Watched the T’ang Quartet perform for the Chamber Music Festival at the Esplanade and it was great. Apart from it being a string quartet, the pieces they choose were rather modern and I think Cheesecake and Percy found it fun and exciting too, considering that they aren’t really into classical music. Modern classical music is rather “noisy” and made exciting with the different ways string instruments can be played - bowed, plucked, slapped; left-hand pizzicato interleaved in the notes, intentional dissonance and “wolf tones” screeches, it’s just an amazing show. Short introduction to the second piece by the cellist which was quite entertaining as well. Got enough applause to get a chinese folk encore which I think they did deserve, though nothing more.

String quartets are the best. So much more fun than the piano concertos or the entire ochrestra. Chamber music is so fun. Ahh… Masterclass recital concert on Friday and Australian String Quartet on Saturday, but no $ to go. Anyway T’ang Quartet will be performing again on 15th May in The Bohemain Affair. $10 only for students. Anyone wanna go?

An interesting event in a webcast Math lecture caught on camera. I’m amazed but can’t say surprised that some guy would of a stun like this. Just seems weird to me that the girl doesn’t know. Thought such things only occur as marriage proposals.

Excerpt of the video: High quality AVI (12MB) | Low quality AVI (2MB)

This must be the most watched webcast lecture in NUS. Had 1200 hits on the day itself.

Just realised that the reason my 5 year old DVD-ROM is not working could be cos the firmware needed updating. But before hunting down such legacy firmware I had to repair the Live Update on my brother’s comp first. I’m still amazed how people can get their computers to such state. (Maybe it would make an interesting HYP)

Found out my Creative DVD-8400E drive is acutally a Panasonic/Matshita 8585 OEM and it’s still RPC-2 and no region selected. Remembered I used a software to get around the region code in the past but now it seems that flashing it with the lastest Matshita 8585 1×32 firmware would make the drive RPC-1 and thus region free! Had to image a Win-ME bootdisk to flash the firmware think due to some ultra low level system calls.

And viola, when rebooted, “New hardware detected: Matshita 8585 DVD-ROM” and yadda yadda but then still cannot recognise my DVD and after download Nero Infotool to probe my drive, discover that it only supports DVD-R, not DVD+R. Bleah. So much for legacy equipment. I still need a DVD decoder to watch DVD movies so any lite ones to recommend?

Rarely have I considered a day as good, what more worth documenting. But such do come by and I suppose this day could be one of them, possibly due to the occurance of several “happy” things.

Went down to Takashimaya this afternoon to shop for a french press. Sort of cracked my old press when I brought it to school last week, so don’t dare use it anymore for fear it may break. Which was why I was hesitant to bring it to school in the first place but thought I’d be extra careful. Oh well, things happen. Was rather sad about it but I guess this is a good excuse to retire it from use and put it away for safe-keeping.

Anyway the Bodum presses were really chio. So nice to see, touch and use. Don’t really know why but then that could be why the cheapest one cost like over $30 to over $80 for other models the same size. Want one of those but can’t really afford them. Found a 3-cup press at Seiyu going for $16 but since the 9-cup one at Ikea was going for only $20, decided only to buy only if I find one below $13. So happy I found a nice 3-cup press going for $11 at Taka today, and it comes with a measuring spoon too. The spring is not as tight as I would like but then it’s cheap and nice. Yippe. Can start making coffee again!

After that went had nasi lemak at Paradiz Food Court and it was good. Comparable to Adam’s so nothing very exciting. But what’s fun was the SGL Annivesary LAN Party after that. Kinda sad that not everyone was able to make it but it’s still good to see old faces and start fragging like good old days. Ele being the prez on hunted, mass spamming dustbowl, our traditional trademark: Spy vs HW. Tried out Half-Life 2 as well and it was really fun. Mok came late and joined us when we were playing BF but unknown to him we were downloading HL2 in the background. He realised that only when we finished with BF and the biggest joke was when we decided to stop playing HL2 then did he finish downloading it. Not exactly one of the coziest places we had played but still had a great time nonetheless. Well that didn’t stop Mok from shouting his warnings of attacks. “Incoming Medic!” heh.

Went to chillz at this pub across the road, near Netizens where we had our party last year. They had this cozy attic for one table. Nice and dark place and we’re the only ones inside. Everyone else was outside cos they all were probably smoking. The music was kinda loud but I think everyone was just to lazy to get them to change it. Took the traditional group photo there though there were fewer people as some went off earlier. Beef Hor Fun with Arch and Tix at Geylang sort of ends up the day nicely.

Shopping, Gaming, Chilling and Food. What more could make a better day? Fondue perhaps…

Just some random or perhaps not-so-random thoughts from the past week. Posts whose chronological order is of no importance will just be posted as on today.

I’m lying alone with my head on the phone
Thinking of you till it hurts
I know you hurt too but what else can we do
Tormented and torn apart

I wish I could carry your smile in my heart
For times when my life seems so low
It would make me believe what tomorrow could bring
When today doesn’t really know, doesn’t really know

I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you
I know you were right, believing for so long
I’m all out of love, what am I without you
I can’t be too late to say I was so wrong

…

Composed by Graham Russell and Clive Davis
Air Supply, 1980

“A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.”

Where are all the Samaritans in this world, who wouldn’t leave a man in trouble when he sees one?

Why can’t lecturers write good grammar? Or rather I’m inclined to believe that they don’t bother to. We’re taught that Context Free Grammars (CFGs) should be written in an unambiguous manner but who writes grammar like this:

Expression ::= Expression Expression | ...

and all hell breaks loose. Probably cos the author doesn’t want to get into the nitty gritty details and throws everything into the water.

Ok so we listed down ambiguous statements and made assumptions and finally get a decent parse tree. Then now we’re thrown a totally cryptic sematic to the language. Who defines a semantic in another semantic which we don’t even know? It’s like translating French into German but you don’t even know both.

This assignment is turning into a nightmare. It’s not that’s it’s a hard assignment, it’s just that no clear instructions are given.