Home

Advertisement

Customize
yzq
16 August 2009 @ 12:36 am
(Science, alcohol, and late-night movies do not mix)

Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies.

...

The key difference between the models presented here and other models of infectious disease is that the dead can come back to life. Clearly, this is an unlikely scenario if taken literally, but possible real-life applications may include allegiance to political parties, or diseases with a dormant infection.

This is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the first mathematical analysis of an outbreak of zombie infection.

[A] zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.


- Munz, P, Hudea, I, Imad, J & Smith, R.J., When Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection, Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress (2009).
Tags:
 
 
Current Music: Starship - We Built This City
 
 
yzq
09 August 2009 @ 12:14 am
Baked salmon topped with dijonnaise and bread crumbs, with garlic rice and baked cherry tomatoes.



Way too salty due to butter overload and my sprinkling of additional salt. Didn't manage to get the bread crumbs to brown nicely either, otherwise the salmon came out tasting pretty good.
Tags:
 
 
Current Music: The Fray - Syndicate
 
 
 
yzq
08 June 2009 @ 12:04 am
    Memorable things:
  • Superb food at the camp canteen and along the streets
  • Shaz getting a not-so-subtle declaration of love for a canteen trannie (mayonnaise squeezed in a heart-shape)
  • 6 guys high on beer squeezing on one bed talking cock
  • Singing cheesy love songs with aaron out of absolute boredom
  • Playing soccer with the Thais, who tend to grab *stuff* when going for the ball
  • Thai liasons actually wanting to eat our combat rations
  • Horny liason who carried porn on his handphone and showed it to random people (without being asked for it)
  • View from the Hellfire Pass museum, along the Death Railway

    Memorable but not so pleasant things:
  • The bloody hot weather
  • Jenny the infamous canteen trannie, with her booming voice, buff upper body, trunk-like legs and hideously short miniskirt
  • Giant winged ants / beetles flying in the shower / tub and drowning in droves
  • Not being allowed to flush toilet paper down the toilet bowl - the consequences of doing so were *not* pretty
  • Almost escalating a soccer brawl with another bunch of singaporeans also from our unit
  • Watching "Cannibal Holocaust" on the bus (the title is self-explanatory; Thai bus drivers have poor taste in movies)
Tags:
 
 
Current Music: Bee Gees - Too Much Heaven
 
 
yzq
29 January 2009 @ 01:59 am
There are new buildings, grand renovations, new and plentiful blessings that one should be grateful for. But what used to be, was something more even if they were fewer, more modest. Those were things we worked for, earned, made from little or nothing.


Despite having resided in Singapore since birth, I struggle sometimes to recognise the country I live in. This isn't the Singapore I remember as a child. This must be the tragedy of living in a place too small for the past to have a place, growing too fast for personal histories to be celebrated and remembered. What are the stories of a bygone era in which my grandparents lived? I never found out before they departed, for which I am worse off, for how do we know where we are going if we do not understand where we come from?

What will become of the personal spaces that I think of as home? The iconic Merlion or CBD skyline may come to mind when we think of Singapore, but our own image of home is an individualistic memory - our neighbourhood, a flat lived in as a child, or even an aunt's house we went to after school. The preservation of national heritage sites thus does little to compensate for the sense of personal loss felt with redevelopment, and one should not be surprised at the lack of rootedness amongst Singaporeans.

There will be those who grow richer, and those who enjoy the comforts of air-conditioning, clean and safe streets, and drinkable water from the taps. But for others, these blessings are too meager for the price that they must pay in toil, in freedom and the loss of something that once made them happy. These people will leave this city of small blessings.

- Simon Tay, City of Small Blessings

Edit: I guess this makes me sound intent on emigrating elsewhere, but in truth it reflects a conflict between 2 sentiments - one of reluctance to leave a place where I know so many, and which has profoundly shaped my views and beliefs, and another of dismay at the reality of progress.
 
 
yzq
Wait a second. The start of next year will be delayed by circumstances beyond everyone's control. Time will stand still for one second on New Year's Eve, as we ring in the New Year on that Wednesday night. As a result, you'll have an extra second to celebrate because a "Leap Second" will be added to 2008 to let a lagging Earth catch up to super-accurate clocks.

- 2009 to Arrive Not a Second Too Soon
 
 
yzq
16 November 2008 @ 06:25 pm
Finally got the time to try this out:

The potato wasn't mashed very well so moulding it with the boiled egg into a ball had catastrophic results initially (the yolk broke). Thankfully(!) they stayed in one piece in the pan =p
Tags: ,
 
 
Current Music: Emerson Hart - Friend to a Stranger
 
 
yzq
02 November 2008 @ 08:18 pm


Download
Tags:
 
 
Current Mood: 481
 
 
yzq
27 October 2008 @ 10:37 pm
Lol  
McCain gets BarackRoll'd


The Dark Bailout
 
 
yzq
24 September 2008 @ 11:08 pm
"Turn left ahead." Foot off accelerator pedal, hands shifting to turn a stubborn wheel to the left. Not enough - wheels careered into the next lane as the road bent to the left. Turn more, lurching in a 90 degree turn back on track. Phew. Rover continued to the left, an inexorable gravity pulling it in an inward spiraling orbit. Hands, moments earlier struggling with the steering, now worked frantically in reverse. An upward jerk as the front wheels mounted the kerb, then another as the rear wheels followed suit. The rover stopped turning, homing in on its target. A tree trunk loomed ahead. Foot down to brake; no, shit that was the clutch. The other foot, frozen, hung uselessly. A pedestrian clad in silly white and yellow stood by in slack-jawed silence. Closer, the tree dissolved into awkward blocky shapes of green and brown. Then blackness.

