quotes of the day Hey what's that!!? -- Danny, Chief Barista of Geek Terminal I was wearing my Starbucks T-shirt. *shrug* I do wear NUS t-shirt into NTU. 笑, 笑多一点 (Chinese, "laugh, laugh more") -- A girl at the bus stop who was also wearing a Starbucks T-shirt. Her friend kept giggling after they saw me. Had a very satisfying Saturday today. In the morning met up with the tech65 crew and fellow bloggers nicole coffee, milo, or espresso The other day I was with a coursemate at a cafe in campus. He came back from the counter with a plasitc cup of brown liquid, and I asked if it was Milo (please, nothing yucky). My coursemate went on to share with me something interesting. He said, when you are dating a Japanese girl, there are 2 drinks you shouldn't order: milo and coffee. Milo makes you seem childish and immature, while coffee back in ntu It's final year and I always hear my coursemates happily talking about where their Final Year Project (FYP) lab is. Where is my FYP lab? It is at the other university. Some one year ago I was working there. To be exact, a research institute located inside NTU. And today I was back. Same place, same building. My old boss was gone though. So much has changed in NTU. There are new batches of girls human factor, human error, human problem Yesterday our project group was brainstorming for ideas for our Human Factors in Engineering and Design module. Obviously, the project has to incorporate elements of human factors inside. We came up with many possible ideas, and realized that most of the time at the end of the tunnel the problem lies with the human and has to be solved by the human. Many a times, the design looks impressive on crispy visit I just came back from a visit to CRISP (Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing). As the name suggests, CRISP takes care of remote imaging, sensing and processing. -_- Basically, they play with satellites and related stuff, such as spotting hotspots (NOT the WiFi hotspots) in the region. They are situated at Block S17, Faculty of Science, NUS. When people's umbrella aren't flipped, patriot game I happened to be at Dhoby Ghaut when the Hippo buses carrying our Olympic silver medalists passed by. I may not be the most patriotic person on earth, but I took the clapper sticks and cheered on with the crowd as the open deck buses crawled pass. I know recently there are many talks about foreign talents, imports and such, and I do have my views on it, but how about put it this way: I was not there are many young engineers I really like this video from Norwegian aluminium company Hydro, and their tagline "There are many young engineers. We can't wait till they grow up." When I saw the train go 360 I was really wide-eyed. O_o There is another version, of kids remote-controlling a motorcar. Ok, I haven't met a Norwegian kid. silver jubilee crap On August 25, chillycraps (the shell behind the blogger) celebrated 25 years of existence on earth. Thank you for all your well wishes on sms, on facebook, on plurk, and in class. And thank you for the mini celebration in campus, fellow engineering friends hj, otc, ivan, aravin, tata and xin! And after that guess what, I went shopping with the 2 mechanical engineering girls. They were hunting silence, i queue you Sometimes I seriously think people queue up just for the sake of queuing. The other day I was at some carnival or something. I stood one side, waiting for the parents to finish visiting the booths. Then a woman came to me and asked me "你这里是排什麽的?" (in Chinese, "what is this queue for?") Firstly, there wasn't any queue. Secondly, I just feel amused. It's like, got queue, will queue. There was Singapore Fireworks Celebration 2008 Did you catch the Singapore Fireworks Celebration 2008 at Marina Bay? If not, I have recorded a 10-odd minutes clip from last night's Korean Fantasia. Singapore Fireworks Celebrations from chillycraps on Vimeo. Not taking into account the amount of money burned or the pollutants produced, watching fireworks has always been a joy. Some people make wishes, some oooh, some aaah, some clap, some private barrier gate Yesterday I was at Marina Square food court watching the Singapore Fireworks Celebration 2008, and I saw some Singapore style selfishness. The outdoor eating area of the food court has 2 rows of tables, separated with one single walkway in the middle. So there was this woman across from the aisle, further from the parapet wall. When there were people standing in the walkway, she would tell them bird over bird's nest I haven't had the chance to talk about the Beijing National Stadium, aka Bird's Nest. Using/wasting a horrible 45000 tonnes of steel, it is definitely some engineering project. Before the Beijing Olympics closes this Sunday, let me show you some nice satellite photos taken from GeoEye. Taken on August 27, 2006, they are still building the nest. October 7, 2007, the nest looks more complete. July red dot for crap A few days ago a coursemate of mine was suggesting me to take part in red dot design award. I seriously think he was joking. Red dot design award is an annual design award given to good designs. There are 3 categories, namely product design, communication design and design concept. Sometimes you can see some consumer products proudly display the logo in their brochure, so you can see how tumbler how much This has happened a few times since the semester started, at both Science and Engineering canteen. I went to the coffee stall, filled up my tumbler with coffee, went to the cashier, and the cashier would ask me "how much?" Huh? Where can you find cashier asking customer how much? Ok, actually the cashier didn't know how much to charge