New old playground

So after 4 days of lectures, there are some thoughts i gathered. First and foremost, the travelling. Due to the fact that i wasn't born with a silver spoon, i chose not to stay in hall, despite many graduate friends encouraging it, primarily to enjoy uni days and to interact more. But on the hindsight of it, i didn't wish to stay in hall not so much due to the cost, but more on the fact that i didn't want to get myself involved into hall activities. Applying to what i've learnt during this morning boring-est Economics lecture, the Opportunity Cost here is of cause the value of missing out fun and interactions with students across faculties.

Thus as a result of my choice, i have to make do with 3hrs of travelling time each day. And somehow so far i think it's starting to weigh a toll on me with headaches and dizziness. I don't even bother taking out my DS most of the time throughout the journey, simply trying not to aggravate the dizzy spells.

So i guess i have to accustom my body and mind to this for another 3 years down the road. Unless i managed to strike lottery somewhere down the road and get myself a car. Then again, i'll have driving woes during peak hours. Life's full of irony.

Moving on, after attending most of the module lectures, i'm glad most of the modules i took for this semester are somewhat appealing and interesting to a certain extend. Top on the list would be the General Education Module, Introduction to Nanoworld and Nanotechnology.

The lecturer was the key to this interesting module. Universities should use him as benchmarks in hiring lecturers, instead of looking at their stupid Masters or P.H.Ds. MOE should send 99.99999% of the lecturers to NIE to brush up on either their pronunciation and presentation/lecturing skills. Though i must state clearly that, the above mentioned is based on personal opinions, has no intention to influence or condemned any subject, and shall be kept within this virtual post.

Just to share a little about the introduction lecture, we were proposed the question of "What color is Gold?". Well, knowing that his question ain't going to be the simple 1+1=2 kind of answer, i made a wild guess of Red in my heart, with 3 choices of gold, red or green. True enough, my lucky charm worked and i got the right answer. And so he showed us a small bottle of Red solution and explained that if you cut gold to 30nm (NM=Nanometer=10 the power of -9), gold becomes Red. And for all elements, if you cut them into different sizes, the color changes.

A quick explanation on this is that the light reflected into our eyes is different due to the fact that the atoms moves differently with the limited amount of space in the element in Nano size.

Also, as proven with current technology, it's possible to write a single letter in 1nm, and as such, given a pin-head, you can fill up 25,000,000 pages (Standard A4 size) of information on it. Sounds impossible and you might question why is there a need to do so even if it's achievable. Just food for thought, if a pin-head can fill up so many pages, imagine what a 1cm x 1cm harddisk can stored up to?

Therefore in conclusion, Nanotechnology is the next big thing in the world of physics? We don't have to look far, just take a look at your iPod Nano, it's the classic example of where technology is progressing into. Smaller, better, cheaper.

Another module worth mentioning is my Common Essential module, Computing and Society. Basically talks about everything related to computing. Lecturer wasn't that fantastic, but the subject itself is worth exploring. Maybe its only just me, but i only learnt about some facts after viewing a clip during the lecture.

WWW or World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. In 1994, Amazon.com evolves and it sets the standard for online sales based on the model of automated personalized recommendations. Google started in 1998, and it became the fastest and the most effective search engine.

2002, Friendster evolves and Google launches Google News and journalism organisations cried foul. Google News is edited entirely by computers. In 2003, Google bought Blogger.

During 2004, Google unveiled Gmail with 1GB storage for each user. Microsoft launches Newsbot, a social news portal. Google also bought Picasa, a tool for organising images. Amazon releases A9, a search engine that builds on Google search technology and at the same time incorporating amazon's trademark recommendations. August 2004, Google goes public and bought over Keyhole, a company that maps the world and puts it online. Google begins digitizing and indexing the world's libraries. 2005, Microsoft bought Friendster.

I managed to find the clip, and i'll leave it to you guys to view it. It goes on to talk about what the future might be.

Going back to the module, it requires us to create a blog and post about InfoComm Technology. No exams for this module, and i guess it can be quite interesting to learn more about the computer world.

Alright, that's all for now. It's getting late. Hope the classes get more interesting as it goes, and maybe i'll share some of the contents over here. Shall update again.

Till then.