate few times as hot as the sun. If you wanna avoid the rain, just find a closed shelter like a house, with cemented walls and covered celings. Bus stops won't help.

2) Swallowing a chewing gum would be a last thing you ever wanna do. Is it true that it'll get lodged in your alimentary canal? According to some research, swallowing a chewing gum is just like swallowing other stuff. In the end, it goes down the other side and get flushed into the sewage system. But, obviously, I don't wanna be a guinea pig to test this out.

3) Cereals are healthy food. Are they? According to a newspaper I read the other day, a lot of brands of cereal contains a huge amount of sugar content. And we all know, too much sugar is never good. So, take this as an advice, always check the labels. You may not know some food might have dog faeces as an ingredient. Okay, okay, I'm just joking about the dog poop.

Hmm... here are some more facts:
4) Straighten your arm in front of you and pinch the skin below your elbow. Do you feel any pain? Well, maybe a slight pain lah, but not as bad as pinching your forearm right? I think you know why, but if not, then here's why: There aren't many pain receptors under your elbow.

5) Too much water can kill. Here's something form Wikipedia:
Water intoxication (also known as hyperhydration or water poisoning) is a potentially fatal disturbance in brain functions that results when the normal balance of electrolytes in the body is pushed outside of safe limits by over-consumption of water. Normal, healthy (both physically and nutritionally) individuals have little to worry about accidentally consuming too much water. Nearly all deaths related to water intoxication in normal individuals have resulted either from water drinking contests, in which individuals attempt to consume more than 10 liters (3 gallons) of water over the course of just a few minutes, or long bouts of intensive exercise during which electrolytes are not properly replenished, yet massive amounts of fluid are still consumed.

I'll see if I can find any more cool facts. So, till then, bye

Monday 15 September 2008

What happened today leh?

Today, I had my Geo and English test. Geography was okay, same goes of English. It wasn't too hard and it wasn't too easy. But Geography was more towards the Hard zone rather than the comfort zone. So, after I finished my English test, I thought of Mr Ball 2. Yeah I know, I just love my Mr Ball!

I should start coding the base for Mr Ball Arena 2 now actually, but I'm really tired. I'm gonna nap for a while after this.

First things first, I'm gonna model all the objects in the game first. Gosh, 3D Modeling! I'm never good at it, but it's incredibly fun! Instead of painting on a flat canvas, you are painting in a virtual world!

Then, there's the texturing... That's the not fun part. Sigh... There's gonna be a lot of 3D Models in the coming game. I'll try my best to use smaller music files so that it won't be so large.

Sunday 14 September 2008

hmm... a trailer?

Yeah, I got bored. So I wondered, what am I gonna do? The suddenly, an idea came to me. Make a trailer for Mr Ball Arena!! Well, this is just for fun. It's very lame, but here it is:


It won't take long to load since it's only 1 minutes and 10 seconds long. Erm... any comments about it? The music is from the trailer of Narnia The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (or something like that). The music is called Here Comes the King from X-Ray Dog, a company who makes trailer music for many movies.

Yay, gonna get a new pair of spectacles!!

Just when to see an optician yesterday. I was surprised after he told me that my power rose up to 500! and my current pair of specs is only at 300. I was like "OMG!!". I didn't know my power was that high! Yeah, so I have chosen my specs and it'll arrive tomorrow evening!!

Hmm... I've promised myself to finish Geography today!! Gah! I really need motivation!

Oh, I captured a very cool screenshot of Mr Ball Arena!

Ahaha, Mr Ball almost kena hit by the vortex! I know, I know, the vortex looks damn fake, but you can't blame me for being erm... not talented in graphics right?

In the meantime, I'm re-planning Mr Ball Arena 2 so I can start making it in Game Maker. I'll see if I can use Game Maker 7 so it's Vista-compatible. If I can't manage it, I'll stick to Game Maker 6. The thing is, a lot of my friends who had tried to play the game can't start the game. Maybe it's some kind of a glitch from Game Maker 6.

