The Office

Now I'm back working in the office, normal 0900-1800 working hours. The first day was spent heading to the research centre in the morning to get a briefing on how to use the improved transcribing software. The first thing that came to my mind when the window opens: "Waaaa... so many buttons~" Hahaha, yup! Compared with the software that we used last year, this one's interface is filled with more & more buttons. But we didn't actually have to touch all of them except a few essential ones, so it's just a matter of getting used to staring at the window full of buttons, lol... The rest of the day and today were then spent on getting familiarized with the new interface and functions. My progress has been very slow so far, also due to some technical problems... but all is well now so tomorrow I'll be able to go full speed, ohohohohoo..... XD

Mainly in this entry, I'd like to share with you a music video that my sister showed me last week...or was it 2 weeks ago, hehehe... The song's titled "I Eat Cannibals". I find the lyrics sooooo funny, that I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed for quite some time!!! The melody kinda got stuck in my head for a few days too, though, lol... So here's the video that my sis found (watch the video to also see the lyrics):

Then I found the original MV for this song. It's actually performed by Total Coelo, a British new wave vocal group formed in the 1980s. The hit single "I Eat Cannibals Part 1" actually reached the Top Ten in UK back then =O Check out the original MV:

Somehow the first video is more entertaining, I think... maybe because of all the colourful dancers, haha... And after a closer observation, there's another funny thing about this song - if the woman's actually so attracted to the guy that she wants to eat him, won't that make her the cannibal here? Then, shouldn't the title be something like "I am a Cannibal" instead? Hmmmm... =/

The Aftermath of the Adventures at IMM

The adventures at IMM finally ended last Thursday! We didn't actually reach the final target, but it was really close... Oh well, we did our best and were quite satisfied with the final turn out. Definitely a rewarding 2 weeks experience - got to learn new skills, made new friends & know them all better, worked with great and fun people, interacted with strangers in a good way (including with kids, lolz). I definitely have gained more things now to be carried through my future endeavours (pardon me if this sentence don't make much sense, because I myself don't know how to express it, meheheheee~).

Of course I've got the chance to take a few pictures when we worked there, kekeke.... So here they are:

Us at work

The 'forever-modified' banner

An admin table, just for moi =D

Some shots taken using my laptop ^_^;


The latest form of the modified banner XD

The crew~

And thus from Monday onwards, we'll be back working in the office to transcribe all of the voice samples that we've collected. Will it be fun? Will it be boring? Gonna find out soon enough ^_^

My Programmer Personality Type

A week has passed working at IMM, and we haven't reached our target yet! Still short of voice samples of English-speaking Malays and Indians, so most probably we'll have to extend the collection to Thursday, haiz... The statistics looked quite bad last weekend... but the past 2 days has been much much better and looks more promising. I'm quite positive that we'll finally reach our target by this Thursday, whee~ After which is a short break, before we start transcribing all of the voice samples from next Monday, then another 'headache' will begin, lol XD


Today when we all chatted a bit during work (got time to chat because almost no one pass by our booth at that time), Nicole suggested that we take the 'Programmer Personality Test' online.. said she has done it but never post the result in her blog, haha... I don't actually code much except at school during labs, but thought I'll just do the test for the fun of it (and my hair's still wet so I can't go to sleep yet, hehehe...). Got the link from Hendri's blog, and here's the result...


Your programmer personality type is: DHTB

You're a Doer.
You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better. After all, time is money.

You like coding at a High level.
The world is made up of objects and components, you should create your programs in the same way.

You work best in a Team.
A good group is better than the sum of it's parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers.

You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.


Hmmm, the result's rather true... not so sure about the Doer part, though, haha... If you want to try it out as well, you can find the test at Doolwind’s Game Coding Site.


Have fun~

And the Results are.....

