before kings (grey sky morning)

oh yeah baby, yeah! (to the tune to that S7 faculty dance choreo, hmm, mass dance actually, haha.)

two exams down, two to go! oh yeah...

MA1102R - expected to die. not really. certainly will pass with quite a significant margin. hoping for an A- at least. the least, least, least, a B+. that was one great paper man. i started studying yesterday night, getting really nervous as i didn't even know how to do limit and all those crazy memory work on differentiation and integration formula. at the end, managed to memorize the formula lists and read up on l'Hopital Theorem this morning. sher told me that l'Hopital Theorem is very important since in past year's papers, probably 3 or 4 out of 5 parts on limit question will depend on that theorem. thanks lots sher! haha! i used it successfully on one part today, big success! if only you told me earlier. like yesterday. =P

the volume of solid revolution about x-axis came out. my favourite kind of question since jc ;). what to do... a mugger f maths student like me sure really loved this kind of question -wink2-. well. that question was quite well done. following which i had the honour to do the last question (part B, question 4-6, we only need to choose 2 questions). it was surprisingly easy. hmm. i didn't expect that one to be that simple. i was kinda desperate actually when i was choosing between 4 and 6. i really didn't know which one to do. both also not confident.

question 1 to 3 was okay. managed to do about 80-90% of the question. ran out of time towards the end trying to solve this crazy integration question. tried everything, nothing works! integration by parts was definitely out. substitution? didn't look like it solve the problem. splitting denominators looked promising for awhile. then at last, i settled with partial fraction. did half way. that's when the time's up. wasted my time on that question. oh well.

after that paper, about 1130AM, i walked back hall. why? because of that guy! irritate me to hell. met him by accident at busstop, asked him about his exam and stuffs, and he brought up that topic. hello? i'm the one involved right now. why you sound much more excited than me? very funny. but anyway, i just walked back to my hall. took quite awhile, about twenty minutes i guess. it was fun though, listening to my iPod under the shade (which was in turn under the hot sun). walked through my favourite central library pathway and met some friends along the way.

reach back halls, and started mugging for my CS1102S in the afternoon. shit. i didn't have any time man! the paper was in two and a half hour and i hadn't even started studying at all. but anyway, fortunately i polished my Java skills earlier due to this new plaything of mine. it's TopCoder Algorithm Arena, where people pitch their algorithm skills online. i went to the practice rooms and started doing questions like hell! i couldn't stop! even today. i mean, people play DotA and can't stop. me? i go answer algorithm questions and did Java programming and can't stop. once i'm logged in into the arena, i'll be mad focused on the questions and the answers. it's crazy really! i solved a lot of 250 points questions. i think it's time to move up to 500 points question. hmm. i could only do a few 500s just now. i was a bit lazy to think. anyway, this sunday, they'll be organizing Single Round Match (SRM). i'll be there of course. off programming my ass off for forty five minutes at 3AM--monday actually--in the morning (due to the freakin' time difference between the states and singapore). now people wonder why computing students are so geeky. that's because the kind of things we are doing are wonderful and exciting! yay!

LESSON 1: always pick things that interest you! no. no need to be pragmatic or practical. dream high! remember all those times you wanted to be a rock singer, a musician, a dancer, a singapore idol, and yet your parents and friends told you to go back down to earth and don't dream so high? how the hell do those rock singers, musicians, dancers, taufik, etc. become what they are now? through dreaming and walking that dream in reality! oh please... forget about what people say to you! when you have the dream and the will to walk the dream, you'll get what you want. persevere!

CS1102S - fantastic! questions were tough! just the kind of questions we should be expecting from a tough class that is called CS1102S. that was a great paper! difficult yet exciting. a little bit too tedious though. but sufficiently thoughtful. i mean, at least for this one you've to think quite a bit before proceeding to answer the questions. unlike the midterms, when you could just copy blindly from the lecture notes and still get 15/20++.

well, didn't do to well though. i thought up too complex a method for one part. correct, but not the fastest solution. and a little tedious too. i missed out a 3m questions because i didn't see it until the last minute. cheh! idiot. sounds the same like what i did in jc when i skipped one full 10 marks from my f maths paper because i didn't see the question. damn.

