//beconfused » school

A note from President Obama

Mr. Dew — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:00:51 +0000

U.S. President Barack Obama turned on the charm at an event in Wisconsin when an audience member told the president that his daughter Kennedy was missing school to come hear Obama speak about healthcare reform. One 10-year-old Wisconsin girl has a rock-solid excuse for missing the last day of school: a personal note to her teacher from President Barack Obama.

Obama pardons girl for missing school

See the note at the end of the video by AFP. (Can’t embed)

Any driving instructors at Bukit Batok area?

Mr. Dew — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:16:37 +0000

I’m likely to go learn driving since I have a Basic Theory and I sort of just stop there. I’m looking for private driving instructors, preferably at Bukit Batok or Jurong East area. Any recommendations? Related posts:Car driver licence – automatic or manual Basic Theory Test funny questions Abuse the zebra crossing and annoy the driver Related posts:

Teen figures out how to decompose plastic bags in 3 months

Mr. Dew — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:26:56 +0000

Ontario high school junior Daniel Burd wanted to try to figure out if there was a way to get plastic bags to decompose faster. As it stands, it takes thousands of years for the wasteful objects to disintegrate. But by using bacteria, he figured out how to make it happen in a mere three months.

WCI student isolates microbe that lunches on plastic bags

Daniel Burd’s project won the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa. He came back with a long list of awards, including a $10,000 prize, a $20,000 scholarship, and recognition that he has found a practical way to help the environment.

He knew plastic does eventually degrade, and figured microorganisms must be behind it. His goal was to isolate the microorganisms that can break down plastic — not an easy task because they don’t exist in high numbers in nature.

Will Smith opens Scientology school

Mr. Dew — Sun, 18 May 2008 06:43:28 +0000

I didn’t know Will Smith is a scientologist.

Will Smith Opens Scientology School

Contains 6 Scientologists as teachers and offers “Study Tech” which was developed by L. Ron Hubbard and is used worldwide by the Church of Scientology. No longer the prince of Bel-Air, but rather a slave hubbard.

Family Guy: Stewie goes to High School

Mr. Dew — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:45:29 +0000

Family Guy clip of Stewie.

Family Guy: Stewie goes to High School

“I took a bunch of picture, you can see them in my MySpace page, along with my favorite songs and movies that people have created that I use to express my individualism.” Well said!

Some updates on what I’m doing

Mr. Dew — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 05:48:16 +0000

I haven’t been blogging as regularly. I was busy with a couple of projects, learning some Japanese and a horrible upcoming math exam.

My project is just hanging that, it’s not moving as fast as I thought it would. There are lots of mistakes I made and sometimes I wasted a lot of time implement stuff wrongly. I hope I don’t make the same mistake again… It’s so time-consuming.

On a happier note, I finally, finally finally, decided to take up some Japanese class and learning some Ã£ÂÂ‚Ã£ÂÂ„Ã£ÂÂ†Ã£ÂÂˆÃ£ÂÂŠÃ£ÂÂ‹Ã£ÂÂÃ£ÂÂÃ£ÂÂ‘Ã£ÂÂ“. It’s an interesting language and I bought a book to help me along. It’s just something I thought I’ll pick up during my free time as some sort of an educating leisure.

And yes math. I didn’t like math too much. I can score quite well for it strangely. It’s the subject I do best it. But somehow I just didn’t like it. I like knowing history, I sucked at history.

Finally a friend is leaving Singapore already. I have so many friend leaving Singapore these days. We’re doing some farewell thing for him. It’s great because I get to meet all the army guys again. We still don’t like the commanders so no commanders shall be invited.

I just watched the National Day Parade. It’s the retelecast, I sort of missed it because I somehow forgot. This year’s location seemed different from the previous year but it’s one of the better locations. I love the city area. Perhaps one of the better NDPs; wished I were there.

Punished for not showing up in costumes at school

Mr. Dew — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 10:37:46 +0000

This is kinda absurd, the school loves costume play too much they just had to single out those who didn’t come in costumes. Honestly, I don’t see really see much benefit in wearing traditional costumes. I mean it would look great and all but it just not that necessary.

