Abnormalised

short subtle lesson in optimism

2006-02-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

[comment 6th Feb 06: first post of the year. somehow it disappeared and i had to repost it today. The post below comes immediately after this one by time of writing]

Its been a long time since i last blogged. To be exact, i think i haven't blogged at all this year. And we're already past the first month of it.
i've been spending the nights at home for the past two weeks. This will continue for an indefinite amount of time, and may last till 20th Feb. The reason is that i'm currently attached to the ISTEC, School of Military Intelligence to help out in the very tedious process of drawing map overlays on the computer using some obscure GIS (geographical information system) software. Its commercial, proprietry, and probably very expensive, and not very user-friendly in my opinion. Such work entails drawing thousands of polygons and hence millions of mouseclicks. very good for training a specific hand-eye coordination haha...of course these things sound quite impressive, especially those military organisation acronymns, but we who are involved in this work for too long have grown numb to it already. There is nothing interesting to it, and its very very tedious. I wish we had software to replace this work, and if DSTA actually worked at it, they'll get it done. But of course i am very critical and skeptical of DSTA's work. To say the least, their software is NOT user-friendly. I won't even bother going into the technical details of their products, and the products of our local defence industry in general. I've seen it, and i think it sucks. Never mind that ST Engineering doesn't seem to be exploiting carbon fibre composites in the best way. Who cares if you make your UAV with that?! Its just as flimsy and i probably it will break with repeated hard handling. What a great way to add more cost to your product.
okay stop. my criticisms never end...
on thursday evening i decided to spend the night back at sungei gedong camp, where i'm permanently based at. And make my way down to Pasir Laba Camp, which is my current temporary workplace. That'll save my mum from having to wake up early in the morning to fetch me to camp. And Jurong's very very far away from the east. I crossed my fingers while having dinner (mmm very good Hokkien fried mee, always my favourite) at the basement food court at Lot One shoppers' mall. Don't get bound my some errand. And then that fateful call came. My friend (colleague) is very busy with some work and we're running a tight schedule (which i'm freed of to assist in the work at SMI). It also happened that he was the orderly sergeant (we call it AOS for Armour HQ Orderly Sergeant) that day and since there would be some important inspection at the Ops Room the following day, he would have to spend the night studying lots of standing orders and procedures pertaining to emergencies. Since I was returning to camp, I would have to take over his job, spend the night in the Ops Room studying and face the inspectors tomorrow.
As it turned out, those inspectors were mostly handled by our guys from the Ops Branch (of course, not by the NSF third sergeants). I stood at a corner with the sergeant i'd be handing over my duties to after the inspection, and the day's duty orderly officer. Us sergeants didn't get many questions, and all that i had prepared for had been in vain. I was relieved when it was all over and it turned out not to be much. I forgot those negative thoughts of "why me?"
And i learnt some things too.
I am now probably the NSF third sergeant most aware of our camp's crisis management procedures.
And I learnt what being Optimistic means when i observed the guy who was taking over my duty.
Its quite an irony how my friends like to describe me as optimistic. As much as it is flattering, and as much as i used to be (or maybe only appeared that way) in the past, i guess this cannot be said of my current self. I must admit that i am now a more pessimistic person. And the other guy just seems quite cavalier to the impending inspection. His demeanor (?) was so carefree, it was to me like a model of what a person one could potentially become when freed from the shackles of pessimism.
That was such a discovery.

emotional resonance

2006-02-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

Hmm last week's three working days seemed rather long. i wonder how it will feel to spend the next, which spans all of five days. perhaps its the lingering effect of the chinese new year holidays. i'm still experiencing its after-effects.

To minimise the hassle of travelling between work place and home, which are situated at two ends of the earth (yes, my very tiny world of habitation) i will be spending some nights in camp. That will provide the
opportunity for some very due exercise. That is, if i don't get dragged into some tedious powerpoint slide work again. Hmm i should be let off to spend the night peacefully, but that'll not sit easy with my conscience. That sacrifice could have come more naturally, but perhaps it does not because my working relationships have not progressed any further beyond that of an acquaintance. But i have exercised discipline to be kind and considerate. We may build enough rapport and camaraderie in future, and the undercurrents of misunderstanding may disappear till, but that is not conceivable now. I must sound very cold and unaccomadating. I don't wish to, but this partly stems from some personal psychological challenges i have to deal with, such as issues of self-esteem, self-confidence etc... These issues have been trampled upon too much by words in my private notebooks and this blog. what i really need is some action. period.

Watching "I Not Stupid Too", the characters' emotions resonated within me. Those feelings of being at wit's end, those violent emotional states so full of anguish and helplessness, the pain of getting caned (for being naughty)...for being the angry teen, the bad child, the hopelessly misunderstood one...

I'll leave it at that. Reminiscing my childhood will be reserved for long bus rides. like taking 67 from choa chu kang to eunos. No more fresh stuff to write by harping on old topics.

SORRY EVERYBODY

2005-12-30T23:08:00.000-08:00

as the year comes to a close, i just want to say sorry.

to all those who expected much of me, i have disappointed

to all those who are friends of me, i have had only negativity and nothing else to share

to my relatives and family, i've been stuck in a deep rut and can't find my way out. you can't see it, you only see my mood swings and chaotic behavioural fluctuations. its been difficult to cope with my presence. i regret that.

to myself: your hummy and your pillows and bolster and bed have been around with you for many years. we will continue to share your sorrows and depression as we have done for many many many years. please be strong, we'll be with you all the way. you can always count on us, as reliable as hummy's smell regenerating powers which were at work since you were a little baby 1 year old.

try to be strong

struggling to come to terms with life

2005-12-30T22:55:00.000-08:00

I totally forgot it is the last day of 2005 today.

instead i'm mired in some sort of a deadlock of sadness. i start to think that this depressiveness may occur with increasing frequency until it inevitably becomes permanent and irreversible. i find it difficult to converse with most people now. its getting more and more awkward. i cannot form sentences properly, i cannot hold a conversation for longer than a few sentences before
the other side tunes out of me. i can't answer properly, tongue daggers fly all around and into me, but i am so numb i stand there to receive more for awhile. then i will walk slowly away and into hiding. i hide in vain, and while i do i take conscious effort to immerse myself in the pain. i don't even know what too say to my classmates. i lose my dignity and self respect.

pain is the refuge i take from paina circular path that knows no endmaybe i am turning autistic. i feel bad after my class gathering last night...hell i even had the impression it was on another day. can't seem to communicate, just feel as awkward as ever. dont know what to say. just sat on
the lone stool, at the back of the circle...withdrawing from the social
realm.

laugh when they laugh,
but i don't know what's so funny,
smiling to all the faces at once,
not even the walls smile back at me

increasingly i want to be alone, but loneliness is what i want to escape from.

i wish i didn't go for that barbeque. because i don't know what to say, i'm lost and i can't communicate. so lost.

if i become autistic, i just hope i get asperger's syndrome too.

i am trying very hard. sometimes it scares me how a certain thought could seem to lift me up high for a while. i get bewildered, i disbelieve, and then i fall. the ground is very hard and it hurts. i can't get up and i just want to cry like a little fallen boy. to seek attention and pity. but didn't i just say i want to be left alone?

life seems so cold and hard...i struggle to carry on, slowly and sorrowfully
i trudge along.

i'm so long aired...here i go again

2005-12-23T19:10:00.000-08:00

there's nothing much for me to blog about actually.

the quality of my writing hasn't been good this year.

blogging has been an outlet for me...just to vent off the steam of calm down or sort out some mess within. hence most posts have not been thoughtful articles.

made a lot of notes in my notebook in the past 2 months since i started using it for the m113 operational maintenance course. but that took up only a few pages. the rest have been personal bits and pieces, technical plans and a long chunk used to record the learning process of electromagnetics.

a lot of learning has not been completed, hence no consolidation of knowledge has been done, and therefore no blogging output. but since i first picked up a book on modern physics and photocopied the chapter on quantum mechanics, i've always wanted to reorganise those facts to make them easier to understand...especially for those who have very very little knowledge and
capability in math but want to get into the math itself, not just getting contented with popular-science books. i think that while there're really bright scientists out there, they can't quite write and express their concepts properly. yes...i dare to say that most can't really teach it. the
most famous exception is probably richard feynman.

instead of a long and painful (to me) mathematical ejaculation (because it must have been pure pleasure for the mathematically gifted author), the transition to math should be gradual. and anyway, i think some books have too much math, and miss out important considerations in the formulation of the theory...giving the impression that all there is to it is just math whose
origin will always remain mysterious and obscure and solely in the hands of mathematicians.
in physics, physicists have to find the math to describe their concepts, then play with the math and relate this to the 'physics'. i hope my statements have not given the impression that math is disjointed from the physics...math and physics are ultimately dialectic in relationship, just as culture and human thinking are probably so.

i may have made my statements in grave error...wondering why ppl can live with the laplace transform in electrical engineering without needing to know what motivated its existence, and only i can't!? that took a long time to figure out, but i believe i'm right about it. OR maybe its too obvious for all but me. how can all the books not write about it? maybe that's for the math books to talk about, but i can't find it yet.

all these need-to-know urges have hindered the pace of my learning. (but is it learning or just ignorance otherwise?) it was this that got me frustrated learning about thermodynamics...for example, when we talk about speed of the gas particles, it is speed relative to what? Bulk velocity when a truckload of air moves is not part of the 'speed'...so what exactly is the speed? i've not pursued further, so i do not know if i have made a mistake in this comment, or wondered/wandered in the wrong direction.

that was how this blog was born...because i got frustrated trying to understand A level thermodynamics.

shivering with rage

2005-12-21T22:26:00.000-08:00

the holidays were supposed to be liberating and happy and full of time to laze around and do everything and nothing. there was a hell lot of learning to be done, but its thursday and i've been ill at ease for the past few days.

something has been constricting my freedom and breathing down my neck. i know what it is. or maybe its just a self-imposed thing that grew from this external thing. my heart aches.

i just want to shout and cry out. but its all reacting inside my tiny heart and its too small to accomodate the storm within. i'm also feeling satanic. satanic rage. i'm upset. i'm repressing my feelings too. it is so painful typing this.

and when i get back to work next thursday, i would have felt that all is lost and all that. i'm so pessimistic now, i just can't pick myself up. i'm having bouts of it now and then. i thought getting out of school of armour would bring some freedom and that would make me a happier person. but i still get these bouts of fitful anger and depression. no that's not the way i was supposed to live through this week!

its christmas week, i'm supposed to live in joy and indulgence. to indulge in my curiousity! but that opportunity has only come and gone abruptly occasionally, sprinkled sparsely over the week since the start of my leave. its like a spectacular domino effect. one factor is all it needs to trigger all the other triggers and ticking time bombs in me. oh damn, i'm still trying to defuse them and now they explode. i'm so full of range. i want to get out of the damn house. just one week to do everything i want and everything for me and let everything go smoothly? please?

no that has been denied to me for the past few days. i'm not sleeping well...in fact since i got into hq armour i think 7 hours of sleep is not enough. and i used to handle late nights past twelve so well...or maybe not. but hey i'm sleeping at eleven and waking at eight plus and its still not
enough?! damn! that lethargy! or maybe its just the way things were this week and make me turn off. i know its possible i could do without sleep. i've been through it before. my passion in my work and drastically reduce my need for sleep. i'm like a dragon. but this week, i'm just less than a worm. today and yesterday i managed to pull myself together for some concentrated
'study time', and for that duration it felt like the lethargy had worn away. once i stopped, it came back and i'd realise once again that i really didn't get enough sleep last night.

i think i need more exercise. i need to get out. to do some real work outside and at home. i need to find my friends and talk to them. i need to do something. but i feel so trapped! how can this psychological maelstrom happen right in the middle of a time when i'm supposed to embark on a process to find my lost soul back?! i desperately yearn for that confident charming fearless and intelligent self that i could be, but has worn away and disappeared over time. i could be so much, and now i am less than little.

and the ghouls are crawling all over my head; ghouls who think they are smart, who like to second-guess me in every way. they try and they fail, but their manner leaves me extremely disgusted. that chronic disgust has taken its toll on me. ghouls who misunderstand me when they think they know better what sort of person i am. i hate you if you are one of them. and hell hath no fury like mine.

that's why i like darth vader.

if things get irreversibly worse from now, i'll just have to turn that way and kill everyone and destroy everything i don't like. manifest that hate into something more tangible.

i'm so confused and so irritated. i can't satisfy my curiousity and desire to learn properly because the undercurrent is too strong its distracting me from what i want to keep my eyes on.

someone save me. i am so sad. i need to be alone. i need the world to stay
away from me for a while. i need to live.

and if you think you know what i am, and associate me with blurness and ignorance and stupidity, i curse that the quarks that make up your flesh dissociate immediately. go away.

and shut up please.

happy birthday to me!

2005-12-18T04:52:00.000-08:00

today's my birthday.

traditionally we'd have noodles (which i did) and remove the shells of two hard boiled eggs. I'm not sure if this is a Cantonese tradition, but i think its a good time to think about it.

The shells signify all the bad stuff one gets during the year, and so removal of the egg shells signifies a renewal of oneself and bidding all the bad stuff good riddance.

This 19th birthday, i only realised we had all forgotten to do this after dinner, but i think there is no problem. I've spent this weekend, and especially today, clearing up my room and reorganising my shelf. i didn't realise it actually took so long, and i'm still not done yet. the whole table's covered in sheets of paper i need to sort out. and file them. and shelf them. and i cleared loads of rubbish too. its a very consuming job, as i found out, and the dust and the musky smell of old paper make a nauseating combination. i had to take a good nap at four after doing much clearing up.

There's still the big clean up for my drawers, the electronics stuff to sort out into containers i've yet to purchase which are strewn all over my typist's table. And getting more containers for some electronic junk that i've deemed useful, relocating some junk into other containers, and relocating the whole lot of that stuff to somewhere else...like the lower cubicles of my bookshelf? there is certainly no room for the ornament display cupboard that currently hoards my junk.

and there is the 'cupboard' next to my bed that's full of junk waiting to be cleared too...

oh my the amount of entropy in my room...its staggering. sure takes a lot of energy to get it back in order again.

usually the act of clearing up provides satisfaction. not this weekend's though. it's brought more giddiness than satisfaction. and i've gotten rather grouchy from it. the act of purging the negative energy has meant some of it has spilled into me. but i will be glad when i'm finally done with the whole room makeover...that first started with a complete rearrangement of furniture. i will not be able to complete the whole project by this year (misleading use of word, given the time of the year we are at now).

so, this has been 2005's 'egg de-shelling activity'...a more practical and useful one indeed.

(still feeling uneasy and grouchy...need some tv and reading to cure it.)

misc update

2005-12-09T22:28:00.000-08:00

great, i think i'm going for the intelligence specialist course. this week
we've been doing some terrain analysis. well i just need to list down the
stuff along a route of advance, no analysis required. but i hope i might be
able to do that some day; write the terrain analysis for my officer.
really lucky, cos in the dull days of SISPEC i dreamed up more interesting
scenarios like being involved in military intelligence. and here i am, doing
this stuff at the division level. everytime i think abt the scale of a
division, i'm awed by the sheer magnitude of the whole thing. a battalion is
but less than a ninth of a division. it gives me some pride, and i hope to
contribute in a deeper way.

its an honour, but i know its definitely not because anyone thinks i'm good.
more like they think i'm not, and therefore not possibly capable enough to
work in the combat unit. but just as well, cos the stories coming out from my
friends over there is that they'ved got rather bad, unreasonable commanders.
not what i'd like to think as 'military leaders'. there's no 'heaven' in the
SAF. i think its quite chock-full of screwed up pple who've gotten lucky
enough to get a commission. and then there are the admirable ones...few and
far between. come one...make the whole damn branch wait for something to
arrive? to do what? you see the think is nothing gets filtered down to the
level of the servicemen...you're just a machine waiting to receive
instructions. you do as you are told, no questions asked, no initiative
necessary, no thinking is to be done. the thinking has already been done for
you. you are not important. you are dispensible. you do as you are told.
damnation!

as i learnt abt that i expressed some sarcastic bewilderment, and i hope it
was loud enough for the two Majors behind to hear. the senseless things they
make you do like stay in the office late into the night until the workaholic
bosses leave and you can finally lock it up. can't they lock it up
themselves? or give a call if they need some assistance? servicemen aren't
handmaids. as a high ranking officer, your heads are in the clouds. its easy
to lose sight of the ground, where the men are working hard for you too. do
not forget them. your success depends on them, and reciprocity is greatly
appreciated.

and that shouting captain 'banshee'...the problem with the military is that
power and hierarchy is projected to the very fore of the management
philosophy. this is an important and useful tool for the commander in the
urgent tactical environment at war. BUT its also they way by which many
commanders lose control of themselves. and they think that being
authoritative and going out of their way to be imposing and domineering is
the most effective way of so-called 'leadership'. it is not. it is a trap
that commanders who lack the qualities and character fall into while
attempting to lead.

a leader and a boss are different things. there are only military leaders. no
military bosses. there is no place for bossing around in the military.

anyway, that was a very emotional ranting, because i got upset at the way my
friend was treated. i wish there was something i could do about it, not just
about my friends in their unit, but also my colleagues in HQ as well.

its been pretty busy, but i'm trying hard to make progress understanding
electromagnetics. i've always held the impression that electromagnetics and
the whole business of radar and radio frequency is black magic. much as i
wanted to learn more about it, that was always in KIV status. never really
went near it...anyway there were other learning priorities then. of course,
i'm not talking about studying for exams...never my priority. but now,
mastering electromagnetics has become an immediate priority, because these
are the most fundamental principles that govern all things electrical
engineers do. a good understanding of those principles, and some solid state
physics, and then a more general and higher level view embodied in standard
circuit analysis, i feel, would enable the electrical engineer to gain an
intuitive understanding of a circuit. in the words of some engineer who
contributed in the book "the art of analog circuit design"(?), the analog
engineer is one who can 'simulate circuits in his head'. intuitive
understanding is better than letting that understanding 'fall out of the
mathematics'.

Technology Workplan

2005-11-27T16:00:00.000-08:00

here's yet another technical post...

note to self:
"it is imperative that you realise that much can be achieved only with having the DISCIPLINE to stick to your plans and goals."

Nov - Dec LEARNING RENEWAL PHASE
-----------

1. develop an intuitive understanding of electronics. this naturally implies an excellent understanding of electronics fundamentals, and necessitates a study of the underlying physical principles of current flow.

2. clear unfinished business :
- Make a replacement ribbon cable for Dinah's walkman
- Anna's walkman replacement

Jan - Feb 06 Direction Finding
-------------

This will set the tone for the rest of the year, probably; I should not try to decide exactly what to do, but put forth several possible scenarios:

1. Fantasy Realm Building
(i.e. start full-blown on the robotics long term research project...now an extension of the Robocology concept)

2. Developing the Foundation Enabling Technologies
- Matrix Interconnect Solution (MIS)
- actuator technology
- Cerebellum Motion Management Philosopy
- basic sensor suite
- misc. ideas and technology repository

3. Functional
work on future combat systems and battle modes

But it seems apparent that we should work on 2 first, because 1 and 3 will be much easier to work on if their work or prototypes could utilise the enabling technologies. enabling technologies are so named because they enable a large number of possibilities... the first is the rapid circuit fabrication method.

CFM project log ... aka. yet another boring technical post

2005-11-22T23:22:00.000-08:00

writing these things help do some mental housekeeping and keep the heart at ease...

sometimes you spend a long time working on something, and the real breakthrough turns out not to be the product obtained from all that effort. It is actually the renunciation of something major that signifies the real breakthrough.

This was the case for the 'development' (this is such a marketing word...creates irrational hype...but i can't think of another more appropriate one) of the zapping erasing (verb: zaperase. ) tools. One of the tools planned for was to be a very fine metal tip. this was meant to outline the circuit traces. this isolates the traces electrically. thereafter we'd use something more blunt to erase the rest of the metal. hmm its getting hard to explain without first discussing the method, but i shan't do it here.

basically, it could have been convenient to have such a fine tip zaperaser. but technical issues abound, as is always the case. the fine tip is prone to melting from the high temperature of the spark, and turns blunt very quickly, in a matter of a few zaps. and to make a line, its necessary to drag the tip along. compare this to another tool that was planned for and eventually realised, called the 'instant line' tool. Its actually one segment of a regular penknife blade, and placing the nascent circuit board in contact with the blade's cutting edge causes a line to be burnt instantly. that's why the instant line tool can last for many many zaps. If it gets blunt, we can sharpen it for a while, and its just one segment of a blade, of a set of several blades easily purchased from a bookshop.

besides, most traces are made of straight lines. i don't worry abt round component pads, for they will still be fabricated as rectangles. in the case of curves, we can spline it. if a single blade is too wide to spline with ease, its possible to sand away some portion of the cutting edge so a recess appears, then insulate it.

Hence i am done with the development of the zaperasing tools.

