Just took my first paper for this semester. It was quite ok, but most people thought so too. Guess all the hard work over the past week has really paid off for this module. At least I was able to write something on the paper and it seems to make sense. The paper was Signals, a module which seemed very daunting at the beginning. At least it's doable now, but I have no idea whether my answers are correct, haha. Will know when results are out.

There was an article on the front page of the Straits Times on Saturday about the inflation rate. It's the highest in 16 years, at 3. something %, I can't remember the exact figure. I remember a quote from an economist. He was so surprised he nearly fell out of his chair. Maybe their figures and past experience worked against them, but it seems very obvious to the man on the street that inflation will definitely be high with constantly increasing prices.

If a hawker raises his price from $2.50 to $3, that's a 20% increase. With many hawkers doing so and with food making up a large part of the CPI, why is it so surprising that inflation is high?

Those statements actually give me the feeling that the economists are out of touch with reality. Or perhaps the extra 50 cents didn't seem all that much relative to their salaries. Still, anyone can tell that inflation is high even without the CPI, so why is it so surprising to them? Out of touch with reality? Or simply too buried in the figures?

Jeff says I will start the post by saying "It's been a month since I last posted". However, he has been proved wrong, I started by saying "Jeff says I will start the post...." Haha.

Anyway, it has been a month since I last posted. (I did not start with that statement). The past month has been very busy, with quite a few projects due, such as MNO, EE2006 and our SS project. The SS project was a real last minute affair as our MNO project was due on the weekend. As a result, we started after that and rushed it over the next two days. Thanks to chris' smoke generator and good research support, we managed to get a very decent grade for it.

If you want to know what CH thinks of that, check out his blog.

MNO project was quite interesting as it involved shooting a video and uploading it to video. That means there are now many MNO project videos floating around. Find them by searching for BTSL. My group's video is here.

After watching that one, search for A28 P4. I think that one is quite worth watching. However, it seems that the professor has some slightly different ideas. He prefers stories which are actual adaptations of bedtime stories instead of entirely fictitious ones which just throw in a few characters. He showed a couple of good ones during the lecture, but the others weren't that appealing to me.

EE2006 went quite smoothly after I found out that I don't have to debounce the dip switch. That saved a lot of D flip flops and allowed me to place everything on the breadboards provided with space to spare.

There have been rumours that some people are hiding in closets to mug. Perhaps it's time to write a story titled "The hock, the witch and the Closet" (Tong 2007). Only the witch part is subject to change. I might do it if inspiration strikes, but then again I might just be too lazy.

Time to go study for exams, which are slightly more than a week away.


Reference

Tong 2007, Message History of Illucid, 16 November 2007.
Retrieved from MSN message log on 17 November 2007.