Lab@Home Update: Tesla Coil

Posted by HELiX

Loooong time since I updated on any lab work.

I’ll rushing for time to mug; Let’s make this quick. Real quick.

Okay, from previous time, as you might have read, my cap bank was screwed.

Arcing was occuring between two adjacent points in the capacitor bank, much thanks to the horrible design by Yours Truly. I could add an insulating layer between the entire string of caps, but the spacing was so small that I couldn’t find a suitable material.

And so I decided to rebuild the entire thing. That was the last thing in my mind when I thought about the options, but I didn’t have a choice, it seems.

Spent about an hour or two unsoldering all the capacitors and resistors, and had my Dad to buy me new pieces of acrylic. This time, it won’t ever be in a zig-zag manner — it’ll just form 3 straight strings of caps.

I drew out the markings for the holes…

It took a while to drill, but as I’ve done it before, it was slightly easy and faster…

Then I proceeded to insert the caps in, soldering them together.

And of course, adding the resistors…

The connections at the end are made by soldering a thick wire to the 3 contact points.

Will test it soon!

Comments(0) 11:37 PM 6 June 2007

Oh. Like that.

Posted by HELiX

I just read something I didn’t like.

So I don’t feel great now. Fortunate that I was still on the excessive adrenaline I got from yesterday. If not…

Naaah. C’mon Derek!

…

WELL!

As of the end of yesterday, after a stunning 5 years, Rong’en concluded his era of dominance in Astronomy competitions. An impressive 7 Team Champions and 5 Individual Champions. 12 Golds.

No one is anywhere close to beating that record. Nope, I can’t beat it…

But I’m gonna try to tie with him. Match up with his record. I’ve got 8 Team Champions and 2 Individual Champions, and left with my last competition next year. 10 Golds, I’ve got no choice but to pick up BOTH Team Champion and Individual Champion at next year’s NUS-NTU.

Hee.

…

In a contrastingly sad mood, I STILL don’t feel the impact of the upcoming term exams.

Someone, please. Get me to mug. Pleaseee.

When I told my teacher, Mr Bryan Ong, that particularly unfun piece of news…

Epilogue Of Light: The End Of Light, The Welcoming Of Darkness says (12:03 AM):
0.o are u serious??
Epilogue Of Light: The End Of Light, The Welcoming Of Darkness says (12:04 AM):
haha i tel u wht
Epilogue Of Light: The End Of Light, The Welcoming Of Darkness says (12:04 AM):
u go off now
Epilogue Of Light: The End Of Light, The Welcoming Of Darkness says (12:04 AM):
take out ur notes
Epilogue Of Light: The End Of Light, The Welcoming Of Darkness says (12:04 AM):
n mug!!!

GG man. Okay. I swear I’ll mug later. Just one bit more… >.>

…

And to everyone who commented about yesterday… Thank you! And for the ones over at BP, you’re more than welcome!

Comments(0) 12:22 AM 6 June 2007

June Holidays — The AstroChallenge 2007

Posted by HELiX

I’ve just realise I have a very poor attention span for blog entries. Long blog entries piss me off, even the really well written and humourous ones. I can’t read them finish without venturing into another blog.

And so I shall make my entries these days, erm, less incoherent and jack up the relevancy. Did that make sense?

However, this entry… deserves a little uniqueness.

…

It’s merely 5 days of holidays left, I can’t believe what I’ve done with it. The entirety of it was spent mentally preparing myself for AstroChallenge, also known as rotting away pointlessly in front of the computer for the first week or two. Slacking is simply such a vague word to use here. Then the real astro bit came in sometime… a week before the competition.

I can’t believe this part — My term exams are in 5 days’ time. I’ve got MSN contacts going like ‘OMG 14 days left WTF have I done??’ and shit, I’ve not touched schoolwork in 4 weeks, and my final 5 days will be probably spent juggling between projects/homework and studying for terms. And I need fun; I’m just human after all.

All in all, these would make my life suck like hell, and I’m going to sound like an emo whore at this rate so GET THIS-

ASTROCHALLENGE 2007.

It was awesome. For me.

…

So it’s Day 2. The day of the finals — yes, that day.

Morning started off pretty sad, so to say. My project is in pieces now was terribly destroyed the night before, and I came from an astro mugging session with Rong’en to a mess of Lego on the floor. Courtesy of my brother. I couldn’t believe this myself, but I slep at 3.30am that night, fixing back all the Lego bricks into their original position and preparing them for final showcase. And here we have it.