Finally, it'll reveal why the Diamonds are trying to obliterate Mr Ball, and who's Mr Cube. Never heard of Mr Cube? He's the new comer in Mr Ball 2. Whether he is at the protagonist's side or the antagonist's side, you've got to find that out yourself. I might consider putting in some voice-overs for some dialogues. Yeah, there'll be cut scenes in the new game. But first, I must restart programming the foundation. The battle system will still be the same, except the controls will change slightly. No longer have to use WASD to move, but have to use the arrow keys and the mouse to orientate. The mouse click may also be used to shoot and heal. Something like First-person shooter controls, but this game is a third-person shooter game. Why am I changing the controls? Well, I just find it very uncomfortable with the old controls, WASD to move, [Ctrl] to shoot, Z to heal. My arms got tired after a while.

I won't make Magic Spells for Mr Ball as it'll complicate things. It's very hard for me to manage so many things in the Game Maker environment. But Mr Ball will get more hi-ougi's (Special Attacks). If possible, I'll add some more stuff to the battle system to make it more fun and exciting.

Hmm... maybe I'll consider hiring a crew? But I'll have to think about that first. Wow, a voice-over crew. Haha!!

Saturday 13 September 2008

Gah!! Hate the 2nd trial!! And the flaw in BM mark calculation

I've got to admit, the 2nd trial was very tough. I didn't really anticipated the tricky questions they asked in Science and Maths. They really made me panicked during the test. Yesterday, I sat for BM and Moral test. BM was hard, but Moral was even harder. Sigh... it's confirmed that I will get a B in BM. I'm not trying to be negative here, it's true. I have 6 mistakes in my BM Paper 1 already. The BM and BI test in the 2nd trial uses the marks for Paper 2 in the 1st trial. Since I did quite badly for the first trial for BM, I have very small margin of error for the 2nd trial.

See, the first trial for BM, I've got 70/100 for Paper 2, or if you wanna follow my BM Teacher's calculations, 42%. How did he get 42 % from Paper 2?

70/100*60%=42% (Because Paper 2 is 60% of the whole BM test)

The 70 marks/42% for my first BM Paper 2 trial will be used in the 2nd trial.

If you use the normal way of counting BM Marks:
Total Marks=(P1+P2)/140*100

To get an A, I'll need at least 75%:
75=(P1+70)/140*100
P1=35
Work it out and you'll know that I must get at least 35 correct answers to get an A.

But if you follow my BM Teacher's calculation:
Total Marks=P1+(P2/100*60)
75=P1+(P2/100*60)
75=P1+42
P1=33

I've got a bigger margin of error. Obviously, I should use my BM Teacher's way of counting to get a bonus, even though his way is technically wrong, in a way. Why? Okay, here's why:

My BM Teacher assumes that BM Paper 2 makes up 60% of the whole BM test. So, 60% from P2 and 40% from P1 makes 100%. But this is wrong.

BM Paper 2 has a maximum score of 100. The total score of the whole BM Test is 140 (100 from P2, 40 from P1). So, the percentage of P2 from the whole test is:
P2=100/140*100
P2=(approx) 71.4

Yeah, so Paper 2 makes up about 71.4 % of the whole test. Now, you can see there's about 10% difference from my BM Teacher's 60%.

His formula should have been like this:
Total Marks=P1/40*28.6 + P2/100*71.4

This mistake in the calculation can cause some people to have a higher or lower mark than they are supposed to have. The proof is shown in a moment...


Now, the difference in the correct way of counting and my BM Teacher's way of counting can be seen in the equation below:

d=P1/40*28.6 + P2/100*71.4 - ( P1+(P2/100*60) )
Crank it, and you'll get:
d=11.4( (2 P2 - 5 P1)/200 )

Using my marks:
d=11.4( (2 x 70 - 5 x 29)/200 )
d= -0.285

We can make another formula:
R=W+d
where R=the score using the correct way of counting
W=the score using the wrong way of counting

So, using what I have:
R=71+(-0.285)
R=70.715

So, you can clearly see that I have a bonus of 0.285% in my marks, which isn't very incredible.

But, let's say you have 30 for Paper 1 and 80 for Paper 2,
W=30+80/100*60
W=78

d=11.4( (2 x 80 - 5 x 30)/200 )
d=0.57

R=W+d
R=78+0.57
R=78.57
R=(approx)79%

So, the real score is 79, but through the flawed way of calculation, you'll get 78. That's 1 mark less. The worst thing is, that mark will be the mark for BM, despite losing 1 mark. So, people, use the normal way of counting your BM mark.

