Got a letter from the FTAAA few days ago, but didn’t really had the time to update this as I was away for a few days, nevertheless here are the details of the Ambank Kuala Lumpur International Marathon 2008. Runners in Singapore can register on weekends at MR carpark/events tarmac area which is near the toilets (the one nearer to the entrance and not the one under construction that is!) just like last year’s race. Here are the details.

Event date: 30th March 2008 (Sunday)
Event venue: Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square) KL Malaysia
Time: 4.30am
Organised by: City hall of KL (DBKL) and
Federal Territory Amateur Athletic Association (FTAAA)
Timing mechanics: Race Chip Timings
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Got few updates from NTU on their National vertical marathon in march and Federal Territory Amateur Athletic Association on their 17th Ambank Kuala Lumpur International Marathon 2008. Till I get all the content sorted, will keep you all posted on the registration and updates for these events on an upcoming update.

Well, it’s one week after Spinnovex with all the post exhibition and administrations things to be done. Finally got all the project grading, interviews and reports done. Man especially the report- never had my team was able to type and compile like 20 thousand words of report spanning 4 days! I guess that feat in comparison, is as remarkable as our project itself! Glad it’s all done now, given the mist of all the exams almost everybody (except my course) would be going through these 2 weeks, good thing I do not have any papers. Nevertheless we all felt the same thing in contrast to all the hussle and rushing over the past one month- it’s too too quiet and free now and it’s so unreal.

It had been almost a month since I visited the gym regularly, unexpectedly met and caught up with some of my track and field fields while gyming out by the SP pool side gym yesterday. Apparently, they are always there every Tuesday and Thursday, contrary to our previous coach who didn’t not even encouraged us to use the gym. Given the exam week, the place is very empty now- good if you want a fuss-free workout with no queues and almost every machine at your disposal.

Was told there was a power outrage at Raffles place today, think it’s no wonder my mum is jumping up and down at technical support, being unable to work from home… Figures.

Played about an hour of Team Fortress 2 last night, it’s good get on the multilayer after a long absence from gaming as well. All I can say after one map of late night bustin’ is that though as action packed, but the interface and controls are tad little more slower to get around than in Team Fortress Classic. The classes are now all more focused with their distinctive good and bad points. I enjoy playing mostly the thinking and plotting classes the most, namely the Engineer and occasionally the Spy and Heavy class when I feel like bustin’ a few heads here and there. But I still have a soft spot for the Engineer haha, but it takes freaking long to upgrade a sentry now, especially swinging the wrench now is like slow motion compared to Team Fortress Classic!

Will be around for a chalet mid week tomorrow, should be rushing bit of work over the weekend.

Lol, was just told by my intelligence network that I appeared on Tonight TV news, Channel News Asia a few moments ago, that one was the interview about my FYP motion simulator project I got the exhibition gold award for. They said I was professional on TV haha, with the exception of some acne… (haha maybe which popped out given the last few weeks of stress trying to deliver the project on time). Otherwise everything was great, haha…

Though I have not seen it in person yet, I think it would be quite difficult to actually source out any archives for that. I think Mediacorp do reruns on the various news channels and TV mobile so maybe I might coincidentally catch it while on the bus. Otherwise, I think I might give that a miss, considering I knew exactly what I said!

Singapore Toy and Comic Con is here! (STCC) will be the first of its kind in Southeast Asia. The convention, modelled after San Diego Comics Convention and the Tokyo Game Show, is organised by Play Imaginative - the people behind the conceived in Singapore urban vinyl series “Trexi“.

The three day event, from 27 to 28 June, will be held at Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre.

But don’t expect to find old historical issues of superman or the golden lantern here. Our previous fanbase here is still in an infant stages compared to established cons in the states.

More updates will be released when more details arrive.

Official website (still under construction)

Event: Menara Kuala Lumpur KL Tower International Towerthon Challenge 2008
Race date: TBC
Accuracy of Info: As given on 4th Jan 2008

Registration

Payable in cash/money order/postal order payable to Menara Kuala Lumpur Sdn Bhd.
All registered participants will be issued a receipt is a proof of registration and should be revealed during the collection of running tags.

Route Map

Bib collection
Venue:
Amphitheater Menara Kuala Lumpur
Date: 1st adn 2nd Feb 2008
time: 10am to 5pm

Further Enquries:
Menara KL Sdn Bhd
Tel: 03-20206504/20205448
Fax: 03-30987001/20205389
Website: http://www.menarakl.com.my
Email: safina@www.menarakl.com.my

Met up with few news friend at a workshop over the week, apparently it was doing one of my freelance jobs for an event and they were my alias as operators for that particular event I was covering. Apparently, as even operators they spend most of their time sitting outside the conference rooms while their main speaker is conducting the workshop, only having to tend to food, and technical problems if they arise, so it’s quite a minute man job with other most of the time sitting around.

We sat and chatted during one of those long boring breaks and interestingly, one of them is currently working and taking a part time diploma as taught by the ACP (ICG) in casino and hotel management, which is a rather new yet topic I am still still curious and would like to know more about. Here is what I roughly got about the “tick and tocks” of casinos which I can share.