Finally the exam results are out!!! Tried my luck to check slightly after midnight, and my grades for the semester just appeared on my monitor - I passed all of my modules, whee~ So that means I don't have to repeat anything & am promoted to year 3!!!! I'm so happy now that I couldn't sleep, although I have to wake up early for work later, hehehe... If I didn't calculate wrongly, I've done better than last sem, so it's a great great great relieve, phew~ ^_^;


And yes, my part-time job also finally started from last Monday, it's been 4 days already now. For the next 10 days, I'll be stationed at IMM to collect the voice samples every day, including this weekend *sobz*. So far it's been a very interesting experience. The first day started off a bit slow due to the first time setup on site, and also was rather shy & afraid to approach passersby in that mall, hehe... We were supposed to get people to record their voices for the research for 10-15 minutes. After all the jitters and hiccups, everything went very well. The response was much better than I expected, lol... Indeed, the $10 compensation for the participants is a very attractive offer.

Many many people agreed to spend their time recording their voices for us - students, office workers, aunties, uncles, tai-tais, grannies, grandpas... People from all walks of life were there! Interacting with them has been very interesting, too. I've learnt many new things like how to approach people, how to convince them to participate, how to pull in the groups of people that we're targeting at, thought of new strategies to improve the response from time to time, a bit of admin skills... and I think the way I speak has improved, maybe just a bit, hahaha... As usual, I'm experiencing something that proved to teach me several new skills that could be useful in the future =)


There are quite a number of interesting observations on the way people behave or react so far. Unfortunately, I have to head to my bed now because, as I said in the first paragraph, I have to wake up early, and need to conserve my energy to survive through the rest of the week camping at IMM, lol... Ah, but before I leave, I'd like to take this opportunity to do a bit of an advertisement:

"Get $10 cash in just 15 minutes at IMM, level 2 (outside Kopitiam). All you have to do is let us record your voice while you read several short and simple sentences, and the $10 is all yours! Only for Singaporeans above 25 years old, until 13 June 2007 (everyday including weekend, 1230 - 2030 hrs). Only left 200+ voice samples needed out of the target of 500, so come on down before it's too late! See you there~"


Oh and by the way, the voice samples are to be used to develop a voice recognition system (which could recognise Singaporeans) and the research is conducted by a local research centre. Currently we really need especially more Malays and Indians' voice samples (but still need the ones from the Chinese community as well, hehe). So your support in this project will be greatly appreciated (^_^)

5 Reasons Why I Blog

Few weeks ago, Pat tagged me and this time I'm supposed to list down '5 Reasons Why I Blog'. I've read what Pat have written for this tag herself, but she wrote quite a lot of stuff! I'm feeling a bit lazy now so will just keep each point short, hehehe... So here it goes:

1. Stories
Simply, I'd like to share my experiences with my friends & anyone who happen to come across my blog, especially the interesting ones...whether they're exciting, new, happy, sad, tragic (hopefully have none of this type, lol), funny, etc. I also write about any events that I attend or even participate in, also for practicing since I'm part of the Publications team in my school club and attended a few events in the process. Although I was only the photographer, I also want to tell stories about those events not just through pictures. I've learnt for the past year that write-ups are also important and they're not so easy to write, for me that is... Whatever I write may not of good quality, but will try my best to make them understandable and descriptive enough so that others could actually visualize what went on in the events =)

2. Share
Other than stories, I also like to share other interesting media that I come across. Sometimes videos, most often would be pictures (those that I took, of course). Hmmm, sometimes I take some pictures for my online art portfolio, also uploaded most of my artworks there. So if you want to take a look at those, they're in my deviantart page, can find the link at the side, kekeke...