That leaves me with the last of the 3 nitty gritty issues for this project, as outlined in my notebook. that is, component mounting. i've resolved that all components will be individually mechanically clamped onto the circuit, which is just aluminium foil stuck on regular transparency. some components of similar height can be clamped together too.

just need to look for a good clamp material, and clamp fastening materials...

just one more hurdle to go...

nostalgic songs that revive memories

2005-11-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

its the weekend again. what am i doing?
there's just too much reading to be done. so much to be studied and pondered over and learnt. so much insight to gain. the thought of it is staggering and even depressing. trips to the awesome national library only makes the brain hungrier and full of want...(did i use 'want' correctly?) impatience from youthful zeal...

the second week of the M113 'Ultra' Operator Maintenance course (or is it operational maintenance, or is it operator-maintainer...) has ended...very boring indeed. most of the time has been spent taking naps on the deck of that rectangular aluminium tin can, or amongst the pillars and OVM cages of the 46SAR vehicle shed. weather's been erratic, but mostly quite warm. when the sky gets dark (as it has for a number of days) and the winds blow and it threatens to rain, the ominous atmosphere and the almost empty unit premises (they're all on leave before ORD) make a good time to day dream.

but i wasn't quite in the mood to build airy castles though i wished too. day dreaming provides a great escape from the dull, boring and mundane routine of waking up at five, riding half-asleep in mum's car to the far end of singapore that is Sungei Gedong Camp (even further than Lim Chu Kang Cemetry!), lectures, tea breaks, practicals during which one idles more than 90% of the time...i was working on quickly wrapping up the circuit fabrication method project which has been a chronic intermittent(oxymoron?! no i didn't mean it that way but my english sucks) royal pain in the ass for the past FOUR YEARS. I shan't talk abt that anymore, its quite tiring when its constantly clinging onto your conscious mind. i have resolved to resolve this pain ASAP. good
riddance!

as i was working on some of that related stuff, i listened to some of the songs i had on my computer after i had exhausted Meteora in my CD drive. many of them were ripped off. some were from the VJ robotics lab computer that i was so involved with in my work there, which were in turn ripped from some CD years ago by batches of grand seniors.
but i declare that i no longer continue this practice.

each of these songs are memorable, because they've been replayed again and again while i was hard at work on the UAV project's electrical systems, especially a 'nervous system' known as the 'matrix P layer'. Its all on paper, and a lot of the design is set to change. for now, its KIV, but i'll
be back on it again only because the concept is interesting. but the methods must change. Yes...there's a second layer too. the C layer. But that was just a single concept and there was never a sustained attempt to realise it.

There is an album by Jolin Tsai. which Martin put into my computer on his own accord. Matin was involved with the UAV's construction together with Chi Hao. He's really hardworking, both with the project and his schoolwork. i get him to my whiteboard which is filled with the P layer's design thoughts to help me verify my calculations. i hate math...

There is a whole lot of J-pop mainly by Ayumi and Every Little Thing. I like Ayumi's 'Surreal', and its one of the little treats for myself when i resolve something important with a circuit or the microcontroller code. software is most confusing. I had this really difficult issue and it was a trip back home, a good bath, dinner, and then a quiet review of the chip's manual in the serenity of the living room with the whirring of the ceiling fan and my dad with his newspapers that it was resolved; with the addition of just one line of code. i had misread/left out sth in the manual.

There is Chage and Aska's 'Say Yes'...a very old song, but i've heard it before in the primary sch days on tv. Provides a comforting nostalgic feeling.

When i'm totally depressed and hate myself, or am working late late in the night in my own room at home with only the desk lamp on, messed up table with tons of stressfully scribbled paper and the windows in front of me are open, the carpark outside is almost empty, the cold wind is blowing in, i'd listen to sth like Gold 90.5 or 'you light up my life'. I've got 2 versions, by
Leann Rimes and Kenny Rogers. I like Leann's powerful singing. And 'Lonely Days' by the Bee Gees serves the occasion well too.

'Superman' by Five for Fighting is the song our class played for VJ's Music Fest. I was at the keyboard. We didn't get past the first round of selections. That was approaching the SSEF fair (i think) when i was (certainly) also involved with the report and last minute work to get everything materialise (it all didn't). And my crush was in the band (i've gotten over it btw). You can imagine how difficult the sum total of all these feels.

In January 04 while rushing a late night for the UAV's SSEF report (the fair itself is somewhere in May(?) but the report was due THAT week and my Matrix P layer's design was not confirmed!!) , when my friends chi hao and martin were trying to get the airframe done and i was trying to get out my design, and we didn't want to work in the lab so we could get away from that stupid teacher, and for a while we were at the study rooms, but they close at some
time in the night (can't remember when) so my friends secured a Council room. From there we heard someone attempting to play Coldplay's 'Clocks' on the grand piano at the Auditorium's atrium nearby. Its a meditative sound and provides some good inspiring music. esp for something as 'obscure and mystifying' as analogue electronics. (i swear rechargeable batteries and Radiofrequency design and Microwave design are really the true Black Magic) i was very worried abt getting it in time, but was also proud that less than a month after i learnt about Operational Amplifiers, i was designing a complicated circuit full of them, by manipulating some math to get the circuit i wanted (complicated doesnt mean good. and it makes you confused, drives you crazy and leaves you disillusioned. you don't even dare to draw the whole circuit out cos that feels like ripping your heart off your chest. so i,ve only tried that out once after mustering much courage and patience. with much pain haha...)

i like this...

2005-11-17T20:27:00.000-08:00

all sleazed up somewhere in a motel in Taipei...

another misc post

2005-11-16T21:57:00.000-08:00

i've got lots of stuff on the active project that i'm working on, which is the faster and cheaper circuit fabrication method project. i'm very very eager to get rid of it, because its been a chronic pain in the ass for about four years. The completion of the project, while long overdue, is closing in before me. i hope i don't get stunned by new problems along the way...its very taxing on me and my mind is just picking up from the military-induced brain paralysis.

its interesting how things just come to you by sheer chance. i was waiting for my mum to pick me up at the hdb block opposite Eunos MRT station, in a general state of worried thought (the most chronic way of mental suffering), when i saw a double decker bus bearing an advertisement for Denso spark plugs...sth like "better performance with sharper, iridium tips". bingo! less than an hour ago i was writing on my notebook on the train, hoping for something very sharp and withstands the extreme heat of a spark. THAT was it!!!

I could get myself one of those spark plugs, but i think its pretty expensive, and that'll not be too economical because its actually the fine tip that i'm looking for...i'll just snip off that tip and throw away the rest...(into my junk store of course...you never know when you need to scavenge sth from it. engineers don't live in a perfect world, so they shouldn't expect to fabricate perfect stuff with their perfect CnC machines in their perfect university labs all the time. to do so, one would die of complications from impatience.)

earlier today i thought i'd use a fountain pen for the zapping eraser ('zaperaser'). (explanations of what the hell this thing is will come later when the documentation on the project will be published here.) After the double-decker bus revelation, i remembered seeing fountain pens advertised on tv..."iridium tips, osmium tips, punctures a drink can without a scratch!..."

time to hunt for stuff again. woah stress leh...

----------------------------------------------------

i was pretty upset with someone today. i've been for much of the time for the past months, and i think the feeling is mutual. sometimes i think i'd rather cease trying to communicate with him. its difficult to get a clear and satisfactory answer to the questions i ask him, and they are usually about getting instructions for work and other work issues. i hate being given a cold shoulder when i'm trying to inquire about what i'm taking seriously. after all its only to the benefit of the rest that we pack up early.

i have a confidence problem, and it prevents me from dealing with people as directly as i wish to, though the tongue in my head is ever so sharp, my mouth is too tame to convey those thoughts. it pisses me off that i have to cope with this...at the same time i think its just a useless waste of effort to try to get anything out of him.

damnation! the monkey of VJC has met his match at last...vain cosmetic attempts to be imposive and domineering. worse, add to that arrogance, kuai lan, insolence.

thankfully i shall bid some stubborn pain good riddance.

cautious optimism

2005-11-12T12:49:00.000-08:00

its been a very blessed week. its amazing how coming home to spend the night for the past week does wonders to one's emotional state.

or perhaps its the free time this gives to reflect and think about the self, to work on the phenomenal task of clearing up my own internal mess, trying to unearth my hidden self that's buried below. Just a few days of effort, and i think its already shining through the cracks between the debris. i don't feel so awkward, though i still do at times. during the worst periods of the past, it was so awkward and difficult even to exist.

i think my friends would have noticed i've been naughtier and noisier and more restless and active. i was like this in the last two years of primary school, and for occasional periods of time in secondary school, and in rare bursts at the VJ robotics lab. still need to learn to tame myself, even as im trying to embolden myself. (hmmm maybe i used the word 'emboldened' in error.)

i pray it gets better by the days, and i become the better person i should be.

lucky isolation

2005-11-08T20:21:00.000-08:00

its out. i was informed of my posting to HQ Armour on Monday.

i have originally intended to write about the really exhilarating emotional roller coaster the news has taken me for a ride on, but the coaster's now trapped in a sort of rut, and i can't seem to put together the details.

its rather weird i guess to be a sudden subject of envy in the eyes of my coursemates. I'm not the least bit enviable. It's my posting which is the true subject of envy. received more attention than at any time in the course. now you get congratulations and other social things initiated by someone else. previously, no one notices when i speak. i feel like a ghost. and i still do now. i haunt nobody, perhaps but myself.

anyway, there're many reasons why i have been fervently hoping for a posting such as one at HQ Armour...a job i'm told will never involve the stuff those in combat positions do. these things demand influence and domineering presence; psychologically i'm still hiding in my own shadow, keeping to myself. its difficult to find someone to communicate with in the course...i've lost touch already, and it cannot be regained. it is perhaps a good thing to throw me in HQ, the only person from my course sent there. i need the time for some very due introspection...when the private battle has not been won, the public one should not be fought.

there is some guilt and regret, but i have to remind myself (and am reminded by others in not just one sort of tone...lol) that the fault (depending on the way you see it) is not mine. i'm thankful for this luck...i dont deserve nor receive much of this stuff. but it saddens me sincerely when i think You Rong has to put up with Messers L and M. i hope you build enough solidarity with your men to withstand what forces may push you and your team apart. so that mr. L can't get his way barking around like a dog. the thought of that so makes my blood boil. its true what they say in Star Wars...fear leads to anger. anger leads to hate...it all starts from an insecurity from within. insecurity builds fear. That would have guaranteed my current vulnerable self a good trampling from officers and men alike.

James told me on monday what he'd do if he struck the HQ Armour lottery...(i don't even know if its a blessing yet. One is always cautious and suspicious of the Army and its high-level perpetrators. stuff that matters, neglected. tiny inconsequential issues, blown out of proportion.) He'd bring his books, and build his models. And now he's in Archer. him, and everyone else i look at, i seem to sense disappointment. disappointment i narrowly escaped by a hair's breadth. there is nothing i can do about that. its a sort of helplessness that's very passive in nature. bad choice of words...i have no way else to put it.

its all talked about in a very amicable manner, discussed like a joke...there's a part of it that tickles me...and i'm upset i may have smiled or laughed inappropriately...its all really very awkward really, though i should not be apologetic...BUT it must NOT be taken as a sign of arrogant empathy. if i laughed or smiled, it was because i was perceiving the 'jokey' side of it, like the manner in which it was put forth to me.

sigh...why am i disclaiming myself? I'm just insecure and very worried abt getting misunderstood. been misunderstood too many times in this course already. totally hate explaining myself...too tired to.

which is why i should be disconnected from the rest for a while...or forever.

great expectations of a long long time ago

2005-11-06T15:31:00.000-08:00

my recent interest in my own Chinese culture led me to a serach for a set of 对联, which my dad got painted some time back. It was dedicated to me and the firstword on each scroll is a character of my name.

I thought i should look at it again and eventually understand the meaning of it, since i was too young to do that when he got it for me.

I'm not good at interpreting calligraphy, but it roughly goes like this:

航天揽（？）云龙马气，
箭疾（？）刀光英雄志

Woo...those words really blow me away. it goes something like

"riding the skies and catching the clouds, full of life and energy;
sharp arrows and shining swords, with a hero's ambition."

okay chinese sounds really weird when translated into english...its not a proper translation anyway. And i don't know if i misread some of the characters (marked with a bracketed question mark).

If i understood this when i was young, those words would have blown me out the window!

I'm sure my dad must have been responsible for this sort of idea, which he conveyed to the calligrapher...who then enshrined them in these powerful words. wow...how much my dad expects from me...really. Its a tall order, but its something to look up to for me now.

of skies and clouds, dragons and horses, swords and arrows...woah...its a little big for a small guy like me, still struggling with the world and within myself. of course, size and most other things are but a point of view. Points of view are by choice.

everyone needs a rebirth once in a while...

Crawling | Linkin Park

2005-11-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

crawling in my skin
consuming all i feel
fear is how i fall
confusing what is real

there's something inside me that pulls beneath the surface
consuming/confusing
this lack of self-control i fear is never ending
controlling/i can't seem

to find myself again
my walls are closing in
[without a sense of confidence and i'm convinced
that there's just too much pressure to take]
i've felt this way before
so insecure

discomfort, endlessly has pulled itself upon me
distracting/reacting
against my will i stand beside my own reflection
it's haunting how i can't seem...

[that's the way i feel by default.
confidence is a false feeling i coax myself into]

i hate this heart

2005-10-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

fuck.

emotions are going on a downward spiral again. upset for no reason
also upset for many reasons.

痛不欲生而无法自拔
万事不如意万年不成器
浪费大半生的精力，却换来痛苦与无境可言的心理折磨，到头来还是无所作为
这种命，溅也。白活了。可惜。

心里怀着痛恨是一种忧郁也是一种气愤
恨的气的都是自己
无法摆脱的心理自虐
我已变成了无意的自虐狂

无为。自甘堕落。悲也。

讨厌自己。无法面对自己。
摆脱不了自己。
被自己困住了

fuck
what chinese is this?!
i'm damn fucked up
19 years it has been and i just can't get any fucking thing done right.
or get done.

so fucked up...

The "Three Represents"

2005-10-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

just a day in the more natural world
and its time to go back in again
into the wilderness...the bewilderness
the senselessness and the numbness

thankfully there is refuge in indulgence
feeding the fire that still burns strong in the heart
keeps it warm
lights up a path for the mind
keeps it from straying into disillusionment

...

nevermind. i've done a lot today. got the missing parts for the rifle cleaning kit, which was totally messed up during the training in Taiwan, and got my sergeant rank sewn on. got some scores from the Esplanade Library, bought some things for my circuit fabrication method (CFM) project, a pair of earphones to treat my ears to more bearable music, returned home at night and did more CFM stuff, like making the printout for the stencil and the test printout onto the glossy photo paper for the toner transfer test.

...

no wonder Kai Cheng can't understand my blog...lol...you probably don't either =P

my (non)-life essentially revolves around Sungei Gedong Camp and the confines
of my room where my hands are trapped to the keyboard, or my blue DSTA folder containing tons of "classified documents". yeah right...when you were young,
you'd imagine being a detective or a soldier or some superhero...so can't i pretend to be some defence scientist who sticks his nose into every conceivable project, witching between projects when patience or inspiration runs out?

when i book out of camp, or when i'm stranded in my own thoughts inside of camp (ie mind travel...or daydreaming (non-euphemistic version)) i cease to be Corporal H J Soo, Specialist-to-be and bewildered about CMPB's decision to post him to Armour. any characters take turns to surface. Usually its either the Defence Scientist, the Exotic Engineer (Default setting), or Master Sergeant Uncle Soo the Sergeant Major of...

The Defence Scientist
he's concerned about this nation's security...and feels strongly about bad engineering he feels is rampant in the hardware he sees in the military. too much weight, too bulky, too unintuitive human-device interface (HDI), too screwed up, too much maintenance...most of all, too much inpracticality, lack of commonsense; i.e. stupidity in engineering.

he seeks to change all this, but not before slamming the current technological convention. especially the indigenous 40/50 "weapon system", at which he curses and swears at. Then he proposes a radical idea that is most probably unfeasible or even stupid, before it undergoes a long and painful (to both the spirit and the 'ego') process of ratification and verification and feasibility studies and refinement. He is inclined to discuss his ideas before these logical processes take place, because with their birth comes lots of zeal. that has many embarrassing and disastrous consequences, which should certainly only take place in the thought process and not in conversations with humans, who don't think much of him nor his trash.

The Exotic Engineer...
has conceived a million projects and ideas to date. None of them has been completely realised. He hits a new idea every now and then. Its a touch and go affair...what can be termed "half-fuck efforts". That leaves very unhappy half-virgin ideas waiting to be fully realised.

Engineering is art to him. Art is intriguing and interesting to him, but he doesnt view art as a plaything for surrealists...anyway he thinks everything around him feels surreal. So the scope from which he gets his inspiration and ideas are broad. recently, reading about the origin of chinese characters has created this 'hand' that tugs at him, telling him it is inspiration for a new data transfer protocol that he seeks to create for his "handphone remote control over voice call" project.

his self-confidence is always wavering. It is a chaotic and dynamic system itself...confidence and depression tug at the emotions constantly, producing complex and unpredictable emotional patterns.

Uncle Soo, the has-been Sergeant Major
reminisces much about his past, glorious career as Unit Sergeant Major in a unit that has much history and heritage. many times to be proud of, such as the ascension to the honourable duty while still a corporal, calming initial tension between his sergeants and staff, setting up the S1 and S4 departments, attempts at creating proper procedure and administrative order, organising the first year-end camp in many many years...

but the great things usually remind him of his many failures too, such as the handling of the unhappy Part C cadets who turned against their platoon sergeant, which he felt he could have handled better, and wishing that he could have played a greater role in training instead of just drill lessons, and other embarrassing moments. like the time his sergeants, who were seated behind him, pulled down his pants while he was scolding cadets...

nevertheless, his cadets apparently viewed him in quite a good light, and
called him Uncle Soo. That was to be his legacy...

Since his retirement from service 3 years ago, he has been leading a rather
sad life as a 'has-been'. Currently in the 'real' military service as a corporal, he still has day dreams about becoming a sergeant major again. Of course this will never come true. Nor will the opportunity to lead over a hundred men come again. He will just have to make do with his very specialised duty that makes him a grain in the pillar of the specialist corps, while he pursues his passions he has chosen to indulge in since his retirement, reminiscing all the great moments of the past with much unnecessary nostalgia.

............

All these and more...until a distant but always irritating voice from the floors above calls for "fall in!!!" and the numb brain (numb from the collapse of the castles it has built over itself onto itself..for beyond maximum on the pain spectrum is numbness) resumes control of the body again.

painfully consciously awkward

2005-10-09T15:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend is passing pretty quickly; that isn't a good thing, because we'll be confined nxt weekend for live firing. everyone dreads live firing. its tedious, its risky, and its meaningless. i guess the only purpose it could serve is to harden your balls by making you run alongside bullets and other projectiles.
5.56mm, 7.62mm, 0.5", 25mm, 40mm... no actually its not all of these i think.

anyway, i've been chanting 'three weeks to three stripes' of late. in less than three weeks, my life as a trainee will end. that of a sergeant's will begin. but there is nothing much to look forward to in 40SAR, where almost all of us will be sent after we leave School of Armour. I've heard the bad things about that place.

so there's really nothing much to look forward to in the SAF, given the circumstances that i am subject to. it isn't a matter of "conditions will never be right, so make the most of them instead of moaning". rather, i don't quite like my circumstances and have chosen not to try liking them...if there are men i have to lead, i will try to fulfil my duty with professionalism, and try to work with them in the way i worked with my friends to run RINCC, and also the VJ robotics club. i will be their leader and friend. not some overlord, nor will i be the unapproachable and fierce sergeant. i believe in soft power, not brute force. back in NCC, it was possible to tell a sergeant to carry on ten push-ups for being late for training. without sounding overbearing at all. it isn't necessary to dominate. anyway my heart is too soft to bear the sight of subjugation. and anyway i've learnt i can't reproach someone effectively by scolding or shouting. if you don't want to, i don't think you should try under the pretext of 'determination'. if you want, it may be worth your life (and i do not mean expending your life to satisfy your wants)

besides all that, i'd prefer time alone to work on my own projects. there are too many to complete. too many unfulfilled dreams to work on...my hands are more than filled. and they effectively prevent R & R (military routine and regimentation) from rotting the brain.

my section instructor once said it was difficult for him to conceive myself leading men. i believe many of my course and section mates share those sentiments...that is not surprising. the self is always running away from the glare of the outside world, leaving behind a cold shadow that is unable to interact. only a small circle can coax the self out of hiding. but that may become a thing of the past. these days it is easy to trip and tumble over my own words, both in english and chinese. when that happens, it is so painfully consciously awkward. i only seem myself in front of my mother. and my papers. and my piano (but my fingers are increasingly stubborn now). and when i dive into my ocean of thought (but i cannot hold my breath for long these days).

the self that i wish the whole world knew, is only an idol that i worship in the private corners of my mind. a figment of wishful imagination, and an aspiration which even my 'core self' resembles barely.

once again, i have expressed myself in a painfully consciously awkward manner. it is a painful and inevitable realisation.

back from the ROC

2005-10-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

phew finally back from Taiwan!!!

