Dreamt of Tiger Woods training for golf by hitting balls into a hole from about 5 metres away many times a day. Was very impressed as the hole is a raised surface with vertical slopes. Or rather, the area around the hole is concave downwards, and there is no sloped path to hit a ball in. In other words, the ball can only enter the hole by chipping (not sure if this term is golf-technically correct or not) it through the air. Imagine the precision needed. It's probably tougher than hitting the white line or edge when playing table tennis. And I actually talked to him, I think (more details get lost the longer I delay penning my dreams down).
Then I woke up and realised that it was just a dream, and that I don't even watch golf in the first place. So it wasn't impressive as it's a dream, and few things are impossible in dreams.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
SoC printing problem
So SoC is currently having this printing problem where if you print wirelessly, the spooling gets incredibly slow (20min for a lecture note).
I'm not the sort of person who waits for "someone else" to do it (todo: sci lib com lock, soc missing mag, laser, recycle), so I decided to do something about it.
I visited the technical helpdesk:
Firstly the person suggest for me to map \\nts27\pc to my netbook as a network drive. It makes no sense to me but well she's the expert and I'm no system admin. It doesn't help.
Next she claims that my file is too big, too many pages etc... I proceed to print a 22kb pdf file with only two pages. It took a long time. So she called the technical guy and they spoke over the phone. The guy says that my file took 36mb on the spool and that he had cleared it. (*) They didn't give any explanation, nor any timeframe for which they'll solve it (not that they owed me one), and only say that this issue has been known for quite sometime and that they recently changed the printing mechanisms.
I'm not satisfied. I mean this is the School of Computing for goodness sake. If there's a problem related to computing, one would think this is the last place in the school where it'll happen. The irony. I'm not angry about this, just amused and inconvenienced.
So I asked, "So what can be done?" She asked, "Do you want to speak to the technician?" and I answered in the affirmative, "Yes I would like to". What happened next made me really angry. She told the other person on the line, "Quek ah, got someone want to speak to you. .... he insisted to speak to you" and mentioned not just once, but at least thrice that "I insisted". What an false allegation! For the record, she suggested and asked if I would like to speak to the technician and all I said was a simple "Yes I would like to". On top of that, she was blatantly lying while I was just in front of her.
I could sense that the technician was kinda unwilling to speak to a "student" and she somehow wanted to absolve herself of any association to me wanting to speak to him, hence this lie. But sorry, this is not a white lie. It is black.
I am not angry that the wireless print spooling takes a crazily long time and that it is not fixed to date (can't blame people for their incompetency). I can always print from the programming labs. But I am infuriated that I get accused by someone of saying something which I didn't say, especially when I'm just in front of accuser. My straight face didn't reveal that I'm angry or anything. There is no emotion, there is peace.
In retrospect, I should have recorded the entire conversation to prove that what I said in this post is true. But hindsight is 20/20, and you have the choice whether or not to believe in me.
(*) I did some experiments later. A regular .txt file spools immediately from wireless, hence .pdf (and the printer driver installed on wireless devices) is most probably the culprit.
Later I printed a .pdf file using the exact same print settings, once wireless from my netbook and another time from a programming lab. As usual, it took a very long time to spool wirelessly, and it was very quick from the programming lab. I suspect that there's a problem with the printer drivers (settings) on wireless devices (I have deleted and reinstalled the printer drivers prior to the test) causing the filesize to be extremely large when spooling. However, as I do not have sufficient privilleges on the school's printers, I'm unable to select "Pause printing" for the printer to check the size of the file in the spool. When I tried printing it at home using the same settings, the filesize is just 181kb in the spool for the 22kb .pdf file. I have a different printer (and hence different printer driver) though, so it doesn't really say much.
I don't think I'm going to experiment further with .ppt and other file formats (to get the classes of documents for which this is an issue. probably happens with postscript printing). It's not my job, it's theirs. It's not worth the effort, and they're not going to be grateful. I have my projects, homework, tutorials to do, and books to read and study. For now, I'll just print from the computer labs.