Approx 1,400 Lego bricks altogether, perhaps slightly less.

Then when we reached BP for the free transportation to NUS, it dropped again. Second repairing job in 5 hours…

The morning was slow. That’s as simple as I can put it. The many teams will given many minutes (5 only, actually) to present their project, and many minutes multiplied by many teams with many project and you can probably imagine how painfully boring it was. I nearly died.

I’m gonna skip the presentations part because despite how well well my project may be, the judges apparently knew that my project was easily over the maximum budget of $50. Marked down on that, damn!

No more pictures from here ‘cos I brought the camera, with no frickin’ memory card!

Blah blah blah, Junior Category finals came. BP, RI, HCI, RGS, and NJC got in. Towards the end, it was clear that…

—- Level of RI

—- BP

—- The rest

Yah. Like that.

RI obviously won it hands down. Team 1 apologised to me, but I knew they tried hard.

RI was fantastic. Defeat would be the term used to describe BP winning the rest of the schools. But BP was simply outclassed.

But really, I was really contented. Very good try, I could tell.

…

Then it came. Seniors Finals.

Heck, to begin with, although I was confident that my team would make it through into the finals, I was still open to the fact that whatever we were capable of wasn’t enough… Nevermind that.

I was quite unhappy that my team got 3rd for Prelims. It meant that we would have lots of catching up to do. HCI Team 1 got 2nd, Rong’en’s NJC Team 2 powerhouse came in 1st as expected.

But 3rd placing got me started. I got HIGH.

I shall not discuss the tactics involved here for very obvious reasons…

The last round — the infamous buzzer round — NJC and us were more-or-less tied at 2nd placing. Sometimes we overtook them by a bit, vice-versa. But for the first time, HCI was ahead. A painful full 40 points lead ahead, and it was really hard to swallow.

The buzzer round this time was awfully draggy. It didn’t have the ‘feeling’ of a true, exciting buzzer round. Participants were given 1 minute to answer the question, so teams would just buzz in, and take their own sweet time to answer.

It started off pretty… constant, if that was a word I could use. Positions were roughly the same throughout… We tried to catch up, HCI shot up… NJC and us exchanging spots… but we managed to reduce the gap between 2nd and 1st placings to 20+ points.

With less than 10 questions left, my team somehow figured that we needed to shoot ahead. 3 questions came, we took down all of them, a full 45 points in one shot.

We were ahead. Oh my god.

A couple of questions left, we tried to extend our lead, failed miserably. We were dangerously brought back down, inch or two away from HCI. Final question came, we were leading by a considerably small 12 points, but we decided to settle with it anyway.

1st for Finals. I was so happy, too happy. Problem, however, remains that the Prelims scores were to be counted. For example, while NJC got a 3rd placing for the Finals, the 1st placing for the Prelims would pull them up. HCI got 2nd-2nd. We got 1st-3rd. Hence, scores were not clear and the winner could be any of us 3.

Prize Presentation, perhaps something I’m too used to. I remember sec 2… my first competition… I won Champion. I was shaking as I made my way to the front. I couldn’t believe it. Now it’s getting so boring, sorry.

…

…

…

This deserves a whole new part of its own.

BP Team 1, as predicted, won 2nd. What surprised me was that they, incredibly, picked up BEST PROJECT and INDIVIDUAL CHAMPION. 3 trophies at once, I can’t remember when was the last time astro did that. 5 years ago?

It’s also now known that BP Team 2 got 6th, missing just by one spot to the finals.

They might not have gotten Team Champion, but I’m very proud.

I’ve spent the past 1 or 2 weeks with them, every single weekday. I’ve gave them everything I’ve got in such a short period. I myself couldn’t believe my dedication…

It’s like this. I took it personally, whatever happened to BP Astro this year.

One of the jobs of the head is to ensure sustainability. That is to say, ever after he/she leaves, the CCA maintains itself further. I looked back after the NYP competition, and I’m going to admit that I failed at that. I wanted to win so much last year, to continue Rong’en’s gold streak, that I focused on the competition teams, and neglected the juniors. Could also explain the big knowledge gap between Edrei and everyone else…

I needed to go back to make up. Make things right. Even if I’m wrong and it isn’t my fault, it was still worth a try. Just one, last try.

