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I know I won’t be the first nor the last one to say that I WANNA GET THE EXAMS OVER AND DONE WITH!!! It’s come to a point where I don’t really care for studying anymore, and I just wanna take the paper and go home. Exams, depending on the person teaching the course and setting the paper, are loads of crap. I don’t want to get into a lengthy discourse about the claim right now, but take it from me, it’s quite a ridiculous concept of testing knowledge on a subject, yet for now, there doesn’t seem to be a better way at the moment. Anyway, thanks to Melvin who (attempted to) help me understand Haskell type inferences.

I’m still waiting for my I-20 to apply for my student visa. I found a place to stay in Michigan, and the lease with the land-lady should be finalised in a couple of days time. The place is on Jorn Court, off Packard Street, south of the University of Michigan north campus. I heard it’s -10°C at the moment… I just can’t wait to get there. My flight leaves on the 1st of January.

Last Friday, I woke up from a dream that I could walk. The dream was so real and tangible that I actually imagined myself walking, and convinced myself that taking out my cast was a good move. I spent an hour ripping out my cast with the help of my swiss army knife. After all that effort (I’m attempting to sound nonchalant here..), I couldn’t walk. It was more of a limp and drag rather than a proper walk. I went back to the hospital to get my leg re-casted. Ah well. I’ll be smarter next time.

I don’t know why I decided to term the following “naked intelligence”, but I guess two words popped into my head and since it sounded catchy, I stuck with them. What I’m referring to, essentially, is the fact that some people can really memorise entire textbooks, or learn concepts extremely fast. In fact, however, they have no idea how these apply in reality.

I hate people who brag about things that aren’t really important…even if they were, bragging still ticks me off. It introduces an element of competition that is unproductive really. Most of the time, whatever he/she brags about is simply due to pure luck, rather than any form of personal achievement.

I don’t know why I’m so random today..maybe it’s the lethargy…or maybe it’s just that I’m bored. I’m thinking of scrapping this blog altogether. It’s not even properly structured and all… we’ll see how it goes.

I just realised that I asked for a break in my previous post. …. yup, God’s granted it. I fractured my ankle. Now I’m on a long break where I can’t do anything even if I wanted to do something. sad life. But, as all who have passed through the walls of NUS know, life goes on. On MC? Tough luck. Still have to drag yourself to lectures. I did pretty bad for my recent assignments.. Why can’t I have a maths brain like others? I think I take 2 hours to understand something the vietnamese guy who-got-full-marks-for-everything-and-don’t-have-to-study-and-is-so-smart-i’m-so-jealous-i-wanna-be-him takes 2 seconds to master.

yesterday Candice and I went to the Laurent Bernard chocolatier boutique at Wessex Estate. I’ve been there once before (last weekend) with my parents, who took me there out of pity that I was stuck at home 24/7 because of the cast and crutches..which reminds me that Singapore is handicap-unfriendly. Anyway, we had a late breakfast at about 1PM…the food’s quite expensive, but we agreed we’d definitely go back just because the ambience was charming.

why is michigan taking so long to respond… don’t they realise that students have to book flights and arrange accommodation before heading down there?

okay, back to the topic of interest… to all my wonderful friends: please stop asking me about my leg… haha. I really appreciate the concern, but I hope you all understand that all I’m trying to do is to make it from LT15 to the Biz lobby..and it takes me close to 40 minutes just because every 10 metres someone stops me for a chat. =P So to satisfy everyone’s curiosity, here’s the story:

SoC was playing Engine in the inter-faculty games soccer semi-final. The ball was passed somewhat into my direction and I realised I had an opportunity for a shot on goal. As I pulled the trigger and kicked the ball as hard as I could, some guy from the opposition came from the side and kicked the ball away in the opposite direction I was kicking it. He got in a little faster than I did, and I ended up kicking the sole of his boot, after which he followed through with his kick. My foot snapped backward, and now here’s the confusing part… I know the e-mail sent to everyone said that I continued to play on until the pain was too much to bear etc etc…. I assure you that the pain came within 2 seconds of that tackle, and unless “continued to play” means “stumbled forward for another 5 metres”, I didn’t continue to play. I fell to the ground and yelled. Some of my team mates and the opposition (of which I’m grateful eternally) carried me off the field. I was sent to NUH, and was discharged 7 hours later. I have a fractured fibula, and a fractured ankle, and one of my joints has been knocked out of position. Yes, it hurts a little sometimes. Yes, I was zoned out on painkillers for the first few days. No, I’ve since stopped taking them despite some of the pain because I have to study. Yes, I did try to walk normally a few days ago but I fell down again. It’s gonna take 6-8 weeks to heal. And most of all… NO, I’m not using this as an excuse to get out of tutorials and all. It’s just very tiring to be walking around all day on crutches. I believe after 2 months, I’ll have very muscular arms.. haha. Moreover, it’s super inconvenient to just be in school… what happens when you’re thirsty? what happens if you need the toilet and it’s far far away? how much does cab fare cost to get to school and back? Yeap, I assure you there are far more considerations than just tutorials.