3. Not to Forget
One of my greatest weaknesses... is that I'm super duper forgetful! I've forgotten most of my childhood, the stuff that I did in primary and secondary school, except for those with deep impression on me... I could even forget what I wanted to do or say 1 minute before! Hahaha... yah, that's how bad it is, which is one of the reasons why I don't do well in subjects that require more memorizing work, haiz... So hopefully by blogging I could record down...whatever I want to record down, hehe, I could look into my past entries whenever I want to remember some things... Btw, before started blogging, I originally take pictures often for this very purpose in the past. But now I also take pictures for publications and art purposes =P

4. Networking?
I don't know...currently I don't use my blogs to find new friends and contacts, it's mainly for sharing stuff with my current friends... But why not? Maybe someday, when I'm brave enough, I may join some local blog community and get to know more local bloggers, just like what some of my friends are already doing now. Then again, it may happen, it may not happen.. We'll just see how it goes~

5. Waste Time
Hahaha, I usually blog only when I have stuff to write about and when I have free time to spare. So maybe I also blog just to waste my time if I have nothing else to do? .....actually can just ignore this point, I'm just crapping because I myself am not sure what's the 5th reason I blog, muahahaha...


So those are the 5 reasons why I blog! Hmmm, I actually wrote much more than I intended to... thought I said I'll keep each point short, lol... Oh well~ Guess now I have to tag others, kekeke... Not sure how many people I'm supposed to tag, but I'll just choose these people as my victims, nyahahaha :
Noriati
Ashley
Nicole
Hendri

I think the last time I tagged Atie and Ashley, they didn't write anything... haiz... You'd better respond this time and write something! >=(

Btw, is this font size too big? Which is better? this or the one I used in the previous entry? Do leave your comments in the tagboard.

And thus I shall end this entry now. PEACE!!!

New Template!

Yeah~ Changed my blog skin to this one for now - just a simple layout, but I like the image and words of the blog banner so much, hehehe... It seems that when I switch to the skin, the font size of my previous entries appear smaller... so I've edited the last few entries. Do inform me if you think the size is still too small, I'll definitely use a bigger font in the future =P

Hopefully the next skin will be my own design..... or maybe.... someday.....

Ah, also a shout out before 25 May ends: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VIKREM!!! \(^0^)/

HOLIDAY~

Long time no post! The exams ended 2 weeks ago, and about less than a week ago completed my DDP. So now.... it's the holidays!!!! Yahoooo~ \(^0^)/ It almost felt that the semester would never end, but it's finally really over! Just hope that I won't have to repeat any of my core modules next semester *touch wood* >_< Edit: Somehow a big portion of this entry disappeared, and I don't remember all of what I wrote, waaaaaaaaa..... I've re-typed whatever I could remember of the missing pieces, but it's not as detailed.... so for those who read this entry for the first time...sorry, u missed quite a bit.. so please settle with what you see here now... T_T

So far this week, I've been trying to catch up with all the sleep that I missed for the past few months, play some video games, watch some animes, and even managed to complete a short flash animation for Pat. She's setting up a new online business with her friends, so she asked for my help to make an animation to promote it. In the past I've made simple animations before like for text, image transitions and other effects..but not character animation. This time, the video consists of short character animation scenes. It's quite a challenge, but I managed to make a simple character animation and the final video looked decent enough, hehehe... A good new experience, learnt new stuff & revised flash techniques after not using it much for quite some time, yeah~ Might be making a new deviantart avatar using flash, just a simple animation. Actually, I've been planning to change my deviantart avatar and ID pic but was too busy to make them, haiz... Will make sure I make them this hols, lol... During last year's hols, I was busy with rushing Digital Design stuff most of the time. But this year's different since I'm not involved in any event, so I should have more time to do my own thing, hehehe... It's not that I didn't enjoy DD... I miss the whole thing and also the people... *awwww* XD

On another note, I've also got a part time job. It's similar with what I did last year - voice sample collection and transcribing. But this time it's slightly different. The voice collection is not via phone conversation, but in a noisy indoor environment, like a mall for example. The voice samples will be used for some voice recognition project, if I'm not mistaken. My work will start either next week or the week after, so will still have some time left to rest before I get busy again then, hahaha...