Its been ages man...but i feel kinda numb.
it always seems that before you go through an 'ordeal' like 'three weeks of
tough training in taiwan, on new and unfamiliar terrain, challenging to drive, and fight...you expect to emerge from it with a great feeling of accomplishment and happiness and relief.

i was hoping for that too, but part of me was also hoping time would just pass by uneventfully. And that came true...the feeling is pretty numb. of course there are some hot and cold moments, but the general feel was nothingness. just wanted to pass time and get over and done with it. which got pretty difficult sometime towards the end. and difficult means very sian.

it wasn't as if i had some other things to work on during this time. didn't feel like reading, didn't feel like working. just took out my DSTA folder, flipped through my papers, pretended to work and act busy (or act smart), but the only thing i managed was to organise them. And they're still messy. i've been doing this pretty often. its my attempt at 太公钓鱼，愿者上钩. No catch so far...

anyway it doesn't mean my brain left my skull for a holiday for the past three weeks though...there was still plenty of mental 'noise', where numerous thoughts exist fleetingly, emerging into consciousness for a while before disappearing into the darker corners of the mind again.

now i'm back, and i feel more lonely than ever. i'm too tired to think about it, but i do want to get out of it. ...its all too complex for anyone else to comprehend. i feel insecure too. the feeling's back.

but i hope and think and believe i can increase my self-esteem, instead of admiring that which someone else posesses and feeling bad that i do not. (digression: i'm aware this is a bad sentence. too lazy to correct, yet i can spare the effort to write this. i'm always disclaiming and explaining and absolving and extricating myself. the fear of being misunderstood...)

Long "Holiday" ;

2005-09-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

To all my friends, i'll be leaving Singapore for Taiwan tonight.

Will be there for three weeks for military training.

Returning on the 4th of October (woo...hell long time for me that is...)
in the morning.

When we're over and done with this, it'll be a month left before our passing out parade when we don our new set of stripes.

Still have lots of projects and stuff to work on, and these won't change; i'll continue to devote effort and time to them. there's just too much of this stuff i need to finish. much of them are a backlog of projects with histories stretching all the way back to the start of my secondary school life, and with pre-histories well, originating from my scientific prehistory. Even so, many of them are important milestones and enabling technologies. Who would imagine a crazy more-than-decade-old idea of laser trapped and bouncing around in a multifaceted crystal in a complex manner as the core module of an artificial brain (sketched in that wonderfully childlike manner) can now point to the study of complexity and emergence and chaotic phenomena as fields leading to insights and a new nascent paradigm of artificial intelligence?

the future is uncertain until we receive our postings, where we will likely remain for the rest of our NSF lives. I can only wish real hard that they give me some room to work on my interests.

this is a piece of shit. don't go ard telling ppl i write poems. please.

2005-09-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

Should i continue working my way down this seemingly endless path that seems
to lead to nowhere?

this doubt about pursuing electrical engineering, electronics, robotics and artificial intelligence, and a whole host of other crazy ideas is recurring with greater frequency these days. yet the passion i have for these things is undeniable. i cannot relinquish them.

i have witnessed another idea collapsing before my very eyes this afternoon. i dont seem to be able to salvage it from the heartless process of engineering decision. And that decision appears to write off all the effort spent on and off this thing over the past 4 yrs or so.

Doubt
------
The craziness of those ideas make them flimsy
nothing to stand against
the winds of skepticism
blowing from the inside, and the outside

doubt has been lingering around every dark corner
something that appears everytime i hold up the mirror
in self-scrutiny

a spectre resides within me
it reminds me of a bad past
it threatens a terrible future
if i choose to keep bashing through this uncertain path

uncertainty and doubt
the two horns of the devil
that devil's inside me
and i can't get it out

i don't know
don't know if i should keep making these silly patterns
patterns that consume my mind
and sap my energy

and when a nasty revelation appears before me
the shock waves of the ringing death knell
smash my house of cards
all the hearts and gems come crashing down
so does faith

the joker sneers at me

all for nothing
wasted energy
dissipated into the nothingness of the universe

if that is what lies ahead,
a disappointing retreat i must make

should i go on?

A tale of two methods

2005-09-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

There was once the method of circuit fabrication, which took a piece of aluminium foil, stick it onto a piece of paper (for backing), print or draw on (with liquid paper) the circuit traces onto the foil, then dip it in concentrated saline and let it be the anode (did i get it right? hiyah the positive end of the power source lah) of the electrolysis of salt solution.

Supposedly, the chemistry goes like this: in the presence of chloride ions, the aluminium oxide layer that is so omnipresent on the aluminium surface will sorta dissolve. When the electrolysis occurs, the chloride ions are also discharged and highly oxidising chlorine gas is produced. Which attacks the raw aluminium metal whose protective oxide layer has been stripped. So the aluminium metal gets oxidised and forms aluminium chloride, which dissolves into aqueous solution.

This basically means that the parts of the aluinium that are exposed to the
saline solution will dissolve, leaving the parts protected by liquid paper. Which we can remove with alcohol and connect metal parts to.

Sounds perfect, but here's the snag(s):
1. because the whole sheet of aluminium is only linked to the power source at ONE particular point, what happens if etching occurs such that an "island" of aluminium is left behind? Since the aluminium is no longer connected to the voltage source, the electrolysis does not occur, so the aluminium isn't etched away, and remains behind. Leaving a really really messy (i call it 'noisy') circuit board. And it totally sucks if these things interfere with the operation of the circuit. But tests showed they didn't matter too much.

2. i totally chose to totally ignore the fact that aluminium cannot be soldered using the conventional tin/lead solder. All thanks to the irritating oxide layer present on all aluminium surfaces. And all previous attempts to temporarily eradicate the oxide layer for the solder to stick first, failed to work.

There exists solder that allows for soldering onto aluminium. It is no doubt expensive, and difficult to get.

Another alternative may be treatment by a chemical, called the tinning solution. okay maybe its called something else, nvm...anyway this is an organometallic compound, whose metallic component is, well, tin. Basically it liberates the metallic tin onto the metal surface. Since we can solder on
tin, we've solved the problem. Of course i do wonder if the tin sticks to the
aluminium in the first place! Such a solution is used in the conventional PCB
fabrication process, to coat with tin portions of copper onto which we want
to solder our electronic components. This is because tin makes a better medium to solder on, due to its lesses reactivity as compared with copper.

Once again, the hindrance to solderability is the bloody oxide layer!!!

As for Snag #1, we could conduct the electrolysis with a set of inert electrodes, and then place the aluminium to be etched really really really close to the anode...hoping that the chlorine produced would dissolve all the exposed aluminium nearby. Of couse chlorine is a very powerful oxidant, so how to find an 'inert' piece of metal 'impotent' enough to resist the temptation of losing its electrical virginity to chlorine? Can't possibly use mum's gold jewellery for this purpose can i?! (yes i was actually audacious enough to think of that.) Okay actually pencil lead can do the job (sentence added on 10th Sept)

The investigations into this method happened too long ago for me to recall if i've tried the remedy stated in the paragraph above. I must have made tons of notes on countless sheets of surplus "Industrial and Marine Electrical Contractor Tax Invoice" papers, but they are now nowhere to be found in my new home...and i've unfortunately forgotten the numerous minor details of my previous exploits. dank. (btw, 'dank' is the only word my schoolmate of 6 years considers 'clean' enough for usage as general expressor of anger/disappointment.)

Lone exploits sometimes get quite tiresome. You conceive it, you try it, you fail it, you try it again some other way, you get yourself out of your blind alleys and nasty snags, you kick yourself out of depression and disappointment, you debug everything yourself, you be the worst and harshest critic of yourself, you judge yourself, you screw yourself, until someday it (hopefully) works and you have something to be proud of.

IF that day EveR COMES.

Meanwhile, no one's gonna test your crazy ideas, so you've gotta test them yourself, and sometimes you've got so many tests which involve so much repetition that you get tired of doing them and too lazy to bash through that dense vegetation of drudgery to get to that lone tree on the empty patch.

**The Hand of Hang Jian's Rationality Department pulls him back from his
natural-inclination-driven digression**

Woo...okay (insert slightly dazed look containing a tinge of bewilderment)Anyway, i was thinking about this method which i had long abandoned, and compared it with the current one involving electroplating. The electroplating method creates really fragile circuit traces, but allows for soldering. The other method has rather robust circuit traces, but resists soldering. BOTH face the same problem of messy, noisy circuit patterns. (oh boy...circuit patterns...i do sound metaphysical to the electrically uninformed human don't i now?) Which i think i have solved by distributing my electrical contact points. BUT if the proposed solution to Snag #1 (see above) works? Then i have no more noisy circuit traces to worry about anymore!
(by the way, i will not extend the proposed solution to Snag #1 to copper clad boards, because they don't allow me to pass the circuit through a printer so i can only hand draw my circuit patterns...with liquid paper!!! no way...)

Which leads me to the question...Any other compelling reasons for using the electroplating method instead of the 'other' aluminium foil etching method?
Other than solderability? And supposing the noisy circuit pattern problem in this method was solved?

Reasons FOR the plating method
Environmentally friendlier because unlike etching, we don't need to dispose
of the plating solution.
Soldering is possible. Can't solder on aluminium without special solder which
is hard to find.

Reasons FOR the etching method
Don't need to hunt for zinc cation containing solutions...just add salt to
water
there's a good thickness to the circuit trace. Furthermore, the resistance of
aluminium is lower than that of zinc...(i think...you think, i thought, who
confirm? later...)
If the solution to Snag #1 works, we also don't have a problem with noise.

There is also a snag with the plating method regarding soldering. Due to the
tiny thickness of the plated metal, the circuit trace is extremely fragile. During soldering, the heat of the soldering iron will be passed from the circuit trace to the adhesive below it. The adhesive will melt under the heat, thus losing its tack. There is also cohesion between the circuit trace, the soldering iron, and the molten solder in between. When the soldering iron is lifted from the trace, this combination of factors causes the trace to dislodge from the substrate of the circuit board. This condition occurs in both the plating and etching methods.

The difference is made by the thickness of the trace. Aluminium foil is certainly thicker and more able to handle the physical strain due to the above situation than the plated trace. Nevertheless we do not discount the possibility that the aluminium foil trace may tear during soldering too. In response to the certainty of this occuring in the case of the plated circuit (as indicated to much disappointment by most recent tests...but also long anticipated AND ignored) 2 methods were developed to reduce the possibility of tearing.

They are, in short, to sink the heat rapidly, and to reinforce the traces by prudent and effective coating of the traces with quick-drying adhesive.

So i think the main issue wiith aluminium foil lies with its unsolderability.

Provided our solution to Snag #1 works...(okay i know the repeated reference to Snag #1 is getting irritating), unsolderability is a serious problem.
if we didn't use soldering, what could we use? a room temperature solution?

Powdered metal?

---Date line. the above was written on 9/9/05. the below is written today.---

Anyway, with reference to that issue of uneven etching of the aluminium foil in the 'other' method, a solution has just occured to me. It would be possible to press a matrix of pins onto the aluminium surface. These pins are all connected to the positive end of the power source. Which means that we now have multiple contact points on which we apply our positive potential. Which means most large islands created are probably in contact with one of these contact points and thus will eventually be etched away. Which leaves us with the very very tiny pieces of aluminium micro-islands that makes up the bulk of the noise. I can imagine using sharp pencils as positive electrodes, press them firmly on the micro islands such that electrical contact is made, and see them dissolving away. This was attempted before, but i think it somehow didn't work out...will investigate again. The micro-islands, as mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, do not quite affect circuit operation...unless we've got really close circuit traces. The benign-ness of

these noisy things are based on the assumption (okay make that a fact) that most of the islands are electrically isolated from each other. But we should have a way to remove them if we need to. So i hope the proposed method works...though i think it did not. We'll see.

To do now:
1. make sheets of paper-backed aluminium foil
2. print copies of a test pattern onto the foil with my laser printer
3. try out the etching method again with the new recommendations

Alternate Circuit Fab Process (For prototyping purposes)

2005-09-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

Aims and Objectives

The conventional PCB fabrication process is tedious and expensive, and involves many chemical compounds.

The exposure process takes some time to happen. Then there is the developing, and then etching. Etching probably takes the most time, and expensive etching tanks are required to do the job.

For those working at home, such a process is expensive; the chemicals are costly, toxic and difficult to obtain, and requires most importantly, an etching tank if the etching is to be completed in an appropriate length of time. If insufficient funds are available, as always in the case of self-funded or poorly-funded projects, an etching tank is a painful expenditure. I've been reduced to immersing a nascent PCB in a plastic container, agitating the mixture with my hands and a pair of chopsticks...

Etching is also an environmentally unfriendly process, and the chemical waste generated is not something that should be washed down the sink at home.

These disadvantages of conventional PCB fabrication make it unsuitable for small scale uses, such as those in makeshift labs and homes.

However, there is also a desire to fabricate printed circuits for regular prototyping purposes, because they are more reliable and less tedious to make than soldering them onto prototyping boards. Don't you find flipping a proto-board on one side to insert a component, then flipping to the other side to solder the connections, then flipping back again and getting confused something good to avoid?

Prototyping on printed circuits also means the prototype is more like the possible production version, which makes the prototyping process better.
There're some things breadboards aren't good for too.

with the above, we've come up with a method ourselves. Its by no means a production method. Just meant to make prototyping easier, faster.

Principle
Print out a mask of the circuit pattern on aluminium foil. Electroplate the foil so that only parts not covered by the mask will be plated with a thin layer of metal. Using something sticky, press onto the electroplated aluminium foil, and peel. The electroplated layer will be peeled off from the foil and onto the sticky piece of thing i want my circuit to be on.

The Process

1. Creating the pattern
This can be done with PCB creating software. What should be printed out onto the foil is a negative of the actual PCB circuit pattern.

To do this in PowerPCB:
After creating the circuit pattern, select the "drafting" button.
Click on the "Copper Pour" button on the drafting toolbar.
Create a copper pour outline area along the board outline.
Click on the "Flood" button and click on the copper pour outline.
ALL THESE ARE DONE IN THE SAME "TOP" LAYER, OR THE SAME LAYER AS THE LAYER WITH A CIRCUIT PATTERN.
Then go to File=>CAM
When dealing with the settings, select "Copper" to be printed, in Black colour.
Preview to confirm, and then print.
SELECT PRINT OPTIONS, AND CHOOSE "MIRROR PRINT"! OTHERWISE, THE CIRCUIT PATTERN PRODUCED EVENTUALLY WILL BE LATERALLY INVERTED!!!

2. Printing is to be done on a laser printer. The aluminium foil should be made to be free of creases and stuck to a piece of paper. This will be fed into the laser printer. Printing settings should be set for max toner and darkness and resolution. Parts not meant to have copper MUST be fully covered with toner.

Do multiple passes thru the printer to ensure this, if possible. Otherwise, hand-correct with liquid paper.

3. Trim and clip the masked paper-backed aluminium foil onto a hard flat sheet of material. Immerse and electroplate.
Electroplating was done with "Baker's Soldering Fluid No.3", which is actually zinc-chloride. Or rather contains zinc-chloride. (So what exactly is its composition??) And so we use zinc plate on the other end of the electrolytic cell. well...the zinc plate isn't exactly zinc...contains some iron too. Well that's fine.

4. Once done with electroplating, transfer onto a sticky surface.

Things to note:
If the sticky surface is flexible, do not allow it to flex too much, cos the very thin electroplated layer with break.

Electrical contact is below 20 ohms...but as yet unsure how much resistance there is. And yes i know anything even at 1Ohm and above is rather unacceptable...i know i know.

After soldering, take care that the components aren't pulled off the board. That'll wreck the circuit traces.

A sketch of my thought process

2005-09-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

Last night I thought i could write in prose about my personality, but when i failed to do so, i thought i could write it in a poem. that failed too. writing assignments simply don't work for me. it just seems that i can't write about some topic on-demand. Not even when GP A levels demands it, nor even when i demand it from myself. it just doesn't work that way.

so i proceeded to work on my alternate circuit fabrication proces project, and wondered how i abandoned an earlier process for the current one. These things happen all the time in engineering...or at least in most of my own pursuits. Millions of (okay less than that...) ideas come and go, and the surprising bit is that after you've killed an idea, its ghost comes after you and you're forced to consider it some time later. The ghost might be resurrected in physical form once again, for the same purpose, or becomes the seed of a new idea for a new purpose. Which is very good. So its good for engineers to keep ghosts as pets. They might be useful someday.

Anyway, i wondered about the reasons for abandoning that previous idea for the current one. So i wrote a document last night trying to address that issue.

Turns out that document seems like a good way of presenting myself. It shows the haphazard approach that is present on all levels of my pursuits; things come to mind at random...i may lose interest in one thing and pick up something else to chew on for a while before returning. i've got lots of projects in mind, and they all compete for brain-time. i learnt that i can't complete one thing at a time, nor read a book from cover to cover. Maybe that's why i haven't read fiction in a long time. So i won't force myself into things i feel i cannot make progress for the moment.

hmm i thought i had a lot to talk about, but i've forgotten. can only remember the above...which can be summarised as haphazard and messy.

The next two documents are about this whole circuit fabrication affair. The first is background about the latest method, which i thought would be the final version. which is why you will see an introduction that suggests its some kind of paper introducing a new method for circuit fab. It is followed by an outline of the method. I will call this method the 'plating method'.

The second document is what i wrote last night. The issue surfaced in my mind recently, so i had to address it or risk lack of peaceful sleep. that document is like a 'real-time' recording. The thought process really flows that way. Sometimes the terms used are rather incomprehensible. This is not because they belong to some highly technical vocabulary. Its just that i have mental images of some things, and i just give a short label that will immediately refer to these things. I think scientific literature is like this...of course the compactification of expression leads to incomprehension by the so-called 'layman'. Think of it as a painting. Its sometimes very difficult to describe the subtle portions of a painting. You can't just say "The Potato Eaters" is a painting of some people eating potatoes. Doesn't tell much abt the painting. You just refer to the title, and assume that the reader has seen the painting and understands the label is tagged to the painting. Hence its difficult to describe some things, so we just tag a label to a commonly-accepted-previously-tied-down meaning. Just that i'm alone in this, so no one may understand what i mean.

Still, they make interesting collections of words, albeit incomprehensible. No?

Enjoy the peek into my rotten numskull (its spelt that way??!! i dunno, just assembled it phonetically.)

Saturday

2005-09-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

saturday was a long day.

despite the fact that i slept at 1am the night before, i woke up early into 8 o'clock. Turned on the computer, noted down the stuff i had to do on notepad (which was previously scribbled on 4 small pieces of paper back in camp). The usual stuff on a weekend morning (ie computer and internet, breakfast with mum, piano, television, newspapers) took me to 11am faster than i would have liked it to. hmm actually for us life-deprived NSFs, we sometimes wish time stops for us on weekends...then again, if time stops, how to run our schedules?

(oh boy this is turning into a boring events log for the day)
was watching Air Crash Investigation when my mum got me off the couch and into the car to Parkway Parade where i would get part of my million things done. They were: getting a haircut, go to hardware shop and bookshop to look for stuff required for the circuit fabrication process project, going to Giant hypermarket to get many cups of cup noodles to pay back the amount i ate last week in bunk.

And then we had our lunch at the basement food court.

And we went home, and i was supposed to leave for raffles place at 2pm to once again search for stuff i needed for the circuit fab project in Meng's Store, before making my way down to City Hall MRT. But i took a nap which lasted a tad too long, and so my mum brought me straight to city hall where i met Zi Jian and we were supposed to walk to the Starbucks at Suntec and meet up with Dequan. For a good conversation together. But this didn't happen due to the Comex and the huge crowd it created. Instead we spent some time walking ard the exhibition, and had a look at the food fair too, where we met Dequan instead. Then more walking. And i picked up some leaflets at Apple's booth and have since gotten so smitten by the iBook that i have decided to get it. Seriously. Then we went to Mac's for a drink and some fries, and after some talk abt the military, we left. I wished we could have dinner together, but Zijian had a class gathering and Dequan was going to have dinner with his family. So i went about town all alone.

went to HMV, looked for some CDs...remembered this Virgin Classics CD compilation of Mozart Piano Sonatas. Couldn't find it. Went to Esplanade Library, got some stuff, went to Meng's Store at Raffles Place but found it closed, then went to Taka, had dinner at Mac's (ate McSpicy Double, a meal that brings forth nostalgia and many painful memories of the times at VJC robotics) and then got Kueh Lapis for mum, then went to Cold Storage to look for the circuit fab stuff (later it turned out that the contact adhesive was not suitable after testing at home later at night) then went to HMV at the Heeren (wow i actually found my way there, by a stroke of luck. i never knew where it exactly was along Orchard (if it really was along Orchard Rd) just followed my friends blindly in the past) That was where i saw the CD compilation, selling for $20+ great deal but i didn't buy it then when it was on clearance or sth...was placed in this box with a mish-mash of other classical CDs(last yr i think). Now its gone, and i can't find it. Tried Borders, but the place was messy, couldn't find it...though one CD had some sonatas on it, thankfully the digital sampling showed it was a bad performance...in my humble opinion. I didn't like that interpretation.