Right, today’s a Thursday.. I have to go back for TA duties now. Sigh.

It’s been super long since I last had the time (and mood) to blog about anything at all. It’s not that nothing’s happened. In fact, it’s because too many things have been happening that I find it cumbersome to even attempt to write about them. Nevertheless, I’m alive. Important things:

• I’m 95% on my way to Michigan.
• Candice and I have been together for almost 30 months.
• I’m going to get a dental implant (ouch).
• Benedetto’s been on a winning streak.
• I got a new laptop.
• I’m taking Comp Architecture, Algorithms Design & Analysis, Prog Languages, and a general elective on Nanotech.
• I ended up joining the ELITe programme.
• I’m packed with so much stuff, and together with the time I need to study, I only have time for one meal and 4-5 hours of sleep per day.

Today’s society is super-connected. Physically, we have fast and efficient transportation systems that allow us to commute to our meetings. Virtually, we have ever-increasing bandwidth and improving technology which simplify communication and the ability to remain connected to one another. While Moore’s Law is still somewhat valid for computing machinery, our human brains have not been able to keep pace with all this progress. Data and information have become readily available – in fact, since the Internet boom, the problem of information-overload has become more severe and widespread.

We’re already familiar with e-mail spam: messages that we did not request for or do not want are labeled as spam. The reason for the ubiquity of spam is simply due to the convenience and low cost of generating such spam. If, for some reason, sending an e-mail cost the sender a dollar, there wouldn’t be so much spam. If sending an e-mail involved some form of computation which took a minute or two, there wouldn’t be so much spam.

Now, with nascent technologies and services like Friendster, Facebook, MySpace, and the like, another form of spam has surfaced – social spam.

The source or root of social spam is in social networking sites and services, or social networks. Broadly defined, social spam is simply requests or messages, which you do not want, that come from other people or entities within the social network that you use.

For now, there seem to be three main trends in the cause of social spam. Firstly, there are organisational entities looking to advertise a product or service for commercial reasons. Secondly, there are individuals who have a strong desire for social inclusion. Thirdly, the ease of creating custom extensions on social networks: Some may classify the first type of spam as real spam, and the second type as pseudo-spam, but the very definition of spam still holds.

Slightly more than half of all social spam is generated for commercial reasons. Companies seeking new ways to promote their wares have been attracted to social networks due to the sheer number of users that they can potentially reach. Numerous companies set up profiles in social networks and then randomly (or not) start to include real social network users in their profile. By doing so, they are able to harvest tonnes of information that immediately becomes available when a user accepts their request to be added.

Another form involves some form of deceit. The tactics described below are normally used by more dubious commercial services, such as companies providing adult entertainment services. In the case of such, these businesses generally set up profiles on social networks and pose as female users, with suggestive photographs and profile descriptions to lure unsuspecting social network users into initiating contact. While I may sound stereotypical about this, I must add that this form of social spam is not limited purely to adult entertainment. I have seen companies who create profiles that look seemingly innocuous and which appeal to users who, out of our human-nature tendency to be curious, click on these profiles, only to eventually realise that they are not real people.

Since the advent of first generation social networks, the typical adolescent mindset has become more pervasive among Internet users. This mindset generally revolves around the need for competition and social inclusion. For instance, many find it necessary that they appear as someone who is widely-known, sociable, or influential to others. They feel that having more friends (or people) connected to their profile equates directly to being more popular. Due to this, such people generate their own social spam by sending connection requests to random people, or to people they know, but barely.

