Don't you feel the stress of staying connected too much sometimes? Like on Whatsapp, imessage or Facebook, it seems like there is a need to give an instantaneous reply once you receive a message. I don't mind it most of the time because of its convenience and how it connects people, but at some times it just gets so tiring to keep it up. The frequency of having time to me, myself and I and people in real life is decreasing, and even when we meet, we're still always on our phones. And for friends who are reading this, I'm not referring to anyone specific but just as a general observation. Of course it's fine if it's for emergency stuff like school, but to be on the phone for >50% of the time you're out with us then... I don't even want to be out with you!
So there you have it, the trade offs of technology. You don't always feel it, but it's definitely there and here to stay, I might add.
Sudden verbal diarrhoea because the pressure of replying instantaneously just got to me. At times like this, I just put my phone aside and don't even open or read the messages I received until I feel like it. I don't feel good doing this but I just can't help it.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Happy 9th birthday to my blog!
Just out of curiosity, I went to check the date of my first post and it happens to be today. Unknowingly my blog has existed for 9 years. Though not all my thoughts have been written here, some of them have been. So embarrassed to look at my previous posts written in secondary school because of the bad grammar and random smatterings of Singlish and the shortforms I used then. So laughable if I weren't the author of those posts. But I still wouldn't delete them or privatize those because they're a reflection of my past. Afterall, I don't think anyone bothers reading them except yours truly. I like reading them and remembering that such things used to happen and I already forgotten them. So I'm thankful for this blog to remind me of things.
You can gradually see the transition into proper English and punctuations so it's a good thing! I still remember doing the quizzes on Quizilla or some site, then you get the code for the result to just paste into the blog entry. I have so many of those. And as if those weren't enough, we would purposely re-do the quizzes until we got the desired result, then post it on our blogs and 'show off'! Hahaha. And blogging was fun then because everyone had blogs. I remember having a whole list of people in my links. It was fun tinkering with the html codes as well. And searching on blogskins to look for nice templates. I remember my favouritest template was one with pink shoes, and second favourite would have been some colour pencils template.
Without facebook or youtube or the Korean drama/variety shows hype then, coming online meant updating blogs, chatting on msn, using friendster and playing Neopets. I don't know about you, but those were enough to keep me on the computer for really long hours. Gosh I feel so old. I bet no secondary school or JC student even knows what friendster is.
Haha. And just for laughs, I shall pick out some funny posts for my loyal readers.
My first entry ever on blogger. I used diaryland last time as well. Didn't really like it because it was quite restrictive and to use all the features you need to PAY. I wonder if it still exists now.
'new diary...i used blogger before but i din noe how to use it..so i used diaryland lor..but now i noe how to use liao,so juz create another blogger account lor...
hiz..now i'm in skool,juz now i wuz helping ms cheng do the powerpoint 4 the art awareness week...i din hv lessons after recess cuz i wuz helping ms cheng wif my friend..think i betta go liao lor..gotta go home liao..bb'
Omg I don't know why I had the tendency to begin with a 'hey' and end with a 'bye'. Like I'm writing a letter or talking to a friend. And check out the shortforms. Blogging in school. I remember the Art Awareness week where I had to put videos into the powerpoint slides. So I got to skip lessons with Felicia I think. Crescent even had zocards printed just to promote the AAW. I remember keeping a lot of them because the design was very nice. I think arts awareness week became a yearly affair, if I didn't recall wrongly. I actually kept all the crescent zocards because they used the students' designs and it turned out really nice. The excessive use of 'leh' and 'lor'. Can't stand it now, seriously!
And I don't even know what I was talking about in the past. Like 'omg I can't believe they did this'. I really really don't know what that 'this' means anymore. This shows that things that I thought were so significant that I could remember them forever are actually so insignificant now. Because if they were really so important to me I should definitely be able to remember them now, right? And I believe it will always be the same. Things that I hold on so tightly now, will I even be able to remember them 10 years down the road? I can't even remember things that happened 9 years ago. Hahaha. Maybe I'm just getting old. Like I always say, my memory is so bad.
I don't know when I'll stop blogging, but for now, I will. Since I have the luxury of time to note down the little things that happen in life. I hope blogger will always continue to exist and not close down. I think I will be so devastated if it really does happen.
You can gradually see the transition into proper English and punctuations so it's a good thing! I still remember doing the quizzes on Quizilla or some site, then you get the code for the result to just paste into the blog entry. I have so many of those. And as if those weren't enough, we would purposely re-do the quizzes until we got the desired result, then post it on our blogs and 'show off'! Hahaha. And blogging was fun then because everyone had blogs. I remember having a whole list of people in my links. It was fun tinkering with the html codes as well. And searching on blogskins to look for nice templates. I remember my favouritest template was one with pink shoes, and second favourite would have been some colour pencils template.