School says students not punished for not turning up in costumes

Ethnic garb was the requirement for this year’s Racial Harmony Day celebrations at Jurong West Secondary. To all good intent, this was meant to create a better atmosphere and make it a grander occasion, according to the school.

But what happens when pupils turn up without an ethnic outfit? Some 30 to 40 of them, who did not have costumes, were taken out of the activities and made to stand outside the school office for one-and-a-half hours, said a parent who called the MediaCorp Hotline, after her son was one of those who missed the finale.

“We had trouble borrowing costumes, and I didn’t want to waste money buying something that he would only wear once a year,” said Madam Ng, who declined to give her full name. “Why should they be punished for that?”

Avoiding punishment was on the minds of some other pupils.

“Half my class didn’t even turn up because they couldn’t find costumes,” said a Secondary 3 student who declined to be named. “We were told we had to come in costumes or we might be punished.”

But school principal Oliver Jeeva Balasingam told TODAY that Jurong West Secondary did not punish any pupils for not wearing costumes. “That is not true,” he said. “Students who did not wear the costumes were taken aside and briefed by some teachers and then told to do a feedback form about racial harmony. I don’t see that as a punishment at all. And they took part in other activities in the morning.”

He explained that students who could not get costumes because of financial difficulties could have approached the school for help. “We could have helped them borrow costumes,” he said. “That was made known to the students when we notified them about the costumes.”

Source: Yahoo! News

I remember that my secondary school made it optional to wear these costumes during racial harmony day. Few turned up in costumes of course but everyone turned up and enjoyed themselves at least.

[Edit: Just thought it would be funny to tag this post 'cosplay']

Remember the time when we stand and greet teachers?

Mr. Dew — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 03:46:31 +0000

My friend and I were talking about the things we used to do in the past and one of things he pointed out is that we had to greet teachers in this form ‘Good Morning Madam Tan” while standing up in attention. My friend thinks it’s so communist, hahaa… And after class we stand up and thank the teacher for the class. After a while, it just become so routine that I do it as a chore.

I kinda like those greetings actually. I just wish it would be a little more spontaneous. I wish the teacher come in and just greet you good day and everyone just echo back sincerely. There really is no need to stand up at attention to greet. Not all teachers are comfortable with it too actually. I guess it just sorta got stuck in our culture.

During the ten years of education, we greet teachers like robots. I am still on the process of relearning how to greet people when I see them. I think I greet people more sincerely now.

Why I did not join a uniform group in secondary school

Mr. Dew — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 04:33:46 +0000

In secondary schools, joining a CCA is a must. You have to choose one, you have to represent the school in this and that and bring back some silly honors for the school. I mean you’re great at marching? What the fuck? Is it going to help you in life at all? How is this co-curriculum? Have you just stop and think who is it that you’re benefiting? Is it really yourself or just the school?

And if you think you’re indeed benefiting yourself, couldn’t you choose to do what you want to actually benefit yourself? For example, I love Japanese anime, why can’t I just start a Japanese anime appreciation club where a bunch of people just sit in a room and watch television all day?

My secondary school just had to persuade us to join some crazy uniform groups to nurture teamwork and, erm, country building. I recall my principal urging people to join uniform groups. The CCA talk he gave is absolutely bias and dedicated a whole fifty minutes to uniform groups and ten seconds to comment the existance of clubs and societies. I was so annoying by his speech that I joined a club. Seriously if you joined a uniform group in secondary school, and spend all the time doing drills, perhaps you can find something better to do – like watching anime or play tennis or even running.

Some guys would join the NCC and wear those army uniform. Seriously, you guys are just cosplaying soldiers! If you’re a guy, you have 2 years in national service to slowly cosplay being a soldier, a police or a civil defence guy. And NPCC? Haa! You’re just cosplaying being a policeman. Why don’t you go join the cosplaying club instead. You get to be air-stewardess, Haruhi, maid, bunny girls, esper, ninja, shinigami (death gods), military personel and more. You can change your costumes every week if you want.

Naughty kids barricade school door with snow

Mr. Dew — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 09:32:56 +0000

As you can see these kids really really hate their school. I salute them for standing up for their own rights not to school!