Anymore interesting things happened lately? Well, there was another traffic accident occured near my place. Note the word 'another' - this is because such accidents occur quite frequently around here, especially at night.... Somehow quite a number of drivers like to speed here in the evening...don't know why... Anyway, this time it's a taxi vs a motorcycle. Seemed that the impact's quite strong, because the motorcycle was laying a few meters away from the taxi, and the front part of the taxi was crushed quite badly. What different with this particular accident? Before the taxi and motorcycle were towed away, my mother noticed that the last two digits of both their plates were identical - 13! A mere coincidence? Don't know, but it's quite scary when you think about it @_@

Ok, enough of the scary story, haha... Oh ya, I also went for a Photoshop CS3 Preview Seminar 2 days ago! ---------WARNING: This long paragraph mostly about stuff related to Photoshop and some other similar content. So if you're not interested to read this topic, you're welcomed to skip to the next paragraph ^_^ ---------
During the 2 hour seminar, the trainer didn't really talk about CS 3... but CS 3 'Extended' instead, lol... I did't know there's such a version before I went there, so it was quite a surprise. What's so different about CS 3 Extended? First of all, it includes an improved Adobe Bridge for file browsing, organizing and adding details to files. Secondly, there's an 'Auto align layer' function where Photoshop could align two similar pictures which are not really aligned exactly the same - this is really helpful especially in photography editing. The trainer demonstrated how to use that new function together with masking to edit a group picture. It's the solution to the common problem when I took group pictures and I sometimes want a better expression of one person's face in another similar but better version of the same group picture! (Don't know if you know what I'm talking about, so pardon me if you don't, hehehe...) There's also a special 'Black and White' function where we could modify a picture to a greyscaled one, but at the same time still able to apply other colour tones over it. It's different with changing the whole image into a greyscale mode, since in that case we can't apply colours over the image. There are a few more new and improved functions in CS 3 Extended, but the most notable one is the capability to support 3D files! We could actually import a 3D format file into Photoshop and add some lighting, rotate the 3D object, and even switch from shaded to wireframe mode! That would eliminate the hassle of taking a screenshot or exporting a flat image from a 3D software, then do some editing in Photoshop *drool*. Although it's a rather short 2 hour seminar, I got to know quite a lot of CS 3 Extended's new features and it made me want to get my hands on the software! Muahahahahaha.... well, at least I want to try it out somewhere someday XD

Quite a long entry there, hehehe... Will end here for now, gonna watch American Idol in a few minutes, wheee~ So tata for now and watch out for more of my holiday adventures! >=D

Almost there...

I added some countdown displays on my laptop desktop for the exam period, just to remind & scare me whenever I turn on my computer, lol... So here's what I have now (*the information shown in the screenshot is true at the time it's taken). Click on the thumbnail to get a better view =P

Just a bit more... and I'm FREE!!!! XD

2 down, 3 more to go~

2 papers down, and 3 more to go!!! Finally I've tackled down CPE207 and GD02 within 2 consecutive days, hohoho... My exams schedule's rather crazy this semester: 2 papers this week back-to-back, 3 papers next week also back-to-back! Good thing my first paper started in the second week of exams period, so I have more time to study, hehe... but I still haven't touched 2 core subjects...gonna touch 1 shortly, hopefully can finish studying all before next wednesday >_<

So far so good - should be able to pass CPE207, but not sure about scoring high overall, lol... and today's GD02 paper's not so difficult, the first time I'm having an evening paper, haha.. However, my mind actually went blank for the first 10-15 minutes when I was goin to attempt the first question, which is design analysis.

It was a National Geographic print catalog, and what baffled me was the huge headline that said, "Indelible." I was like, what the hell does indelible mean?!?!?! I've never seen such a word before!!! (my english vocab's not so powerful, mind you) So that single alienic word shocked me to the core, and as a result I suddenly didn't know what to write AT ALL! I stared and stared and stared, finally I decided to call the prof and asked her (wasn't sure whether we're allowed to do that, but it was worth a try). Thankfully she whispered to me, "cannot be erased". Then I look at the design again, which is mainly a picture of a fully tattooed body, and I saw the light!!! At that very instant I knew exactly what to write and my answer booklet started to fill up, lol...