"EH! Sergeant Yang, you love trees so much ah?"

Thank goodness for simulators.
 
 
yzq
21 September 2008 @ 01:05 pm
Described here are the synthetic details en route to an array of 2-nm-tall anthropomorphic molecules in monomeric, dimeric, and polymeric form. These anthropomorphic figures are called, as a class, NanoPutians. Using tools of chemical synthesis, the ultimate in designed miniaturization can be attained while preparing the most widely recognized structures: those that resemble humans.

- Chanteau, S.H. & Tour, J.M., Synthesis of Anthropomorphic Molecules, J. Org. Chem. (2003).


more chem =p )
Tags:
 
 
Current Mood: amused
 
 
yzq
30 August 2008 @ 07:31 pm
The Workers' Party showed at the 2006 polls, for instance, that it was able to put together a not unimpressive line-up of candidates.

- Paul Jacob, Why let losers share podium? (Straits Times, 16 August 2008)


Is it that difficult for the press to acknowledge that the WP fielded an impressive group of candidates at the last elections? Enough with insinuations, now.
 
 
Current Music: Daughtry - What About Now
 
 
yzq
11 August 2008 @ 12:31 am
To Da Paolo Gastronomia for making possible 30-minute home-cooked pasta that actually tastes decent! The magic's all in the sauce.

Salmon cream Seafood marinara
Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us





While last year was a year of challenging my limits and stretching boundaries (and I still intend to continue doing so), things have seemingly reversed themselves this year as I find myself being delivered healthy doses of humility, in the realization that outside my strength in academic studies, I am merely average or below average in many other aspects of human capability - physically, in leadership etc. And I've been forced to accept that for some of these things there is absolutely *nothing* I can do! Yet I find this extremely liberating, because it focuses the mind on what can actually be done, and insecurity fades into self-acceptance.



None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
- Johann Wolfgang van Goethe

Does anyone know the context of this quote?
 
 
yzq
05 July 2008 @ 11:20 am
Three times as loyal to country
Three times as much leadership
Three times as disciplined
Three times as professional
Three times as much fighting spirit
Three times as ethical
Three times as caring for soldiers

Three times as much faith and allegiance to the president and the republic
Three times as much support and defence of the constitution
Three times as many lives to give in protecting the honour and independence of our country

And so three times as well-paid as the full-time national serviceman

(No personal offense intended)
 
 
Current Music: Boys Like Girls - Holiday
 
 
yzq
23 June 2008 @ 02:07 am
Oh, sweet morning
Is your head not right
Did you hear my warning
This is the time of times

And your head feels like your body
You mind is close behind
There’s a teardrop on your shoulder
Says this is the time of times
It’s the time of times again

This is the time of times
It’s the time of times again

Oh, sweet morning
And your head's not right
Did you hear my warning
This is the time of times

And your head feels like your body
Your mind is close behind
There’s a teardrop on your shoulder
Says this is the time of times
It’s the time of times again

The time of times
Yeah this is the time of times
 
 
Current Music: Badly Drawn Boy - Time of Times
 
 
yzq
31 May 2008 @ 03:43 am

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

- Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est




I swear this baby gives a kick a gazillion times more powerful than that from any chili* you've ever tasted. Charging into a room filled with tear gas and madly scrambling to put on our gas masks while our eyes teared enough to force them shut, and enough mucus ran down noses to flood our masks. The euphoria felt upon leaving the room, and having the fresh wind clear our faces, can only be understood by those who've been humbled by the numbing spiciness of a hot chili, and then come back for more. Has addiction to tear gas been documented? (Kidding =p)

* - Excepting maybe the Naga Jolokia and Habanero

As an added bonus, synthesis is a short and sweet one-step reaction between 2-chlorobenzaldehyde and malononitrile, catalysed by a weak amine base. <3




chem )
Tags:
 
 
Current Music: Alter Bridge - Open Your Eyes
 
 
yzq
25 May 2008 @ 06:30 pm
I think I'm finally done with this and fiddling with engine code. Time to move on to something else!



Download

And I cannot believe how the overt racism in not posting a vast majority of malays (based on observation) to support and other arms units (combat engineers, artillery, armour, signals etc.) goes unchallenged in the SAF.

I'm alive
And I keep my cool one more time
And you just keep on walking by
Tags:
 
 
Current Music: Holiday Parade - Walking By
 
 
yzq
04 May 2008 @ 07:53 pm
If one accepts the theories of modern science - that for all our human complexity in cognition and emotion, we are merely medium-sized aggregations of matter, slowly organised by natural evolutionary processes to look and function as we do and interact with other similar lumps of matter.

Then one faces the consequence of not having any pre-defined meaning to one's existence, and is left with the burden of defining one's very own purpose. What a heavy responsibity to shoulder!

How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

- Kierkegaard, Repetition

And then dawns the fact that one is an impossibly minute entity insignificant to the greater scheme of things. Except the fact that maybe there isn't such a scheme after all, because it's left to us to create.

And then what comes next. How do you pick choices in life when what is right and wrong is so subjective, and Kant's moral imperatives just don't seem to cut it?

Sigh. Too much to read and too little time to understand. Should one even bother? I don't know whether to pick the red or blue pill.
Tags:
 
 
Current Music: Coldplay - Til Kingdom Come
 
 
yzq
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thougth and love lose their value because they are not everasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the wolrd. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.

- Bertrand Russell
Tags:
 
 
yzq
12 January 2008 @ 04:27 am
Went to NYC and Boston over the christmas period - pictures below.

Pics )
 
 
 
 

Advertisement

Customize