Left at 11+, returned home at 12. Slept at 2.

T'was a long and lonely day...

Before and After #1: things to do with some things

2005-08-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

Power Source becomes...erm (remains) Power Source
I satisfied my need for a more or less universal power source for low power electronic circuits experiments by forking out $23 on a Winstar AC-DC power adaptor which gives me selectable voltage output ranges from 3V to 15V and sources up to 1.2A. Yeah i know its not a proper lab power source, but do you think i've got a few thousand dollars to spare for one of these things? Besides i don't need extremely precise regulation, and i hope my designs never need any precision regulation. What i do need though, is precisely settable voltages and voltage and current meters. okay maybe i do need one of these toys in future, but for now, i'll just have to build one myself if i need it.

Anyway, i've got some computer power sources from old computers that i disembowelled. The great thing about this power source is its output voltages...positive and negative 12V and 5V. Very convenient voltages. I'll suppose that i can skip the voltage regulator chip when i need these voltages in future. There're many output cables, for differrent types of hardware with
different connectors and connections. I'll combine all of these wires into neat output ports for each of the power source outputs. Hmm throw in a current meter for each of the outputs too. If i can't find anything cool to use as my current meter, i may have to look to sungei road. Would like something that's cool, and reflect the upper limits for each output. But i'd also like a digital readout that's precise and accurate too. Oh why not have the ammeter and voltmeter thingy with digital readout and analog visualisation be a separate piece of hardware? Like a plug-in front -end? And the other power sources i may have could be modified to have proper front ends, which are compatible with this thing so i could just fit this meter thingy in front.

Air Hog Visionary becomes...Remotely Piloted Vehicle
The Air Hogs are a series of air pressure powered toy airplanes. They're supplied with an air pump with which you pump up the pressure in the airplane's fuselage.

Now what if we added a fuel compartment containing sodium azide (they keep this in car airbags, and when they're deployed, its heated up so it decomposes and gives lots of nitrogen gas to fill the airbag real quick) so we could maintain pressure for longer so we could fly it longer, and add a radio control to it? would make a good toy for my nephew wouldn't it! Guess we have to use sth else, because i just found out that sodium azide is a terribly toxic thingy. Anyway, the reaction's too quick...

Assortment of tubes and pipes becomes...many things
These were bought from a very very interesting shop at a place adjacent to Raffles Place. My friend told me about that shop, and brought me down after we had our last O level paper. Wow...it was real cool. The old couple sell a huge collection of many odds and ends that range from exotic spray paints and aluminium rust removers to very very strong magnets and plastic wares and electronic instruments and a really old oscilloscope! Had a great time there...

These were actually for a couple of projects, including a 'spud gun', which is actually a tube which you stuff anything into, spray fuel, ignite it, and watch the projectile as it gets launched into the air.

There's also the dream of making a jet engine. i'm not crazy! people actually make their own jet
engines in their own garages! We Singaporeans are sometimes too boringly sane...oh maybe i'm crazy cos i tried to do so by making the fan blades from aluminium from drink cans and the housing with plastic...of course i didn't intend to use that for the combustion chamber...but yeah it was a bad idea anyway. Never got around to it.

And also the water rocket...yeah i was really excited abt water rockets for a time and sought to make the longest range one...which meant something that could contain really really high pressure. I imagined fitting it with guidance and monitoring systems and the cool toy from RI's field. But i didn't get around to do that...though i still wish i can make it.

Although these were dead projects, the process of making them come true (in vain) taught me quite a bit. Including stuff on making structurally sound parts, and processing aluminium drink cans into sheets of metal, and joining them up to make larger sheets...

Anyway, back to the thing about the water rockets...suddenly gave me an idea:water pressure powered missiles. No heat signature, easy to use and handle. Easy to make too. Relatively quieter. Less Heavy. Except that...there's lower speed, shorter range.
I'll work on it.

And how could i leave out robotics?
Been thinking of creating some collections of creatures from children's stuff...like the sesame street monsters! And Dr. Seuss's strange and intriguing creatures too...and....they could all be investigations and wild explorations into artificial intelligence that can yield serious results for
the field. oh...and schizo robots too...battling opposing forces within themselves.

Listening to: Maurice Ravel: The Piano Concertosvery dynamic and lively and intriguing and interesting pieces. love 'em!

The Students' Sketchpad

2005-08-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

This is coool.
Its so great to see such creative ppl around. There must be many more among our youth...hidden somewhere in some corner.

I wish i had enjoyed by times in RI. Could have been more interesting, more vibrant.
probably like these guys...

junk repository

2005-08-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

I've got too much junk at home lying around and waiting to rot...
this junk collecting business is a relic from my prehistoric days (see the article on 'my scientific prehistory') The idea was that you could have this huge repository of junk lying around, and when you wanted to make something exciting you could just look for the appropriate junk ingredients, disembowel and dissect to remove the required components, then mix and mash them into a new exotic creation. Instant gratification, instant realisation of some crazy idea. Doesn't need to be a groudbreaking work (although occasionally i thought i might have had one)...perhaps just a computer chassis fitted on a small inverted table with my bicycle wheels painstakingly bolted to the table with pieces of scrap metal and nuts and screws...mind you this creation is for real! I really did assemble it. But i couldn't find the appropriate motors (wish i stopped my dad when he took my little electric landrover that you ride in circles around the small confines of the porch after begging your parent to park somewhere else) I couldn't get them at sungei road either...

speaking of sungei road...that place is a heaven! at least for me...even better because its next to Sim Lim Tower (not Square) where i can get my electronic parts. There's so much junk there...you can even find a corner specially for old laptops! and the karang guni ah peks look so cool and knowledgeable when they play around with those relics of technology. I almost wanted to junk my present laptop and get a replacement from these guys. There's also a really old vacuum tube radio! i'd wanna get that! And there's boxes of CCTV cameras on sale...though its hard to determine if they still work.

i've been working on the circuit fabrication process again...this week i spent a whole night at camp thinking about refining the process. Its just picking up where i left off (??!! language doesn't sound right) two years ago. No...more than that. It first started in like secondary three i think? i had just learnt about the process by which printed circuit boards are made.
That's when i realised that PCBs aren't literally printed out from printers. Though i wish this could become a reality. Anyway, i was making circuits with chips and microcontrollers on them, and soldering them on a prototype board was challengine for me. A prototype board is a fiberglass board that's perforated with holes, and one side of it, the holes are encircled by copper. So you can insert a component on one side, and solder it to the board on the
other. You see that the problem this gives me, being the easily confused person that i am, is that when i make my connections, i have to insert the parts on one side and flip to the other to solder the wires, and this entails laterally inverting your mental picture of the circuit diagram, which means i routinely get confused between the two. And so i make lots of connection errors, and this means lots of debugging. Which is a waste of time and effort, and wears my patience real thin.

Hmm not in much of a mood to describe the detailed evolution of them process...suffice to say that till this day i remain extremely grateful to my RI Computer Science Club teacher-in-charge, Ms. Fong Lay Lean, who has since left the school. She gave me the freedom and latitude and permission to work in the chemistry lab. Even when she wasn't convinced of my idea. That alone is enough. That is one of the best gifts a teacher can give a student, in my
opinion...FREEDOM TO EXPLORE. The process has since gone through many iterations, and in its current form, is considerably cheaper, more environmentally friendly, easier for us home-
experimenters to use, more convenient...than the standard PCB fabrication process. But it still needs refinement, and its primary purpose is to make circuit prototyping easier for the home-experimenter...not as a replacement for the industrial method. Anyway i've been looking through the junk in my home for the materials i need to carry out my plan for the circuit fabrication process. I have a list of projects called 'enabling technologies'. The accomplishment of these projects will open up more possibilities...they will enable the realisation of a lot
more projects. They are an enabling factor. This process is one of them. Without it, i cannot do anything else.

hmm don't seem to be in a mood for writing...apologies to the reader for the absence of coherence and good writing in this piece. haiz...

Postscript:It was originally intended that this article be an exploration into the potential creations i could make from the junk i have in my house. This junk was accumulated as a result of past prehistoric creational fantasies and also projects that all died.

I was looking through my junk today for things i needed for the circuit fab process i talked abt above, and suddenly thought i should conceive some ideas so i could expend my current stock of junk...to make room for more junk when i go shopping at sungei road in the near future (hopefully)

The 'outside world'

2005-08-16T18:30:00.000-07:00

The past fortnight has been pretty relaxed and easy. And i find myself at home for a couple more days. This is a good thing. Gives you a longer taste of what it feels like to be at home, not bound by the stresses of school and schoolwork, nor by national service. Okay the latter is an illusion...and not a very convincing one too. But for the past four days (minus) that i've been out of Sungei Gedong Camp, its been liberating. There's a good vibe to it, even though my spectre of depression likes to haunt me and remind me of its stubborn persistence to which i can do nothing about.

Being around at home...watch TV, read the papers, read some books, surf the net; especially surfing the net, and reading blogs and poking into other people's lives and looking at photos of them enjoying the freedom of civilian life. Yes i know civilian life has its problems too, but the rules of military life are more binding. I know that watching TV can be a dangerous thing to do, because the realisation that you've wasted precious little bookout time channel-surfing and making do with some bad tv programme can immediately invoke the Spectre of Depression. Which i must always remind myself to avoid.

Thinking about my close friends...i yearn to spend time with them. Friendships are too important to lose, and i want to rebuild what i may have lost by attrition due to the flow of time. How i yearn to be free to devote time to good study and work on my artificial intelligence endeavor. Then spend time with and for family, and then enjoy the company of friends.

And as i look at the lives of others, mostly through the tiny windows that are their blogs, and also sometimes from encounters with my friends, i am constantly reminded of my own mediocrity. But i also must not let the Spectre aggravate those feelings, for these are useless and a burden. It is more important to wash away any sense of complacency and superiority, adopt a neutral judgement of oneself (that is, in other words, NO self-judgement) and keep working hard at those dreams. And enjoy the joy of life. And of virtue.

I must judge no one, nor myself, nor make comparisons. That will increase my sense of insecurity. Insecurity can create moral problems.

Keep working. Be disciplined. Hard work and honesty will pay off.

Intellectual Adolescence

2005-08-16T18:10:00.000-07:00

On my forays into the field of artificial intelligence...
These are uncertain times. They say that adolescence is a time of uncertainty and self doubt and identity crises. And emotional upheaval. How true this is of me now; though i may be past adolescence in age, for i am 19, the adolescent period is a very apt description of my current state of affairs in my work in artificial intelligence. I should be embarrassed to use the words 'my work in artificial intelligence'...i've not even been through university, nor am involved in any research project under some institution. Its just personal, private 'research'. The big terms were just borrowed for sake of compactness of expression.
It is a mystery how exactly my interest in robotics arose. (oh no i sound like i'm shrouding myself in a cloud of mystery) But given the general interest i had in technology and science and making and (more often) breaking stuff, this is probably not so surprising. In the earliest period of this interest, which was during my early primary school years, i came across this book at the library's children's section, which was roughly titled "how to make a robot". It was extremely interesting to me, and spoke of all the aspects of the robot, in a rather funky childlike way. Caricatures of grey boxy robots filled the book pages. After that first encounter, i never saw the book again even as i tried in vain to find it.
I also recall exploring the issue of understanding human speech during those 'early days'. That seemed like a pretty easy thing to tackle then, and i created sentences and broke them up into parts and put them in trees...a strategy that i now know (or am i mistaken) is called 'semantics'. I now know that this was the approach of symbolic AI, and presently feel that breaking a conversation into a semantic tree is too narrow and rigid an approach.
In those days my interests were neither focused nor quite serious, especially in AI. Robotics just felt interesting, so i'd claim my interest in it, and pretty much left it at that. Occasional encounters with pictures or videos of robots on television and sometimes in books would remind me of my interest and fascination with robots. Probably the only serious book i've ever read on robotics until recently, was 'Behaviour-Based Robotics' by Arkin. It explained things like subsumption, and introduced the bottom-up approach to AI, which was to create animal-inspired robots instead of trying to build humanoids straightaway. I dismissed such an approach then as i saw no reason why we had to build robotic versions of cognitively primitive animals in order to move on to building humanoids. Why not do it straightaway?
It was only later (but i don't know when or why) that i somehow realised that intelligence should be viewed as part of a wider context. That context is the dynamic interaction between the individual and everything else (ie. its environment). I felt that much of the research in the field of AI (that was and still is my immediate impression, certainly a biased one as i have never looked at AI research journals or surveyed current AI research seriously) was dedicated to the solution of very specific problems such as visually guided movement, natural language processing, or to play some games or solve some mathematical problems. I felt that produced very specific answers to very specific problems, which failed to generalise to broader AI strategies. In essence, they ended up exercising their own intelligence instead of trying to synthesise it. And the solutions were very mathematical. The whole exercise altogether seems very rigid and too narrow. Whatever the method or philosophy utilised, i grouped these under the umbrella of 'symbolic AI' (i understand this may be a misuse of the term. But for the sake of convenience...) Or perhaps we could use the term GOFAI (Good Old-Fashioned AI) instead. yeah...
So i harboured this belief, together with some unjustified belief that neural networks could be THE medium for creating an intelligent system (well, nature used it successfully, so why not give it a try too? That's my only justification. I think it's a good one.) With these thoughts behind me, i carried on with my life (which was now in secondary school and most of my junior college years). And occasionally i would claim to have a fiery passion for robotics and artificial intelligence, while the truth was i did nothing in that direction except perhaps marvel at robots i came across (the movie ones), or mostly scorning them, for they reflected the pathetic state of AI and robotics in general.
When i enlisted in NS, the mind was dulled by military routine and excessive and often senseless regimentation. But i managed to extricate myself from progressive brain paralysis by focusing on artificial intelligence. This time, i was able to identify some fundamental questions and provide some answers to them. Those questions include: the scope of AI, the meaning of 'intelligence', the methodology of research...
Having covered the past and the present, it is appropriate to address the future. The reason is also due to the 'adolescence' that i am going through right now. I am reaching the junction of crossroads, quite uncertain about my next move. That is why i have slowed down and spent some time writing this reflection, to reduce my uncertainty.
My ponderings over artificial intelligence led me to the conception of robocology (i'm not done conceiving it yet!), then introduced me to Alan Turing as a pioneer of the modern computer architecture, his role in artificial intelligence, and his anticipation of connectionism. A BEAM article on Nv neurons and nets by Wilf Rigter brought up the idea of chaos in electrical circuits and the potential of Mark Tilden's nervous neural networks to exhibit chaotic behaviour, which many natural systems including our brains exhibit too. That brought in the interest in complexity and chaos, and led me to wonder how we could design systems with 'chaotic potential' which we could channel to create intelligent systems. Such a development led me to think about many issues of artificial intelligence, and the thoughts i had were random and not directed towards the resolution of particular issues. They were scribbled on pieces of paper. I treasure them, and eventually typed them in two documents, called Miscellaneous Ramblings on Intelligence (MRI). I took those points and put some order in them and created a set of principles and methodology and put them in MRI 3.
However, i felt that MRI 3 did not adequately address the issues of what 'intelligence' meant, and the role of emotions. With the purchase of the book "Mechanical Bodies, Computational Minds", whose articles i found interesting and could very much agree with, i found myself moving into the realm of the humanities. I knew we had much to learn from biology, nature, ecology and neuroscience. And also psychology. But now, i found myself asking questions of a really broad nature which involved sociology too. And the realisation of robocology needs artists and writers and imaginative people. It just means that things have progressed to such an extent that i find myself unable to tackle many of the questions and issues that have surfaced in my mind, and also many important needs of this project. An attempt to tackle all these alone will at best lead to answers with narrow points of view, likely misinformed and misguided. There are also many answers to the questions i ask, and many sources which can provide insight, but are not known to me.
I need to chart a course for action from here onwards.
I cannot steamroll my way through those questions. I need to look for people whom i could discuss such issues with. People from diverse academic backgrounds who can offer what insights their disciplines have to offer. Then what would be my role in this whole affair?
Discussions on those issues can last forever. Innumerable amounts of words were put together to address each of these things, and also related ones. I could take forever, or go for a fast food answer. But i can accept neither.
Dank...nevermind...here's what i'll do:
I'll look for people who could better tackles those issuessettle what i can to the best of my abilities, put them up in well-written documents for comments, and identify and state my uncertainties. Then i'd seek comments and opinions and help. Comments, opinions, help and discussion. Contructive interaction with diverse people.For a purpose.
All things will not be cast in stone.Intelligence is a dynamic phenomenon. So should its research.Keep it haphazard. Chaotic, and well organised at the same time.Purposeful, but not stubbornly single-minded.Its okay that efforts sometimes seem confused. Just don't become confused.Making good rojak is not an exact science, but we all know when we've tasted good rojak. (bad analogy...i don't eat rojak... =P)Don't think like a boring adult. You WILL tend to as the cumulative time spent on this pursuit increases.
You are attempting to recast AI as a multidisciplinary art form. AI will travel further that way than in its old, traditional rigid, narrow and mechanical form.
When i get my rough conceptual framework done, i'll put it out for all to poke and touch, and look for people to interact with about this. Then i should be comfortable enough to start working on building a robocology, while the conceptual and philosophical framework undergoes continual refinement.
That's it. That shall be the rough direction i intend to take.

The most important thing i must do for myself is to maintain the faith in myself. Doubt is a highly effective destructive weapon.

crazy ivan

2005-08-13T02:00:00.000-07:00

Wow...first photo i've posted in my blog...haha this stuff was taken in between crowds of visitors to our booth showcasing the not-so-big 'big guns'. After you've played with them for a while, they don't seem so huge after all...though most people who have served NS aren't quite accustomed to seeing anything larger than a 5.56mm round. 40mm launchable grenades can blow most people off their feet. Though i've never admired big guns...and i think such hardware is pretty crude anyway...light sabres are more elegant and civilised.

Not quite a "Knight of Valour" eh?

You can see above that i'm trying to look like a Crazy Ivan, but the facial expression didn't turn out to be as loony as i hoped it would be...shucks... = (
Nevertheless i'm still crazy enough for many people haha

The reason i'm blogging so late is due to my bondage with the television. They were showing two documentries on WWII in a row, and the second one was about sunken barrels of heavy water in a lake in Norway...which were suspected by British intelligence to be meant for construction of a heavy water nuclear reactor, as part of Nazi efforts to create the nuclear bomb...

the advent of electronics in the 20th century, especially its involvement in the second world war, is particularly intriguing to me. It must have been exhilarating to work on those electronics-related projects, such as in the invention of radar (even till this day, electromagnetics and radar projects invoke a sense of mysticism in me). In those days, radar must have seemed so magical; to realise the immense capability and potential of a brave new nascent technology whose birth you play a part in...it must feel great. Also, the creation of computers, and the promise of intelligent machines that would follow with the inexorable increase of computing power until human intellect would be triumphed by the very machines they borne through their engineering pursuits. And those large instrument panels with huge dials and meters, big warning lights, all mounted on a light grey or pale beige metal frame...and monochrome cathode-ray tube displays with either displayed an eerie green or a sobering orange. Before the days of LEDs and LCD displays...these panels in their seemingly complex and cryptic and inaccessible appearance were an icon of cutting edge technology at that time. They also give me a strong feeling of mystery and an abundance of enigma. Human-machine interfaces of the present will never ignite such strong feelings in me. They're pretty bland by comparison. Maybe its just a passing period of lull, before another leap occurs.

And artificial intelligence was so young then, cybernetics was just created by Wiener...then they moved in the direction of greater processing power and symbolic AI, and gave everybody lots of promises and cautioned and braced the public on the supposed impending arrival of really intelligent robots.

And now that failed and we're at a bland period...or maybe i'm wrong...because i'm not in touch with the latest developments in AI. But i think its either GOFAI researchers presenting yet another solution to a very narrow problem, or other people asking for or practising a more holistic approach, and yet aren't making much concrete developments. This is solely my personal impression, which is entirely unreliable because it arose from my own biased, unevidenced judgement from an incomplete perception.

yikes that was a lot of rambling and yada yada...

working on some issues on artificial intelligence. will take some time to work out. involves lots of humanities, zero math (yay! pretty ironic? we'll talk abt this some other time. suffice to say that i'm not an "i grew up doing really well at math and engineering was just a natural progression" person.) Hope to publish the essay soon, but the questions are really broad and difficult and it would be horrible if i were to give solely my own narrow, most-certainly-biased opinion. Note 'opinion'...because there is no 'answer', for the word implies an absolute truth to the question i'm addressing, and that question can only invite opinions...no assertions, no answers. Just opinions, which i will compile and list and seek further insight from. Like a survey.

getting too long-aired for my own good...

the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

2005-08-05T23:05:00.000-07:00

I've seen those lyrics below in many blogs many times.
I only really read them last night. Oh it really does echo my life.
I'm interested and intrigued and bothered by stuff no one else seems to care much, or as much. Its been like this since i was really young. And now i'm thinking about artificial intelligence and all that, i don't know what else i could possibly do in my life, though the terrible experiences and trials i've been through have been most discouraging. The dirty past projects a dark and uncertain future that seems to indicate failure, not success.

my petty self's wounds are still raw, from DSTA's rejection of my scholarship application. look for affirmation elsewhere...

