Ah.

Posted by HELiX

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, etc.

An unsecured Internet connection is hard to come by, y’know.

Comments(3) 7:28 PM 12 December 2008

I Could Watch This Over and Over Again

Posted by HELiX

Comments(0) 1:47 PM 12 December 2008

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Posted by HELiX

Well, I’ll be flying off to Hong Kong tomorrow to join my family who were already there for the past week. So I suppose the frequency of blog entries will fall.

And I decided to make use of my server web space by uploading the new TV series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, for now. I chose it because anyone can just pick up the series as it’s only a few episodes into the first season.

I had better options like CSI, but it’s already into Season 9 and I think only people who have been following the series will be able to follow.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a new cartoon TV series that continues from where the movie of the same name left off. Granted, it was a really bad movie that felt like an overly long cartoon, but it was meant to be that way — It was supposed to be the opening for this new cartoon series.

It’s currently airing in the US only, in its first season at episode 10. So, well, you can pick it up even if you haven’t watched Star Wars before.

As for those who are familiar with Star Wars, you may like to know that the story is set between the movies Episode 2 and 3.

The episodes are quite high-res and are about 350MB each, and I’ve also included the subtitles file. Not to worry - my site is hosted on a Singapore server, so you should get blazing fast speeds.

So anyway, you can download them from http://files.helixated.com

Enter public as the username and 123 for the password, and look under the TV folder.

Comments(0) 11:02 PM 12 December 2008

Google Zeitgeist 2008

Posted by HELiX

As the year comes to a close, Google has compiled the data from all the searches made using their search engine.

It’s a good measure of which events or people made the most headlines this year.

So, for starters:

Sarah Palin wins the Internet.

But not much surprises in that list. Let’s have a look at Singapore then.

In Singapore, we’re more concerned about some scandal that isn’t even related to us.

Also, we like to search for stupid terms like Facebook, instead of directly typing www.facebook.com into our address bar. The same goes for Google Maps, Wikipedia, YouTube and Yahoo.

And the stupidest thing? We search for Google on Google. What?

Read the rest at http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2008/

Comments(0) 10:42 PM 12 December 2008

Lab@Home: New Coils

Posted by HELiX

Shaun and I spent the past few days getting started on our Twin Audio Modulated Tesla Coils. It’s going to be quite a costly project, so hopefully the end products are worth it.

What Twin Audio Modulated Tesla Coils you ask? Basically, they’re two similar Tesla Coils able to play stereo music using its sparks. Normally, a Tesla Coil produces the most unbearable noises with its sparks. Using electronics, the frequency can be tuned to produce desirable sounds. Having two coils allows us to run them in Stereo, one in Left channel and the other in the Right.

So far, we’ve completed the two secondary coils, toroids and corona balls.

So far so good, but the secondary coil windings were not exactly perfect. Winding more than 340m of wire (per coil) isn’t exactly a fun thing to do, and midway through you’re bound to get sloppy. That’s abut 1200 turns of 0.4mm copper wire over there for each coil.

Oh well, the project will be resumed in January, when I return from overseas.

Comments(0) 9:01 PM 12 December 2008

Christmas Theme

Posted by HELiX

Ah, it’s that time of the year again which I don’t celebrate and don’t receive any gifts. Yay!

So, to complement that, I changed the banner to something more appropriate. Hopefully, that would make up for all the wrongdoings I’ve done this year and Santa will finally give me a present.

My family has already left for Hong Kong, and I opted to stay back a little longer. I’ll be joining them next Monday.

Not too sure which Chinese city we’ll go to from there. My Dad was interested in the cities closer to central China, like Chengdu, but it’s somewhat too far. The only way to get to those areas is by plane, but my Dad likes the coach better.

In other news, Shaun and I started building our Twin Audio Modulated Solid State Tesla Coils. Which is a really long name for a project, so I simply like to call it Twin Musical Tesla Coils. This time, it’s going to be different. I won’t be documenting the whole project using still photos. Instead, we will be doing a video. We’ll see how that turns out!

Comments(0) 1:48 AM 12 December 2008

Singapore is a Muggers’ Nation: International Study

Posted by HELiX

Well, not really. But that’s the implication of the International Mathematics and Science Study.

The test, more commonly known as TIMSS, is considered the largest assessment of international student achievement. Some 425,000 fourth- and eighth-graders in more than four dozen countries last year took the exam, which has been given every four years since 1995.

Singapore emerged top by a big margin.

Let’s put the results into perspective.

We, the tools of Singapore, destroyed the students of some of the richest countries in the world, like Denmark and Sweden.

And it’s okay that we’re not smart enough to develop nukes. We are way ahead of nuclear-powers like Russia, UK and USA.

We make the Japanese dudes who draw our manga and animate our animes look like morons.

We make the German guys who designed and manufacture our branded cars like BMW and Mercedes look like academic disasters.

And most of all, we made the state of Massachusetts look like fools who are trying hard to catch up, but are barely halfway there.

We’re talking about Massachusetts here, where some of the finest universities in the world reside in. There’s Harvard. There’s MIT. There’s Boston.

And the kids of those Professors are surely as intellectual as them.

But the truth is, we’re not any smarter.

We just study more.

We just mug more.

We just compete more.

We just spend more time studying than producing animes, cars and top universities.

Thanks, MOE.

Best regards,
HELiX

Comments(0) 3:02 PM 12 December 2008