anyway, CS1102S was terapeutic. i didn't realise that i've quite a few friends in SoC already. hehe! amazing huh? for somebody who doesn't attend any single tutorial. or, in the case of this module, started attending at about week 9 and got sabo-ed by the kind TA who got me up to the whiteboard for the next 2 or 3 sessions. i got 4/10 for tutorial attendance. not bad for my kind. ;) at least not 0 like in some other module *cough* CS1104 *cough*.
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just watched a new release of gilmore girls. whoops. story getting exciting now. and another whoops. my charmed just finished downloading! i can watch it now! yay! and two smallville eps too. how cool is that? but bleach 224 is not out yet. the script is there, but no sign of raw, much less the scanlation.
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what's with this penchant towards 1337-5p3Ak (leet-speak) in SoC forum? i mean, come on, if you wanted to be a hacker, be a real hacker! not some rubbish crackers whose only jobs are cracking software, maliciously attacking other people's properties and what-nots. acknowledgably, 1337-speak really belongs to this group of people. oh well. if you wanted to know more about this thing, i guess you could easily google one or find it in wikipedia (my favourite encyclopedia ;)).

and ASCII arts seem to gain a bit of momentum in the forum. somebody posted a telnet to a whole movie of star wars episode 4 made into an ascii art. i, myself, posted a link to matrix movie. shall post it here too! and if you are wondering about the telnet thing, simply go to your command line (start -> program -> accessories -> command line in windows, and terminal in linux/unix/mac/sunfire) and type this (while connected to internet):

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

on the command line/terminal prompt. go watch it. it's quite fun. hmm. actually, kinda wonder whether it'll work in linux. i don't know the binary name for its telnet program. and if i'm not mistaken, i purged out the telnet debian package from my linux during one of my great purge. well done!

all right, i guess that's all for tonight folks. ever heard of the songe Before Kings by Geoff Byrd? that song is nice and soft. very nice to listen too. nice beats too, yet not noisy at all. ahh, simply lovely! i downloaded the song for free from amazon.com. it's part of their free mp3s download site. go visit and search! maybe it's still there (acknowledgably, i downloaded that song months ago). here's the lyrics, btw...

Before Kings
Geoff Byrd

Try to find love
You take her into your arms
and time stands still

You've been searching for the one
She's something special
and now you are under her spell

Come to find out
She's everything you've ever wanted
How can it be

Takes your breath away
Every time you see your face
On the big screen

She lays it down before kings
Stars in her eyes and shiny golden rings
Promises slip the skin
Disillusionment can now begin

She comes out just fine
Nicole learns to flourish on the other side
Time stands still for a picture

His hearts not capable
Of conjuring a smile
As he approaches the press line

She lays it down before kings
Stars in her eyes and shiny golden rings
Promises slip the skin
Disillusionment can now begin

Crisis is over as he walks away

Promises all are broken
And there's nothing left to say and now
In her eyes the spark is gone
No more feeling alone
No more feeling at all

Try to find love
You take her into your arms
And time stands still

You've been searching for the one
She's something special
and now you are under her spell

She lays it down at your feet
Begs forgiveness as she makes you weak
Who is in complete control
Is it you or is it cold Nicole
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Q: how do you pick a title for an entry?
A: not sure. it takes a long time for me to pick a title. i'll usually do it last. until i have the big picture of what my entry is all about. at that point, i usually also have the big picture of what's happening in my mind, in my heart, in my surroundings, etc. it's a wonderful feelings of being able to understand the world better. sigh. anyway, my title usually holds double meaning (or more). there's a direct meaning to it, or direct lifting from some parts of the posts (like a song lyrics, etc.), yet there's also this more subtle meaning behind it. for example, the post a life of his own. at first glance, the title seems to refer to the poetry that i wrote there. a life of my own. who the hell write poetry these days? but that's not exactly it. when i wrote that poetry i had quite a mixed feelings. depressed, out of luck, going crazy. i felt different from everyone else, as if people and i are just two immiscible layer of fluids. thus, i have a life of my own. a life that's completely different from most people around me.

i feel comfortable sharing some of these secret meanings, but of course there are a few titles that hold meanings so dear to my heart that i won't reveal it to you. until that meanings don't hold water of course. but don't think too hard, some of the titles are just pure summary of the contents, or taken from parts that i wanted to bring focus on. nothing much really.

some titles are just purely interesting. that's why i used them. like "in retrospect of the previous post's title". or like today's title, taking two songs and mix them together. i guess there's a little bit of subtlety involve with today's title, but don't think about it too much. unimportant! argh, my teeth hurt a little! =S