I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah,
Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah
Ah-ah, Ah-ah

I walk alone
I walk a...

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone...

ahh...

2005-08-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

bookout again! after booking in yesterday night.

the feeling of being in your study by yourself, at your desk typing and working away, the cool air-con and the chilling classical music that's playing from the radio in front of you...ahhh what a great and relaxing feeling...

there's lots of violin, and now baroque pieces over the air right now. so calming...the oboe melody blares clarity into my sleepy clouded mind. every note of the accompanying harpsicord sounds sharp as a razor.

followed by the Spanish guitar pieces of Granados...so much action, yet it sounds so lonely

and then the clarinet with piano accompaniment. so queer and lonely and moaney the clarinet starts, then the conversation between the piano and the clarinet begins...in a tone of wonder and discovery and awe.

oh boy...i love this quiet, lonely feeling. its so pleasant.

time to eat pork chop noodles... =P

My Scientific Prehistory

2005-08-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

A long time ago when i was really young, still in primary school, i had a couple of ideas. And ambitions. But i was still not quite ambitious then...even though i tried to make an airplane out of cardboard boxes and gliding out of my house from the top floor balcony. That was when i had a vague but strong interest in science and technology and engineering, tried to set up my own "electronics lab". I had a "fume chamber" to perform hazardous experiments with, like creating this "highly potent" solution which required liquefying an insecticide spray...so you can imagine me spraying that aerosol can in that chamber onto a glass bottle that once contained "Brand's Essence of Chicken"...or maybe i used some other bottle...but boy i loved those bottles...very "scientific-looking". Very pro...hahaha Hey don't laugh! The chamber really worked, and you can't smell a single thing. Until you had to open the flaps(?) to remove the bottle of potent solution. The chamber was built from i think a scaffold of tough cardboard fax thermal paper rolls, cling-wrap, disembowelled computer keyboard chassis...

Then there was the 'wet lab'...it was in this toilet that we never really used. I can't recall what i called it in the past, when i would put up signs on A4 paper on the doors, which would name the labs too. Its the kind of thing that a primary school kid would use to show he was 'in-business'. The wet lab was the site of one of the most crazy experiments...i read somewhere that you could cause a piece of muscle to contract by applying electricity to it. One day in school, our teacher performed a crab dissection for our science lesson. I took home the claw. At home, i opened up part of the shell, and probably did some crazy things with it. May have included applying electricity from some battery. I did sth similar with pork, and saw it turn blue. I'm not sure if these two experiments were done at around the same period, or if they were separate pursuits.

Of course, the 'wet lab' contains my prized possessions of 'chemical collections', such as Boric Acid, which came in the form of my dad's overdue eyedrops, silica gel, which i had read was a dessicant, and Isopropyl Alcohol, which was rubbing alcohol, and i pretty liked the name. I think there may have been some glycol thymol thingy, which is actually mouthwash. haha...Of course, the most prized possession was my carefully synthesised 'potent chemical' which was supposed to be extra corrosive and contains insecticide and rubbing alcohol, among other things. I never had a chemistry set. I'd pass these things, and toy microscopes and all that, and look at them with contempt. haha the crazy chemical collection was all stocked by myself, reading labels on my own. it was a matter of ego and i'd tell myself those 'toy sets' were for ignorant 'scientist wannabes'. It was also a sign of envy and jealousy at whoever may own them...those who have money to get them.

The only successful product of my crazy prehistoric chemical pursuits was the 'anti-pimple lotion'. I gave it some name that was a slight modification of 'calamine'. After all the active ingredient was calamine. But there were other ingredients; i added rubbing alcohol (goodness...my fasination with rubbing alcohol...haha) and Johnson & Johnson's baby powder. AND i tested it on myself...to astounding success!!! If only temporary.

I SWEAR it made my pimples (yeah, it all happened during the onset of my puberty. also known as the time you peer into your pants and discover to your horror the emergence of pubes in the nether regions! *cough*cough* apologies...)
Anyway, I SWEAR it made my pimples disappear TOTALLY in just 5 minutes!!!
Though experimental evidence suggests this disappearing act is only temporary. Good enough for a quick beauty fix if you're meeting your first crush in the early blossom periods of the tween age. Of course i didnt have a crush at that age, so this wasn't necessary. My pimples bothered my mum more than they bothered me ahaha.

I love using the term 'prehistory' to describe these early scientific pursuits. they're my medieval times, my dark ages. the crazy times when i did all the crazy things, with no proper scientific knowledge and no one to guide me...obviously primary school science class is too lame to be taken seriously...i'm still as amused as i was at the end of primary two, just received my P3 texts and eagerly flipping through the pages of my first science textbook. Only to see sth that goes like : "Change. Changes are reversible or irreversible. Flip the switch on the wall, and the light turns on. This is a change. A reversible one." Of course this quote is inaccurate...the actual one probably sounded more stupid. haha i was amused. terribly amused. also very disappointed.

Must talk about the earliest working engineering creation of mine now. That was like in kindergarten. Bought a toy helicopter from some fair or sth at the kindergarten. It works like this: the heli rests on this mechanical thing that you hold with your hand. Use the other free hand to pull a cord, and through some gearing, this pulling would make the blades on the heli rotate fast enough to let it fly away from the contraption that it rests on. Pretty amazing. But what happened to the heli after that initial play with it, i can't remember. But i know what i did to the contraption. I had a pen whose nib came off or sth. Attached that to the contraption, pulled the cord, and the pen rotates. Out comes the ink, and onto the floor. Kewl. Call it "the ink sprayer". Wow. As i made a mess of the concrete floor, i thought about its potential use as a paint spray gun, and how the house's white walls would become blue from its use. I also remember feeling the Sense and Sanity Department of the Brain nudging me into accepting that this was not possible and that 'the ink sprayer' would not work well as a paint spray gun. Early signs of what is called "Feasibility Study/Assessment" in the so-called 'professional world'? haha

Oh no there's so much to talk about my scientific and engineering dark ages. I've just opened a can of worms. Couple of cans left...but too much to take for now...So that's all i'll recollect for today.

The NEW National Library!!!!!

2005-07-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

i think the title above makes me sound like an incorrigible nerd. I strongly beg to differ. I read somewhere that the story of the word "nerd" began in some American college, where they called those students who partied all day and never studied "drunk". For those at the other end of the spectrum, those who study all day , another term was invented by spelling "drunk" in reverse to give, "knurd".

oh my goodness, i sound so boring. boring with a period in front of it makes it look boring too.

anyway, i went to the new National Library yesterday with my mum. unfortunately they had to bury the Central Lending Library in the basement, but thankfully its not windowless as i had feared. Lotsa gardens around the library reaching underground to illuminate the basement CLC.

It was full of people, and i was getting very exciting cos i've been waiting for this day since i enlisted...haha what a thing to get excited abt...but i really am, i admit. As we entered, i looked around to take in a feel of the library before navigating instinctively to the General section, where books of the 500 region lie...science, math section. The shelves aren't fully populated. Many jewels that were probably once there have been borrowed out by other readers.

Still, i got myself two beautiful books: The World's 20 Greatest Unsolved Problems and, The Road to Reality: A complete guide to the laws of the universe...by Roger Penrose!!! Wow the mathematician has bothered to write this thousand-page tome exposition into the realm of physics and physical mathematics! A glance through the pages shows a healthy dose of words and math too...i hope that means this is not one of those books where idiotic mathematicians dump lots of math with no explanation of the underlying meaning. Yes i hold those guilty of this in strong contempt, because the math should serve to describe the meaning that is the science in more concise and precise terms, and sometimes the mathematical explorations give new surprises that we try to interprete in the context of science. NOT mindless symbolic manipulation, taking the intention and context and meaning for granted!

I wasted some good months wondering why in hell we use the Laplace transform instead of the Fourier transform to characterise signals, and how the hell pple figured out the physical meanings of the real and imaginary parts of "s" in the s-domain...because the stupid books mostly say NOTHING about this and for a person who's trying to learn such things for the first time and teaching himself, i wouldn't have known the simple reasons and intentions behind these mathematical methods at first encounter...until long periods of painful thought revealed them to me!

and dear reader, pls do not misunderstand what i said above...i'm no ignorant idiot! I know the motivation of the Laplace transform is to avoid working with integration or solving high-order differential equations by transforming the functions we work with into another domain, where we can work with simple algebraic manipulations, thereby reducing our math-associated stress levels!

What i was actually concerned about is a long story, but turns out to be very trivial. Thus i've wasted my time understanding such trivia due to some "mathematically -inclined" people who don't understand the need for meaning and understanding and intuition and the artistic beauty of electronics and thus fail to explain certain things which i believe are more impoortant than they think so.

I think many such pple are around, and they've written many books too.

and i've just realised i'm starting on one of my ramblings again...grouchy old man i am...

The Lee Kong Chian Reference Library is a haven! I can't wait to begin my regular visits there, and i know exactly where to look for my electronics books...oooh almost a whole shelf of them! no more limited access to mediocre texts like mine! multiple cross-referencing makes easier learning, and the books will never run away!

Very beautiful view to take in peering out of the glass walls which stretch from floow to ceiling. Large, empty spaces with spacious white study tables...so pure and simple. a nirvana for scientific and artistic meditation, learning, discovery, creation. what a wonderful place!

I can't wait to get there again. I hope i meet like-minded pple there too.

Yet another post taken from sth i typed long ago

2005-07-23T15:51:00.000-07:00

Hmm You Rong, if you're reading this, well perhaps you can tune in for more...i posted this cos i didn't have time to type sth and i'll be out and only update some more tonight...and that''s if i dun fall asleep in front of the TV haha!

Anyway, the following is an email to my class yahoogroups regarding my views on the JC education system. This was in response to another email by my classmate, who expressed dissatisfaction at our maths lecturer coming up with a seating plan for our classes to sit together at certain rows. That email touched on the attitude towards student's learning attitude. or sth like that...lol

Here goes:

hey nice arguments put forth, James...hmm regarding the lack of individuality and making students conform to authorrity, i've had my more than fair share of it at robotics club already. some teachers who are more conservative do indeed think that way.Anyway, i do agree with you that the reasons for the seating plan are quite amusing. In fact, these days, i find any drastic measure a teacher takes to maintain his/her control over class/cca more amusing and laughable than really to be taken too seriously...its like a joke. I'd like to make known my views on VJ lectures and lecturers, and perhaps through all the stuff below, explain why things have turned out to be this way.JC education is a more rigid and "structured" one. Though both polytechnics and JCs use the lecture-tutorial system, the system is implemented in JCs with more rigidity, and it feels more like in a higher secondary school than a junior COLLEGE. While it seems that JC is supposed to prepare us for college, aka universities, the reality is that a JC education prepares us for the A levels, NOT life in university. Its really just an extension from O levels, where they squeeze you twice the intensity of the O level syllabus in half the time. And what is supposed to be "independent learning", is actually not. The very fact that teachers have to impose such things like seating plans, the N(L)ame Game would go to show that many JC teachers still do not understand nor practise the concept of a JC learning environment which is self-driven learning. Maybe MOE simply decided that simply emulating the lecture tutorial system in universities would more than prepare students for university education. JC ranking only worsens the situation, because even if teachers wanted to let their students take charge of their own learning, they would still be obliged to retain control over students' learning because they'd put the school's ranking at stake if they did otherwise. So the result is, teachers continue to drive students to work on their academics. They'd probably argue that if they just left their students alone, those students would just rot on their own. That's not surprising, given the sort of learning environment children go through since primary school. A sudden relaxation in rules in JC would be a culture shock to students after going through a decade of externally motivated learning. As a member of robotics club, I've seen too many pple shun away from learning seemingly "difficult" technical stuff instead of taking the task of learning into their own hands. Its a reflection of how we're taught to learn in school. I strongly support independent learning. Perhaps its because i learn best when i learn on my own. While not everyone is like that, education should still guide and facilitate learning. Even if some of us may be better of being guided through the process, knowing how to learn by oneself is an important life skill. Especially at this age, the student should take charge of his/her own learning. Thus we should have the freedom to take charge of our learning. Not be forced to learn in a certain way. The next point that is particularly important is that of the quality of lectures. If the quality control in industry was to be applied to lectures, i think most if not all lectures would fail miserably. While i do not feel that the she who dictates our seating arrangements is incompetent or anything, i think that many lecturers just do not have enough passion in what they teach. The imparting of knowledge in a lecture has been reduced to a mere task of feeding enough knowledge to meet examination requirements. It pisses me off everytime i hear a teacher says "the syllabus needs you to know this this and that" and says, "don't worry, so many years still never come out in A levels b4, so not impt to know", or "this is a minor/unimportant chapter". Almost ALL lecturers say that, even the good ones. I remember recently, Mrs Choo telling us at the chem Kinetics lecture that we should have "more passion for what we learn" and all that. Moments before I thought i heard her say one of the sentences above. I've heard Mr. Michael Lim say that the topic on Capacitance was a "minor and unimportant" topic. Truth is, capacitors are simply TOO important in electronics. No wonder EEEs are complaining that the young EEs nowadays are incompetent. Lectures come and go, lecturers ramble on for an hour plus, go away, come back again and ramble on some more, then disappear. It's becoming routine and uninteresting. How many of you would say "wow i'm really interested in finding out more!" ? More like "I need to know this because there's a test tmr". Also, what's in the mind of a lecturer? I doubt that most teachers lecturing would actually consider, "How could i make this lesson more interesting and more easily understood by my students? How would i better increase the effectiveness of my lesson?" What I feel most teachers would think is, "How can i complete teaching everything that the syllabus requires in x number of periods allocated to me?" and if they can't, they'd just hold you back in the LT. Such teachers should look to the prominent physicist and a great lecturer, Richard Feynman, and his book, 6 Easy Pieces. You'd probably suspect he was teaching primary school children physics! Think about the Quantum Physics lectures. Or rather, what do you think about them? Isit really just any other lecture on physics? Equations, experimental set ups, tutorials, assignments, tests....BUT how many of you actually know that the quest for the true nature of light (wave or particle?) and its results, was one of the DEFINING moments of physics? It happened at a time when physicists thought that physics was over, and everything to be known was known. Niels Bohr (i think) was told by his professor that he'd have no future in physics. In fact, it turned out to be that the photoelectric effect, along with many other phenomena, redefined and shook the foundations of physics. Quantum physics is a pillar of what we call modern physics, and F=ma can be derived from quantum physics!These are the truly important details of the knowledge that we are supposed to learn. We should be taught to appreciate what we learn, instead of just knowing for the sake of knowing. When will teachers and the education service realise this?

Those words above, I stand by them, because my heart spoke them.
Hang Jian

This week

2005-07-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

...was a busy week. Lotsa section training. Lotsa sweat and effort put in. nvm...

Pretty disappointed with myself. But i know i tried very hard to get things right.

Anyway on friday, LTA Alex drove the rover to the wrong place, and said that just meant we had to carry the tons of benches in the rover to block 223 ourselves. Then it rained. I didn't want to plead him to drive the rover over to the block, because i'm timid and i didn't know if he was unhappy. i'm not sure if i suggested someone else ask him instead, probably not...and then i enlisted some help to carry the benches over, in the rain. I should have insisted someone ask him first before we did anything. But the guys already got themselves wet carrying the benches out of the rover before someone got LTA Alex over. He didn't look like he minded.

And so it was my fault that i got so many pple wet in the rain. Those were great pple who volunteered without hesistation, and they still couldn't understand when i tried to explain it was my fault.

i am an insecure self

2005-07-03T16:51:00.000-07:00

i've been rather down and low these days. For me, 'down and low' also means there's some anger in me. Another bout of depression strikes me once again...they just happen spontaneously, without reason. I'm so prone to such things...

It gets worse when i start reading my own blog and other writings (like the ones below) and find that i'm not as impressed by them as i used to, or thought i would. Now it just seems like little substance in an excessive amount of words. sigh...this brings up self-doubt. I'm very prone to self-doubt. What if you woke up one day and realised that whatever little you've done that you once thought was marginally impressive (and provided sustenance for your fragile sense of self-confidence) no longer seems that way to you?

It opens up a pandora's box of self-negativity.

Have i been taking the right path in my life so far? Or has following my heart and pursuing all my passions amounted to nothing because i wasn't meant to excel in them and didn't realise soon enough?

The Past 19 years seemed like a struggle to work for my passion and interest, a struggle in vain. The currents of failure are pushing me back faster than my efforts can get me upstream, and im starting to lose it. There's so much i owe to so many people, i fear i cannot repay their kindness and understanding and assistance and hopes for me.

self-negativity leads to a fear of incompetency. this fear leads to hate of oneself. this hate leads to spontaneous occasional anger. this anger leads to...

Excerpt from my 'Treatise of Classical Physics'

2005-07-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

Classical physics is a paradigm and framework for quantitatively analyzing material/physical phenomena as perceived by man. The analysis it provides is meant to both predict and account for all the phenomena observed. We will first outline the basic axioms of the philosophy of classical physics:

The Universe operates in accordance with certain laws
All physical phenomena occur in accordance with a set of fundamental physical laws. Such laws include the conservation of energy, and Newton’s first law of motion. The laws are elucidated by identifying patterns of behaviour from empirical data. These physical laws can be expressed with the least ambiguity in mathematical language, and in this form serve to help the human mind analyse physical processes quantitatively and avoid the susceptibilities of qualitative speculation. From the most basic laws, a large number of corollaries may be derived. These will facilitate the analysis of physical phenomena.

Determinism
The principle of determinism asserts that all physical phenomena are completely determined by the laws of nature which govern them. It asserts that given a certain law, and some knowledge of the state of a system obtained through empirical methods, it is entirely possible to determine the state of that system at any arbitrary point in time. The accuracy of the calculated value is only limited by the limitations of the measuring instrument used to gather the data.

It should also be noted that the physical laws are generally assumed to be invariant with everything else; They are true forever. So what happens when laws transmutate to something else? Should there be a law of laws that governs the behaviour of laws? Sounds like a Russian doll problem. Of course, this is not a problem in the paradigm of classical physics; The absolute invariance of physical laws is assumed.

Mechanics
Much of the phenomena that surround us are about the motion of bodies. It is thus no surprise that a central theme of classical physics is mechanics, the study of motion. The fundamental axioms of motion are stated below:

Axioms of the Newtonian Mechanical Universe

1. The Universe is a collection of objects each described by a set of basic physical quantities, from which other parameters that characterize it may be derived. Derived parameters would be functions of those basic parameters. The basic physical quantities include mass, distribution of mass in space, electric charge, distribution of electric charge in space, position in 3 dimensions.

For purposes of mechanics, the quantities of position in each of 3 dimensions, and mass are most important.

The complete state of the Universe can be specified by knowledge of the above parameters of all the objects which populate the Universe.

Time is a quantity that only increases in magnitude. The state of the universe may be specified against the quantity of time. The state is single-valued and continuous with time.
[this is getting rather difficult to formalize…needs a better mathematical formulation than this crude and incomplete statement! Perhaps an analogy would be that each state of the universe is like a bead strung on the string called “time”.]

Orthogonality of Parameters
[some parameters are orthorgonal… e.g. motion in x-direction does not affect motion in y-direction…I’m lacking the math to formalize this.]

2. The fundamental object of the Newtonian Universe may be thought to be a point in space, which is enumerated by at least one of the fundamental parameters as specified above. Its behaviour will be subject to the axioms as stated in this treatise. Behaviour refers to the variation of the state of the object, the state being the set containing all the canonical coordinates which will completely specify the particle.

3. The Position Exclusion Principle
No two objects may have the same position coordinates.

4. Position coordinates of an object must be continuous and single-valued with respect to time.

5. Motion is the change of the parameters of position with respect to time.
To adequately describe motion, several parameters are derived from the fundamental parameters, and are defined as such:

Velocity is a vector quantity whose magnitude is the first derivative of position with time.

Acceleration is the first derivative of velocity with time, or equivalently, the second derivative of position with time.

Force
Force is a causative agent of acceleration. In other words, force causes a change in velocity. Forces are exerted by objects. Forces can have one of two natures: contact and non-contact.

Non-contact forces arise due to force fields (e.g. gravitational fields) and objects can experience such forces whether they are in contact with other objects or not.

Contact forces only arise when:
i) objects are in contact with each other
ii) the objects in contact are accelerating
We can always assume there is a contact force between objects in contact with each other, and if there is no such force in actuality, logical deduction will reveal their absence.

