Now, I thought it was a great speech, something full of suggestions and warm ideas, one that made meaningful sentences that can bring benefits to the people, but alas, it was not to be. For the speech of the day seemed ridden with so much propaganda, I think it should be called “Major Bootlicking of the day”. In fact, our beloved MP actually did some amount of bootlicking in the budget last year, as I quote from MrBrownshow.com.

the generosity of the recent budget is possible under the stewardship of the ruling People’s Action Party.

What a big bullshit, I would say. Nothing to do with budget, but a huge bootlicking. We Singaporeans already know we got a great government, ok?

But why speech of the day? Isn’t there other speeches more worthy of thy honour? No. It’s not that other speeches are inferior, but it is that the speech of the day gets more attention. People who are busy with their working life (or peasants like me mugging for mid terms), are probably going to skip many speeches and just read the speech of the day. Thus, someone wants you to read this propaganda!

Why do I say propaganda then? Surely it isn’t fair to label a speech of the day as propaganda? Let me quote a few paragraphs for your perusal:

1. As Singaporeans, we should feel lucky and be thankful that we have a good Government.
2. But living in a small country with little natural resources except for the seawater around us, there is little we can do to contain imported inflation.
3. I urge the Government to assure the people that we do have strong and capable leaders to run the country, and that efforts to strengthen and renew the leadership need to be made.
4. Singaporeans are confident that the Government will always do what it can to give them a better future

So what is his speech about, you ask? Nothing but the above. Is there any major point he spoke about? Yes, about citizens asking about the Prime Minister’s health, and about being concerned that he is finding the 4th generation leaders so soon.

Is there anything he said to do with the budget? Other than trying to justify that there is little we can do to contain imported inflation, no. If we need MPs just to tell us this, we could all serve as MPs.

I do understand the need to find the 4th generation leaders starting from now. Seeing the standards of some of the MPs, I worry that we cannot find the 4th generation in time.

And oh, somebody asked for scholarship bond to be cut to 3 years, because they fear brain drain. Alas, mere plebians like me who study in local universities are no threat to the brain drain. In Singapore, you should either be a foreigner, or a scholarship holder. But seeing that I’m criticizing some people on my own blog, I doubt I will be getting any scholarship at all, even if my grades were to become fantastic.

What do you think? Take a look at the Straits Times today and tell me if I’m wrong. Comments are welcome, even critiques.

Have you had problem solving difficult mathematics integrals? Or have you wondered if your solution is correct? Many a time we have met such problems, and they are really a hindrance to learning. Thus I present you with:

The Integrator

Just key in any equation and the website gives you the answer! You can only do a single integration though.

The Yellow Ribbon project has been around for several years now. It is mainly to call for the “Winds of Change” (wow familiar right) in the Singaporean mentality to accept criminals who are willing to change for the better. I guess this initiative should be supported as long as there is an element of biasness against repented criminals.

However, perhaps more could be done to help them? In a way, since the job market is supposedly so bad for ex-criminals (that they have to start this ribbon project), it would mean that the demand for former criminals is not high (even if there is such a thing). Any economics student can tell you that perhaps you should reduce the price, or wages in this aspect. Hence, former criminals should be more willing to work the same amount of work for lesser the pay, until their bosses trust them fully.

Labour costs is going up, and this bunch of former criminals can help SMEs offset their rising labour costs because they are willing to work for a lesser amount. What then, can we do to integrate them into society?

Can we think about scholarships? After all, thousands and ten thousands or hundreds of thousands or ______ of thousands are spent on foreign talent. These foreign talents come and study for free, and they just need to serve a 6 year bond. During this 6 years, they have to contribute to Singapore’s economy. (Which makes me think why us Singaporeans cannot do so.) Anyway, the point is that many of these foreign talents are weaker than our normal talents (considering many of our local top talents are on scholarships, the remaining in Singapore are only normal talent, if the government even considered us talents), and thus it means money is wasted. Not to mention there is not a single shred of loyalty to Singapore.

On the other hand, we have enthusiastic reformed people who want to get a job, but can’t. (This reminds me of the bloody NUS SCHOLAR who hacked into the RJC server and got a bloody fine which was paid for by other foreign talents), and is probably still on his &*)(*^% scholarship.

Money could be spent to subsidize SMEs who are willing to take on the following initiative:

SMEs could use the money to train existing prisoners. Existing prisoners who have only 1 or 2 years more to being released, and have excellent track records can be considered for this scheme. SMEs would train these prisoners in whatever skills they need whilst they stay in the prison. Upon graduation being released from prison, they can then move on to work for the SME at a reduced wage for a period of 6 years (with chances of pay increment of course).

