Bittersweet Ending.

To get an idea of my opinion towards the holidays and the state of mind I'm in right now, refer to this post.

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So the holidays have come to an end. And it's back to school. And homework. And teachers. And notes.
Put all this together, and you get getting chased by teachers for homework because you didn't study your notes.

With school, also comes fun and enjoyment because I get to see all the great friends again but it's truly a bittersweet ending to the holidays.

As Lester said, the first day did pass by real slow. It started with me sitting-in for Chinese lesson, revising my periodic table notes. Had Chemistry Test right after that. It went quite surprisingly well, save for the last question, which was a killer.

Then moving on to the LA test. Ugh. It went horribly...I chose the question that I had revised for, hoping it would be easy. But it turned out to be crap. I'm not divulging anymore details here for the sake of those who have yet to take the test.

Had the Maths A Test today, aka test on Differentiation and Integration.
dee why dee ex. Limits.
It went quite well. Better than expected, at least. Though I didn't have the time to finish the last question, I got all the other answers correct I think. I calculated my result should be 23 out of 35. Plus minus 5 marks. =)

Anyway, watched the Brazil vs Ghana match after school today. That final goal for Brazil by that Ze Roberto, it just made me go "WTF?!" Yea. It was that insane! Watch it for yourself, you can't help but wonder how the hell in the world did that guy become a goalkeeper.

Okay I'm gonna go off and do some Physics now. Physics Test is coming up on Friday.
Well, so is the Biology Test, but I'm hopeless for Biology.

Encoded

I like codes and encryption.

Not the kind that are used for programming, but the kind that are used for secret messages. The Enigma kind.

Isn't it just brilliant how the message can be encoded in a billion different ways?

Google Bombs

A short post because I've to run off and revise Physics. Just thought I might share this interesting discovery on Google Bombs here...

A Google Bomb or Googlewash is a certain attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in results returned by the Google search engine, often with humorous or political intentions. Due to the way that Google's PageRank algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page all use consistent anchor text [links].

- a wikipedia article on Google Bombs

So technically, I can make my blog the first Google result shown for a web search on "hot, handsome and sexy"... LOL.
Or I could defame someone's blog by making it the first result if one searches for "ugly jackass"... Hahaha

A Google bomb could be achieved easily; this is a possible scenario:

1. The initiator chooses a word to be searched : "liar".
2. The initiator chooses the target website : "http://example.com/".
3. The initiator creates a link like this : <a href="http://example.com/">liar</a>.
4. The initiator places this code in his website, as his signature in forum, in his blogs, etc.
5. The initiator talks to other people about the bomb and tells other people to use the code in their own writings.
6. GoogleBot indexes and ranks, resulting in http://google.com/search?q=liar having the victim's webpage as the first result.

- a wikipedia article on Google Bombs

Check out the result of a successful Google Bomb. The official biography of George W. Bush on the White House site is the first result when a web search is done for "miserable failure".

Seeing Stars...

I was on my way back home [after buying the chips my dad asked for...don't ask] from the market last evening when I happen to walk past this hardware store. Well that particular store stocks some cheap toys and stuff for little and it's displayed right next to the entrance.

So I'm walking alongside it and what happens next leaves me snickering the rest of the way home. This boy, about 7 or 8-years old, was looking at some action figurine and his Mum was beside him. The lady sees a pair of binoculars [the cheap plastic kind], points towards it and asks her son, "You know what that is or not?" And then she answers her own question by saying this:

This one is called a Telescope.

Binoculars. Telescope?! Yea sure...you'll probably see Mars through the "Made-in-China" binoculars selling for under 5 bucks. And that's what sent me snickering away but soon enough I realized that it's not her fault. I can't blame her if a considerable part of the population is clueless about the differences between a pair of binoculars and a telescope.

On a similar but not-quite-the-same topic, I was reminded of a particular podcast by Mr Brown and Mr Miyagi recently, on the campaign by MOE to recruit native English speakers as English Language teachers. Here's a link to the online version of the podcast: >click me!< Do listen if you have the time yea...it's hilarious!
Warning: Contains coarse language spoken by a native speaker and may not be suitable for minors and the linguistically conservative.
- from mrbrownshow.com

And related to the subject at hand, I found this interesting post on mrbrown.com that talks about Singlish's stand against English. Obviously, I [as many of you reading this] am guilty of using Singlish often. Therefore, this comment by John is an interesting read.


*PS: What's this I hear about smiling for the Ang Mohs?

Code Red...

