Hi guys, in case you have been unable to read Chinese words in the SMB. I will be teaching you how to do so in this post. For Internet Explorer 7 users, first press Alt. to bring up the menu bar, then click on "View". A drop-down list will appear and you should place your cursor over "Encoding". Alternatively, you could just right-click on any blank area in your open browser window, then select "Encoding". Click on "more" and this a long of list of encodings will appear. You should be able to see "Chinese Simplified (HZ)". Click on it and refresh the page. Your browser should be able to detect Chinese characters now.
For Mozilla Firefox 3 users, it is the same, except that after you are done selecting the encoding, you should also click on "Auto Detect", then "Chinese". After this, Firefox will be able to view Chinese characters.
Friday, April 17, 2009
The Elements Song
Sorry, in the previous post I have embedded the wrong video. It was supposed to be this one instead:
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Elements song
Hi everyone, I shall be telling you a little bit more about Tom Lehrer and the Elements Song.
Tom Lehrer was born in New York City in American and was a talented pianist and a mathematics teacher. He was part of a Jewish-American family and he showed great interest in music at a young age.
After graduating from high school, he went on to study mathematics at Harvard and eventually got himself a degree in math in 1947.
He wrote the Elements Song in 1959 and the song contained all the elements which were discovered at that time; it had up till nobelium. The song was not written in order of the elements in the Periodic Table, but rather in a way such that it went with the tune of the song.
After the song was written, it became rather popular and it was even sung in a talent show. Here is the video recorded and posted on YouTube:
I copied the lyrics for your reference:
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium, (gasp)
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, (gasp)
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Hahvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discahvered.
Tom Lehrer was born in New York City in American and was a talented pianist and a mathematics teacher. He was part of a Jewish-American family and he showed great interest in music at a young age.
After graduating from high school, he went on to study mathematics at Harvard and eventually got himself a degree in math in 1947.
He wrote the Elements Song in 1959 and the song contained all the elements which were discovered at that time; it had up till nobelium. The song was not written in order of the elements in the Periodic Table, but rather in a way such that it went with the tune of the song.
After the song was written, it became rather popular and it was even sung in a talent show. Here is the video recorded and posted on YouTube:
I copied the lyrics for your reference:
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium, (gasp)
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, (gasp)
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Hahvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discahvered.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
NPCC Bronze Proficiency Badge Test
Yesterday, I had something different during my CCA. Instead of foot drills, we had a test instead. I was not too prepared for it as my senior just emailed me on Wednesday night.
In the email, he said that the content tested only included the five aspects of Total Defence, national symbols, national pledge, Singapore's history before WWII, and nation building after WWII. But in the test, I was also assessed on my knowledge of the Japanese Occupation. I had to depend purely on my memory for this part of the test.
Before the test, I was rather nervous as I did not revise sufficiently for the test. I had only memorised the five aspects of Total Defence, the national pledge and national symbols. I still had Singapore's history to go through, which was making me panic quite a lot. I revised as much as I could until it was time to assemble at SALT Centre.
The squad was brought to the NPCC activity rooms and the test began. I flipped through and discovered that it only had 50 MCQ questions. Most of them were rather easy, and some had really ridiculous answers.
e.g.
What can an aggressor potentially do to Singapore?
a. Cause racial and religious tension by exploiting the fact that Singapore is a multi-racial and multi-religious country
b. Make Singaporeans lose confidence in their defence
c. Kidnap the country's citizens to a faraway place
Option C is obviously wrong so the answer was options A and B only.
What was the wartime currency used in Singapore during the Japanese Occupation?
a. Papaya money
b. Yen
c. Banana money
The answer is C.
I am quite confident that I can pass the test and attain Bronze as the passing mark is 70%, which means that I can have 15 wrong answers.
In the email, he said that the content tested only included the five aspects of Total Defence, national symbols, national pledge, Singapore's history before WWII, and nation building after WWII. But in the test, I was also assessed on my knowledge of the Japanese Occupation. I had to depend purely on my memory for this part of the test.
Before the test, I was rather nervous as I did not revise sufficiently for the test. I had only memorised the five aspects of Total Defence, the national pledge and national symbols. I still had Singapore's history to go through, which was making me panic quite a lot. I revised as much as I could until it was time to assemble at SALT Centre.
The squad was brought to the NPCC activity rooms and the test began. I flipped through and discovered that it only had 50 MCQ questions. Most of them were rather easy, and some had really ridiculous answers.
e.g.
What can an aggressor potentially do to Singapore?
a. Cause racial and religious tension by exploiting the fact that Singapore is a multi-racial and multi-religious country
b. Make Singaporeans lose confidence in their defence
c. Kidnap the country's citizens to a faraway place
Option C is obviously wrong so the answer was options A and B only.
What was the wartime currency used in Singapore during the Japanese Occupation?
a. Papaya money
b. Yen
c. Banana money
The answer is C.
I am quite confident that I can pass the test and attain Bronze as the passing mark is 70%, which means that I can have 15 wrong answers.
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