Love to see teamwork in action. I would do the same if it snows in Singapore, it would be fun. No school for a day and it looks fun too. [Image source]

[via Digg]

The uninteresting math class

Mr. Dew — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 04:24:07 +0000

I entered math class half an hour late but I’m so glad I did that, the math is rather simple and it’s a total bore in there. I sat beside a Malay girl whom I believe is a mute. Sitting a little further down were a bunch of guys excitedly talking about some game they played. I tried listening in and finally concluded that they are playing MapleStory.

When a bunch of people talk here and there, the volume just goes higher and higher, soon the lecture theatre resembles the ambience of Carrefour hypermart at Plaza Singapura and that is when the lecturer step in to shut us up.

(So bored I tried writing numbers upside down.)

I didn’t have a book to read. I left my house at noon and brought out The Kite Runner (by Khaled Hosseini) to read but finished it before I got into the lecture theatre. The Kite Runner is a wonderful book by the way, very moving story too. Anyway, I sat there practicing writing my numbers upside down. I used to be able to do it quite well.

The lesson finished after 3 hours – okay 2.5 hours since I am late half hour – and I left for the bus stop. It’s the longest wait I had and I never seen so many people outside SIM before. They’re all waiting to board the bus.

The whole math class is getting more and more boring. Sometimes I wonder if I would get slack and stop attending the classes. I don’t feel that I am learning something particularly useful too, it’s secondary school Additional Mathematics and it is quite simple with no assignments. When my class starts on September, I hope I’ll be more hardworking than that for sure.

Welcome to university

Mr. Dew — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 05:23:42 +0000

The chattering, the laughter, the childish jokes – they’re all back. I sat in front of 8 ladies in a lecture theatre listening to the lecturer introducing logarithm, quadratic equations and sets. It’s all something that I have learnt before and this course is more to cater to people who have basically forgotten all their mathematics.

I sat there writing some notes on my work (not the lecture basically) and unintentionally – okay, perhaps a little intentionally – eavesdrop on what the ladies are talking about. I tell you they make the most unfunny jokes you’ll ever hear. I couldn’t laugh. It’s just so cold! I felt the temperature drop each them they tried to misinterpret what the lecturer is trying to remark.

It’s actually like back in polytechnic. After I exit from the lecture hall, I looked at the other two-hundred students, all eagar to learn how to add and subtract. I saw two of my friends too. I perhaps won’t be that lonely this coming semester but it really depends. I can sense not a lot of people are serious about studying there. Most, like me, don’t seem to know why they are in a bloody mathematics class!

Still it felt good. I mean – school felt good. I shan’t complaint too much. Welcome to university, I said to myself.

My night classes are going to start

Mr. Dew — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:45:43 +0000

Must’ve been dreaming a little too much. A check on my schedule reveals my Mathematics night classes are starting. They say that I lack certain Mathematics knowledge so I need to go though it. I do well in Mathematics but I don’t really like the counting and all. It’s some bridging module thing. I’m a little lazy to study under a school again honestly.

I got a little shock on how fast time has passed, however, it also excite me a little. I’ll probably be studying some Japanese too. It should be interesting in the coming months.

HTML5 differences from HTML4

Mr. Dew — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 09:07:57 +0000

The HTML5 draft reflects an effort, started in 2004, to study contemporary HTML implementations and deployed content. The draft:

Defines a single language called HTML 5 which can be written in HTML (HTML5) and XML (XHTML5).
Defines detailed processing models to foster interoperable implementations.
Improves markup for documents.
Introduces markup and APIs for emerging idioms, such as web applications.

I kinda blog about this HTML5 thing for my own benefit. I just thought it would be useful to take a look at it again another time. They are introducing new elements such as

, , and more. Good news is that getElementsByClassName() is going to be added.

And it would seem like HTML5 is stepping in to help developers expand the capabilities of their web application. It appears that the internet is very serious about moving to the direction of web applications. It may be a good idea to prepare to enter this industry. I’m entering it and I’m pretty optimistic about it.

Elements such as

and

isn’t really necessary, but if developers were to all deploy these tags, they probably isn’t a need for those feeds at all. Every website can easily become feed-enabled.