Naturally, there is bound to be some interview process involved.

Isn’t this much better than wasting our precious resources in Singapore? By the way, if you have been reading Stomp, one of our Foreign Talents are very much involved in our NEWater scheme! Her son is actively contributing to the pool of NEWater, just at the wrong venue, in the MRT. Yes, the MRT. The MRT is now named the sMelly Rancid Toilet.

Anyway, the main point is that we got to do something to help the SMEs and the criminals, and this is the best way. Why, you mean scholarships can’t be given to criminals? Even Ah Longs throw paint nicely and sing songs to take back money already!

I watched “L Change The World” today at GV Max in Vivocity. I must say the seats are great. Anyway, the movie is a spin off, which means it has nothing to do with the official death note story. In the first place, the movie death note wasn’t exactly in tune with the manga’s. But this has nothing to do with Death Notes though the shinigami appeared for a few seconds.

The story is about another clever human, but clever in the medical field. The gist is that there is this virus that spreads quickly and kills humans quickly too. L only has a few days left before he dies from the Death Note, and he has to solve the case quickly.

Spoilers ahead:
The movie is about the virus, and its creator is this clever lady, whom it was discovered to be K, another of Watari’s people. Watari told K to change the world, and she thought she could change the world by killing off humans who were destroying Earth’s ecosystem.

The virus has an antidote who was discovered by this brilliant scientist, K’s colleague. When this scientist discovered that K is so evil, he injected himself with the deadly virus, and kept the antidote with himself. To prevent a disease outbreak in the facility, K has to destroy the lab herself, and the antidote is also gone.

However, this is not before the scientist gave his daughter something to pass to Watari (whom is dead but no one else knows). The daughter holds the key to many mysteries, and without spoiling further, let me just say that all ends well and L saves the day.

Spoilers end…

Oh..Do stay after the credits. There is a 5 second clip that shows L munching on a chocolate bar before the subtitles announce that L passed away peacefully. I guess there won’t be a sequel? Or will there? Near, a character in the manga, is manifested in the flim in the end. Perhaps this means there is a chance for future movies? However, with L missing, perhaps the attraction isn’t there anymore.

For entertaining me for 2 hours, I give “L Change The World” a total of 4/5 stars. Do catch it if you have watched the previous 2 death note movies. It will help in understanding the gist of the introduction.

I’ve got myself my own favicon after doing the one at NextTutor. Its just a small blue favicon with the letters I and G, forming IG, for IGnorantsoup. At least, I can replace the stupid favicon that’s on my bookmark to access the wordpress login page. For some weird reason, its stuck with YouTube and I hope it gets updated real soon!

Ignorantsoup seems to be getting more popular… with spam. Akismet is reporting more spam than usual and within a few weeks my spam count grew by 200. Somehow somebody configured a bot to spam me, but lovely Akismet is helping me clear those spam. If you have a wordpress blog and you have not used the Akismet Plugin yet, do so now at the Akismet download website.

I also used my favicon to replace my Avatar on Ping.sg! I have also tried using Gravatar, but it doesn’t seem to be working well at the moment. Maybe I forgot something. Oh well, and my categories are in a mess. Haha.

I’ve been following Ping.sg for quite some time and I know about the latest post about the prostitute photo, except that there is no way one can know if someone’s a prostitute.

However this is not the reason I’m blogging. Some guy actually justified that its ok to label someone a prostitute, and that it’s every blogger’s right to call something some name. Is it right?

I would think not. Bloggers are supposed to be more responsible than that. When taking a photo and giving an insulting name, we hurt the person and we destroy their reputation, no matter how small their reputation is. When we blog, we must care not to offend innocent people. It was wrong to label the lady a prostitute simply because of the way she dressed, but I commend the blogger for taking it down and not keeping quiet. Someone must learn how to keep his mouth shut.

Bloggers are also bounded by rule of law. We cannot say things that are false and risk getting sued because of defamation. Besides, its our duty to society not to write the wrong things. We can make a mistake, but not a mistake as such because it becomes an insult, although written in a tongue in cheek manner.

I feel that us bloggers are not a totally mature lot. Sometimes I find that I may have been reading a kid’s blog.

I have always wanted to have a wordpress category to write my own How-to’s for wordpress, but I haven’t been able to find the plugin to display codes. Or rather, I haven’t been actively finding the plugin.

At last I found the plugin and I am now able to display codes and hence write my own tutorials! Codes can now be displayed like the following:

If you want to download this plugin, visit this site.