2nd, Best Project and Individual Champion for Team 1. And 6th for Team 2, whose members felt their team was a complete joke just a few weeks ago. I think I’ve done whatever I can. Team 1 has managed to improved even with the sec 4s gone! Team 2 went from a joke to a serious contender.

I’ve done so much over the past 2 weeks for them that I… sorry but, I won’t EVER be doing this again. Hee. I just hope that y’all have learn as much as possible from me, be it little or a lot. I ask for nothing else.

…And Mdm Yu has even realised that. I told her my AC team will pay for the celebration dinner ourselves, but she refused. After the dinner, she said at this Friday’s AGM, she wants to present some token or souvenir to us. And even something about ‘Friends of the School’, but that requires 3 years of service, not 2 weeks. Cool.

…

Crap. Now then we only come to AC.

Results were perhaps the most tense part of the competition for me. Any of us, NJ, AC or HC can get either 1st, 2nd or 3rd. ANY.

We clinched 1st. HCI a tiny 11 points behind with 2nd. And also a tiny bit away, NJ at 3rd.

It’s awesome. Our first as a CCA, we’re 3 months old, an effective strength of 8~10 members.

But I don’t take this win as satisfying as I should. Winning NJC was one of my… err… dream kinda thing. And it happened. But I expected MUCH tougher competition.

While Rong’en believes he tried his best, no regrets, and that usual stuff… I can’t disagree with him, but I could only say that I’ve seen him better. Much better.

So personally speaking, I didn’t win Rong’en at his best. Nothing much to celebrate about. [Eng Yian, don't take it like that. In terms of YOUR war between AC and NJ, we've won this round.]

But HCI came up very strong this year, and we fought from 3rd all the way to 1st.

So awesome. I wanna say something good about my team but they will add it to their highly inflated ego. But well… gotta say it: Very Good Job, Guys.

It’s 2am now. The competition ended at 8pm. I’m still HIGH =D

Still so awesome.

Comments(0) 3:04 AM 6 June 2007

Play! A Video Game Symphony

Posted by HELiX

Of course, the most sensible thing to do after watching a concert is to, perhaps, blog about it.

And I like being sensible.

…

Okay.

I met up with Xin Jie, Kok Hong, and Shaun at City Hall. Apparently no one else could appreciate musical pieces from video games. Sad, but apparently true.

We headed down to Esplanade. Gotta say this but, first time I’m there to watch something. Blah.

Ok, for those of you who are lost. The concert is "Play! A Video Game Symphony" which basically features a live orchestra and choir performing pieces from famous video games, with projected videos behind them showing memorable scenes from each game. It’s a very successful concert in the US, but for Asia, it’s premiering in Singapore.

So let’s dive into the concert itself.

Chronologically!

1. Fanfare by Nobuo Uematsu

The highlight composer of these video games’ music is Nobuo Uematsu. AKA the guy who did the music for the Final Fantasy series. He composed an opening piece for this concert, so, yeah it’s just some random good instrumental music.

2. Super Mario Bros Suite by Koji Kondo

Themes from Super Mario! Really cute, and they had scenes (real game played by some guy) from the game itself (the Gameboy version and the PS version, I think) projected behind. SO CUTE. Then you see Mario jump, eats mushroom, and even swim. The Italian can really jump!

3. Shenmue I and II’s Sedge Tree by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi

I… haven’t even heard of the game before.

4. Lost Odyssey Main Theme by Nobuo Uematsu

Eh. Don’t know either.

5. Sonic the Hedgehog Suite by Masato Nakamura

AH. So awesome. Brought back the SEGA Genesis days. They have footage from the game, and Level 1’s music matched with the Level 1 video, Level 2 with Level 2, and so on. Almost like you’re playing the game! And 3D Sonic (PS, I’m guessing) looked uber cool.

6. Blue Dragon Main Theme by Nobuo Uematsu

This was dumb. A game they were trying very hard to advertise at the concert. It’s on the 360, and the concertmaster said PLAYSTATION. OWN’D. Oh and it features a blue dragon, which did not appear in the background video.

7. Kingdom Hearts Suite by Yoko Shimomura

Ah! One of the better games out there, so 90% of the time I was watching the game footage and not listening to the music >.> King Mickey FTW!