My own experience with such purveyors of social spam is that the level of inconvenience that comes with it is greater than those that generate social spam for commercial reasons. The reason for my opinion is that social spam generated by businesses and companies is generally easy to spot and remove. In contrast, when I receive a request from some person that I barely know, if at all, there are a few processes that I have to undertake before coming to a decision whether to accept that request or to reject it. First, one would have to determine whether the person requesting the connection is known to him or her. Next, that person, at least on a subconscious level, has to rate the requester according to how well he or she knows them. Finally, that person would have to make a conscious decision to accept or reject the request, which may take into consideration the social and emotional ramifications of the action.

Facebook itself, like many others, allows developers to write custom applications through an easy-to-use API. This could prove to be its greatest asset and its greatest enemy at the same time. The simplicity of these APIs creates such low barriers to entry, to the point where anybody who can write simple scripts could potentially create his or her own plug-in or mini-application. While there are many useful extensions available, this has led to vast amounts of junk extensions that generally provide zero useful features. Notifications and requests, together with the ever-available “Send to All” buttons in such plug-ins generate their own fair share of social spam.

Now that we’ve seen how an instance of social spam could be generated and the inconvenience one instance causes, imagine social spam on the magnitude of its e-mail cousin. The same inconveniences and economic costs involved in e-mail spam is also applicable to spam of a social nature. Time lost, revenue lost due to time lost, computing resources wasted including bandwidth and processing power, are all real consequences of social spam. Similarly, the vast amount of social spam disguises legitimate requests on the social network, which one would inadvertently disregard as spam.

I used to enjoy using services such as Facebook and Friendster. Nowadays, I have to force myself to log in at least once a week to remove social spam. I’ve stopped using them to connect to friends, and have even contemplated deleting my account. I’ve received notifications from weird-sounding mini-applications that I’ve begun to reject all requests to add any kind of new application to my profile.

The result and the impact of social spam in the near future remain to be seen. We can speculate all we want, and yet be wrong about it. One thing is quite certain, however, and it is that if the magnitude of social spam continues to increase, the convenience and benefits of social networking services would be overwhelmed and outweighed by the eventual inconvenience that would come with using such a service. Should that day ever come, we would, as a connected world, possibly be forced to disconnect ourselves from the first useful application of technology since the Internet and search engines.

Computer Theory & Java Programming (Bryan Chen, May 2008)
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Had an interesting question in CS1231 paper today:

Prove that F : X > Y is one-to-one if and only if f(SnT) = f(S) n f(T), where S, T exists in the domain X.

Right.

Think think think.

Still thinking.

Okay, so I can’t figure it out (Redbull doesn’t make you smarter apparently). So I come up with some lame compositional story:

x exists in F(X) iff f(SnT) iff f(S) n f(T) iff f(S) and f(T). Therefore, etc, etc, etc, etc ……….. …………………….. …… ……………….. ………….. …………. ………………………. .. . ………….. ………… …………….. ……………. Hence, little red riding hood was eaten because the wolf was hungry.

I hope I pass. Please God, please let me pass this.

Just a couple of days back, I was thinking about stuff, about how certain things turn out the way they do, and why some are more successful than others. Then in a moment of clarity, I came up with the following:

Passion (creates) Goals (and drives) Motivation (that brings) Achievement (which reinforces) Passion

Doing something we like is infinitely better than doing something that we have to. Following our love or passion for something will bring greater success in a more natural way.

That aside, my exams have begun. I have a paper in another 12 hours… super sian. After that paper, I’ll have 2 more (easier ones though), so next week will be another busy week. The only reason why I even have the time to blog now is because I’m too tired to study for tomorrow’s paper (it’s already half past midnight, and I started at 8.30AM this morning) and too anxious to fall asleep. Nothing nice on TV. I’m starting to get the hang of discrete maths, and it’s a truly beautiful subject. Too bad I’m almost done with it.

My first paper was Software Engineering, open book exam. Super easy paper (thankfully). Hopefully it’ll make up for the marks that I’ll lose for the (severely lacking) project.

Candice got me a new body pillow and blanket. Really, I don’t know what I’d do without her. I hope her workload decreases soon. It’s her birthday next week, and my parents have decided to celebrate her birthday at Graze …. good stuff.

… Have to go for a drink with Ming Yee and KH after my exams. =)