Odds, statistics, mathematics and even Psychology brought together
He talked about the concepts of statistics, maths and probability in casinos (they have whole encyclopedia thick of related statistics just for casinos) to the sciences of and psychological greed. All these actually tells that if an average layman thinks that gambling in a casino is based on luck but an extensively calculated matrix and formulas to have the odds against you. It is so even up to the extent of the magnetism, face, pride and physiological pressure to keep users glued to the tables to surge more, just to name afew.

Play only what you prepared to lose
As the saying, the house always wins, but come to think about it, this is something not really something I did not know about, but now I definitely get a clearer picture of operations- But I never knew it’s so bad, especially the thought of you are kinda “doomed” to lose to the house from the start when you enter the casino is rather daunting too.

You lost $10,000 even if you’ve limited yourself to playing $1,000
Theres a theory of losing more than what you actually intended to spend on, say like losing $10,000 even despite having only bet $1,000 maximum. This is so given the addition and subtraction of possible wins and losses you might make you your intended $1,000, this is a good pressure factor to play more beyond your $1,000 limit to “earn it back”.

Eyes in the sky
Other notable facts most people should catch on the show “Las Vegas” is the rather intensive camera on casino floors (up to even 20 cameras per table), no corner in the casino is left unwatched.

Casinos are very honest operations
What is yours is your and what is mine is mine, casinos are very honest operations to the extent of even go up to your door to return any cash in chips that rightly fully belonging to you, unless you played them on the table that is! Then that will be a different story. Anyway, with gambling probabilities always on their side, casinos have nothing to lose

The coordinated floor
Casinos floor operations are rather complex- almost everything is coordinated. Table dealers work together to meet a common cutoff, quota or daily target. Putting their best dealers to deal with their client and gambler database. Blacklisted players can even be escorted out within minutes of entering the casinos. Key or experienced players will automatically be greeted by best dealers dispatched just like minute men.

Even each jackpot machine are designed to churn in a target of profit set and connected to an extensive computer network. Multiply that by the number of jackpot machines in the whole casino to multiply the profit. They are coordinated and programmed to release a jackpot only after a whole set of objectives, revenue, crowd popularity (e.g jackpotting crowded areas to arouse more interest and “spill over effects”in using the machines) and targets are set.

Huge salaries
He went on to even targets set by pit bosses for dealing tables and overall Casino turnover rates, which is realistically many many times that to even big banks. Pit bosses in the casino floor managing a few tables and dealers can earn easily a 5 digit salary per month, no wonder the industry in Singapore is so sought after, not to mention the amazing number of tens and thousands of jobs created when Las Vegas Sands moves in town within a few years time.

What I’ve covered here are simply just to tip of the iceberg, there is more than it meets the eye. Man will it be an interesting industry.

Had been rather busy the last few days rushing up post final year reports and some other post Spinnovex administration matters. Before you know it, its the last day of the semester with the exam weeks starting next. Good thing I do not have any modules to take this semester! Good luck to those taking (and repeating) modules this semester, for the 05 batch it’s your last push so don’t give up!

I had been itching to play Team Fortress 2 for quite sometime. Many Team Fortress Classic server are all either empty or fullof bots only- The old days are in place for the new game which in turn is more crazy and happening. Brought the orange box from Techdrome today. Met the same celebrity uncle store owner there who could not give me his usual discount, as the box was already cut down almost $15 the normal retail rate, in hand he gave me the orange box cloth mousepad for a $3 top up, so thats $68 in all, not a bad deal for 5 games in the box (though I already owned Half-life 2).

Will be taking a much needed break over my first weekend which I do not actually need to wake up early, since a month! Yea, outta bed, hello lunchtime!

Event: NTU Surf & Sweat 2008
Event Date: 3rd Fen 2008
Organiser: NTU Sports club
Venue: Tanjong Beach Sentosa

Events
All participants must be above 16 years of age.
Main Event:
Surf and Run Biathlon (400M surf on surfboard and 4km run)

Registration
Start date: 15rd Dec 2007
Closing date: 23th Jan 2008

Rules
Rules and Regulations PDF file

Route
Route map (Jpeg Image)

The thing which makes this year’s event better than the last is the new “A” maze side event. The organizing committee reassures that the national vertical marathon 2008 will be a completely different and unique event to that of the 2007 event organised similarly at republic plaza in last year’s vertical marathon.

Event: National Vertical Marathon 2008 (Republic Plaza)
Event Date: 2nd March 2008
Organiser: NTU Sports club
Feat: 60 floors or 1,380 steps
Venue: Republic Plaza, 9 Raffles Place S(048619)
Recommended Transport: MRT (Raffles place)

Registration
Start date: 3rd Jan 2008
Closing date 11th February 2008 (New postponed closing date)
Registration form download

Thereafter, please await for an confirmation e-mail or call (to those who could not access to the internet).

Please be patient with us and pardon us for any late replies as the registration entries are overwhelming. Nevertheless, all successful or failed application will be dealt with as promptly as possible.

