There are still a few beautiful places in Singapore

Took a short stroll at Lower Pierce Reservoir on Friday, a slight mist/haze (it's kinda hard to tell the difference these days..) covered the far bank of the reservoir, giving the sunset a little extra dash of magic :)

Was even lucky enough to catch sight of a white bellied sea-eagle circling over the reservoir! Albeit all I had was a blurry shot with my 18-55mm lens that was clearly unsuitable for the job. (Digitally zoomed and cropped as much as possible) 

Am I (Are we) spending too much energy on what's unimportant and missing out on what truly is? Do i really need my steady day job to be happy? That being said, how I wish I could afford this expensive big fat telephoto lens (and of course the skill) to capture the majestic eagle in it's full glory. After all I'm only human.

Back to Usual Work

And a really hectic few weeks had passed with me preparing materials, teaching and arranging for other speakers, in a class of secondary school student an introduction signal processing. It was also my first ever attempt in teaching a class of students (other than 2) with completely zero programming experience how to program in Python.

While exhausting, I had a great time with the students and I definitely think that I could do a far better job in teaching. Perhaps I will make available my teaching materials here after some tidying up.

Rewarded myself, and my dear, with a relaxing weekend together for walk in an old, to-be-torn-down estate in Toa Payoh, with one of the last few sand pit playgrounds and the assembly of my first RC airplane!

Mailboxes, a photo by moodoki on Flickr.

Dragon!, a photo by moodoki on Flickr.

My New Toy, a photo by moodoki on Flickr.

An Engineer's Rant

I had been furious this month, and accompanying it came some cynical laughter at certain failures. (I know I shouldn't laugh. I'm reflecting on it..)

Slow down, do more, walk further.

Doing too much in a rush today could just mean that you'll have to rush more in the future.

Quality should come from within, not as an external requirement. Knowing the quality evaluation process, we can always package crap in an air-tight container for the QA to prod, but when exposed to the real world, it would probably blow up in your face.

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Random rants I hope project managers will take seriously :s Or perhaps this is the wrong 'big picture'.

Midnight Blue

Midnight Blue, a photo by moodoki on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
The Southern Cross with Centaurus arching over it. Rarely in Singapore do I see so such clear skies.. Even so, the city is so bightly lit at night that we don't see much stars anymore..

Code jamming

So the qualifiers of the 2013 Google codejam is over. And I managed to qualify! It's both a humbling and nostalgic experience for me.

I started to learn how to program as I was greatly drawn by computer games and thought I wanted to create one or two of my own, but soon realized that its much more than knowing how to code. I couldn't create nice art, and hardest of all, a novel idea for a game.. Not to mention my then only basic skills at programming in QBASIC.

What actually got me seriously coding was joining the National Olympiad in Informatics(NOI) when I was in secondary school, where I first learnt of numerous algorithms. Honed my skills in C/C++ and manage to get myself a bronze medal on my 2nd year of joining. It was great fun, but I didn't find any opportunity to join more after that.. Until I learnt of Google codejam :)

After more than 10 years of not doing competitive programming, I guess my skills had became rather rusty, despite the need to code as my daily job. I really do think competitive programming is a far more demanding tasks as compared to typical software/algorithm development in a day job.

I qualified, but not with great results. Time to prepare and sharpen my skills. Round 1A in 12 days!