Energy
Energy refers to the capacity to enact a change in an object’s state of motion that is consistent with the enactor’s intention. Since force is the only causative agent for a change in motion state, the “enactor’s intention” refers to the direction of the exerted force.

6. Conservation of Energy

7. Newton’s first law of motion
In the absence of an external unbalanced force, an object at rest will remain at rest, and an object moving at constant velocity (not just speed) will remain moving at constant velocity.

8. Newton’s second law of motion
An object experiences an acceleration that is proportional to the net force it experiences and inversely proportional to its mass. By definition, the constant of proportionality is one, as it is arbitrarily defined that 1N of force will cause a mass of 1kg to accelerate at 1ms^2. After all, what 1 Newton of force or 1kg of matter means is entirely arbitrary and chosen for our convenience.

This law establishes the relation between mass and motion. That is, mass is a fundamental property of an object which resists change to its motion. The resistance to a change in motion is known as inertia. Hence mass the cause and the measure of inertia.

10. Newton’s third law of motion
When an object experiences a force, it exerts an equal and opposite force on the object that exerted that force on itself.

[post note: the following is one of the couple of examples in the treatise which used the axioms alone to make deductions about some mechanics problems]

Example 3
Consider two boxes connected to each other by a rigid rod. We have the following diagram with all the forces labeled:

F is a pulling force that acts directly on M1.
A2 and R1 are an action reaction pair between M1 and M2.
A3 and R2 are an action reaction pair between M2 and M3.

Since M1 is stuck to M2 which is stuck to M3, and we claim that all the masses cannot be deformed, and that they’re perfectly stuck together, this can only mean that they must all experience the same acceleration. Since A = F/M, we write the following expression to equate the accelerations of each mass:

A3/M3 = (A2-R2)/M2 = (F-R1)/M1

Newton’s third law tells us that the magnitude of forces in an action-reaction pair is the same. Hence,

R1 = A1 and R2 = A3

So to make the algebra look nicer, we write this:
R2/M3 = (R1-R2)/M2 = (F-R1)/M1

Suppose the two boxes have a mass of 1kg i.e. M3 = 1 and M1 = 1. We then have:
R2 = (R1-R2)/M2 = (F-R1)

Suppose that M2 was a massless string. A string cannot extend beyond its length, so M3 and M1 cannot move any further from each other than the string’s length. But unlike the case when M2 was a rigid rod, they now can move closer to each other. Consequently, we cannot claim that the accelerations of all the masses are equal. Instead, we can only say that M3 can have an acceleration that is equal or greater than that of M1. By considering the property of the string alone, this is a correct deduction. However, further reasoning taking into account this particular situation of F pulling on the system eliminates the possibility of M3 accelerating more than M1. Why? This is because the instant M3 accelerates faster than M1, the string M2 becomes less taut. When this happens, the string no longer passes the force to M3. Consequently, M3 has zero acceleration. Since at any instant when M3 accelerates more than M1, the acceleration disappears, this means that at any point in time, M3 can never have a greater acceleration than M1. Thus the only possibility is that the acceleration of M3 and M1 is the same.

During the discussion, we have conveniently left out any consideration of the mass of the string, M2. Since the string is flexible, the motion along its length is complicated and does not easily render itself to a simply discussion. Moreover, our force diagram remains the same, since our conclusion above that acceleration of all parts of the system is constant implies that the string must be taut at all times.

Given the special case that the string M2, has zero mass, we can multiply M2 across to give the following:
R1 – R2 = 0
This implies that
R1 = R2

Hence we have proven a frequently used assumption: “that the tension in the string is constant.” This has been placed in quotes because it is not very technically correct. I explain:

We should be careful when using the notion of a massless string. We must note that by A=F/M, anything massless that experiences a force will have infinite acceleration! This clearly cannot happen because it implies that the object can have infinite kinetic energy when no work was done by the force at all, since at the very instant the force is applied, the object takes off at infinite speed. This is a violation of the law of conservation of energy. Also, the string does not experience any net force, since R1 = R2. How can this make sense when it is clearly supposed to be a rigid body (it is taut in this situation) undergoing the same finite acceleration those two masses are experiencing too? This is a contradiction…if there is finite A, there should be finite F. But M cannot simultaneously be zero. Therefore, when using the idealistic notion of a massless string, the string should not be regarded as a mass (its massless anyway). Instead, it is simply some ideal device that :
i) constrains the maximum distance between the two objects it connects
ii) exerts an equal force upon the two objects it connects

Hence we prove that the “massless string” is physically impossible and its construct in the Newtonian mechanical world is contradictory and paradoxical. It can at most be an approximation to make computation simpler.

Therefore, the statement “that the tension in the string is constant” should be amended to “the string exerts an equal force upon the two objects it connects”. When we speak of tension in the string, we really are referring to the forces which are pulling the particles of the string apart. When the forces exceed those forces which keep the string intact, the string breaks.

Technical Conclusion
We have done all our reasoning in the above examples purely with the 10 axioms we have listed in the previous section. An axiomatic approach is tedious, and not practically efficient. But it exposes the many assumptions we make when we solve these problems; assumptions which we take for granted, which we sometimes fail to justify, and which we never worry about when we unknowingly make them.

We have proved the assumption that the tension felt by two objects connected by a taut, massless string is constant.

A solution to a mechanics problem is found by listing all the forces and parameters of the system in consideration. All the variables must behave according to the 10 axioms. This can be expressed mathematically. We can then proceed to solve the equations simultaneously.

MRI 3 - The Foundations of a Foundation

2005-06-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

MRI 3.1 Organising the Foundations of a Foundation
---------------------------------------------------

In this document we need to do some consolidation by laying out a foundation
of principles and ideas from what research we have gathered, and the ideas
which we have come up with so far.

This foundation will have to consist at least, of the following components:

1. A set of principles that provide the vision of our kind of intelligent
system

2. The basic principles and ideas of our approach, and the rationale behind
them

3. What questions remain to be answered, and what needs to be done to answer
them before we can at least start building something that fulfils our vision
partially

We will try to fill up those categories shown above, taking exerpts from MRI
1 and 2.

MRI 3.2 Our vision of an intelligent system
--------------------------------------------

"Intelligence" includes (ie. not exhaustively):
1. The ability to execute difficult tasks efficiently
2. The ability to adapt to increase the efficiency in tackling these tasks

The intelligent system must have the following qualities (...some apart from,
others in assistance in...) fulfilling the above two criteria:

1. Decentralised operation - everything is everywhere and nowhere...and in no
particular place.

2. The architecture breeds its own intelligence. Hence the complexity of its
behaviour comes from the operation of the system.
Our design is concerned with maximising the potential of the system to
generate complex behaviour. (Thus for a robotic organism living in a highly
dynamic environment requiring complex behavioural mechanisms, the system can
provide that)

3. Precision is not always necessary. The system should be tolerant of
inprecision. But we should take a step further ahead of nature, and demand
that the system should be capable of producing precision when required.

4. The system should be adaptive. It should learn and optimise itself.
It should posses the skill of learning, which we said in MRI 1.

MRI 3.3 Basic Principles and Ideas of our Approach and their Rationale
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

1. The Intelligent System is composed of a network of interconnected units
whose behaviour follows certain rules.
These are the key features of the biological neural network, which we believe
are directly responsible for the desired characteristics which we specified
in the previous section. Hence we have reason to investigate these features
more thoroughly and incorporate them in our nascent intelligent system.

The underlying simplicity of such an architecture is also attractive to us,
yet there is empirical evidence that this form has potential to generate
complex behaviour.

As the system derives its functionality in a decentralised manner, the
resulting robustness is also very desirable.

2. In order to exhibit the two important qualities that characterise
intelligence (as stated in the previous section), we need to create a source
of power or motivation for the system to do so. We call these DRIVEs.

We propose two drives, the EMOTION drive (E drive) and the SURVIVAL drive (S
drive).

The S drive is based on the biological organism's need to survive. To
survive, certain physiological parameters must be satisfied. These parameters
are fed into the system, which seeks to act via its outputs to ensure the
parameters stay within certain prescribed limits. In biological organisms,
these limits probably evolved. In our robotic organisms, we can choose to set
these limits ourselves in our designs, and perhaps allow those limits to
evolve through successive generations of robots (refer to the document on
robocology).

The E drive is based on emotions in biological organisms, most obviously in
humans. Emotions come in pairs, positive and negative ones. The system seeks
to minimise the negative emotions and maximise the positive ones.

The E drive may help complement the S drive in ensuring survival.
In addition, its purpose may also help increase the variety and complexity of
behaviour the system can exhibit.
Perhaps emotions evolved to enhance the survivability of biological
organisms. Perhaps some emotions like anger and fear were evolved to enhance,
but the nature of emotions in a network architecture meant emotions were dual
and had to come in pairs. Hence came the positive emotions. And perhaps at
first this served as a drive to keep the emotional state positive, since
negative emotions implied a threat to survival and actions had to be taken to
avoid this. Then the dependance on positive emotions evolved from this.

We propose that, similar to the S drive, what condit\ions evoke positive
emotions in the E drive mechanism can be set by the designer, and then
allowed to evolve over generations of robots.

3. In the conception of robocology, we seek to create an environment that a
robotic organism would survive in. The environment creates the conditions and
the challenge, while the DRIVES created the driving force for the robot to
behave in a way that would meet the challenges of the environment.

The driving force alone is not enough. It must drive some 'machinery'. These
are certain specifics of behaviour and skills to design. We draw inspiration
from subsumption, to break down certain broad tasks (which we must first
define) such as motor control and visual perception into smaller, more
manageable bits and layered into hierarchies of control.

4. These 'modules' may perform highly specific functions, such as those
performed by the lowest level pattern generators in the brain's motor control
hierarchy. They merely 'execute'.

Other higher level modules, or groups of them or the whole layer of modules
interacting with one another might perform the additional tasks of 'creation
and conception', and also 'learning and self-enhancement'. These fulfil our
two criteria of intelligence stated in the previous section.

while conception could have given rise to the patterns of behaviour exhibited
by the lowest level 'modules', this would have taken too much time to evolve,
since their effect is least profound, and to hit upon the right combination
of behaviour among a large number of modules to meet the high level of
objectives provided by the S and E drives takes too long to happen.

5. We can generalise every task to be a task of
1) conception of objects
2) destroying or creating connections between sets of objects

In other words we have incorporated the connectionist model of cognition, and
extended it to all parts of the intelligent system from low level behaviour
to high level ones.

5. In Summary...

In point 1, We have specified certain features our architecture must possess.
This is based on the assumption that they lead to the highly desired features
that we have outlined.

Point 3 shows us the way we intend to manage the complicated problem of
generating behaviour.

Clearly the idea of conception and self-enhancement is an innate objective in
the design of the architecture. The design must fulfil these two goals from
bottom up, as specified by point 4 in order to satisfy our criteria for
intelligence.

Point 5 specifies the general way in which stuff is processed in the system,
which is drawn from Connectionism.

Point 2 provides power to run the whole system through its 'drives'.

I STRESS THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SYSTEM TO MODIFY ITSELF TO ENHANCE ITS
ABILITIES. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT GOAL OF THE DESIGN.

MRI 3.3 What needs to be answered first, and what must be done to do so
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. In reference to point 4 of the previous section, we need to know how much
specifics we need to design and how much to let the system evolve.

2. How exactly do emotions enhance the normal S drive mechanism in biological
organisms? (do they? or how else did the Emotions evolve?)
Why do they enhance survival (by supplementing the S drive) in a way the S
drive alone cannot?

3. How do we design the drives into the architecture? Especially the E drive?

4. [THIS IS THE BIG QUESTION] How do the features specified in the previous
section's point 1 provide the advantages which we already see in biological
brains?

MRI 2

2005-06-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

MRI 2.1 Consolidation Attempt
-----------------------------

We've gotten many ideas from many places. Lets try to consolidate them and find a good integration of all of them.

First is a list and synopsis of the key ideas we have picked from others and also those we created:

From Stephen Wolfram in "A New Kind of Science"
--------------------------------------------------
Complex Behaviour can arise from systems whose behaviour are based on simple rules. An example of such is Cellular Automata, which is composed of an array of elements whose behaviour is dictated by simple rules which are functions of the state of adjacent cells. This is reminiscent of neural networks, in which simple rules govern the firing of each neurone (at least this is so in their general behaviour)

An increase in the complexity of the rules does not lead to a corresponding increase in thhe complexity of the resulting behaviour of the system.

Perception and analysis is very much concerned with summarising the details of some raw input.
To accomplish this it is necessary to IDENTIFY PATTERNS, and COMPRESS DATA.

(pg. 627 paraphrased)
The power of human thought lies in its ability to store and quickly retreive a huge amount of information.

That allows us to make many connections between concepts. Making references to items in memory and forming new connections between them and new perceptions forms much of human thought.
(I ask, "what else is there to human thought?")

From the Connectionist Model of Cognition
-------------------------------------------
Concepts are represented as patterns of activity in neural networks.

These are present in material form as the strengths and weights of the synaptic connections between neurones.

Hebb's Rule is the method by which the connection strengths change.

If objects/concepts are represented graphically as paths, then the points of intersection of paths represents the relations between the two things...
e.g. John is a boy is depicted by the 'john' path intersecting the 'boy path'. The intersection is manifested in neural networks by the synaptic connections, and the strength of the connections means the strength of the relation.

From Subsumption
-----------------

We borrow the concept of layers of behaviour and agents each with its own simple, low-level task. Thus the complex behaviour we want an intelligent system to manifest can be split into simple specific tasks handled by simple systems.

Misc.
-----
Motor control is achieved by huge networks of pattern generators whose pattern output control the contraction of muscles that give rise to

Some of my own early ideas before those stated in MRI - 1
----------------------------------------------------------
Basic Principles of a good control system:

Decentralised operation - everything is everywhere and nowhere...in no particular place.

The architecture breeds its own intelligence. Hence the complexity of its behaviour comes from the running of the system itself...design of the architecture is only to enable as much of this complexity to evolve from the unsupervised operation of the system

Precision is not always necessary. The system should be tolerant of inprecision

The system should be adaptive. It should learn and optimise itself. (Consult
MRI 1.2)

Miscellaneous (Random and Unorganised) Ramblings on Intelligence #1

2005-06-26T13:12:00.000-07:00

I have decided to put up three documents (MRI 1, 2 and 3)
These are thoughts over the past two months, eventually culminating in MRI 3, which sets the foundation for my pursuit in the field of artificial intelligence.

MRI stands for Miscellaneous Ramblings on Intelligence, and the first two MRIs appear disorganised and messy, which was the way they were first conceived...messy and illegible scratches on rough paper.

The language will not always make sense, because the meaning sometimes is too difficult for my linguistic skills to express in words. Sometimes this makes some sentences sound stupid. I understand some ideas are really stupid...haha hopefully they get refined in subsequent editions of MRI 3, where the ideas of MRIs 1 and 2 are consolidated, and more...

MRI 1.1 Some thoughts on the network
--------------------------------------

Note: Network here refers to a body of numerous interconnected elements

A network can exhibit a large variety of possible states, far greater than that of a digital computer.

(hmm okay, what exactly makes up the state is debatable. maybe this statement is not valid now on hindsight)

A network can possibly be a good model for a UNIVERSAL REPRESENTATION OF THE WORLD. This may provide much flexibility when having to deal with the complex dynamical system the world is.

We have a:
1. Representation problem (i.e. how to represent the inputs to the system within the system...the inputs being 'the WORLD')

2. Interaction of Representations (...to produce complex and interesting behaviour...Is thought solely or partially a product of the interaction of representations flowing around in the network?)

Perhaps by mathematical reasoning (or not), we could design an architecture that provides maximum flexibility and potential ('potential' as in huge possibilities in behaviour...or not?)

The network would come up with the THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY TO MAKE A REPRESENTATION so it can work on those REPRESENTATIONS in the simplest and most efficient way.
(hind-note: i.e. just like logarithms make multiplication simpler and fourier analysis reduce difficult integration to simple algebra...this is a way of self-optimisation of the network's own problem solving process, a sort of learning too. )

MRI 1.2 A little bit on Learning and Creativity
------------------------------------------------

Could a good and precise definition of learning make it easier for us to understand how STRENGTHENING THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN NEURONES constitutes all there is to learning on the neurophysical level?
(OR is there more to strengthening connections in the brain's learning mechanism? perhaps on a higher level, probably built on from this lower level connection strengthening mechanism?)

What is learning? We attempt to define (not exhaustively):

A Set of Qualities (based on macro, behaviour-level layman interpretations of learning) which includes:

"Refinement" - adaptation, to do things better

"Inference" - taking in new knowledge and generating futher insights, making us wiser and "REFINING" the thought process for future demands

"Generalisation" - (definition feels incomplete) identifying underlying patterns which apply across a set of representations/things/mental objects.

Clearly, they all lead to refinement. Which means things get done faster, more efficiently, and less effort in the end. The end product of all learning.

Which leads mentally to emotional satisfaction and physically, survival in the material world.
Emotion is an internally generated purpose, drive.
Survival is an external purpose, drive.
Both drive learning.

(How about "UNDERSTANDING"? Where does it lie? between "INFERENCE" and "GENERALISATION"? What does it mean when we understand something?)

Creativity
Probably a process generated by a parallel mechanism...
- perhaps many approaches are all considered at once, and one of them wins? (sounds like 'neural darwinism')

- indirect/by-products of the mainstream cognitive process (i.e. conscious reasoning??)

- Or perhaps by-products of the interconnection of representations...More connections, more products, which are stored, and sometimes surfaced when needed. Hence more interaction, more creativity.

MRI 1.3 The Conscious Thought Process
-------------------------------------

Man's conscious thought process is a SERIAL one. We can only pay attentiona to one thing,
Perhaps this confers some ADVANTAGES, so the brain needs it. After all, we can do only so much at one time.

Perhaps this serial thought process is somewhat like the Turing machine.

But while the Turing machine is highly capable in executing algorithms, it isn't creative enough to come up with the algorithm itself...or is it? (Anyway the 'programming intelligence approach' hasn't worked well so we assume it doesn't work well)

This is how the human subconscious comes into the picture. It probably plays an important role in the creative process, in a way that was described above.

Perhaps the brain does things that way (i.e. running certain processes in parallel and others in serial) to optimise its ability to think.

MRI 1.4 The Problem
-------------------

Much of the world is probably about:
1. discovering the intersection of sets of objects
2. creating or destroying (in whole or in part) interactions between sets

This echoes the CONNECTIONIST model of human cognition.

We could like to create an extremely flexible and adaptable architecture for fast and efficient computation. Clearly a problem can be solved with a host of methods, some of which are simpler and faster and more efficient than others.

So can the architecture be designed to be flexible enough to learn to configure itself for the best possible problem-solving "SUB-ARCHITECTURE"?

[This coincides with the point on choosing the best mode of representation that would aid in finding the best way to solve a problem. That point was stated in MRI 1.1

Some slightly new developments

2005-06-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

I said 'slightly new' because these 'developments' are largely confined to pen and paper for now, and some kilobytes on my harddisk.

Yesterday i obsoleted the UAV project i worked on in 2003-2004, archived the folder, and started a new UAV project. It would surely benefit from the ground previously broken by the old project.

The idea for the new project first came when i was waiting at the Tekong IMT centre for my turn to shoot. jotted an engine placement scheme in my notebook then left it alone for a while. Days ago i decided to make a UAV, and that scheme came to my mind. The flexibility and multiple redundancy associated with its VTOL capability is appealing to me, and i have just come up with a design i can start building. Two wings stacked as a cross, four engines on the ends of the wings. The engines are mounted on servo-controlled joints that allow a hemispherical movement space (hmm its difficult to explain, apologies for the bad use of words)

The X-Wing UAV (okay maybe its difficult to visualise) has aspects reminiscent of previous efforts by other pple...hovering discs or other skeletal crosses hovered by 4 engines, and the V-22 osprey's tiltrotor concept. I hope this 'rojak' design allows it to 'dance like a helicoptor, cruise like a plane'...if you understand what i mean.

Now to go work on the control system, which will be really difficult. Also, to muster the monetary resources to acquire my motors and batteries and structural materials and electronics parts.

Long way ahead. The success of this project is extremely crucial to myself.

I cannot fail.

gotta learn to like my new fate

2005-06-03T16:36:00.000-07:00

oh well, the past few weekdays leading to the end of my Basic Section Leader Course (BSLC) have been heavy hearted. No it wasn't because i miss SISPEC or Tekong (oh no am I?) but the fear that i could be posted back to SISPEC again for the Advanced Section Leader Course (ASLC), which means i would have been an infantry specialist. I'm no action-man and charging around with six men under you isn't something i have aptitude for. The thought that i would be doing that makes me shudder, but in hindsight, that now seems nothing compared to what i may be going through...more on that later.