I was angry then, I'm not angry now that I'm typed this out. Peace out.
I'm not the sort of person who waits for "someone else" to do it (todo: sci lib com lock, soc missing mag, laser, recycle), so I decided to do something about it.
I visited the technical helpdesk:
Firstly the person suggest for me to map \\nts27\pc to my netbook as a network drive. It makes no sense to me but well she's the expert and I'm no system admin. It doesn't help.
Next she claims that my file is too big, too many pages etc... I proceed to print a 22kb pdf file with only two pages. It took a long time. So she called the technical guy and they spoke over the phone. The guy says that my file took 36mb on the spool and that he had cleared it. (*) They didn't give any explanation, nor any timeframe for which they'll solve it (not that they owed me one), and only say that this issue has been known for quite sometime and that they recently changed the printing mechanisms.
I'm not satisfied. I mean this is the School of Computing for goodness sake. If there's a problem related to computing, one would think this is the last place in the school where it'll happen. The irony. I'm not angry about this, just amused and inconvenienced.
So I asked, "So what can be done?" She asked, "Do you want to speak to the technician?" and I answered in the affirmative, "Yes I would like to". What happened next made me really angry. She told the other person on the line, "Quek ah, got someone want to speak to you. .... he insisted to speak to you" and mentioned not just once, but at least thrice that "I insisted". What an false allegation! For the record, she suggested and asked if I would like to speak to the technician and all I said was a simple "Yes I would like to". On top of that, she was blatantly lying while I was just in front of her.
I could sense that the technician was kinda unwilling to speak to a "student" and she somehow wanted to absolve herself of any association to me wanting to speak to him, hence this lie. But sorry, this is not a white lie. It is black.
I am not angry that the wireless print spooling takes a crazily long time and that it is not fixed to date (can't blame people for their incompetency). I can always print from the programming labs. But I am infuriated that I get accused by someone of saying something which I didn't say, especially when I'm just in front of accuser. My straight face didn't reveal that I'm angry or anything. There is no emotion, there is peace.
In retrospect, I should have recorded the entire conversation to prove that what I said in this post is true. But hindsight is 20/20, and you have the choice whether or not to believe in me.
(*) I did some experiments later. A regular .txt file spools immediately from wireless, hence .pdf (and the printer driver installed on wireless devices) is most probably the culprit.
Later I printed a .pdf file using the exact same print settings, once wireless from my netbook and another time from a programming lab. As usual, it took a very long time to spool wirelessly, and it was very quick from the programming lab. I suspect that there's a problem with the printer drivers (settings) on wireless devices (I have deleted and reinstalled the printer drivers prior to the test) causing the filesize to be extremely large when spooling. However, as I do not have sufficient privilleges on the school's printers, I'm unable to select "Pause printing" for the printer to check the size of the file in the spool. When I tried printing it at home using the same settings, the filesize is just 181kb in the spool for the 22kb .pdf file. I have a different printer (and hence different printer driver) though, so it doesn't really say much.
I don't think I'm going to experiment further with .ppt and other file formats (to get the classes of documents for which this is an issue. probably happens with postscript printing). It's not my job, it's theirs. It's not worth the effort, and they're not going to be grateful. I have my projects, homework, tutorials to do, and books to read and study. For now, I'll just print from the computer labs.
I was angry then, I'm not angry now that I'm typed this out. Peace out.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Caveat Emptor: Miracle Laundry Ball
Saw a "Miracle Laundry Ball" advertisement at Carrefour, Suntec. I found it interesting and took a photo of it, thinking that I may one day get this incredible invention when I have more money so I can save even more money (on detergent). It didn't occur to me to do more research (though I may actually do so if I were intent to get it) on this product when I'm free, as I though mistakenly that this advertisement is endorsed by Carrefour, and that if it's endorsed by such a big company, it must not be making fraudulent claims.
Today I saw this post: Diary of A Singaporean Mind: Great Singapore Sale : Miracle Laundry Ball (thanks for the heads up)
Now I look at the photo I took and noticed that there it is actually an advertisement by the company selling the ball, McCoy, as opposed to a promotional advertisement by Carrefour.