Without facebook or youtube or the Korean drama/variety shows hype then, coming online meant updating blogs, chatting on msn, using friendster and playing Neopets. I don't know about you, but those were enough to keep me on the computer for really long hours. Gosh I feel so old. I bet no secondary school or JC student even knows what friendster is.
Haha. And just for laughs, I shall pick out some funny posts for my loyal readers.
My first entry ever on blogger. I used diaryland last time as well. Didn't really like it because it was quite restrictive and to use all the features you need to PAY. I wonder if it still exists now.
'new diary...i used blogger before but i din noe how to use it..so i used diaryland lor..but now i noe how to use liao,so juz create another blogger account lor...
hiz..now i'm in skool,juz now i wuz helping ms cheng do the powerpoint 4 the art awareness week...i din hv lessons after recess cuz i wuz helping ms cheng wif my friend..think i betta go liao lor..gotta go home liao..bb'
Omg I don't know why I had the tendency to begin with a 'hey' and end with a 'bye'. Like I'm writing a letter or talking to a friend. And check out the shortforms. Blogging in school. I remember the Art Awareness week where I had to put videos into the powerpoint slides. So I got to skip lessons with Felicia I think. Crescent even had zocards printed just to promote the AAW. I remember keeping a lot of them because the design was very nice. I think arts awareness week became a yearly affair, if I didn't recall wrongly. I actually kept all the crescent zocards because they used the students' designs and it turned out really nice. The excessive use of 'leh' and 'lor'. Can't stand it now, seriously!
And I don't even know what I was talking about in the past. Like 'omg I can't believe they did this'. I really really don't know what that 'this' means anymore. This shows that things that I thought were so significant that I could remember them forever are actually so insignificant now. Because if they were really so important to me I should definitely be able to remember them now, right? And I believe it will always be the same. Things that I hold on so tightly now, will I even be able to remember them 10 years down the road? I can't even remember things that happened 9 years ago. Hahaha. Maybe I'm just getting old. Like I always say, my memory is so bad.
I don't know when I'll stop blogging, but for now, I will. Since I have the luxury of time to note down the little things that happen in life. I hope blogger will always continue to exist and not close down. I think I will be so devastated if it really does happen.
Monday, August 20, 2012
LSM2241 Introductory Bioinformatics
[05012013 EDIT] I took this module in year 2010/2011 Semester 2. From what I know, the lecturers are different now so this review might not be so relevant now. There is no more miniproject and the lectures are given by one lecturer now.
I know it's a little late to be doing reviews now, considering that bidding is already over and school has already started. But I can always benefit other people in future right? Okay so bioinformatics review.
I got my first and only B- for a core module and yes, it was for bioinformatics. Took this because we had to choose either bioinformatics or ecology. And eschewing anything outdoors and field trips and writing essays, I chose bioinfomatics for the computer lab sessions. It was the worst ever decision, really.
Content: I never learnt anything out of the entire module. Apart from getting a Wizfolio account which does automatic citations for my lab reports and using the library system to get research papers, that is. I didn't understand anything at all. The lectures were really very technical and about programming and databases. Can't remember much about the content because there probably wasn't much in the first place. Not forgetting that the lecture is early in the morning at 10am, I think I often dozed off or started talking to people beside me.
Lecturers: I lost count of how many lecturers we had. I think we had 4 lecturers in total, which made understanding really difficult. Because they were all foreigners except one. When I finally got used to how one lecturer spoke and decided I can understand him, he finishes his lectures and I can't decipher the next lecturer's words again. But not to worry, the lectures are webcasted so you can re-play and re-play until you understand. I didn't do that at all. So maybe that's why I only got a B-.
Assessment: We had one presentation (10%), one miniproject (45%). The miniproject is really a misnomer. It's a mega project literally. But don't worry. You just need to do mostly admin work like using excel. It was more like an excel crash course for me than anything else. We started our project super early hoping we could be ahead of other groups and finish early to write our report. But our Teaching Assistant (TA) was really useless and unhelpful. We kept approaching her for help and each time we asked her the same thing, she gave us a different answer. In the end, we kept on re-doing and re-doing and re-re-re-doing the same thing all over again. My group and I spent about 70% of our time in the semester on this project, meeting online every night till 4am and regularly in school and yet we got the worst grades of the cohort. If you're taking this, I suggest you don't start so early. Bioinfo was the worst module that we ever took. I learnt nothing out of the project. I repeat, NOTHING at all! And there's the final exam, which was open book. But suffice to say, open book usually means killer questions. The notes did nothing to help.