As a conclusion to the formula I made up above, if you still rely on the flawed calculation method, you can determine if you gain or lose marks from the real not-flawed way of counting by using this:

if 2 x Paper 2 marks > 5 x Paper 1 marks, 2 P2>5 P1, you lose marks, so, use the correct way of counting your BM marks

if 2 x Paper 2 marks < 5 x Paper 1 marks, 2 P2<5 P1, you gain marks, so, use the flawed way to earn some marks.

But, you must ask your teacher first. If the teacher uses the wrong way of counting, then show his/her the proof.

First, count your marks using both of these formula:
A=(P1+P2)/140*100
B=P1 + P2/100*60

Compare both A and B. If A > B, you gain marks by telling his/her the right way of counting BM Marks. However, if B > A, just stick to his/her way of counting. If A=B, then do nothing. A will B if 5 x P1 = 2 x P2.

And, I've finally finished Proud Mode of Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories! I kicked Marluxia's ass like mad!! A very good way of releasing stress!!

Wednesday 10 September 2008

Hmm... here comes my stuffed animals!!

I've never talked much about my stuffed animals, apart from introducing them to you right? Well, here they are:

The name's Doggy. He's my oldest pup. I think he's around 6 years old now. I got him since when I was Standard 3. I found him in a cupboard. He is used to be my sister's, but since she dumped it into the cupboard, I adopted it when I found it. Cute, isn't he? Anyway, he's considered as the "tai ko" or the big brother of all the dogs on my bed because of his age. He is very friendly and always smiles. He is loved and well-respected by the other dogs.

Erm... I present to you Chucky. Supposed be named Chocky because of its chocolate-brown colour. Don't let the look fool you. He may be grumpy, but he's incredibly friendly. But then, he acts like a big bully to the two following dogs.

From left to right, there's Licky and Bobby. The two shy and quiet ones. Despite their quite nature, they are quite active. They are always running around here and there. The problem is, Chucky always picks on them whenever I'm not around because of their timidity. In the end, Chucky and these two dogs always make up with each other.

I know, I know, I'm very imaginative. I can't help it. Whenever I'm down, they are the ones who will make me happy again. You can't blame me for having a soft-spot for cute things right?

Anyway, today I sat for the 2nd PMR trial, or erm... school examination. Science was tricky. Very tricky!! But, at least it's gone for now, and I can finally focus on something more important. KH, BM and Sejarah. Those are the subjects which I hate the most. Oh oh, don't forget to throw in Geography!!

To tell you the truth, I find Geo easier to understand than History. To most of my friends, History is better than Geo. I don't know why. It's just that once I read Geography, it's stuck in my head. For History, the first time I read, I won't be able to understand.

Oh, I've got to go search for more HLSL Tutorials!! This is what I got yesterday from playing around with HLSL:


Cool eh? But the lighting needs a little work, because if you look at the back of the teapot, there are patches of light coming from nowhere.

Tuesday 9 September 2008

Gah!! The trials!!

I'll be sitting for my second trial exam tomorrow. Well, I'm not as nervous as the mid-terms or the first trials because this one doesn't have Paper 2 for BI and BM. But too me, that's not a good thing. I know, Paper 2 (Composition) can be very torturous, but it's vital that I can do well in my Paper 2 since most of the points come from, yep, you've guessed it, Paper 2!! Tomorrow is Science. Hopefully it'll be easy.

Yesterday, I was busy watching Brainiac: Science Abuse. It's a UK Science show. I wonder why ASTRO doesn't show it here. Yeah, I watched it in Youtube and it was amazing! It's a fun video to watch to learn Science. Trust me. It's incredibly interesting. They even electrocute celebrities, but it's not the harmful type of electrocution lah. Oh oh, and erm... if a civil war were to break out, and you are in the office, your best shields against a flying crossbow bolt is a bundle of papers and an LCD Screen!! Lol! Or if you are in the kitchen, the wok is very good, if the enemies are using longbows and cross bows lah, not very sure for guns though.