From now on, I will start introducing other plugins that I think are must-haves and even write out the implementation code that you would need to use.

In the last post I stopped when I was talking about Physical Training. Potential Guardsmen will surely be concerned with the level of fitness required during the course. Let me just say that it will be tough, no doubt about it, but it is definitely manageable.

I do recall many different types of physical training which focused largely on the abs area. An example of a particular exercise is to raise our legs up whilst lying down and move your left and right name alternatively up and down. After a while your abs would be very tired, and you can’t put down your legs till everyone’s legs are straight and at a 45degree angle. This is a test of endurance as a team. If there are some jokers who do not comply with instructions, everyone suffers. This allow you to find out if your friends are really trustworthy in times of need.

After a few weeks of running and training, your fitness will definitely improve. By the way, the IPPT system for Guards is different from normal infantry. To get a Gold, you must get an A in all the 5 stations, plus running time for 2.4km be less than 9 minutes and 15 seconds. To get a general feel, for a Pass in Guards its like a Silver in Infantry. One level up.

As for SOC, there is no major difference, except that the passing time is not 9.29 and below but 9.14 and below. The 15 seconds is for pride issues. At least you can tell your friends that you passed the Guards SOC. I did, and I cleared it in 9 minutes 7 seconds after many tries.

In the next post, I will talk more about the stuff that I did. However, they will not be detailed and certain parts will not be said because certain stuff are sensitive information.

After my lunch in NUS today, I walked past this guy and he promptly gave me a flyer. Its for some Hoiio Technopreneurship Challenge, and they are asking people to join this competition. If I wanted to join, I would need to submit an executive summary by 29th February.

29 is like next Friday. Why can’t the organizers choose a better date to market their competition? It seems a little lame for me to receive this when all I got is about 1.5weeks to put a team together, churn out an executive summary, on top of all the tutorials and labs that I have to do! Someone please spare a thought for studying pupils.

A visit to their website tells me that even if I get through the next round, I have to develope my service by 3rd May. Hello? People just can’t think for us students. Our final exams are in late April to May, so the time is supposed to be given to us to study and prepare for examinations. How the hell are we going to cope well with doing both. In any case I think its pure madness for me to juggle this competition, studies and NextTutor at the same time.

Anyone interested? You have to be a tertiary student to join. Do form a team of maximum 3 people to participate. If you are going to join, good luck and do tell me about the service you are going to provide. I would be happy to do a little marketing for you on my humble blog.

There have been a few posts on Qassia and about joining them, and I finally succumbed to joining it. On first impression it seems like a wiki. However I believe that it is more like an ezine directory of information.

One of the ways to increase pagerank is to submit articles diligently to various ezine articles directory. People will then copy the articles that you have written and insert the footnote that you have supplied, which contains a link to your own website.

Now, Qassia seems to be emulating an ezine directory because you get to add bits of information, or articles, called “Intel”, and they “pay” you in Qassia dollars. I believe that these Qassia dollars are used to rank your website against other websites.

I have tried to add an intel, and the following are very familiar stuff if you have been contributing to ezines.

You get to add your title and your article (duh), and you get to add tags or keywords about that article. You are also allowed to specify any geographical tags. Lets say that your article is relevant only in Singapore, hence you put up the Singapore tag.

HTML is not allowed in the body of the article, so be sure not to copy articles that links to other sites. You may contribute up to 10 external links per intel, for reference purposes and these will be no follow links. Meaning search engines will not follow the link and you can’t use it to increase your pagerank.

However, your own website will be linked when you submit the intel and that link is not a no follow link, so the more you post, the better it is?

You can also add in up to 25 images, and in this aspect its like creating your own wiki, except that there may be other wikis just like yours with the same keywords!

You can allow the public to take your work, or even limit it to no copy, or Creative Commons. There is even a comment option which I set to off because I don’t want to spend too much time replying to comments that’s not on my blogs.

Finally, you get to add a contributor’s note at the end. For me, I will naturally write about my site, NextTutor.

The one thing weird about Qassia is that you need to include at least 7 tags or keywords. I feel that this minimum thingy should not be imposed because I have to think of what to add in when there are only very few keywords. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be any mention of a minimum 7 tags. However Qassia is in beta mode so I guess its ok.

Finally, click continue and then submit and it will be queued for screening.

If you think that Qassia is quite a nice site which could potentially increase your traffic (internet marketeers think hard!!!), and you find that I have done a nice review, why not sign up at my Qassia page now?

Qassia seems to be a great upcoming site and take some chance and try it!