From this, I learnt that we must not trust advertisements even if they're hosted by companies with a reputation to protect.
And I guess I can save $59.90. Yay!
Monday, May 18, 2009
The pedant in me: Facebook UK Fail
For a company recently valued at $3.7 billion, I would expect their employees to have better grammar. Such a rich IT company should have the resources to check the language in their interfaces with more than just spell check (the bare minimum for any work in English produced or parsed on a computer).
Screenshots taken from http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Gates/502040841 at SGT 9:42 PM Monday, May 18, 2009
Screenshots taken from http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Gates/502040841 at SGT 9:42 PM Monday, May 18, 2009
I like Cats
Don't know why my sister is mortally afraid of them though.
This is the resident cat at my block. He took the lift up with me.
This post is actually just an excuse to use the 'cat' tag because there's already a 'dog' tag.
This is the resident cat at my block. He took the lift up with me.
This post is actually just an excuse to use the 'cat' tag because there's already a 'dog' tag.
NDP Balloting and My Strategy this Year
Ticket application is from 16 May 2009 to 25 May 2009 and is NOT based on a first-come-first-served basis.P(ballot x tix on y) = P(ballot x tix on z), where y and z are between 16 May 2009 to 25 May 2009
Each applicant must choose one out of the two choices given, either NDP or Preview Ticket. (NDP is on 9 August 2009; the Preview is on 1 August 2009).I'll ballot for the NDP ticket as I prefer it over the preview.
Each applicant must choose 2, 4 or 6 tickets. The chance of obtaining 2 tickets will be higher than that of obtaining 4 or 6 tickets. Similarly, the chance of obtaining 4 tickets will be higher than that of 6 tickets.P(2 tix) > P(4 tix) > P(6 tix)
As usual, to maximize the chance of getting a ticket, I'll ask my parents and sister if I can use their NRICs to ballot for the tickets. Last year I balloted for 2, 4 and 6 NDP tickets and didn't get it. It was a flawed strategy, based on what I hope to get. I do not want to get as many NDP tickets as possible. I just want to get 2 (at least 1, but they come in 2s anyway) NDP tickets. Let's analyse why my strategy last year was wrong and what balloting strategy I will be using this year:
First of all, we have to make a few assumptions:
- They are using a pseudo-random generator to select the winning ballots. There's no need to rush to ballot since any time within the given time will have equal chance for same ballot. This means that no one can game the system. Incidentally, the company that is running the ballot system is 10tacle Studios, a game development company. Gaming the system, game company.. both got game.. mm.. OK nvm, I'm just being lame.
- P(2 tix) = 2*P(4 tix) = 3*P(6 tix) = d, where d is a small positive number closer to 0 than 1. I guess that this is a reasonable assumption. It satisfies "P(2 tix) > P(4 tix) > P(6 tix)", and it's somewhat intuitively fair since the mathematical expectation are the same: E(2 tix) = E(4 tix) = E(6 tix). I mean if I were to set the parameters, I would set it as such.
Expectation is mostly useful only when dealing with many many many trials. In this case, I only had three ballots. Also, I was seeking to have at least 2 ticket instead of having as many tickets as possible. In fact, with a fixed number of ballots at one's disposal, one cannot improve the expected values of tickets possible based on assumption 2. So what's my strategy for this year's ballot? It's to shoot low in order to maximize P(having at least 2 tix with 3 ballots): P(2 tix) + P(2 tix) + P(2 tix) >= P(a tix) + P(b tix) + P(c tix). There you have it, my NDP ballot strategy for this year~!
Of course, a yet better strategy is to ask around for the tickets or for people to ballot with their NRIC for you. But I don't know many people and don't like to ask for favours.
Have you balloted?
http://www.ndp.org.sg/
Promoting the ndp website actually reduces the value of d, so I should not do it if I were really desperate to get a ticket. Then again, the value of d is already so small, and my blog probably has a readership of 1 (me) at the moment.
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