I actually spent slightly more than 1 hour to complete that 40 marks question (I wrote 4 pages, hehe), and I only had 1 more hour left to answer 2 questions weighting 30 marks each!!! So I speed-write whatever I could come up with within that last 1 hour, and times up! Not sure how many marks my answers could gain me, but I wrote as much as I could. Overall it's an 'ok' paper, it's just that I wasted too much time on the first question alone... Hopefully it's enough to get me a good overall marks, including my project grade.

The paper ended at 7 pm, and now my fingers are stiff and a bit painfull, thanks to the speed-writing that I did earlier. I won't write anymore for the rest of the night! Muahahahaha... Even typing this entry is causing some slight discomfort in my fingers, it's never been this bad #___#

So yupz, 3 more papers to go, all of them are core subjects (ie. killers). Shall read a textbook now before I head home (yeah I'm still at school)... and I won't write any notes! Kekeke... Wish me luck & cheerio~

TAG!

I've been tagged by Hendri. So here it goes~

Layer One: On The Outside
Name: Listya
Birth Date: 1 November 1984
Current status: Online
Eye Colour: Dark brown
Hair Colour: supposed to be black... but somehow on one side's a bit red-brown (I didn't dye it!)
Righty or Lefty: Righty

Layer Two: On The Inside
Your Heritage: Chinese
Your Fears: those-that-can't-be-seen... & sharks
Your Weakness: doze off quite easilyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Your Perfect Pizza: with cheese, cheese, and more cheese!!!

Layer Three: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Your Thoughts First thing when I wake up: damn, 2 hours late...
Your Bedtime: After midnight
Your Most Missed Memory: childhood..because I've forgotten most of them, lolz

Layer Four: Your Pick
Pepsi or Coke: Coke
McDonald’s or Burger King: Burger King
Single or Group Dates: single, la
Adidas or Nike: Nike
Tea or Nestea: Green tea!!!
Chocolate or Vanilla: Chocolate
Cappucino or Coffee: Coffee

Layer Five: Do You..
Smoke: that's a big NO NO >=(
Curse: nope...not really...don't think so...did I?
Take a shower: Of course!
Have a crush: nah
Think you’ve been in love: don't think so, since I don't even know what it feels like, mehehehe...tragic...
Go to school: Yup... damn it
Want to get married: Leave it to fate~
Believe in yourself: not always
Think you’re a health freak: sometimes, depends on my mood.. now where's my instant noodle? =P

Layer Six: In The Past Month
Drank alcohol: not in the past month, but even if I did it'd be very very little
Gone to the mall: have to go through a few on my way home almost everyday, hehe
Been on stage: yesh, very scary
Eaten sushi: oh yeah
Dyed your hair: nay

Layer Seven: Have You Ever..
Played A Stripping Game: nope & I never will!
Changed Who You Were To Fit In: hmmm...not drastically, i think

Layer Eight: Age
You’re Hoping To Be Married: before 100...bcoz most prob by then I die liao, haha

Layer Nine: In a Girl/Guy
Best Eye Colour: not particular
Best Hair Colour: depends, must suit the person of course
Short Hair or Long Hair: no longer than mine, muahaha... not too long, la

Layer Ten: What Were You Doing
1 Min Ago: typing these nonsense
1 Hour Ago: hanged the laundry
4.5 Hours Ago: just woke up
1 Month Ago: should be at schools rushing out projects...
1 Year Ago: studying for exams

Layer Eleven: Finish The Sentence
I Love: Noodles!
I Feel: Sleepy~
I Hate: Hypocrites!!
I Hide: My Undergarments (hehe)
I Need: To Stop Writing This & Go Start Studying!

Layer Twelve: Tag five people..
I'll do even better. I tag 6 ppl, muahahahaha XD
Noriati
Ashley
Patricia
Melisa
Lidya
Linda