So as our sergeant read out each posting destination, followed by the names that would apply to, my heart pounded increasingly harder. For each name that was read that was not mine meant a greater chance of getting stuck on this island. Some lucky souls got sent to the airforce! Some were sent to the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Training Centre (UAVTC), and i was disappointed i wasn't among them. I was posted to the school of armour instead. That left me quite affected, though i struggled to give myself a feeling of relief that i wasn't sent for ASLC. well its not that bad i told myself, tanks played a rather interesting role in the second world war, and besides its probably going to get more interesting than that regular infantry business. Yesterday i found out that things just got 'better'...or worse.

Of the Mortar Commander's Course, Tank Commander's Course and Armoured Infantry Section Leader's Course (AISL) , i was posted to the lattermost. What a blow as i saw the guy slide his ruler down the very long namelist to reach mine, and spotted the acronymn AISL. I looked at it a second time with disbelief, before the guy told me so. Then i was scolded by an old man who turned out to be the course warrant officer for smiling. i'm still quite bewildered, but i think he probably mistook my smiley nature for a lack of seriousness.

I felt a little better after having an early lunch with my friend, but emotions slid all the way while i spent the rest of the day at the library, then at Kinokuniya, and then at my aunt's place, where i managed to pick myself up and am still clinging precariously onto this fairly stable emotional state, which always threatens to give way to the depths of emotional hell.

the story of robocology

2005-05-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

robotics is an emerging discipline. or not. man has strived to create autonomous machines and we've moved from mechanical automatons to electrically controlled machines running pon computers with fantastically complex and long algorithms. we thought that with our newfound discipline of electronics and its rapid advances, we could soon create thinking, autonomous machines with ease. And we quickly ran head-on into a brickwall. moving around a real-world environment filled with obstacles in the way is something we do in our daily lives without even realising what it takes our brains to accomplish this task...until we try to make computers armed with video cameras and sitting on wheeled platforms do this. I believe we're still having some difficulty.

the academic fraternity that deals with AI is coming up with many new computer programs and algorithms for visual processing, moving around obstacles, having robots get up on their feet and walk properly. Many ideas and schools of thought. Then there are those who prefer to start on a lower level: try achieving the intelligence of insects and other 'simpler' organisms before we try to create artificial humans. Years ago i came across this idea as i read one of my first encounters with literature on robotics research (a book approximately titled "Behaviour-based robotics") Then, i felt this was quite lame and unnecessary, but i now think this is the way we should proceed. I'll first have to set the background and explain the rationale for a methodology of artificial intelligence research that i will also outline here.

The various physical and mental abilities of living creatures today have evolved over time, to meet the demand for survival. And survival is for reproduction, which is in turn for the continued existence of the genes. Creatures own the capabilities they possess to allow them to survive in the ecosystem they call home. It was natural circumstances which forced creatures to become smart enough to find their way around based on the visual information from their eyes, to execute the hunting of their prey...Perhaps by analogy we can try to reverse-engineer this process of evolution by which nature gave living creatures their intelligence. Perhaps we could try to create robotic creatures that similarly have to fight for their survival in a robotic ecosystem. Then we'd put ourselves in the shoes of mother nature...how could we engineer these robots to give them abilities which they need to survive, just like their biological counterparts? Using the 'simpler' insects as inspiration, thus removing other distractions like visual processing by advanced eyes that mammals possess and social skills like language etc. we concentrate instead on creating solid, robust control mechanisms for 'simpler' tasks insects are capable of and then building upwards to higher level skills which are more difficult to design.

First and foremost, this approach serves to guide us and give us focus in our quest to develop artificial, intelligent systems.
The second reason for this bottom-up approach is related my belief in how to 'create' intelligence. (i don't think "create" is a very appropriate in this case, but i couldn't find a better word)

I disagree with the approach of trying to programme our way to intelligence. that somehow we will one day be able to develop an algorithm that would make a robot intelligent. besides, many of the efforts in software are directed towards specific "intelligence goals", such as visual obstacle avoidance, recognition of facial social ques, locomotion, moving a hand to manipulate something, working as a group...I think we need a common underlying methodology to achieve all these. I would refer to the brain as an example of this. From insect brains to human brains, organic brains (yikes that sounds awful for some reason) are composed of complex and vast networks of neurones. Neurones and the sound interconnection of neurones is the basic methodology by which nature builds its brains and creates intelligent creatures. Using these basics, nature has shown us what complex and interesting and intelligent behaviours it can create. And for that reason i think we should give nature's method a try too.

This approach of creating a robotic ecosystem and starting out by creating the simplest and most primitive robotic creatures which possess the most basic skills that nature's most primitive creatures have facilitates our playtime with creating networks composed of basic functional units and once we can get our own networks and robots to achieve the basics as exemplified by nature's primitive creatures, we can build on our success and use what we have learnt to get there, to create more complex creatures.

Mark Tilden's BEAM robotics is a well known effort that uses this approach. But the robots so far, while exhibiting interesting behaviours, are still purely reactive devices. No memory, no learning, and the networks cannot modify themselves, their connections. The last feature is important, and in neuroscience, the ability of the brain to do this is called neuroplasticity. Plasticity. Important quality. That'll be a gap we can attempt to fill. What matters in a cognitive system that's made up of networks of functional units is its architecture. Methods and ways of combining the units to create behaviours is the goal for this project. And we hope to progress from the simplest behaviours and skills in the most primitive organisms to the most complex ones.

More details of the robotic ecosystem in the next post ;P

miscellaneous ramblings on design philosophy

2005-05-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

I like aesthethics. Engineering a new piece of technology that's novel and works wonders, yet simple and reliable. No patchwork designs allowed, where imperfections in design are spotted at last minute, and patches are added (adding complexity and part count too) to make it work. That makes a design more complicated, when it could have worked desirably with better design and less components. This is art.

Artificial intelligence probably sounds better in its acronymn form, AI. The combination of two letters looks simpler and more aesthetically pleasing. It also hides the word "artificial". This is such a notorious word; it carries the implications of imperfection, especially in the realm of robotics, where artificial, man-made creations pale in comparison to the beautiful creations of mother nature. Nature is such a brilliant engineer, architect, artist. We can only seek to emulate her...we've not surpassed her even though many people would like to think so by making mental references to our 'giant' land-clearing machines whose sheer 'size and power' seemingly dominates the land. Most of us probably haven't realised that nature's subtlety is a very good lesson in engineering. The masculine part of us has forgotten subtlety and simplicity and given disproportionate attention to 'raw power' and strength.

hmm i wonder if i'm making much sense. surely i do agree with the above, and it certainly reflects my design philosphy, but i sensed a lack of sincerity as i typed the previous paragraph. that's a little cause for concern. =P

Ramblings on the Matrix P layer (no not the movie)

2005-05-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

It started with a dream to build a flying machine; an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Not just any other UAV, but a penultimate machine. Penultimate because (to borrow ACS's school motto), the best is (always) yet to be, in the quest for perfection. Penultimate because we knew that the ideal was far beyond our practical reach. Nevertheless, the team comprising of myself, martin, eric, and soon after chi hao, sought to create something special. Perhaps my imagination was running wild, and i got rather zealous trying to turn dream into reality; as the initiator of this project, i set an ambitious tone and made known my ambitious vision for the outcome of this project. The conception phase of any project is probably one of the most exciting times of a project. We spent many hours for many weeks discussing about the UAV, our visions of what it could be, and some detail design. I printed a spec sheet of the Predator UAV, and sought to make our creation better. Such lofty goals...

The electronics of this UAV were fully handled by myself, and i had underestimated the enormity of this task. It is not the design of the electronics systems that is difficult. I believe this is a relatively simple system. But combine this with the stresses of schoolwork, the fact that i was doing a lot of these things for the first time and learning as i was doing, and the many many details involved which range from conception to detail design to fabrication and all that...micromanagement is very stressful and i was doing all this by myself without any help. And i wasn't managing my time and schedules too well, as much as i tried with of timelines, deadlines, timetables and plans.

Our UAV is expected to contain several systems, including an inertial navigation unit, a servo control unit and a communications unit, and must be expandable to include more systems if necessary. I decided that this called for a modular system. Some ideas about how the modules would communicate with each other surfaced. In particular, this was the Radio Frequency Data Bus (RFDB). Something like bluetooth. Simultaneous bilateral communications between modules, broadcast capability...the rough concept was drawn up.

Then one day i walked home with a classmate. I guess i was particularly inspired that day, and i'm sure the conversation we had on the way home must have contributed to that inspiration too. When i got home, i got down to work and wrote in pencil on a few sheets of paper the concept for the "matrix".

The word "matrix" implies something of a network, a myriad of connections, an array of objects. That was what i wanted to have for the UAV. Something of an infrastructure to support the presence of modules, and peripherals such as sensors and actuators. something to "maintain and connect, power and protect". I wanted to create a system that would:

1. facilitate communication between controller units
2. facilitate connection between controllers and peripherals (such as servos, sensors etc.)
3. act as the power grid of the whole UAV
4. act as the immune system of the UAV, protecting the electronics against 'rebellious' controllers and other malicious foreign elements

Point 4 was an idea that was good to have, but it was difficult to get into the specifics.
Point 3 was partially worked out in detail, but it remains unconvincing to myself
Point 1 resembles the earlier intention of the RFDB. It was called the C layer of the matrix. C stands for Controller.

Point 2 was the part i worked on for virtually the whole of this matrix affair during the period of the UAV project. This was called the P layer of the matrix.

The P layer is an electrical network of cells which enable the connection of controller units and peripherals. That is the bottomline. But we could spice things up a little, couldn't we?

Here are the essential spices, and what stuff the P layer actually is made of:
There should be reliability. That includes the capability to recover from failure. That also includes the requirement that this system is decentralised. One failure should not topple the system.
Hence the system is composed to many basic functional units called cells.

Using the P layer is like playing an eccentric pass-the-parcel. Suppose you're a controller and would like to talk to a lightbulb and perhaps get it to turn on. You know that the lightbulb is connected to one of the cells. The controller is also connected to one of the cells in the P layer. Each cell has an address to mark its location.

To talk to the lightbulb, you would have to send a signal containing the address of the lightbulb (which is the address of the cell the lightbulb is connected to) and

The controller sends out an address signal to the cell, which receives it, takes a look at it and decides which of the cells adjacent to it should receive it, and passes on the address signal. The cell makes the decision by comparing the address signal it received and the addresses of itself, and the cells adjacent to it, and routes the signal to the destination with the closest matching address to that specified by the signal. It will not route the signal in the direction it entered the cell.

At the same time the address signal is being routed from one cell to another until it reaches its intended destination, an electrically conducting path is created that traces the same path taken by the address signal. Hence an electrical connection is created between the controller and the peripheral (the lightbulb in this case). Because this is simply an electrical connection and nothing more, this leaves a lot of flexibility as to what we can do with this connection. Any peripheral as simple as a lightbulb to a complicated sensor can talk to a controller unit, without additional hardware on the peripheral's side.

The cells are assigned addresses in such a way as to prevent signal paths from going in circles without ever reaching their destinations. Besides this, numerous other details are also being considered in this design, the oversight of which may crippple the system. This

Haiz...why was i so emotionally disturbed during the course of the design for this system? the frequency based router is now considered too complex in design, and a newly discovered flaw means the design cannot work. Perhaps i might be able to cure that flaw in future (that needs a particular voltage controlled impedance that i'm still working on), but i would choose not to. I think its too stressful and tiring to work on something that took months of really hard work and mental agony to create, that required too much thinking about too many minute details. There is no doubt i covered a lot of ground in the past, and those records of minute considerations in the design are still relevant even in the design of the new router.

I've got a very shaky sense of self-confidence. Sometimes i look back and think that i've done a lot during those months i worked on that design. I feel marginally good when i manage to remind myself how formidable a task it was to create such a complicated design, consider so many many minute details, having just learnt some of the essential knowledge less than a month ago. I still think this is doubtlessly a beautiful design. The main features of this design make it very desirable, very attractive, and very novel.

But more often than not, i'm inclined to interrogate myself. Why did you take so long to design that thing? Why do you have to feel so disturbed during the design? Couldn't you be more organised during your design process, so you'd be less stressed, distressed, and more productive? Was it so difficult to create that router design? Yes the conception took a long time, and that's justifiable because lots of those main features of the P layer design were very novel and take lots of inspiration. But how could you take so long to design the router? How could you have gotten so lost and confused that you didn't always know what you were doing?

Sometimes stress builds up so much that it clouds your mind and slows your cognition. I guess that's my only answer to all those questions above.

What isn't so healthy is the persistence of those negative stressful feelings even today. i was working on improving the design during this new effort to revive the project, because i still see its beauty and usefulness. It still is stressful to think about all the things i have to think about. Old principles remain, but its been decided that a new sorter design is to be created. Embarking on a totally new design is exciting and fun, but the many minute details and considerations involved in this design are reminiscent of those i had to consider in the design of the previous, frequency-based router (which as mentioned before, took up the bulk of the design time). This revives many of the negative emotions felt before in the past, emotions which have no reason to surface.

It won't be easy to chase away negative emotions which stick to you like a shadow. I can only wish that i can become more knowledgeable and organised, and try to indulge in the joys of a brand new creation in progress, while trying to lose the unnecessary psychological baggage that's still chained to my feet.

back at this blog again...life as its been in 2005

2005-04-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

yeah...been a long time since i last blogged.

supposed to have written journals during bmt and posted them up here, but that never happened. supposed to have done a post at the end of bmt but that never happened too.

but i think its emotionally and psychologically beneficial to think about what has happened and do some psychological housekeeping. so that's what i'll do below...

bmtc in my time, now, seems like a military utopia. there's a scholarly lieutenant colonel running bmtc sch 1, corporate management practices, newly introduced syllabuses, organised training programmes, commendable safety practices, brightly coloured camp buildings and great facilities together with a nice sea view from the running track. and although some things are still screwed up, like a sometimes improperly-planned training programme, some lack of sensibility in the running of training by the sergeants and all that standard military screw-ups, most things are relatively perfect, compared to all the bad things bmt used to throw at young, mostly unwilling recruits. i was impressed.

training wasn't very tough, and i was in a good platoon with nice section mates. there were acjc and/or acs alumni scattered across the sections of the platoon, and their mutual friendship spread to the rest of the platoon and facilitated our bonding as a platoon.

i guess there's quite a fair bit to say, but its been a rather long time since bmt ended...too long for me to muster enough enthusiasm to recall it all quickly and type it all out.

then at the end of bmt there was a two week break, at the end of which i received my posting to the next unit. i wished to be posted anywhere but at sispec, and that was what came true haha...

so here i am, at the last week of term 1 at the Basic Section Leaders' Course (BSLC), with another 4 more weeks to go and praying real hard i don't get into ASLC.

things have been quite good so far, i'm living with a great section with approachable and friendly pple who make great pple to talk with, and that includes having my classmate with me too!

hmm i guess i'm out. out of stuff to type. just worn out of words. its been quite an experience thus far, not terribly exciting, but certainly was a fair bit to bet through. right now i'm hoping to get some progress working on my personal projects (if only i could just find some time for them!) and reading more and writing more.

weird feelings

2005-01-05T16:45:00.000-08:00

hmm a new chapter of my life is going to start soon...yet there's so much unfinished business that i feel i've left. hmm actually what unfinished business have i actually got? Even if i'm not going into ns, i'd still have made the decision to pause my study of that electrical network analysis stuff cos my mind has reached saturation and only some demanding practical work can revive the need for the assimilation of more theoretical knowledge. Perhaps its the fear that i will no longer have the time to pursue my interest. the up and coming life in NS is such a complex variable...

So, with that feeling of having 'unfinished business', (which probably actually means 'i'm trying to have fun playing and you're dragging me into the toilet and making me bathe!!') i feel like i'm stuck on this conveyor belt that's taking me into this black box that's closing in on me. so helpless... this week and last weekend, the days seem to pass really slowly. its like riding on a raft on a calm river, you can't get off the raft, and you see that steep drop of a waterfall ahead of you, slowly approaching you... haha so much for metaphors! anyway, i'm full of mixed feelings of nauseous nervousness, anticipation, faint appearances of (positive) excitement...that excitement bit has probably got to do with the sort i feel before i embark on some project...in this case, my study of analogue electronics in theory has been coupled with the practical work i intend to do on the robocology project. seriously, this robocology thing may be the vehicle i ride and depend on in achieveing the dream of artificial intelligence. goodness! i don't deserve to speak this way!

yeah, looks like i dont deserve a hell lot. sure, i know more analogue electronics than most people of my age, i've done practical stuff, i believe i have the ability to do more, i've got lots of plans (who at this age doesn't?!) but sometimes i feel guilty that i've been into all this stuff for too long, and neglected lots of other aspects of me. and the people around me too. And that probably...no IS a great deal, even greater than the miniscule amount of knowledge and practical experience i've gained over these years. so i'm not really so great...only a technician with more knowledge, who's missed out on a great deal on everything else.

looking back...
primary school was a rather murky affair, but it did feel like the start of an exciting new beginning and great prospects towards the end of it. i think i was quite sociable, and i could inadvertently make some girl who never smiles smile...
i couldn't even believe it when i could make it to RI...i still remember telling my classmate next to me (who also got his 4 A*s and all of us were standing at the front of the hall), "we're going to RI!!!" so excited...and i never imagined i could be capable enough to accomplish that...

so i came into RI, and suddenly i guess, lost a lot of confidence. i think it showed as soon as my first week there, at our sec1 orientation camp. or maybe it was a little later...anyway, it was whenever we interacted with our Peer Support Leaders (PSLs) i just felt so shy...where was the confidence i had when i was in primary 5? i could acct like a joker then...but now...anyway, RI was when my life started to be filled with all those ambitious pursuits...naive ideas about a method of using buckminsterfullerene balls in cigarette filters to trap toxic stuff..that was our Multi-Disciplinary Project. (hmm at least i think i independently conceived the potential of using buckyballs to contain stuff...this idea turns out to be for real!)then in secondary two, the second MDP project was totally about some crazy idea of mine, magnetic propulsion...and i didn't understand Newton's third law...and anyway the whole thing flopped, i was really stressed, and i had a chronic cough for almost half of that year. I may have been through worse in JC, but that year in sec 2 still seems to be one of those worst years...but some really nice thing happened...i participated in the inter-house science quiz, and got individual second! as well as got team second. It was great...one of those few 'officially' achievements. and so for that, got invited to join the science club as the only non-foreign-talent, non-GEP pupil...so much for "Express" pride...haha!

the next two years were more hectic and i had more CCA involvement. In sec3 i almost fainted when i learnt i was going to be RINCC's Unit Sergeant Major...and so i had lots of stuff to do managing the unit, while attempting at futile and fledgling efforts to do my job as RICSC's robotics i/c and trying to get everyone all hyped up about robotics. i had started my foray into electronics in sec 2, and now i tried to teach electronics to the juniors...haha i can remember asking Daniel during the lesson to make sure i got my explanation of Ohm's law correct!! Anyway, i did succeed in having a good bond with the juniors...now everyone calls me 'Uncle Soo'! argh! but its still satisfying to know that i've made some 'impact' on them...haha though the psychological trauma of being called 'Uncle Soo' till this day is something to wrestle with!

So, after a hectic four years full of CCA involvement, learning and all that, i graduated from RI. I still had not set foot on orchard road with an annual average frequency of more than twice. So, i left secondary education with a little more knowledge, a great experience managing pple, but little 'real' social interaction with the real world.

Then came JC.
It was supposed to be the ultimate dream. I had visions of being able to study the science i enjoyed reading up so much (and A level stuff was the subject of science club quiz team training curriculum). At last, my 'side interests' would now occupy the rightful place of orthordox learning! and then there's this memories abt my time in primary sch and all that...to put it nicely, i thought that this would be the chance to undo all the de-sexing that an all-boys sch may have done to me. and then i'd enjoy doing robotics at robotics club too!

so much for that grand vision.
I remained 'desexed', i stutter when i talk to girls, except the club vice-chair, and tt's only because i have to communicate about club matters...and i worked really long hours in the lab and it turned out to be futile, and i had this terrible irritating club teacher, and i screwed up my studies, and then i guess i screwed up my A-levels too...

so here i am waiting to be enlisted into NS, with some terrible past behind me...something that's left of a burst bubble. the bubble never even existed for real anyway.

and having not received a reply after my scholarship application, i guess DSTA doesn't want to take that "LEAP" (as they call the taking up of their scholarship) to check me out at the interview. hey! my essay wasn't about being a good student with neat handwriting and always-on-time homework...it was about me, my beliefs and engineering, and my pursuits so far! but so much for practical experience. i guess they don't want someone who can make bandpass filters and all that...

argh this is turning into one of those posts below that dwell on self-pity and all that...I'M NOT THAT PITIFUL!

but i am...

NO I'M NOT!
Open ended problems of life always must have a solution.

i'll have my day. someday.

hmm...i cant think of a title man...

2004-12-18T16:01:00.000-08:00

Woah its been almost a month since my last post man!...
anyways...Happy Birthday to ME!!!

