The VSOP Club!

No, I did not join the VSOP club. As many of you know, I’m not an alcohol fan. Why am I writing about it then? That’s because I happened to pass by it a few weeks ago when I was back in Malaysia and it turned out to be something unexpected.

Check out the pics and see for yourself:

You’ve gotta admit that they have got a really creative and cute name. ^_~ It looks like a very well-maintained establishment and active society for the elderly community to network and do activities together. What have they done in the past? Well I did not venture in to check it out (obviously!! ) because it was not for VSYP!

ASEANpreneurs: Network for student entrepreneurs

Hey guys! Just got a request to blog about this from my friends. It is about the launch of ASEANpreneurs, a new network created specially for student entrepreneurs from the ASEAN region. I was in the founding committee a few months back but had to leave due to overwhelming commitments. If you want to meet other student entrepreneurs from the ASEAN region, do attend their launch and check out what this network is up to! ^_~

Here’s a quick introduction:
The ASEANpreneurs Youth Leaders’ Network is a student organisation dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship in the ASEAN region. It will serve as a platform for the youth to interact, share knowledge and ideas and collaborate on various projects which may be beneficial to the ASEAN countries and economies. This will be facilitated by means of an online portal.

Membership is open to all ASEAN universities and their students. There will be an annual exchange programme for which top entrepreneurial students will be either nominated by their universities/ clubs or through self-nominations. We hope this exchange or a conference will be hosted on a rotational basis among the ASEAN countries. Throughout the year, projects will be initiated and undertaken by ASEANpreneurs to tackle problems in their own countries or to promote cooperation between the countries – as a commitment to the network and to further economic integration of ASEAN.

Date: 21 May 2008 (Wednesday)

Time: 11.00am – 1.00pm (Registration starts at 10.00am)

Venue: Hon Sui Sen Auditorium,
NUS Business School
1 Business Link
Singapore 117592

Attire: Smart Casual

Register online here.

Creature that can survive in space!

I’ve been back in Malaysia for about 3 days and after catching up with all the good food and shopping, I decided to spend some time at home writing. I was wondering what would be interesting, went through my drafts and saw this! I’ve been wanting to blog about this since last year but never found the time. Special thanks to Jiin Joo for telling me about this “alien”-ish creature!

The Waterbear!

This creature is no other than the Waterbear which bears the scientific name Tardigrade for slow-walking animal. For starters, (this will disappoint you) they are not your average-sized mammal but microscopic creatures that resemble a GUMMI bear with a face, claws and paws. They come in Gummi bear colours of orange, red and green too!

Check out this video of the Waterbear walking. You can actually see its paws and feet:

Where can you find them? According to Microscopy UK, they can be found almost anywhere especially in water droplets of dark moss. Among some of the extreme places where their existence has been encountered are at the top of the Himalayas, in hot springs and under thick layers of solid ice. One of the unique traits of the Waterbear that allows them to survive in literally any condition is their ability to “sleep” and “revive” themselves again. They are capable of deactivating their metabolism turning into a suspended state which will “reactivate” when exposed to water. Talk about people who need a bucket of water splashed on their faces to wake up. Watch the video of the Waterbear’s “returning from the dead” process here.

The other extreme conditions they are able to survive in (where most living things suffer/die) are temperatures over 100C, absolute zero, pressures many times the atmospheric pressure, in vacuum and even a decade without water. There are a few parties online who mention a NASA Space Shuttle experiment (which I failed to find on the official NASA website) where a few microbes including the Waterbear were placed on a rock and put in outer space. Upon entering the vacuum, the microbes went into a suspended state and despite long-term exposure their DNAs were not affected by any radiation. In other words, the Waterbear’s DNA is radiation resistant. This rare ability to survive in vacuum and withstand radiation has caused speculations that these creatures are capable of interplanetary travel and may have come to Earth from other planets. It still remains a question of how long the Waterbear will be able to survive in this suspended state(some say a few years) and whether it is able to withstand the harsh conditions that deep space holds to travel to another galaxy.

The Waterbear is certainly one of those marvels of science (and mystery of outer space?) with a lot for us to learn from. Who knows, when we discover the secrets behind their DNA we might be able to apply the knowledge gained to modify and make our DNAs more resistant to radiations and MAYBE… (a huuuge maybe) hibernate long enough for inter-galactic travel. Mysteries are knowledge waiting to be mined and as the saying goes, with knowledge comes great power
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Interesting resources you might want to check out:
The incredible waterbear!
The Waterbear it is! from Scientific Blogging
Earth Life could possibly reach Titan from Slashdot. (Discussions under comments are really interesting)
Hunting for ‘bears’ in the backyard

The NUS Facebook Module: A student’s perspective

Exams have just come to an end for me today! (Woohoo! FINALLY!). It has definitely been an interesting semester with me being in the pioneer group of 2 subjects, one of which is the famous Facebook module. Reflecting on all that’s happened in the past 5 months, I thought some of you might be interested on how the Facebook module went considering the many pre-semester “speculations” about it. So here’s a quick write-up of my experience and thoughts. All comments and questions are welcomed!
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Quick introduction (skip if you already know what the module is about…)
For starters, the official name of the module is CS3216: Software Development on Evolving Platforms. The main objective of the module wasn’t so much to teach students how to create Facebook applications but rather to learn how to use Application Programming Interfaces(APIs) of various web platforms (Friendster, Open Social) to create applications. As Facebook is one of the rapidly growing platforms among students in Singapore, it became the choice of this module. Class is very small with a total head count of 51 students from various faculties (including Law). For more info, read the official introduction here.
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The class structure…
Many thought that non-computing/engineering students won’t be able to contribute much as they can’t code but this turned out to be quite different because of the way the class is structured. The assignments are very open ended with only minimal requirements. By requirements, I don’t mean concrete things like “Your application must be a wall that people can scribble on” but rather “Your application should allow interaction between users and those interactions should be visible to others“.