Late entries will not be entertained successful applicants can check out this link for confirmation of participation after submission of registration. Furthermore, a confirmation email will be sent to each participant once application has been approved. Participants are required to check online http://www.nvm2008.ntusportsclub.com for their respective category reporting time.

Information regarding the time of registration would be posted online one week before the date of the event.

Categories

Today is the last day of the SP Open house Spinnovex 2008 final year project showcase. The day started off as a lazy but otherwise smooth morning prior the opening of the event. There was an air of fatigue hanging around the tent (given the late industry night the day before and considering it being our 6th consecutive day in the white tentage already) but otherwise also coupled with a sense of fulfilling victory being our last fruitful day for all our efforts put to date.

It was cold with lots of cold wet condensate falling on the outside over the night making the air rather still and musky in the tent, well till the air conditioning was turned on. The previous wet morning didn’t affect our outdoor air compressor to some extent and kept on delivering operating pressure through the early part of the day and became more stable later in the day as the weather started to warm up.

Thereafter, the crowds starting to pour in around the late morning. From there, the fun begins all over again with the crowds around our booth, prying eyes and impressive looks of amazement all written upon the looks on almost every visitor’s face who passed by our booth. Some are simply just fascinated to the extent of even finding hard to believe that we actually built this for our project, especially teaching staff and lecturers. Some professors and lecturers from NTU also came and chatted with us on the project, they too were amazed. Is such a project actually quite hard to come by now?

We also got our youngest guest for the whole event as well, maybe about 6-7 years old- He’s so small that even with the seat completely forward, he still can’t even reach the pedals!

But that didn’t stop us from giving him a ride after consent by his parents- Danson carried him on his lap and rode the simulator with the kid, controlling the pedals while the child steer, remarkably he was able to complete the whole course without even getting busted by the police in the game, something even some grown ups couldn’t do themselves! I’ve got a video of this kid riding our simulator in a video below, you can check it down there:

RMS-1 Day 3

Physio beans demo to the principal

We are missin’ half a car!

It’s still pleasing to know that each of us still get about 15-20 comments a day from strangers from the general public commending us about our project, even the principal was around to take alook at the projects for the day. Mine and Danson’s parents came yesterday, today, it’s Khowming’s parents turn to take the spotlight and we gave him some time off the booth so that he could show his parents around.

Some of my old track and field friends and alumni seniors were down in the afternoon, so I brought them around SP for lunch and at the same time, catch up on the exhibits around the area. The design studio exhibits are kinda cool, together with those in the T14 dreamhome where I could check out the skateboard game the EEE team our buddy CIE team worked with.

Besides some other interesting items such as the “half car” which makes everybody go huh? Met up with Darius in the EEE project area where he showed me his version of the “Cappobrewis” automated PLC toast and coffee maker, only that this one seems to have all it’s guts splattered all over the table.

Our team was amazed that our simulator prototype actually pulled through 3 full exhibition days of back-to-back operation with guest continuously in-and out without any major problems at all. Even if there was any, it was mainly an electrical problem which we were prepared for given the unstable current produced by our external turbo diesel generators powering the whole tent area. A quick 2-3 minute fix was all it needed to be back into business and serving the crowd again.

The closing of the 3 third day of Spinnovex marks also the closing of the whole week of ordeal, not to mention sore feet having to stand up and put up a good show and impression to every visitor fairly without displaying any form of fatigue, but it was rewarding in the end. And man was it- few lecturers came down and paid us a visit prior the ending of the exhibition and start of the closing ceremony (Spinnovex prize award presentation), many said they can’t reveal much but they reassured and told us that we “will be pleased” with the final results.

The convention center

Prize Presentation - Gold!

Team CIE!

And there we have it, the Spinnovex gold award presented to us. Khowming parents were there, so I gave him the honor on my behalf as team leader to go up the stage and collect the prize. But don’t worry I was there too to take pictures of course! I think my team deserved the award more than I do and I am just glad I saw them throughout whole to this very day which I believe they will always remember at heart.

My heartfelt thanks going to my Teammates, Danson Han & Lee Khowming for being so corporative as committed team members, not to mention being tolerant of the demands of the short project timeline, project troubleshooting and me a persistent team leader. We are such a close knit group I guess it’s that which set it apart from other groups.

With that in hand, other few people to thank, in no particular order:

Mr Gary Lee, our Industrial Automation lecturer on his shared experiences in the pneumatics field.
Mdm Goh, our IA lab and pneumatics expert for sharing of experiences and loan of equipment.
Mr Ang The Machine development center TSO who helped us with our test cylinders and misc stickers.

Thats all folks for the exhibition report.

Multimedia animation video shown during the exhibition

Event and happenings video

Well, apparently besides the happy Tibetans and villagers in Africa, Singapore is rated the happiest country in Asia! With strict rules, fines and regulations in place, strangely it’s so! Or are we all simply just brainwashed to say so when asked?

Even if not, well I guess we will definitely be even more happier if housing, cars and gas are much cheaper!

View the video report from 2020 in touch webcast.