Posts

• Mar 10, 2009

  Space

  Reading through articles on Space Exploration and Travel have never failed to amaze me. Inventions amount from the Shuttle Transportation System, and the Hubble Space Telescope, to the most impressive, Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity; surely this list isn’t exhaustive but it is just a sample of what USA Space programme can deliver.

  Mission transcripts are pretty exciting too, especially that of those where faults and unexpected events have occurred. Apollo 13 was one such mission. The ingenuity of the people planning, operating, and living the mission are simply beyond description. Life-and-death situations with real time-pressing problems are documented to seem like they can be easily solved in just a couple of hours or days.

  The amount of detail put into planning is also tremendous. In the Mars Exploration Rovers missions for example, every aspect of the 500 million km journey is thought out and planned, all the way to landing the craft artfully onto the surface of Mars.

  Really, this dwarfs all the planning that we employ in everyday life, but it is just as important.

  What about those that don’t even plan ahead?

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• Mar 4, 2009

  Driving 2

  I don’t believe that it is just me, but driving is an extremely mentally exhausting activity, especially along urban town areas where pedestrians and cars are of a plenty. It’s worse when your vehicle employs manual transmission. I have to admit, before I had started driving myself, I always thought that driving a vehicle is simple, not just in looks.

  Add in the inching traffic and gentle up-slopes, your legs would be as tired as though you’ve walked up the slope yourself. The amusing ‘proper’ method when starting a vehicle on a slope is to apply the handbrake and maintain half-clutch position. Release the handbrake and your car inches forward (gracefully). The hard part is to repeat this procedure 3 to five times and on the last time, your other free hand is busy turning the steering wheel right and you’re just looking out for incoming vehicles and stray pedestrians.

  I have to admit, although it’s tiring, it’s pretty fun.

  A 2 hour long driving session at night after a long day at work is enough to knock me out the moment I’ve reached home.

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• Feb 7, 2009

  MIN DEATH

  Looking at the Budget speech the moment it was released, I all but fail to discern the excitement, breakthrough, generosity, and innovation of the budget, until the follow day when the newspaper wrote nothing but praise.

  Reading the articles in depth yields nothing about the excitement nor revolution. It’s just a good Budget because it is the budget. Nothing else; nothing logically else. In fact, in my honest opinion, it’s one of the most stingy budgets relative to the economic situation.

  Just look at the amount of help given to the layman in the streets. Nil, unless you’re past retirement age and live in a cheap small house, but that’s just a hundred or so bucks. Nil, even you’ve lost your job and can’t find anything yet, and still have a family to feed. Oh yeah, generous rebates in rents, but for a grand total of one month! WOW!

  Some called for a temporary reduction of GST and other taxes to spur domestic demand, but only fierce resistance has been met, all in the name of ineffectiveness, claiming that rebates are more effective. Yeah right.

  Believe it or not, S’pore defence budget up 6% in these trying times. “The government intends to spend $11.45 billion on defence during the 2009 fiscal year, the estimates showed”, up from “$10.8 billion ... in 2008”. That’s a S$65 million increase.

  Ah so clearly, that’s where the reserves are going. Into the blackhole well characterised in this post.

  From this, you can easily see the priorities of the ruling party. Needy citizens are certainly on a lower priority compared to businesses, military, and the government itself.

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• Jan 25, 2009

  Things

  I’ve finally come across a decent “GTD” kind of application, which is basically a very powerful ToDo list manager. It can finally hold back todo items till a certain date before it pops up, removing a lot of clutter from my todo list.

  Check out this amazing application aptly named, Things. It has a Mac and iPhone edition, allowing Wifi sync between the two apps.

  That aside, I love the design of the site. Clean and functional, blending syntax with schema.

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