3 comments on Singapore Science and Engineering Fair 2007 Registration

If I dont comment now, I think I would not have the chance to…

Comment 1: “Do NOT click the Next button again”.

To submit your registration, you are supposed to click the button at the bottom of the page that is labelled as “(Click Once Only) Next >>”.

Honestly, it would take a great leap of faith to trust that phrase as the web page simply freezes for like an half a minute (depending on youy internet connection speed) before responding.

So being impatient (and somewhat convinced that I might not have pressed the button hard enough), I pressed it again (maybe up to a few times…). Then suddenly, a response appeared, saying “Please wait while the next page loads. Do NOT click the Next button again.” Amazingly, after the message appeared, it took less than 10 seconds (I think) for the next page to load.

Comment 2: SPAM! or is it privacy?

http://www.science.edu.sg/ssc/ssef-ats/publicview.jsp 

We all recieve spam in our email mailbox, and if you dont recieve any spam, you are either 1) lucky 2) have a good spam filter or 3) treats spam as mail. Well, the administrators at the Singapore Science Centre are certainly not lucky, and I dont think they have a spam filter for registration (dont thnk anyone does).

(On a side note, if you create a program that can reject spam for online registration forms, you can register for SSEF and potentially win yourself a gold medal + probably a scholarship if you are taking part in the A Star Talent Search).

Thus, spam is treated as a legitimate registration; I hardly think there is a school called ss or ssss. And I certainly do not think that anyone would be given the name of “boyhood wonder” (am I mistaken?!).

Of course, it might be that for this 3 registrations, the organisers have CENSORED the names of the students and schools to protect privacy… But what privacy…

Comment 3: Now this is really spam!

After sending in my registration, the SSEF administration has sent me 4 emails that says: “SSEF/A*TS Registration Receipt”. The 3rd and 4th are duplicates of the 1st and 2n email respectively. While the 1st (and hence 3rd) is useful in the sense that it gives you a copy of your registration form, 2nd and 4th are blank and hence completely worthless!

(Just in case you were wondering why are the screenshot so weird, it is because I have censored part of the information… ….)

Update: 5th November 2006
A manual scan of the page leads me to find that the LAST person to register (successfully) did so on the last day, at “23:56:53.420″. whihc is only ~3 minutes away from the deadline…

Update: 24th December 2006
Merry Christmas Eve! I rechecked the http://www.science.edu.sg/ssc/ssef-ats/publicview.jsp and realised, to my horror, that the last person who registered successfully did so over the deadline: “2006-12-02 00:05:02.653″. The deadline was 2006-12-01 23:59:59.???” and thus “2006-12-02 00:05:02.653″ was over the deadline by 5minutes and 2.??? seconds! Shouldn’t this person be disqualified? But then, we always give the benefit of the doubt… maybe he/she forgot….

Prom dresses at Metro Tampines

Metro Tampines has a section on level 2 dedicated to selling dresses for proms! Wow, looks like our prom was a little too early, since it makes more sense for other proms to be held later (with O and A level only finishing a few days/weeks ago). Of course, you can be sour grapes and claim that those dresses on sale at metro have no style.

Learning assembly? Look no further!

I have been trying to learn assembly and I recommend you to look at http://www.drpaulcarter.com/pcasm/. I am no expert at programming but I find this website very useful for learning assembly, especially because I use C and NOT C++. For those using C++ and not C, its time to pick up C since the code given is in C. Of course, you should be able to find a way to use other languages too.

What has happened to Sony?

Something has happened to Sony quality control. For those following news you would know that they had problems with their (laptop) batteries and camera sensors (CCD).

Camera sensor problems: http://www.imaging-resource.com/badccds.html

Battery recalls? Search: “sony battery recall” on google or some other seach engines

Well, with their Playstation 3 coming up, lets hope they can recover their losses . Check out: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Japan-PlayStation-3.html.  It might be game over for Sony if there is (unlikely) a product defect with the playstation or if they lose the blu-ray format war.

Update (24th November 2006): More problems for Sony. There seem to be problems with their digital cameras too! Apparently, it might be that overheating of the sensor would cause the LCD to fail.

Check out for more details:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0611/06112401sonydefault.asp

The “Dunman High School Secondary One Orientation 2003″ Booklet

I was flipping through my old Dunman High-related stuff when I stumbled upon the “Dunman High School Secondary One Orientation 2003″ Booklet. If you flip you page 2, you would find a well written message by Lin Yi Han who is the representative of the Peer Support Leaders Committee 2003.

The second sentence of his message goes: “For the next four years of your life, Dunman High will be your second home, and it is my pleasure to welcome you into our Dunmanian Family”.

I wish to shift your attention to the first and second phrase which reads: “For the next four years of your life, Dunman High will be your second home,” Apparently, this message was made without the knowledge (who could predict the future) that there were the Integrated Programme.

Imagine you are now in his position, and you are suppose to write a similar message what would you put for the first phrase? I came up with 4 options:

1) “For the next two or four or six years of your life, “

2) “For the next two to six years of your life, “

3) “For the next two, but I hope, four or six years of your life, “

4) “For the next two or six years ,if you taking the integrateed programme, or four years, if you are taking O Levels, of your life, “

So what would you choose? Actually, a more realistic one would be: “For the next four or six years of your life, “, because they would probably not consider anyone who only stays there for only two years part of the “Dunmanian Family”. Hopefully not.