Lab sessions: Presentation were held during these lab sessions. And beware of the Q&A sessions at the end, or sudden interruptions by the lecturer to question your slides. Lab sessions were a real waste of time, I think they were 4 hours long, and they mostly let us do the 'lab' report in the lab for most of the time, and then start going through at the end, like 30 minutes before the lab ended. They always claim that we need to know how to do the lab report to do the miniproject. But.. we never used a single thing we did in the lab on our miniproject! Quite a few people had to leave early for lessons at other places, like yours truly. So we never once got to listen to the answers for the lab reports. Answers were uploaded but isn't the explanation more important?
Omg my blood started boiling towards the middle of this review. Thinking of how we suffered and still got such grades. Not that I was expecting an A, but still.. So if you're intending to take this, I suggest you either abandon your friends and join a group of smart people for them to do the work for you while you just claim credit. This way you learn nothing as well, but you get a good grade since the final exam doesn't really count for much. There isn't much to study for this module either. I can't say much about ecology, but I gather nothing can be worse than what I have been through. I'm sure Amanda and Joanne will agree with me. And this was the first time ever that I sat in a lecture and didn't understand what the lecturer was saying at all. This never ever happened even for the level 3000 modules or the only level 4000 tumor biology module I took. This is getting too long. I hope this review helps you choose wisely. If you have the habit of reading reviews in the middle of the sem like I did, when you're already taking the modules then.. all the best to you(:
I know it's a little late to be doing reviews now, considering that bidding is already over and school has already started. But I can always benefit other people in future right? Okay so bioinformatics review.
I got my first and only B- for a core module and yes, it was for bioinformatics. Took this because we had to choose either bioinformatics or ecology. And eschewing anything outdoors and field trips and writing essays, I chose bioinfomatics for the computer lab sessions. It was the worst ever decision, really.
Content: I never learnt anything out of the entire module. Apart from getting a Wizfolio account which does automatic citations for my lab reports and using the library system to get research papers, that is. I didn't understand anything at all. The lectures were really very technical and about programming and databases. Can't remember much about the content because there probably wasn't much in the first place. Not forgetting that the lecture is early in the morning at 10am, I think I often dozed off or started talking to people beside me.
Lecturers: I lost count of how many lecturers we had. I think we had 4 lecturers in total, which made understanding really difficult. Because they were all foreigners except one. When I finally got used to how one lecturer spoke and decided I can understand him, he finishes his lectures and I can't decipher the next lecturer's words again. But not to worry, the lectures are webcasted so you can re-play and re-play until you understand. I didn't do that at all. So maybe that's why I only got a B-.
Assessment: We had one presentation (10%), one miniproject (45%). The miniproject is really a misnomer. It's a mega project literally. But don't worry. You just need to do mostly admin work like using excel. It was more like an excel crash course for me than anything else. We started our project super early hoping we could be ahead of other groups and finish early to write our report. But our Teaching Assistant (TA) was really useless and unhelpful. We kept approaching her for help and each time we asked her the same thing, she gave us a different answer. In the end, we kept on re-doing and re-doing and re-re-re-doing the same thing all over again. My group and I spent about 70% of our time in the semester on this project, meeting online every night till 4am and regularly in school and yet we got the worst grades of the cohort. If you're taking this, I suggest you don't start so early. Bioinfo was the worst module that we ever took. I learnt nothing out of the project. I repeat, NOTHING at all! And there's the final exam, which was open book. But suffice to say, open book usually means killer questions. The notes did nothing to help.
Lab sessions: Presentation were held during these lab sessions. And beware of the Q&A sessions at the end, or sudden interruptions by the lecturer to question your slides. Lab sessions were a real waste of time, I think they were 4 hours long, and they mostly let us do the 'lab' report in the lab for most of the time, and then start going through at the end, like 30 minutes before the lab ended. They always claim that we need to know how to do the lab report to do the miniproject. But.. we never used a single thing we did in the lab on our miniproject! Quite a few people had to leave early for lessons at other places, like yours truly. So we never once got to listen to the answers for the lab reports. Answers were uploaded but isn't the explanation more important?
Omg my blood started boiling towards the middle of this review. Thinking of how we suffered and still got such grades. Not that I was expecting an A, but still.. So if you're intending to take this, I suggest you either abandon your friends and join a group of smart people for them to do the work for you while you just claim credit. This way you learn nothing as well, but you get a good grade since the final exam doesn't really count for much. There isn't much to study for this module either. I can't say much about ecology, but I gather nothing can be worse than what I have been through. I'm sure Amanda and Joanne will agree with me. And this was the first time ever that I sat in a lecture and didn't understand what the lecturer was saying at all. This never ever happened even for the level 3000 modules or the only level 4000 tumor biology module I took. This is getting too long. I hope this review helps you choose wisely. If you have the habit of reading reviews in the middle of the sem like I did, when you're already taking the modules then.. all the best to you(:
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