8. Final Fantasy VI’s Dancing Mad by Nobuo Uematsu

Eh. The first and worse FF music. No comments actually…

9. Daytona USA’s Sky High by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi (He was there in person to play it solo on the piano!)

Horror. Which was what exactly happened when you get a Jap composer, to compose a musical piece for a game with the word "USA" in it. What was worse, he sang it. In English. Horror, I must emphasize. Horror. He was high, really high, and sang "I WANNA FLYYY SKY HIGHHH… LET’S GO TOGETHA… BLUE BLUE SKYYY…" I thought it was a good joke, and maybe it sounded like that only for this live performance, but no, here’s the REAL song from Daytona USA. Link here, 8MB so… I really wonder how people could drive their cars in Daytona with this playing away.

10. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Suite by Jeremy Soule

Another US game… NEXT.

11. Chrono Trigger and Cross Suite by Yasunori Mitsuda

Uh. Vague memory of this. NEXT.

12. World of Warcraft Suite by Jason Hayes

Wow. As in, Wow, not WoW. World of Warcraft, and they showed WARCRAFT III footage. LOL. And once again, I was watching the footage, not listening…

13. HALO Suite by [2 guys whose names are long]

Eh. Halo 2 footage, so I don’t really recognise… Master Chief anyone? And once again… ditto above…

14. Castlevania Suite by Michiru Yamane

Cool. Okay next. I’m rushing through this cos it’s 2am…

15. Legend of Zelda Suite by Koji Kondo

Another awesome piece! Not really, just the game footage. I mean, it’s ZELDA y’all.

16. FINALE - Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children’s One-Winged Angel by Nobuo Uematsu

As with every other concert, the left the best piece for the last! One-Winged Angel! Although it isn’t totally awesomely awesome without the Metal, it’s still great! It’s basically the music from FFVII: AC’s boss battle between Cloud and Seph. Apparently Square Enix didn’t allow game footages for the concert, so the FF songs went without background video. But nevertheless, this song was awesome enough. Estuans interius, Ira vehementi, Estuans interius, Ira vehementi, Sephiroth!

17. SPECIAL FEATURE - Super Shinobi Suite by ???

Nevermind this.

YAY. ‘Night.

Comments(0) 2:31 AM 6 June 2007

PLAY!

Posted by HELiX

Tomorrow is Play!

As in, Play! A Video Game Symphony.

Comments(0) 12:47 AM 6 June 2007

Day 1

Posted by HELiX

Ah, it has began. Funny isn’t it?

NUS-NTU Astro Challenge 2007. It’s an incredible event. Fascinating…

I actually met up with Rong’en last night, yup the night before the competition, to study astro together! This is perhaps the equivalent of North Korea taking up democracy. Actually, we couldn’t concentrate and learn new stuffs by self-studying at home, so we were like "hey later let’s meet at cck mac to study kk?", hoping that we could be… better off. We stayed from 8pm to 12am (got chased out), went from astro to food to… very personal matters. Weeell… I actually enjoyed it.

And next, we have moron bloggers, who attempts to flame others’ blog entries, our way of life and perhaps it’s still easier to summarise this sentence by saying, moron. Look, flaming your team mates and acting emo isn’t the best thing to do during a competition, so I shall stop here…

To top things up, we have a egoistic muggerpolitan who threatens the very existence of the friendly competition between NJC and ACJC. You want to kick an 80kg ass, fine by me.

And finally, beginning on the topic itself, Astrochallenge Day 1:

It was terrible.

Questions were disgustingly trivia. As in, VERY VERY trivia. Hey BP, I found it difficult too.

Data analysis was really DATA ANALYSIS, for the first time ever.

And the second biggest joke of the day? Practical/Observation round, we tugged the monster 10-inches telescope from BP to NTU. The largest and heaviest scope of all. At night, we had it set up ready, and stared. Where the hell was the finderscope? I wanted to feel utterly stupid, but no, I felt worse.

The biggest joke of the day belongs to Shu Wei, for having a very, very timely birthday.

Happy Birthday, Shu Wei! Sorry no time to manage a full blog entry for you! =D

Comments(0) 11:57 PM 6 June 2007

NTU-NUS Astro Challenge 2007

Posted by HELiX

I can’t believe it has come down to this…

BUT OH WELL.

Comments(0) 12:37 PM 6 June 2007