You were happily enjoying the holidays - you took full opportunity of the time given to morph into a couch potato, spent days wading through the net looking for nothing in particular but reading lots of interesting articles, you slept late and woke after a slumber of at least nine hours every single day and spent the rest of the days going out. And you. did. nothing. in the 24 hours in a day that was even remotely related to schoolwork.

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Well, that was my life for the first two to three weeks of holidays.
And today's the first day of the last measly week of these pathetic so-called "holidays". Well they could be called holidays, if not for something called homework. The ugly reality of life is that homework does exist. And heck, if it was just homework, I wouldn't be here complaining. It's homework plus revision for the goddamit-why-do-they-even-exist! tests that are right after the holidays.

Where's the justice in giving us tests right after holidays when they know that being the irresponsible bunch of adolescents we are, we are probably gonna do our very best to avoid doing revision during the break given from school? Yea sure, they want us to study and keep in touch with schoolwork even during holidays but having a test on the first day of school? I don't know about you, but to me, that just sounds insane and diabolically torturous, in a way.

And it certainly doesn't help that your friends have test dates as their MSN messenger screen name. And that everytime you log into the school portal, you get a pop-up announcement from your teachers telling you to revise and that there'll be some test on the first lesson when school reopens. And neither does it give you any condolences when you get this in your assignments from the teachers:

FINALLY ... (Try to) Enjoy the holidays.

I'm not naming the source of that quote but I'm pretty sure most of you would know the origins of the above-mentioned quote.

Aargh, I think I'm gonna go absolutely insane one of these days! Guess what, the thought of quitting school seems oh-so-very appealing right now...

Okay enough ranting, it's a Monday today and I still have six more days to get my act together. Well then, I'm off to go do more dee-why-dee-ex...


All I did in this post was rant like some idiot..Excusee me for that. These kinda outbursts of hatred are rare and I'm gonna make sure they don't happen often while blogging...

Pop the Champagne!

The third post.

But the first one after the official opening.


And you're probably wondering what's up with the official opening and the red ribbon, eh?

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OH MY GOD! The time's 0134 hrs right now and Varun's pretty sure he's gonna be screwed if he's found to be awake by his Mum right now. So guess what, Varun shall update this post tomorrow...
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Ah okay. So maybe the so-called Official Opening Day was yesterday but heck, I'll just continue on from yesterday.

So as I was explaining the reason for the official red ribbons, it's simply because most of the elements edited weren't ready at first and I was still experimenting with HTML and trying out various tricks for this blog.

But that aside, the posts will be streaming in now. Effort will be made to update frequently but excuse me if the schoolwork doesn't allow much time. Although I'd rather blog than do schoolwork, I'm afraid the teachers and parents don't think along the same train of thoughts...

And before any vulgarities come out regarding schoolwork and how these so-called holidays are just filled to the brim with revision, I shall end the post here.

Officially Unopened

This is a notice to anyone out there who might be reading this. This blog is not officially announced open yet. So Stranger, Varun advises you not to visit this blog for a few days weeks and let him design it up till satisfactory enough for an official opening.

Varun also posts another notice here to the certain other human being who happens to have the privilege of knowing this blog URL through Varun himself that she doesn't tell anyone about the mere existence of this blog yet.
The construction is still in progress [points to the heavy weight cranes, digging machines and cement mixers. hahaha] and Varun doesn't want others to know of this blog till its officially open.

Reason for this simply being that Varun's HTML skills are too noob inadequate to provide a good enough platform for him to express his thoughts. He wishes that his blog be top-notch before its declared open to the world.

Therefore, Starngers and You-Who-Knoweth-The-URL*, please be patient while Varun absorbs HTML and attempts to make this blog more seh appealing.


_{*not that I refuse to use your name =) it's just not safe you see.}

Maiden Flight

testing one two three....

Hello World!

ahem ahem....Welcome, stranger. I am guessing you stumbled across this page in an attempt to do something productive with your time. So you decided to do a web search on something that might have led you to this page but oh well. Make yourself comfortable and enjoy the site - there's loads more in store so do visit back.

Now, moving on to a picture test...

hmm...seems to work fine. Oh and if your neurons are reaching the conclusion that I might be a pervert or any of those breed, please tell them to stop this very instant. This is the first picture I found lying in My Documents and being the lazy guy I am, I didn't bother looking for something else. Anyway, credits for this picture go to Grace. And with that I'm done with me URL link test too.

Moving on to the embedded obejcts test. Below SHOULD be a video from youtube.com. As you SHOULD be able to see, it's a video of Dan Osman speeding up a natural cliff. Very interesting display of extreme sports and the human mind overcoming fear.



Okay that's it for now. Further work needs to be done, that's for sure.