They’re dropping some elements though, such as the , , and

Unfortunately, with all these additions, HTML5 is getting more complicated. The learning curve would get steeper. There use to be a time HTML is about layout and positioning and everyone’s using

. But things are changing, it’s about layout and XML items. They just sort of changed direction or something. Teachers are probably going to find it hard to explain a macro picture of why those new elements are present in HTML. My web publishing teacher in school isn’t even teaching me CSS that time! In fact, she’s still teaching about font tags when it is already deprecated. CSS was a ‘read-up’ thing. Good to know, don’t need to know for examinations.

Just want to share my thoughts about HTML5, hahaa… Sorry that this post is a little disorganized, I typed in a hurry.

This document describes the differences between HTML4 and HTML5 and provides some of the rationale for the changes that have been made to the language.

Some funny homeworks and tests student submitted

Mr. Dew — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:27:07 +0000

Here are some of the school work that students submitted. I wonder how many are actually real. If you’re feeling a little naughty, you can possibly do something like that to your teacher, do to it those who can accept humor though. And of course, pray that your teacher won’t send you to the principal’s.

(Find x, here it is.)

(I would check to see if it had a vagina.)

(Sleeping with boss wife.)

(Expand the equation.)

(Man hung at the end of square root.)

(Suck my dick fag.)

The source is quite unknown, it’s been forwarded around emails for a really long time. I seen it in blogs too.

Significant milestone – Eprep

Mr. Dew — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 17:24:34 +0000

I don’t know what the hell is “Eprep”. But I hit the stage of my national service that requires me to go to Eprep. No idea what that is but it’s just something to go to before you ORD – which is to get out of army.

One hundred days more. Tomorrow I’ll go look around for some schools to see what I can study. I don’t know if I should go to work and study part time or just study full time. NUS and NTU refuses to accept me, they think I’m too dumb to be in the school. Probably true but it didn’t really matter much to me. I’ll just study else where.

I kinda like to learn things myself at my own pace. I’ll probably go to a slack type of school so that I can learn other things myself when I’m studying.

‘A’ level results releasing tomorrow

Mr. Dew — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 07:02:00 +0000

Tomorrow the A level results would be released. I wonder what results my cousin would get. He has been worried these few weeks. I hope he would get the results he wished for. I never took A levels before but someone told me it’s quite stressful. It seems that this year the cohort didn’t perform well for general paper, perhaps some remarking would be done.

I just hope he would do well.

Ahh… Spam again

Mr. Dew — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 18:17:54 +0000

It’s really annoying, I receive about 100 spam comments per day and I am not at all proud of it. Something ought to be done. I have Akismet which is a spam filter and to date, it has caught 55,734 spam comments. But I keep going through my moderation list so as to not miss out people’s comments.

A couple of legitimate comments does get caught once in a while. Maybe they should add spam into the school syllabus or something. We have CME in secondary school I remember. It’s Civics and Moral Education. It’s pretty outdated during my time and they spend much of the syllabus trying to tell you what type of festivals the Indians go to then discuss the technology-related issues.

I thought some time might be allocated to discuss about plagiarism, intellectual property, spam, Windows Live Messenger nudges, forwarding emails with curses and stuff. Maybe some internet related issues may be covered at school.

Free Adobe Photoshop – or so she thinks

Mr. Dew — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 04:37:22 +0000

It is late morning when I answered a call on my phone. I’m usually unkeen to answer calls on my cellphone, it usually means work, but this time it means school.

I enquired about a computing school. And one of the questions I post was regarding software licenses. It just came to my mind and I asked, “So what if the school requires Adobe Photoshop or some 3D Studio Max like programs?” She didn’t have the answer and promises to get back to me.

She did, “As for the software license questions, you don’t have to worry about it. We won’t be providing Microsoft Office but you can get Adobe Photoshop and those software online.”

“Where may I get those? Are they academic licenses?” I questioned.

“Oh, they told me that you can download for free.”

“Free? You mean Photoshop? Is it a trial version?” I was a little shocked, a little amused.

“Not the trial, Photoshop is free online, you can download on Adobe’s website,” she declared.

MIT demonstrates way cooler sketching

Mr. Dew — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 04:19:54 +0000

I don’t really know how to describe this, I guess you guys have to see this for yourself, it’s pretty cool but I can’t really see much applications for it except for a much cooler toy for kids.

*MIT sketching*

Or maybe a computer game or something.