周杰伦，费玉清-千里之外MV
Monday, August 28, 2006

Apparently, youtube shut down down all videos that featured the song. Should be a copyright violation issue.

posted byWilliam at 2:09 AM 0 comments  

USP Dinner and Dance 2006
Saturday, August 26, 2006

Jiatong and I covered the USP DnD tonight. Here are some of my takes of the event.

posted byWilliam at 1:27 AM 0 comments  

NUS Photographic Society
Thursday, August 24, 2006

I went to the NUS Photographic Society Media Centre in YIH in the afternoon. My intention was to check out the calibrated monitor. The computers and monitors are not bad at all. Powerful, high color accuracy and very very under-utilized. I think I will hang out there during my free time.

I met the secretary, Leonard, who has just got into the organizing committee. It was my lucky day, I told him I am interested in conducting Photoshop courses for the NUS community and there is an appointment in the committee not filled: course coordinator. I immediately signed up for it. Leonard told me there might be an interview next week. I think I gotta revise my Photoshop basics before I stumble at the interview; will also organize a portfolio to showcase my editing skills over the weekends. If everything goes well, I should be conducting courses during the holidays.

Also talked to FM about his idea of setting up a Media Dept in USC. I volunteered to help out as the photographer. Basically, I am increasing my exposure to events and people photography to improve my skills and techniques. I find myself really lacking in creativity and artistry. I'm pretty ok with technical skills. Still remember what the boss of Riceball Photographic Books told me: "A photographer shocks people with pictures, not technical knowledge. Though the latter is essential for a perfect picture". I think I am reading photography more furiously than chemistry. Have you heard of Brooks Institute of Photography? Really hope to study there, though I know it's not going to be easy.

P.S. I'm sure there are lots of Photoshop experts in NUS, I really hope to meet them to discuss on photo-editing and post-processing techniques. Not so interested in graphics design/processing though.

posted byWilliam at 11:32 PM 0 comments  

Birkenau Death Camp in Krakow
Monday, August 21, 2006

posted byWilliam at 11:10 PM 0 comments  

Thinking log for CM5245
Sunday, August 20, 2006

CM5245 Bioanalytical Chemistry is one of the few chemistry modules that I have taken and has a percentage allocated to IVLE discussion. Most USP modules in the "Science" basket have IVLE forum discussions but, even so, not all are graded. Therefore, CM5245 is one truly unique module in chemistry dept.

In this module, the assessment is in a form of seven weekly thinking logs which a student uploads to the Assignment in the Student Workspace. This is quite unlike a "normal" discussion on the IVLE forum. Here is my first thinking log, which is not a very scientific discussion.

Thinking Log 01

Name: Wong Yu Kai William
Matric no.: U031969B

The first lecture on bioanalytical chemistry touched upon the topic of the importance of analytical chemistry and some basic protein science. If I’m going to talk about the latter, it is going to be quite boring in a thinking log like this. Therefore, I shall talk about the importance of analytical chemistry.

I think Dr. Toh is one of the few lecturers in NUS to tell me about analytical chemistry as a problem solver. I think it’s quite sad that most lecturers focus so much on theory, instrumentation… that we forget that the importance of chemistry, or science in general, is to solve real-world problems. Dr. Toh showed us the changing definition of a chemical analysis which was quite a nice piece of new information for me. I have always linked chemical analysis to determining the components of chemical in a sample. The paradigm has been shifted!
I also used to think that analytical chemistry is so routine that it’s not exciting. Well, I have changed my thoughts after this lecture. I still remember Dr. Toh saying that a result is up to an analytical chemist to interpret. How true it is! In a broader sense, isn’t the world like this? Everything we see is a fact but how true are they? I think how true things/ analytical results are is up to one to interpret. How we see things and interpret results all depends on the cumulative knowledge one has; and all of us are unique individuals and we see things differently. And talk about science being objective…

posted byWilliam at 4:45 PM 0 comments