So here i am, in the middle of my holidays, reading up on electronics and Laplace transforms and trying to make sense of the "real" significance of "imaginary" and how "s" came about to mean (neper frequency) + j(angular frequency)...its really so important to refer to more than one book while learning...at least that's my personall style. Oftentimes, no single book can fully explain something clearly and so multiple cross-referencing gives a better view of the subject you're trying to understand.

hmm...wasn't i supposed to learn more math, then learn more physics? oops...looks like a last minute change of plans. Ever since last week when my friends and i went to AISCube to work as "temp staff"...Youquan helps with the programming (he's damn zai and damn fast and always gets it right man!), Dequan helps with their computers and i've got electronics to do...yeah i'm supposed to help with the vision system electronics, which is actually functionally complete, but could have some improvements. I'm just told to do something for some reason that would optimise the system, and i gotta do the circuit...woah this is kewl i get to do TWO analog circuits! the first design is complete, and simply adds an offset to the raw video signal output from the camera. now im waiting to get there to breadboard it and put it through the final test.

the other is even kewler...its the first bandpass filter i actually have to make!
4kHz centre frequency with +- 1kHz...maybe i'll do direct synthesis and use op amps to simulate an RLC ladder network...to make a chebyshev or elliptic high pass and a low pass filter to remove the unwanted to the ground...that's very tentative...and i'm not quite happy about having to use so many opamps...8 in all for a 5 pole filter...two quad opamp chips are quite excessive for a simple function, which is to detect a 3-5kHz range of tones and just give a square wave output to indicate their presence.

so now i'm hitting the books and trying to understand more abt electronics in the frequency domain and all that...hopefully i get that filter out...

i screwed up again!

2004-11-23T16:49:00.000-08:00

Argh something's wrong with this brain of mine...it works so slow, i couldn't complete the physics paper quickly enough...left all those "state definitions" and other open-ended word answer questions blank...then didn't have time to go back and fill them up...argh!

just wonder why i'm so stupid...why am i so slooow? [insert stuff in last post here]

i hate myself...and to seek temporary relief of my pain, i'm reading "mathematics for physicists" and trying to bluff myself by making me think i'm smart enough to understand that...yeah and perhaps 100 yrs later when i finally get it, i'd also realise my brain's too sloooow.

oh well its gonna be over...just as how Pu Yi's father said to his young crying son at his coronation, in the twilight of the Qing Dynasty. Perhaps next March i'll learn that i'm finished too...what an awful thought i cannot resist.

what can i possibly do? sigh. i hope i don't sink into depression again...i've only a month before NS catches up on me, and i'll need to find some confidence in me. So much to do to save oneself, so little time to do it. And i'm so sloooow.

math, physics and curry...drugs to cause hallucinations of achievement and high mental capability, even in the absence of. There is no cure to a painful inferiority complex in which that awful reality is projected into the inner space of my heart.

There's only math, physics, curry. Indulge in psychological analgesic.

and so it goes..

2004-11-20T22:53:00.000-08:00

my boring life...yeah i don't know how others lead theirs, but i fear my life must seem terribly boring to many other pple...yeah i know its the exams, and exams make life dull sometimes, but oh well who cares what other pple think right? More important to have some self confidence that'll go a long way. What matters is i find what i do challenging and interesting!

spent lotsa time last night and today adding a few features to this blog, most visible being the floating links bar to the left. Well been looking at many other blogs, so interesting-looking, but mine's still a default template, though subject to some tweaking to accomodate that javascript...boy that was tough trying to make the menu float! and the mending procedures following that too!! also, i can add post notes like these * ! Yay! it works! Hopefully this comes in useful for technical articles in future!

Note:

(hide)

Testing 1,2,3.

Note:

(hide)

Peek-a-boo!!

Talking about looking at other blogs, hehe reveals my "voyeuristic tendencies". Yeah its interesting looking at what other people are posting. Like girls talking abt their boyfriends and such...haha! oops! But i'm also glad i came across some other blogs such as iraquna.blogspot.com at last i've seen the famous blog written by an iraqi as seen on the papers! I've got lots to discover in the blogger's world! *wink*

And now, for some more "random ramblings on physics for possible future use":

What sort of geometry could we be talking abt with space?
Does only "space" need to have a topology?
How abt energy too? Cycles...yin/yang...symmetry in topology, how abt topology of physical laws? Topology of a topology? Russian dolls with symmetry, i.e. the "largest" doll fits into the "smallest" one?
Laws and laws which govern laws...sets of laws applying to only particular universes...compare with eignfunctions of the schroedinger equation, and Hawking's wavefunction of the universe
Constants? Physical constants? Hmm...
why does quantum mechanics have the Planck's constant?

Some commonly made assumptions:
energy is conserved
there is a fundamental particle
existence of the Planck energy/distance/whatever else
why does the "single unified force" at higher energies have to split into 4 forces at our energy? Only 4 forces?

so much for wild questioning...perhaps they may be useful years later haha! well, if not for physics, at least to entertain the masses abt my stupidity??!

yep tt's all.

the self-contradicting loser that's me

2004-11-19T18:21:00.000-08:00

Dammit!!! ARGH! Shit today i just found out i'm gonna lose another 6 marks! DAMMIT!!!
And they just gotta be on electronics!! It sux big time when you make mistakes on stuff that's so close to your heart...really feeling very bad...i'm so inclined to being pessimistic abt my A levels, and i wonder if i might lget B for physics instead! F*** i just cant express the anguish i feel in words. I really can't care less abt my studies and grades, but this is the A LEVELS! If i screw it up, i won't get a scholarship, i'll lose a 6-year employment opportunity that's part of the bond of the scholarship, i'll not qualify for a good university, and if i'm stuck in a local university with a stressful education and "overly pragmatic students", what's the purpose of living??? I've had enough of studying in this place! My school life has never been really happy, only the stress i've got just because i've always wanted to pursue my passions and interests. Great, so now i've lost the gamble, screwed up two years of JC life, and am paying the price for my A levels...and the doom is unfolding before my eyes!!! SHIT!(*$&%*#&$#@

sigh.

If i screw up my results, i've gotta get to plan B...which goes something like, "hey i've got this really sucky result slip here, but at least i'm smart enough to do ___________, so can you give me that chance to study at your place?? Pleeeeaaaasssszzzeeee?"

Maybe i shouldn't try too hard...maybe i wasnt made for this...i'm not supposed to do electronics or physics, cos i've got a mathematically impaired brain..yeah and i'm easily confused, have a very volatile memory, and i forget what i say 2 sentences earlier, i'm VERY careless, very stupid, lousy grades...yeah plus i'm always overly ambitious and overestimating my abilities perhaps...i mean, how can someone like me so wishfully hope to do electronics and physics, when my math SUX? how can i get anything right when i'm so CARELESS? How can i understand all that difficult stuff when i can even get my schwork in order???!!!

So does that mean i stop doing what i like doing best? does that mean i'm really too stupid? Perhaps i am...yeah i've not seen any proof of any intelligence in me...yeah so what if i can take 6 years to slowly learn QM bit by bit? If this was schwork, i bet everyone would master in it like a few yrs! That i do sth other pple dont does not show if i am capable of anything more than trying to bluff myself into thinking i've got some brains...i've really lost my self-confidence...after 6years of trying new stuff, doing things differently, have i gotten anywhere? Slaved so hard in the last two years, only to have the UAV project fail...man i've never succeeded even once! I don't even trust myself!

The truth is, i don't have any talent or particular skill...neither have i proven myself in what i've tried to do. and so now i'm wallowing in self-pity.

I hate it when pple say i'm good in physics and all that. The fact is, i'm not! I didn't study, and i got a D for my prelims. and pple still say i'm good in physics!!! Don't they understand that its making me really upset? So what if i can talk abt QM and think i know what little i know abt QM? It doesnt even matter a shit when i panic and screw up my papers or not even handle a simple mechanics question properly! All i am, is someone who's interested in physics, but really is an asshole who can't do physics properly and yet has the audacity to think he can point out inconsistencies and imcompleteness in the A level physics he's studying, or fret abt any incompleteness...yeah the truth is, its a way to hide the fact that i'm too stupid to understand physics!!! ARGH!

okay, i've scolded myself enough now. covered all the pts i've wanted to cover. now i've gotta get over my depression.

not had this feeling for a long time...

2004-11-18T07:04:00.000-08:00

had two physics papers today! argh very scared of careless mistakes, and i know i've got some mistakes already, be they careless or due to my lousy brain...must not think about it anymore!

anyway, been really slack today...i've not done any studying the whole day...except studying string theory...haha that sounds so lame! i've only seen it for a few days, and reading some layman accounts of it...very absorbed by Michio Kaku's book, Hyperspace...yeah when i first saw that bk in the sch library, and i saw the words "10th dimension" i thought...oh no not another more-than-4 dimension popular lame and over hyped what-the-hell-is-that?! thing. I must be excused for this! after all, i'm rather tired of seeing pple so interested in relativity and einstein-is-great and sprouting abt 10, 20 or N-dimension universe parallel universe when they take up such magazines as Discover and Scientific American. Hell i had no idea what these things were! I've been rather bewildered why everyone likes to talk abt relativity! Not that i think many pple know what they're talking abt...I've totally ignored (almost completely) relativity and focused on understanding Quantum Mechanics instead. But QM books are often placed alongside things with names such as "supersymmetry", "superstrings"...and a few days ago i guess i decided i must not be left out...

So now i feel that same way as i felt 5, 6 yrs ago when i first read popular accounts abt QM...it feels intriguing, interesting, beautiful! and keeps me stuck to the book...i'm sure its a good beginning. perhaps a few yrs down the road i can start understanding more math and reading more abt the theory, which is rather new and everything's like all over the place, unlike QM where i can look at a couple of basic postulates that give me a good summary of the basic principle... dammit, i severely lack the math man! Even for QM, i'm still taking a long time to take in the stuff, reread and reread again...but i think its very very beautiful when all the things start to fall in place, no matter how slowly it happens/is happening, and when the things you read in popular accounts are starting to REALLY show up as MATH!

Anyway, i'm gonna start recording in this blog, some questions and identifying assumptions and all that...i've learnt that assumptions are very crucial things...gotta hunt down the elusive assumptions we constantly subconsciously make, to break new ground...so here goes:

what's with dimensions? What are dimensions?
Is there something more general than dimensions?

can there be more than one set of dimensions? (ie. instead of 1st,2nd...etc dimensions, could we have like the 1,5 dimension?)

Non integer numbers for dimensions? e.g. 1.5th dimension?

do the extra 6 dimensions as claimed by string theory have to be too small to see? could they also be too BIG to see? Does the difficulty or even impossibility to perceive them necessarily be due to relative sizes of dimensions?

Often a distinction has been made between the dimension of time, as a temporal dimension, as compared to that of the spatial dimensions, as in x,y,z,whatever-follows...is this distinction necessary? could time be another spatial dimension, which due to our nature, we experience it the way we do?

I like the way Hinton (as described by Kaku) talks abt the perception of a higher dimension object from a lower dimension object's perspective...

math paper

2004-11-16T20:45:00.000-08:00

phew today's math paper2 wasn't so bad...managed to do the stuff, with not so many careless mistakes...at least i hope! then there's this notorious question 27...haha hope i did it right, but oh well...its over...yes A level Math is over!!!

although math'll probably still be with me for a long time, cos its a necessary evil for physics and electronics. if only one day, i'd discover a hidden talent in maths! that'll sure help me...but i see no sign of mathematical intuition inside me though...argh talent...i guess excessive self doubt forces any talent into hiding! but its gonna take a while b4 i regain that elusive self-confidence...its not easy after all, to recover from 2 yrs of trauma and stress and depression and loss of mental ability and then the post-traumatic stress...argh and the bipolar maniac depression syndrom...goodness it gets worse the more i say it!!

i've got abt 6 days of exam left. I've not covered my Bio option topic adequately, which is so crucial bcos i've screwed up the main paper BIG TIME. But i'll do one topic at a time, per day...
then there's physics! i'm gonna finish covering it, but i wont know if i can do well until i get some practice, and the problem is getting it done fast! That'll be the priority tmr.

Started reading up on string theory yesterday...hmm after a really long time, i'm back how i first started: reading layman nonmathematical accounts of string theory. Last time it was quantum theory...but even now i'm thinking of going back and reading a couple more accounts of quantum theory, just for fun...as for the math, well i'm hoping to get past the expansion postulate and stuff...and then perhaps start learning more math so i can really understand and do the stuff...there's so much to learn, its gonna be fun!

[INCOMPLETE ]Thermodynamics Stupidisation - Thermodynamic Processes

2004-11-14T01:05:00.000-08:00

Okay now i'm done with characterising the ideal gas.

oops...forgot abt PV = nRT
Ideal gas equation is a relation between the macro parameters of a gas. The relation was deduced by experiment, thanks to Charles, Boyle, Guy-Lussac...who else? hmm anyway, in the previous post i've shown the equation relating the pressure to macro level parameters...which essentially is the speed of the gas particles! Equating the macro and micro equations, we have the following:
1/2Nm = 3/2NkT

Rearranging for T, we also see that temperature is due to the speed of the gas particles.

So, the implications of a gas consisting of particles moving at a certain average speed, is that, it has a certain temperature, and exerts a certain pressure, and occupies a certain volume...nice cause and effect!...

wait! i think we gotta interpret this volume-pressure thing really carefully...its quite lame talking about a gas occupying a certain fixed volume, if its not bounded by a container...after all, the gas is gonna dissipate if there was no container to hold it! How then can we talk abt volume and pressure? I think we should amend the statement above to this instead:

Given a gas consisting of particles with a total amt of internal energy U (solely kinetic energy, cos its an ideal gas we're talking abt), there is a relation between the volume in which the gas is being enclosed inside (by means of a container), the pressure it exerts, and its temperature. This relation is, well,
PV = nRT

rearranging, gives T = PV/nR
shit...how can increasing V increase temperature? NO WAY! NOt unless i give the gas energy!!
damn...so how to interpret PV = nRT? argh!!!

okay lets look at other cases (variable that's not discussed assumed to be kept constant):
P = nRT/V - increase temperature, increase pressure...well that works fine. but inc. temp must be due to some energy input right?
increase volume, decreases pressure...that's true...
V = nRT/P - increase temp, increases volume...

BUt increase volume doesn't increase temperature! unless there's energy input! argh whatever this is all getting very confusing...i suppose this is where thermodynamic processes come in...

okay...i think i get it...PV=nRT still remains true...if i could just increase volume while keeping pressure constant, temperature has to increase! Just think abt the microscopic level of things...if the gas needs to exert the same pressure, ie. the same force on the walls, the particles have gotta move faster to keep up the same rate of collision with the walls!

hence PV = nRT is an empirically proven relation between the variables of a gas. And it is logically consistent! How certain things can happen, such as increasing the volume while maintaining the pressure constant, and hence increasing the temperature, is not the business of the ideal gas equation. It just tells us that if we want to do this, the consequence has gotta be temp. increase. The rest of thermodynamics tells us how we can accomplish this.

In fact, this is in essence, the First Law of Thermodynamics! So, we want to increase volume, at constant pressure...that's called an isobaric process. For this to happen, the particles must move faster. That means more kinetic energy, hence this means the internal energy of the gas must increase! By the conservation of energy, this energy must be supplied from some source outside of the system. This implies that all our heat energy goes to increasing temperature...but we must be careful! But we first note that the first law of thermodynamics is an expression of the conservation of energy in a close system involving a gas.

We could supply heat energy so that both temperature and volume increase at constant pressure. Now that's isobaric. So what happens is that some heat energy is used by the gas to do work in expanding...the rest goes to increasing the KE of gas particles, and hence its temperature.

Another possible way is to first increase the volume, perhaps by pulling out the plunger of a syringe, and then then heating it to cause an increase in temperature. That would be TWO processes. Increasing the volume would do negative work on the gas...i.e. the gas loses internal energy. Then heating it at constant temperature would give

Thermodynamics Stupidisation - Ideal Gases

2004-11-13T22:53:00.000-08:00

i hate this topic...yucks. its so heaty...when i think i know it, i don't...
lets see if i can put the big chunks in order...we have ideal gases, macro and micro behaviour...then we've got the actual thermodynamics that deals with gases (ideal and non-ideal) and their processes...then we have "thermal properties of materials", which really is a pretentious cover for "heat capacity, latent heat and their measurement"...hmm i think i can get started now:

Ideal Gases
Gases are one of three commonly observed states of matter (you don't see Bose-Einstein Condensates everyday do you?) i suppose its hard to define a gas, i guess (pun!! not intended...) i could say that if the particles which constitute some "thing" aren't clumped together, then its a gas i suppose.

So lots of things could be gases, if we could give them the energy to become a gas...and the particles could be complex molecules, ions...so to start out simple, and then by extrapolation deepen our understanding of gases, we start with the notion of the "idea gas"...

So here goes...An Ideal Gas is:
1. composed to infinitesimal point particles, which actually have mass! i.e. point masses
2. NO forces of attraction between gas particles, or between gas particles and any container which holds the gas. In fact, ZERO potential energy exists in the whole system.
3. the gas particles obey Newton's laws! (argh i hate Newton's laws!)

in addition, we also assume that the gas particles undergo perfectly elastic collisions with the container walls, of zero duration, and that the container is totally rigid and of infinite mass (otherwise we won't get a change-in-direction-with-no-change-in-speed particle-wall collision condition)

So, gas particles like to move around. And when they hit the walls of a container, they exert forces on those walls. This would be the pressure of the gas. So how do we figure out the pressure exerted on a container by N gas particles?

[oh well too lazy to type the derivation...i suppose i remember it..hehe]

Some problems with the theory
I think there're some problems...maybe the problem is really me, but i say that there's some incompleteness in the theory that was printed in our notes. i'll list them here:

1. It was said that the particles are in constant, random motion. However, the derivation given does not seem to be consistent with this claim. Instead, we have taken one particle, assumed it to be moving from one wall to the opposite wall, and back, and forth...and assumed that (probably by thinking this implied random motion...i beg to differ) 1/3 of the particles will oscillate between one of 3 pairs of opposite walls.
the point is that random motion really implies that the particles could travel in oblique angles such that they strike the wall at oblique angles. In such a case, the time taken to travel between consecutive walls would differ...

2. Look at the equation: P = 1/3(rho)(mean sq. speed) [darn i can't insert Greek!]
again, i say that this was based on the assumption that 1/3 of all the particles are oscillating between one of 3 pairs of opposite walls. But doesn't this only happen when all 1/3 of the particles are striking the wall simultaneously? If that does not happen, the pressure would be lower than calculated right? Well we could say that since everything happens so quickly, it would seem as if all 1/3 strike at any one time. BUT the problem with this is that, there are so many possibilities of combinations of particles striking the wall, that having all 1/3 striking simultaneously is a highly improbable event? Well, suppose we forget abt the 1st point i made above, so that the particles' motion is truly random. even so, even though we can claim that statistically, all walls get hit by the same no. of particles at almost any instant, we can't expect all the particles to be hitting the walls at the same time...i.e. there's gotta be some particles which don't touch the wall at some instant, and i've pointed out that the probability should be quite high shouldn't it? So the pressure should really be lower than what
P = 1/3(rho)(mean sq. speed) gives us...right?

stupidisation of mechanics

2004-11-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

This studying for the A levels is getting on my nerves...i'm sick both physically and mentally and the stuff refuses to get in my head...and i've not done any practice on my papers yet! damn i don't want to end up not finishing all my papers on time anymore...2 days left man...shit

anyway, i suppose typing out the stuff as if i'm compiling notes may help me make sense of all that physics i've gotta cram...juz wonder if i can get everything done in time...i've already done some for some mechanics, but that was incomplete, and did not include a couple more examples i would like to...maybe i should address them here...then i gotta move on to thermodynamics, electricity and electromagnetism and modern physics...i love modern physics...newton's stuff stinks! i don't see how commonsensical classical physics is...i reckon that pple say its common sense because there's too many assumptions people UNKNOWINGLY make when they solve mechanics problems! I sought to address some of these deadly assumptions by digging out the axioms of classical mechanics (without bothering with the presence of electromagnetismor anything else). Then i used them to give a thorough (okay i still think its rather incomplete but adequate enough for now...hey at least i know its incomplete! not everyone who makes assumptions is aware of that!! tt pisses me off!) axiomatic treatment of some simple mechanics problems...so far everything works fine...but some problems are still pissing me off...dun wanna talk abt them now, but when i get some reasonable answers i'll add them here. I've sent this as yet incomplete treatise of classical physics to my class's mailing list...i wonder if anybody's gonna read it...or maybe they'll just heed my warning that i could confuse them, and delete it. Cos its "out of syllabus" ARGH! i hate that phrase! New to blogging...perhaps it'll take some time b4 i figure out how to put that file up here...copy and paste!??! thats 2000++ words for you man! nvm i'll get down to it...for now i gotta get down to the rest of the areas i've not touched...dis gonna be a looong night man...

2004-11-13T19:34:00.000-08:00

urgh this is my first blog i'm so pissed and stressed i need a land of nonsense where i can type everything i'm thinking and dump all that bullshit into this pit called "nonsenseland".