In the meantime, I've been searching the net the past few days just to find good tutorials on HLSL, or High Level Shader Language. I need to learn it if I want to learn the XNA Framework to make games. But then, most of the tutorials I found aren't really what I'm looking for. Sigh... Anyway, what's HLSL? According to Wikipedia:
The High Level Shader Language or High Level Shading Language (HLSL) is a proprietary shading language developed by Microsoft for use with the Microsoft Direct3D API
I'm not sure how to explain it, but it has something to do with telling the GPU on the video card how you want to draw the 3D Models onto the screen. Anyway, it's very cool! There are tons of effects you could do with HLSL. At first, I started learning DirectX, you know, the thing you have on your Microsoft Windows computer to run games? Yeah, I gave up learning DirectX when I saw this XNA Framework. It sounded interesting, so I started learning about it. Actually, I have no intention to learn the HLSL, because while I was using DirectX, you can just draw 3D shapes onto the screen easily without it. However, in XNA, you need HLSL just to draw the simplest 3D Triangle. If I'm making a 2D game, then yeah, I don't need HLSL, but then I'm more focused on making 3D games.

I have got to start saving money since the books about the XNA Framework doesn't come cheap. The last time I saw one was over RM130+! My jaws dropped when I saw that. I really wanted it!!

I apologize for sounding so geeky. It's just that I love programming a lot!! It's fun and quite satisfying when you see your program works out. Anyway, I've got to bring in the clothes. Gosh, house chores. How I hate them. But without them, the house would be a mess. Well, everything has its own pros and cons I guess. See ya!

Sunday 7 September 2008

My 100th Post!!

So, since this is my 100th post, I should post something interesting right? Hmm... what to post about? Think, think....

Gosh, I have no idea leh. Ah, I know!!



So, wasn't that interesting, eh? Yeah, yeah, I know. It's pretty lame.

Okay, okay, how about this?



Did you like it?
...Did I hear a no? Dang, you are one tough person to entertain, aren't you?

Alright, I know what will make you happy. Watch this video...


Hmm... you still don't look too happy. Why ah? The video's a little too childish? I find it a little amusing. Fine, fine. I'm not sure how to make this more interesting for you.

Let's do a test, small we?

This small test may include anything from 1+1 type of math to super illogical questions. Ready? The answers are at the bottom. To answer these questions, just write down your answers on a sheet of paper then check with the answers at the bottom. For some questions, like question 2, you don't have to jot down the answer on the paper. Those kind of questions just requires some kind of a very smart way to solve it. And, btw, The answers listed in between the square brackets may not necessarily be correct. For the questions with a text box where you can type text, you've got to type your answer there and press Submit. If your answer is correct, it'll say so, but if it's wrong, it won't respond.


1) 1+1=
2) Describe how does a password look like? Just type 5 characters into the text box.
3) If Tim is taller than Tom, does that mean that Tom is shorter than Tim? [Yes/No]
4) Is question number 3 a little too stupid?
5) I'm gonna give you the answer for question 6. The correct answer to the next question is not here
6) Are you happy? [Yes/No/Maybe]
7) 1,2,3,4,5,6,_,8,9,10. Fill in the blank.
8) HCl + NaOH -> ?
9) Calculate this: 111 222 333 444 5672-111 222 333 444 5662/ You must give the exact answer.
10) Last question. Ready? This will be a hard one!! This involves searching the net.
What's the first year?

I know, question 10 is pretty hard to understand.




That's it, thx for playing!!

Friday 5 September 2008

My fear has came true...

Just now, I went to see a dentist. The dentist was nice and friendly, but even so, I was feeling incredibly nervous. I was ushered to the reclining chair. Then...

"Bee Lee, is it? What seems to be the problem?" he asked.

"Well, see, the gum behind my lower-right wisdom tooth is aching for a week already. So, I was wondering, can you tell me if there's anything wrong?" Then he took a small mirror and shoved it into my mouth. Soon, he finally saw it, that annoying wisdom tooth.

"Ah, I see! Bee Lee, your gum is in your tooth's way," said the dentist.

I couldn't think of anything else but "Oh my God!!" and "Mama mia!!" for that moment.

"Do you want to have your teeth x-rayed so you'll know what's happening?" asked the dentist.

"Y-yeah, o-kay."

After that, I was brought to the X-Ray machine. I sat in front of it. The machine looked at me, I looked back at it. Then, the dentist wrapped the small stick that is sitting there in front of me and asked me to bite it. He loaded the "film" into the machine and everyone in the room left me alone. Soon, the alarm started buzzing followed by a sudden movement of the machinery. I closed my eyes for no apparent reason.

I wondered, why did I feel so scared eventhough I didn't even feel a pinch from the radiation that was going through me? Anyway, it didn't take long. The dentist asked me to go sit at the reclining chair while he prepares the x-ray slide.

After a few minutes, he showed me the slide.

"As you can see here, your gum is blocking your wisdom tooth. Because of that, your gum swelled."

"Oh?" I said curiously.

"The permanent method of rectifying your problem would be to remove that wisdom tooth of yours."

I looked at him with my eye wide opened. Then gazed at the x-ray image.

"Oh my God! All of them?" I asked.

"Nah, just the one which is causing you problem."

"Oh, okay..."

"If you want, you can ask your dad to come here so I can tell him about it?"

"Sure, sure"

So, I called my dad and the dentist revealed to my dad the problem. I told the dentist not to do the surgery now since my trials are just around the corner. There are some reasons why I told him that. One, I don't want to be studying with a swollen face or jaw or whatever. I wont' be able to concentrate if my gum or my jaw swell up and waiting for my gum to recover after the minor surgery. Second, I'm afraid. I know, I'm chickening out, but I'm really gonna do this surgery. If I do this when I'm older, it's more dangerous and harder.

After all that, I was given some antibiotics to prevent infection on my gum. Then my father had to cough up RM210 to pay for the X Ray, Antibiotics and Deposit for Surgery.

I have another appointment at 19/9/08 at 3.20pm. It's the surgery day!! Yay!! It's a 1-hour surgery. Sigh...

Thursday 4 September 2008

Rain, rain and more rain!!

Man, it has been raining cats and dogs lately! According to my Geography reference book, May-September is the period for Angin Monsun Barat Daya (AMBD), or in English, South-Western Monsoon Wind. It's really carrying a lot of rain to here in Selangor. The downside is, if there's no rain, it also blows the haze from Sumatera. But I think the haze has stopped, since it's not so hazy now.

Gosh, my gum is showing no sign of recovery. It still feels the same after about 1 week already. Tomorrow, I have a dentist appointment at 3.20pm. Whoa!! Nervous lah!! I think I might have Gingivitis!! Gingivitis is a gum disease. It happens when the bacteria from the plaque starts to deteriorate the gums. Well, it's something like that lah. I always taste dried blood whenever I lick that affected gum. Okay, okay, Julie's right, I'm overreacting!!

Anyway, my second trials are coming next week. I hope I won't forget my Sejarah. Currently, I'm studying Geography. I think I should start KH on Saturday, then Science on this Sunday. Hmm... Moral should take me about 1 day to finish. Well, it's just memorizing the moral values, nothing much.

Hey, wanna know some facts? If you have not heard of the following math facts, the you'll find this interesting. I know I did when I first heard of it.

Area of polygons

The picture above shows the way to calculate the area of a square and a rectangle. Everyone knows that.

Now, what about parallelograms?

Here's the trick: Do you see the triangle after the white, dotted line? Cut that out and move it to the other end of the parallelogram, and you should get the following:

And what do you get? A rectangle!! So, we can now conclude that the Area of a Parallelogram=Base x Height. This applies to Rhombuses as well. (or, Rhombi??) Rhombuses are slanted squares.

I guess a lot of people know about the paralellogram. So, I don't think you'll find that quite interesting. Now, how about triangles? Okay, triangles are quite different. Here's how to find the formula for the area of a triangle:

Right, you are given a triangle, something like what I drew above. I know, it's so pretty!! We all know, Area of a Triangle=1/2 x Base * Height. But how did that formula ever came to be? To find out, first, you duplicate that triangle. Take the triangle's clone, flip it over and place it so that one pair of corresponding sides are touching each other:
(The shaded triangle is the clone)
In the end, as you can see above, you'll get an awfully familiar shape. It's a parallelogram!!! And, as we've just discovered few minutes ago, Area of Parallelogram=Base x Height. So, the area of the figure above, A = Base x Height. Now, since Base x Height is for 2 triangles, 1 triangle will be equal to 1/2 x Base x Height!! Yay!!

Hmm... let's try something harder. Maybe a trapezium??
Alright then. A trapezium is a quadrilateral with only 1 pair of parallel sides. The formula to find its area is 1/2(a+b)h, where a+b is the sum of the parallel sides. Odd right? Why? It's simple to find out. Just do the same as what you can do to a triangle to find out it's area. Duplicate the trapezium, flip it over, place it at one end of the original trapezium. Let me bring out my trusty old friend, Paint!!


As you can see, when you do the cloning and flipping, you'll get a parallelogram!

Cool right? Well, that's all for today!!

Tuesday 2 September 2008

I'm addicted to Hamsterball!!

Well, some of you might ask, "what's this Hamsterball of which you speak, Bee Lee?" It's a game, made by Raptisoft. It's basically sort of like the modern-day version of the game, Marble Madness, from Atari. The objective of the game is to roll the ball, with a hamster inside, to the goal, avoiding the nasty monsters which will try their best to stop you from getting to the goal. But mostly, you'll waste your time falling off the stage and breaking the ball. I find this game kinda cute, especially the monsters.

I recorded how I suffered in the last two stages. Now, if you're a pro player, you'll probably laugh at me, but I've got to admit, the last two levels are incredibly tough. I was playing in Pipsqueak mode, the easiest mode without the monsters, rather than normal mode with all the monsters. It's too hard. And, I kinda cheated a bit to get more time limit, so in the last level, the Impossible Race, I'm not supposed to get 200+ seconds of time limit.



Oh yeah, I have also cheated in the level you saw above. There's too much time to spare.




Okay, let's talk about something else.

For about 4 days already, my gum behind my lower-right wisdom tooth is hurting for no apparent reason. After surfing the net, I suspect my wisdom tooth maybe the cause. But, I'm not exactly sure. I'm supposed to go to the dentist today, but then my father's not home. I'm getting a little nervous about my situation. If the dentist also suspects that my wisdom tooth is causing the pain, he might recommend an extraction of that tooth. It won't be like those normal tooth extraction. It's not like just clip the tooth with the caliper thingie and yank it out. No. It depends on how deep the tooth is in the gum and whether or not it is easily accessible. If the tooth can be access easily, then, fine, just pluck the tooth out. But since my wisdom tooth has, almost, no good place to grip on to, I might need to undergo a surgery. Okay,I think I'm jumping to conclusions. But if it were to happen, I will be really scared, even though I will be under anaesthetics. What if my tolerance to anaesthetics is high? And the doctor doesn't know that I'm still conscious even after administering anaesthetics? I can't scream out to him since I won't be able to feel my body. Now you see the problem? It happened to a lot of people before, but it's actually a rare occurence. But rare doesn't mean never. OMG!! Okay, okay, calm down.

I know I'm really jumping to conclusions. I can't help it. My heart is thumping fast just by thinking about it. Alright, exactly how does a wisdom tooth can cause problems to the gum. It's just an innocent tooth, sitting there and waiting to chew.

If the wisdom tooth, or the 3rd molar as it is called in medical terms, came out facing the wrong way, it could affect other teeth. If it didn't fully erupt out of the gum, and there's still a flap of tissue above the tooth, food debris could get stuck over there. It's very hard to reach those places with a toothbrush and a floss, so, bacteria starts to from due to inadequate care for that place. After that, gum infection might start. And then there's tooth decay. I found some sites that might help explain things better, so, here are the sites:

Wikipedia: Mandibular Third Molar

Wisdom Teeth Removal

Wisdom Teeth Basics: Pain, Removal and Recovery

What are impacted Wisdom Teeth? This is a good site if you wanna know how does the problems caused by Wisdom tooth start.

Extraction of Wisdom Tooth
This is a youtube video of the extraction of a wisdom tooth. Be warned, this is very gory. If you wanna watch this, and you lose your appetite after this, don't blame me.
I won't embed the video here.