me cos she didn't know how much had I filled. Canteen quote of the day Don't worry about the expression here. It will come out in the tutorial problem. -- Prof Wong YS Department of Mechanical Engineering NUS You know, when you spend too much time working with metals, you get a lot of ironies. plurk vs blog When the site is not down, the plurk monsters really take the cake from conventional blogging. Some call it microblogging, plurk is like the chimera between twitter and blog. You have the interaction that twitter lacks, and the timeliness at the tip of your itchy fingers that blog lacks. The official punchline is "your life, on the line", and surely it runs in a timeline style. (but going by the skribit If you scroll down a bit and look at my far right most sidebar, you will notice a new widget with a froggy, the skribit widget. While blog hopping, I came across some blogs with this widget. This toy allows readers to suggest titles or topics for the blogger to write about. Very helpful especially when the blogger runs out of topics, which is not uncommon. Also, readers may want to hear the sticking your legs I was snapping photos of pretty girls in LT20 (nah, I don't) when I caught this: Don't worry, no one's foot got stuck. Being a territorial animal, I feel that it is not quite right to stick your legs to the row in front. Who knows what have your feet stepped onto. Mud, dog shit, man's pee (trust me, you will always find urine on the floor of the male's toilet. Some men drip). And now you how to handle engineering problem When I need to move from one level to another in campus, sometimes if it's just a few storeys I'll just use the staircase instead of the lift. So today I was at Engineering E1A when I wanted to go from Level 4 to Level 3. I walked down the stairs and this is what I saw... Other than the questions of the choice of materials or the design of the handle, most importantly how do I get out from quote of the day Project is very important. It is the difference between A+ and A. -- Assoc Prof Naresh Kumar Department of Industrial & System Engineering NUS mature audience Went for my first lecture for IE5301 Human Factors in Engineering and Design yesterday evening. 6pm to 9pm, urgh! The class has a very interesting mix of students. We have PhD students, MSc students, and the few of us BEng kids. There are Singaporeans, Belgian, Americans, French, Swedes, Chinese, and other nationals. There are full time students, part time students, working adults, slacking kids kukup revisited Went on a little trip to Johore on Sunday. Destination: Kukup. First took MRT train to Jurong East, then switched to the yellow bus which went by the Second Link. Alighted at Gelang Patah and changed to a cab to Kukup. After lunch took a bus to Pontian, then from there switched to another bus to Larkin. Then took SBS Transit bus to downtown Johore Bahru (that sounds weird, but I have bus nus freshmen recognition guide 08/09 Following the annual practise, it's time to publish the NUS Freshmen Recognition Guide AY08/09! Come to think of it, now I can't really tell if the person walking in campus is freshie or stalie... Continuing from the previous edition: 16. They tell you they are year 1. (this one you can't miss) 17. Pronounce CORS as C-O-R-S. 18. There is a saying that if a guy walks around campus with dyed hair hell in canteen The other day I was on my way to meet my coursemate for coffee at Engin Canteen (officially called Techno Edge. What a name that few people use), then suddenly I received a SMS from her. "Hell". I was like, what the hell? Then she went on to explain, she was at the lowest deck. Engin canteen has 3 decks. So if the lowest deck is hell, I presume the middle deck is earth, and the top deck is 151 on double deck A few days ago I received an email from the university saying that SBS Transit now has double decker buses running service 151. I couldn't quite believe it until I saw one on the way to campus yesterday, and sat inside one on my way back. Sitting is believing. On my way to school I was in the single deck Scania K230UB, with a friend from NUS Civil Engineering who specializes in transportation. hole of the day Have you seen a hole with thread? --Prof Wong YS Department of Mechanical Engineering, NUS I mean, no thread how to screw?! Ok, some of the juniors didn't know what a tapped hole is. quote of the day me: ooi, I tell you first hor, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to chase you. cute NTU girl: why won't I think of that? Let's just say that the 2 of us talk weirdly all the time. This time round, we met behind bars. At the MRT station. Should I have tapped my card and take the train with her? you are your gpa Yesterday I had a meeting with my FYP supervisors. I have 2 supervisors, one from NUS and the other from an external research agency. So we were talking and talking about my project, then suddenly the external supervisor popped this question: "what is your GPA?" GPA. Grade point average. Not GTA. So when I told them my CAP (NUS' version) which is nowhere near an astronomical value, I guess the quote of the day You have a few GOES. Not the 7th month ghost... -- Dr Liew SC CRISP, NUS Dr Liew was telling us about Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) during GEK2503 Remote Sensing for Earth Observation lecture. The lecturer started the lecture by showing us a short clip from the movie Enemy of the State and went on to say how much of the satellite camera scene was untrue. Then the rest chillycraps in 65bits Episode 83 of 65bits podcast is up, served chilled. Listen to my magnetic resonating voice here. Coincidentally, I was born in the year of 83.