February 2012
3 posts
Me: *Trying to find my way out of a small parking lot, which had undergone renovation since my last visit, I find that the usual exit has been disallowed for that purpose*
Me: Hmm, this used to be an exit.
Mom: That's what she said.
All: o_O
Mom: What. I lived through the 90s.
January 2012
6 posts
The rules of the Game
Chinese New Year (beginning after the end of the first complete lunar cycle in the new solar year) is a time for Chinese from all over the world to gather together, stop working, visit family, and sit around eating. After living in Singapore for a while, I’ve started wondering why this is considered a holiday instead of a normal day.
Maybe because it’s the one day of the year where parents (at...
Herbal supplements
Kratom actually does something. Perhaps not very sleep-inducing in normal (3-5 gram) doses, but quite relaxing, speaking from several months casual use. Highly recommended. An opiate agonist, so use with care based on how much of an addictive personality you happen to have.
I also highly recommend the particular supplier linked above, again from experience.
December 2011
8 posts
M comments on Kenji hiding in wait to attack Shinji.
M: Ah, 'machibuse'! [待ち伏せ]
Me: What?
M: 'Machibuse.' 'Suneeku attakku.' For example on December 7th, 1941 -- no, that doesn't really work.
Me: Why not?
M: That wasn't really a sneak attack. I heard Washington knew about it before hand.
Me: I'm not sure if that's entirely the case, but even so, I think it's still an ambush because the people actually being attacked didn't know about it beforehand.
M: Yeah, it's all Washington's fault.
Me: o_O
Broken arrows →
i.e. accidents involving nuclear weapons.
WatchTrippy psychological/philosophical film by Jim Fucking Henson. (1969)
edit:50 minutes of video + 11 minutes of weird bonus cartoons
During the first days of his new wandering life, in the first greedy whirl of regained freedom, Goldmund had to relearn to live the homeless, timeless life of the traveler. Obedient to no man, dependent only on weather and season, without a goal before them of a roof above them, owning nothing, open to every whim of fate, the homeless wanderers lead their childlike, brave, shabby existence. They...
“If there are forty thousand people in an area that can only support thirty thousand, it’s no kindness to bring in food from the outside to maintain them at forty thousand. That just guarantees that the famine will continue.” “True. But all the same, it’s hard just to sit by and watch them starve.” Ishmael rumbled volcanically. “Who said anything about...
November 2011
7 posts
“Well unfortunately a lot of people will judge a restaurant just by how long the...”
– David K., my Singaporean colleague.
While watching Yamikin Ushijima-kun Me: Hmm, she looks familiar. I think I’ve seen her somewhere before. M: It says on the DVD case that all the actresses except for the main character are former AV stars. Me: Oops.
Capitlolism →
Or “how I learned to stop worrying and love economics and then also starve to death.”
Structural variability and the usefulness of... →
Interesting thoughts on the role of variability in neural modeling.
Singlish
Today I learned how to pronounce the following words in Singaporean: Udon - “yoo-don”
Margarita - “mar-GAR-ita”
Which reminded me of several other weird/interesting bits of Singlish vocabulary, grammar and verbal politeness, which I will now relate since most (2/3) of you have no idea what sort of miserable excuses for spoken language get hurled and spat at me every...
M: *Trying on new shirt*
Me: You've still got the "Small" size sticker on your t-shirt.
M: Oh, thanks. *Removes sticker, places it on my crotch*
Me: :(
September 2011
6 posts
Q: How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman? A: None.
Nature has endowed us with a capacity for kindly feelings - let us not squander them on others.
Dolmance, Philosophy in the Boudoir, Marquis de Sade, 1795
Amy: Why’d I have to invent that awful device.
Professor Farnsworth: Amy, technology isn’t intrinsically good or evil. It’s how it’s used, like the death-ray.
Futurama S06E08
they finally found a way to measure it →
jehk:
The quote from the Nickelodeon people, in reference to this damning study, is hilarious: <SNIP>
But this does correspond with reality. Like it or not, preschoolers watch shows like Spongebob. Their parents do plunk them down in front of the TV. The “diversity” thing is totally irrelevant — the actual audience, as opposed to the “target” audience, is surely mostly young white kids....
Optimization? In my Haskell? →
(Warning: contains nerd stuff)
August 2011
6 posts
Fine, be a bunch of jerks...
Problem 2
By considering the terms in the Fibonacci sequence whose values do not exceed four million, find the sum of the even-valued terms.
My answer
Let's all do these together
By “these” I mean the problems at Project Euler. Use HPaste to paste your responses. We’ll do one every couple days so nobody gets too bogged down. Since I seem to be the only one who allows replies to my posts, you can all post your own answers in response to mine, or make your own post whenever the mood strikes you. If possible, try to post your own answer before looking at...
STOMP - a site for Singaporeans to bitch about the... →
Nutritional content of your favourite Singapore... →
My favourite dessert, chendol, has 386 kcal per serving, or about 1.5 slices of cheesecake per glass.
July 2011
2 posts
bitches.hs →
Hint
Giant gyouza
2.5kg of gyouza. Skin so thick it’s like pizza crust. Only 9600 yen (~$95) and a bargain at twice the price!
June 2011
3 posts
Me: Do you want some of this special tea?
M: No thanks.
Me: Why don’t you like this stuff?
M: It’s bitter.
Me: What about coffee?
M: I’d love some, thanks!
3 tags
"Quine programs" quine programs →
Interesting discussion about writing programs that output their own source code. Reminiscent of Hofstadter’s GEB but with more formal mathematics and less metaphysical extemporizing (not that that’s a bad thing or anything).
May 2011
6 posts
Playstationmania
Look ye upon all the cool games I got and weep. Also, pity me for they’re all in Japanese so I can’t understand what’s going on. They’re mostly RPGs (about 70-30 Final Fantasy style/Resident Evil style) and a bunch of sports games which M found advertised online from some Japanese couple who was moving back to Japan and couldn’t take their Singapore-voltage...
Shaolin Intruders
Shaolin Intruders .
Forget what I said earlier. This is what you should watch if you want to enjoy great cinema. Campy? Sure, but it’s also got a great plot and some hilariously over-the-top kung-fu.
3 tags
Chinese Drama Review: "Masters of Tai Chi"
Masters of Tai Chi: We received this series from a colleague of M’s who has an even deeper appreciation for old kung fu movies than us. That said, I expected this series to be a ham-fisted drama with a bunch of low budget kung fu thrown in. Yet almost from the very first episode I was pleasantly surprised, and continued to be so with each subsequent episode. Not only is the plot intricate...
Old and New Cat
Old Cat (Kenji):
New Cat (Shinji):
April 2011
9 posts
Lake Agassiz
Lake Agassiz, which existed roughly between 13-8.5k years ago in the area now including Manitoba, Saskatchewan, North Dakota and Minnesota, was a glacial lake (a lake formed by leftover melting ice which collects during the retreat of a large glacier) of truly immense proportions. Major drainage events were likely due to the hot periods several thousand years ago which caused ice and glaciation...
The Unbearable Wholeness of Being →
Very eloquent and thought provoking article about the “middle path” between clear-cut mechanistic biology on the one hand, and what basically amount to intelligent-design vitalism on the other. Neither of these two approaches really work anymore: nobody has taken vitalism seriously since the 1800s when the last scraps of alchemy were being burned away by scientific progress; and...