Grading for the assignments is not based on technical aspects alone either with 70% awarded for meeting stated requirements and 30% for creativity (Final project is FREE FOR ALL with no requirements). Hence having a team with technical prowess alone is not enough to do well in this module. It takes a combination of various skill sets like creative-thinking, design, marketing and coding which gave room for everyone to contribute in their own respect.
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Opportunity to explore
To be honest, I didn’t do much coding even though I am a Computing student (I hate coding!! ^^;;). I contributed more in terms of idea-generation, conceptualization, user interface and incentive design. The way the class was structured allowed me and I believe others to really focus our skills in where our interests truly were and take the leap to try out new things. For example, I got a first hand experience at game architecture and mechanics design which was waaay more brain-draining than I expected. (If I’m not wrong, some musically-inclined people got to show their composition skills as well)

However not everyone had the opportunity to delve deeper into their interests. I know a few who wanted to improve their PHP coding skills but as there was a shortage of talent (e.g: design), they ended up doing what they do best for the benefit of the team. I guess I was lucky to be in teams where both my interests and skills were complementary to the rest of my team members.
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Do what you like for homework
Yea!! This is the part I can’t stop loving. I used to complain and whine about how university assignments take up so much time that I hardly have any left to work on my own ideas. This module was an opening for me. Due to the open-ended nature of the assignments, we could literally do ANYTHING we wanted for homework. From the list of applications created for the final project, one can see that majority of the class’ interest lied in games (guess it goes with the class being composed of more guys than girls). How many modules allow you to work on your dream idea and earn credits for it?

Some cool games: Farm Wars 2, Ant Rush, Alt Real and Law School (Haha the concept behind Law School is interesting.)

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Exposure exposure exposure…
I’d say that the learning curve is extremely steep for this module not in the technical sense but in the post-production segment. Being on Facebook, most of our applications are exposed to the public and hence there is a lot of work to be done once user feedback and statistics start trickling in. I find myself spending more time cracking my head on how to convert user feedbacks into changes that lead to improved user experiences than development. Of course this is not a bad thing because how often do you get to show your homework to the world and know what people think of it? This is definitely one of the most practical module I’ve taken at NUS thus far.

Another element that my professor and teaching assistants have been working hard on was getting exposure for our work and skills among business people. There were many sessions where we could meet with company CEOs, form potential partnerships and showcase our work to them. Even though not many teams took up the deals offered during the company pitching session, it resulted in a few interesting outcomes:

- MTV MyCribs which is a Facebook version of yes, MTV Cribs haha.
- RateMyTurban, Facebook version of RateMyTurban.com.

(And of course not forgetting the free lance project opportunities out there from the exposure…)
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Lastly, is this module for everyone?
The workload was definitely heavy towards the 2nd half of the semester when all the other module deadlines started clumping up leaving most of us with sleepless nights. With 3 assignments, 1 application seminar presentation and 1 final project, I have to say it was quite a handful for many to handle including myself but most of us pulled through in the end. Then again, the module is still new and many things are being changed as more feedback is provided. I heard that the next time this module is offered, the workload will be 2 assignments and 1 final project and they will be less open-ended (and it’ll be using Adobe AIR? Cool!). To tell you the truth, MOST OF US stressed ourselves out not because the module was hard but rather because we had high standards to meet set by our classmates. After seeing stunning applications created in Assignment 2, most of us tried to create even better quality work for Assignment 3 which burnt out a lot of us.

Personally, I think the module is more oriented for students who love a challenging and risky but creative environment. With no bell curve, no exams and open-ended assignments, brute hard work is not going to help much in this module without the passion and creativity for your projects. The module’s focus is not about creating viral Facebook applications with 100K users(but of course if you do I’m pretty sure you’ll definitely get an A) but more on helping students learn be it in terms of coding, design or even communication. Hence I believe students who like to explore new things and challenge themselves in a rather open environment focused on practicalities will be well suited for this module.

Note: If you want to check out all the applications created for the final project, go here.

Are humans really THAT special?

Everytime a documentary runs on National Geographic saying “Humans evolved from apes”, I switch the channel as it is usually a repetition of the same facts proposed over and over by many researchers. E.g: Pictures of hunched humans, bone structure comparisons and capability comparisons. Today however, Wayne told me about this TED video which proposes something along similar lines with a unique twist.

The presentation was made by Susan Savage-Rumbaugh, a researcher who has spent decades in the field of ape language studies who believes that the unique traits(intellectual thinking, language learning) human beings possess may have been culturally nurtured rather than biologically in-grained into our DNA. Her research with the Bonobo ape species has shown that in a culture of interaction where researchers are not “aiming to teach” but rather be part of the Bonobos’ daily lives, these mammals were able to learn through observation very human tasks like starting a fire with a lighter, playing Pac-man and delicately using a scissors to groom their offsprings. A comparison made between stone knives crafted by the Bonobos and those by pre-historic humans from 2 million years ago show stark similarities, creating the notion that we may have once lived like how the Bonobos are living today.

After watching the presentation, I was very convinced that humans developed the traits and capabilities we have today through millions of years of cultural interaction and development. If what Rambaugh proposes is true, then does the widely championed phrase “Humans are special” still hold? Or are we just equals of animals who happen to culturally advance through some chance encounters and interactions with a mix of other species’?

Here’s the video to fascinate your mind: