New RAM

RAM prices dropped pretty low these few weeks, it was $20 for a piece of 4GB SO-DIMM two weeks ago, so I wanted to get some to upgrade my laptop to 8GB RAM. I was actually at Sim Lim that time when the price was $20, but I didn't know it was cheap then.

My printer spoiled again today, seem to be a clot at the yellow color, so I had to go down to the Nine-Ink at Sim Lim to try and get it fixed. The RAM price shot up to $22, but it is still cheap considering that it used to cost $40+. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to get the RAM since my cash flow is pretty tight recently, so I pinned the decision to my printer. The person at Nine-Ink said she could try unclogging the clot with some chemicals, but there was no guarantee that it'd work. If it didn't work, I would have to head down to brother service center for repairs. The chemical needed around an hour to work, so Anthony and I decided to get some coffee at Killiney. While drinking coffee, I decided that I should buy the RAM if my printer is fixed. From the title you would have figured out my printer is working.

So as OCD as I am, I did some comparison with my old RAM and the new one, here are the screenshots:

Micron 2GB PC3-8500F

Kingston 4GB PC3-12800

I got the 1600MHz RAM since they're of the same price for all frequencies, turns out my laptop's motherboard can only support up to 1066MHz.

Here's the pictures of the RAM itself:

Micron 2GB PC3-8500F

Kingston 4GB PC3-12800

Changing Perspective

 It was a small presentation which presented unexpected insights. Looking from the replay of the presentation, I found out that I am failing in the very thing I thought I was proud of. Of course, I know that I am out of touch with presentation since my semester has been extremely slack thus far; my presentation skills are far from top notch. But the epiphany is not on the presentation skills, it represented something bigger: the difference in perspective. My character was wrong. Comparing my performance with Anthony’s performance, I realize that the difference is not in ability, but in perspective. I realize the need to give your best in doing things. I have been slacking too much this semester that I have dismissed every single thing as small and insignificant. While the carefree nature is what I have held in pride for a long time, I have been re-presented with its problems: the ambiguous line between carefree and reckless. From the presentation replay, I believe the word best describe my performance is ‘frivolous’. While I hold my freedom and flexibility in pride, I realize that it conveys the image of being unprofessional and unserious, the lack of respect. I thought that I was portraying the image of a cool and unrestrained, but know what he’s doing person, but I am really just flying all over the charts. Anthony’s well composed posture and charisma stuck me deeply, I realized that it is the image I wanted.

The problem of this boils down to something deeper. It’s not a matter of ability/competency, the stark difference is of perspective. Anthony’s (and Dennis’) attitude has been to give all the best to whatever they do, while I have a more heck care attitude. This difference in perspective leads to the difference in how we see things and how we handle them. This in turn leads to the difference of experience and lessons learned from identical events, and the experience loop back to affect the perspective, often reinforcing it. In other words, if you care about the things you do, you keep caring, and vice versa.

Further thought brought me back to an older theory I had on character (and perspective). It often seem that attributes of a person’s character are only contrasting: carefree versus serious, extrovert versus introvert, emotional versus pragmatic, etc. But that is not true, these attributes are not mutually exclusive, you can lean towards a certain attribute more, but it’s hardly an absolute true or false. Adding on to the fact that there can be infinitely many possible perspective/attributes, all these points together form a sphere, and the character is a certain point in the sphere. Of course, philosophically it may not be a sphere, it may be boundary-less, that is possible as well, but that’s not the scope of what I’m trying to say. I started this post by naming it “changing perspective”, but it is not exactly ‘changing’, it’s more like ‘injecting’. Being carefree and flexible is cool, but I drifted too far to that it’s becoming reckless/heck-care, and benefits are diminishing. I need to inject some seriousness and professionalism to bring some balance.

To end this post off, I have two points on expectations which have been hovering in my mind for some time:
1. You can’t expect to act like A and think that people will view you as B. it’s impossible. You are how you behave.
2. You can’t expect others to fulfill your expectations, while you yourself constantly fall short of others’ expectations.

Just a quick note to record my thoughts, I might write a post on this if I can think of something to write.

Psychological Homeostasis

Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, relatively constant condition –Wikipedia

Adapting from the idea of homeostasis, psychological homeostasis is the property that people tends to react to stimuli in a way that will maintain a comfortable state of mental condition.

The idea of psychological homeostasis is in the domain of behavioral psychology, as it looks at people's behavior in response towards stimuli in attempt to maintain a comfortable state of mind. A basic model of human actions goes like this: stimulus → process → actions. For a given stimulus, our actions depend on our thinking, how we process it. How we think depends largely on our character, which is shaped largely by our experiences. The notion of a comfortable state of mental condition is subjective. Thus, unlike an equation for a scientific formula, there are no definite set points for psychological homeostasis, how psychological homeostasis is achieved it varies with the individual.

Let’s consider two extreme examples.

First, the bitch: the one who pushes the blame to everyone else. No matter what happens, it’s always somebody else’s fault, it’s never their fault. The bitch has the best state of mental health: by pushing the blame to everyone else and become clean of any responsibility, not my fault = no stress.

The bitch is usually well equipped with woman logic, they are capable of arguing their way through everything. It is impossible to reason with them due to the nature of defensive reasoning. They have the inert ability to overturn facts to protect themselves. They employ woman logic so splendidly that often leave you speechlessly defeated. Arguably, their defensiveness may stem from an extremely low self esteem leading to the formation of giant ego bubble to mask their tiny inner core, but causes varies widely with the individual.

As a rule of thumb: avoid any confrontation with the bitch and give them what they want. Giving them what they want serves well to their psychological homeostasis and further reinforces their bitch behavior, but you really have no choice. Leave them – if possible – it’s good for your own psychological homeostasis.

On the other hand, we have the guilty. The guilty is the complete opposite of the bitch. No matter what happens, they always think that it’s their fault. They try to fix things, only to end up making things worse. They are often the nice guy trying to please everybody. The bitch loves the guilty, it’s the perfect target to offload the blame to, and the guilty would just accept anything that the bitch blames him for.

The guilty can be considered as a failure on psychological homeostasis. They gather negative energy, it is easy for them to spiral into depression with the thinking that everything is their fault. Similar to the bitch, the guilty usually have low self esteem, but they lack the bubble to hide in and protect themselves. The society today celebrates selfishness, people are more likely to build the egoistic bubble and become a bitch, than to succumb to their low self esteem and become a guilty.

Psychological homeostasis is closely related to my human level theory. To understand human levels better, read my post on the Level 1 Humans. In essence, low level humans are incapable of processing; they have no awareness on themselves or their surroundings. The higher the human level, the better the processing and awareness.

The bitch and the guilty form the two approximate ends of the behaviors which people would take to achieve psychological homeostasis. How psychological homeostasis is achieved depends on the individual’s human level. Statistically it should be a normal distribution between these two ends, but I’m biased to feel that there are more bitches, since the easiest way to achieve psychological homeostasis is to be a bitch. Everybody hates them, but they’re the happiest person in their world. Being a bitch, self fulfillment is all that matters to them.

While life is a lot easier being a bitch, it is morally meaningless to live your entire life without any self improvement. Thus, despite the good state of health from being a bitch, achieving psychological homeostasis by knowing what is right or wrong would be a more morally dignified method.

The proper exercise of psychological homeostasis gets you through the tough times in life, makes you a better person. But it requires a higher human level. You need to be able to judge properly whether you should be held accountable for a given event. This is exceptionally difficult when evidences and people (bitches) point faults to you, a morally strong person will tend to self-blame. You need to be in touch with yourself to know when you should be sorry and when shit just happens. You have lived with yourself since birth, you should very well know you own character to analyze events and judge for yourself. It is not easy; too much of ego – you become a bitch, too much of self-blame – you are depressed. This is precisely why a higher human level is required to do the processing.

Level 1 humans do not process, life is simple for them; they are basically: stimulus → reaction. Higher level humans puts themselves in between the stimulus and their reaction, by doing the proper processing, they have greater control over their reactions, learn from events and store it as part of their experience. And from the experiences stored throughout your life, they can process new event better thus gaining even more/better experience. This forms a general circle of learning. This is also the reason why different people have different wisdom regardless of age.

Being good at managing your psychological homeostasis is important. The bitches maintain a good mental state by hiding inside their ego bubble, shrieking responsibility and pushing blame to others. However, they are extremely vulnerable to drastic events, if a setback is to occur that is so great that it bursts their bubble, they fall sharply and may never recover. While all man are affected by setback to some extent, a high level human who constantly keeps himself in touch is able to respond well to drastic setbacks. They are more likely to recover, and recover faster.

Changes

Something bothered me more than it should have. We were talking about emotional intelligence and social intelligence in class today, and i ask: "how do you induce/teach emotional/social intelligence to a person?"

From my observations, changes are made by these general steps:
1. Awareness in self and its surrounding (through observation and experience)
2. Through awareness, identification areas of weaknesses
3. Acknowledgement of identified weakness and hence the will/need to change
4. Modify behavior towards desired outcome, usually through self determination or training
5. Maintain behavioral modeling until it becomes a part of you

Changes are never easy, step 4&5 (modeling and maintenance) are the longest and most tedious, accomplishing this requires a lot of guidance and determination, it's understandable that people may fail here.

When change is not possible due to weak character/determination, it is quite understandable, but one should at least have awareness. However, many fail even at the first 3 steps: awareness, identification and acknowledgement. One cannot change when one does not know what to change. Even worse, as people grow, they tend to become stubborn as their lifestyle and thinking are deeply embedded, when problems are pointed out to them, it is like poking into their comfort zone and they thus turn defensive. Instead of accepting, they are convinced further that they are right; they refuse acknowledgement even when the identification is presented to them.

I thought I can get some new insights from a more experienced person, but it pointed to the same answer. The answer was not surprising, but still disappointing, as i was hoping that there is a way to do it. The comfort is probably that coming out with the same philosophy myself, I am not too bad, right?

Leadership

I was reading about leadership and teammate management, and I realized that I’ve been drifting away from greatness. I feel that I have been somewhat authoritarian in my thinking and leadership styles lately. My pride has made me arrogant, losing the connection with my people somehow. This superiority complex has led to selfishness in my behavior somewhat, and I’m beginning to fail to understand that the people I lead are complex individuals as humans themselves. I’m starting to enforce what I want on the team, based on my own perspective, failing to think from their perspective.

The leader provides vision and leads the team towards this vision. But vision must be built based on his people. To do so, the people must be constantly consulted. Truly great leaders adapt their strategies to the people around them and the situations in front of them. I hope I am on track for the search for greatness.

Silence is gold

Extending from the "Some things are better left un-said" post, I’ve finally learned the next lesson: silence is gold. Or rather, partial silence. Keeping silence for a talkative guy is extremely torturing, but recently I’m starting to appreciate and enjoy the silence. The moment when you not only know something, but also know what should not be said, what should be, and when to say it. That’s when you find inner peace, when you see such a clear picture of what is going on. This feels a lot better than blurting out everything. There are things that people don’t like to hear, there are things that people don’t need to know about. Being frank not only hurts others, it always turns back and hurt you as well.

I open up my laptop when I am sad

Feeling a bit down today and don't feel like doing anything, so I opened up my laptop for cleanup. Acer laptops are easy to dismantle and they usually have service manuals, just google "Acer [model] service manual", it likely you can find the service manual for your laptop.

Anyways, here's a picture of my half naked laptop:

Level 1 Humans

The human, the Homo sapiens. ‘Sapiens’ – related to the word ‘Sapience’ which (by Wikipedia) is often defined as wisdom, or the ability of an organism or entity to act with appropriate judgment, a mental faculty which is a component of intelligence or alternatively may be considered an additional faculty, apart from intelligence, with its own properties.

The brain is a very powerful tool. As humans, we are able to think, and think of what we are thinking, and think of what we are thinking about what we are thinking, and so on. The brain is capable of deep and multi level thought processes, but it is often not put into good use. Of course, I'm refering to are those born with brains which have no defects, the unfortunate mentally handicap group is not in discussion. Now then, my interest is in the observations that people who are equipped with a perfectly healthy brain, yet not utilizing it to its full potential.

What is meant by “deep and multi level thought process”? Let us look at a simple input-output model, where the input is an external stimulus (job, academic stress etc) and the output is the response of the human (emotions, actions etc). A basic model of human actions goes like this: stimulus → process → response. The subject of interest is in the processing part.

For a high level human, the processing is extremely complex and varies with each individual. There is identification, analysis, control, feedback, and in each part, there can be a recursion of the whole process. On the other end, at the base are the level 1 humans, their response is mostly direct and subconscious; there are zero processing of the inputs which are applied to them.

But these level 1 humans are extremely important; they form the backbone of the society and the economy. Being easily influence by the media and marketing, they keep the money flowing in the economy, they are the basis of why/how society works.

Take the apple products for example, notice how widespread iProducts has become? Their products are designed such that minimal intelligence is required of the user, for people with limited processing capabilities. The interesting part is, thanks to media and marketing, these level 1 iHumans subconsciously believe that they are high class, intelligent and knowledgeable. On there other hand, there is the counterpart of the level 1 iHumans: the level 1 andro-humans, who stubbornly believe they’re so cool just because they reject the mainstream iProducts. These people have close to zero technical knowledge and almost everything they say is wrong. It doesn't matter which 'religion' they subscribe to, these level 1 humans are just preys of marketing and they don't even realize it. It is cute how entertaining they can be.

Take politics as another example, suppose a general political system with just the ruling party vs opposition party. Level 1 humans fall into two main groups: one who believes whatever propaganda the ruling party prints on the media, and the “righteous rebels” who think they know the truth behind everything, but actually just believe in the illusion painted by the oppositions. Each team blindly believes the bullshit fed by their “team leader”. Higher level humans are capable of analyzing the situation and realize that both parties are shit.

The point is: level 1 humans are not generally incapable of information processing; they eat whatever they are provided with, and then shit. The amazing part is, they are equipped with a perfectly functional brain. I believe that my brain is not any smarter anyone else’s, but I don’t understand why level 1 humans don’t seem to be putting their brain to use. Be it at work, school, or personal life, level 1 humans are capable of only the most direct straightforward response in actions or emotions without any depth of processing. For the record, I do not think I rank very high in the levels of humans, but I think my level is not too bad, since it’s sufficient enough to observe these trends.

Reality

Life has an interesting way of pulling you back to earth; you may have thought that you have everything and ready to fly, a simple reality check slaps you right in your face, reminds you that you have nothing. I have received many compliments recently, maybe way too many. So much that I started to dream, started to believe that I have a bright future ahead. And I began to think that I am better than everyone else.

But a simple reality check was all it took: I have nothing now. The fact is always there: I have pathetically little in my account to even survive, while others hold amount I can hardly count. While I continue to dream about my future, many are already having more than I can ever achieve.
They were born lucky, that's what I thought. But were they? Am I just assuming that others were just lucky so that I can use it as an excuse for my laziness and incapability? Am I not fighting hard enough for my own future? Am I missing opportunities along the way which could have made me better?

搵到食 vs 瑞春

I went a bit of food hunting recently, 宝贝 loves to eat dim sum, so we tried 揾到食 and 瑞春.

揾到食 (Wen Dou Sek):

Located at 126 Sims Avenue. This place is a short walk from Paya Lebar MRT station, not difficult to find if you have Google maps. It is a 24 hours Dim Sum place to satisfy your cravings during unearthly hours, and all those who have a car.

炸虾卷, 纸包鸡

皮蛋粥

烧卖, 虾肠粉, 流沙包, 小笼包

虾饺

Receipt:

炸虾卷	4.00
纸包鸡	4.50
皮蛋粥	3.00
烧卖	2.50
虾肠粉	3.50
流沙包	4.00
小笼包	3.50
虾饺	3.20

The food is quite not bad, above hawker standard; the price could do better. I would say that there should be many stalls ‘hiding’ in markets all over Singapore that can match the food quality, and possibly with a slightly lower price. But that’s provided that you wake up early morning to go market to yum-cha.

瑞春 (Swee Choon):

Next: 瑞春. Located at 185/187/189/191 Jalan Besar. Yes, 瑞春 takes 4 shop spaces, and there’s a good reason why: this place is fully packed even with 4 shop spaces. This place can be quite difficult to find, we walked from Farrer Park MRT, I have a bad sense of direction, so I got lost trying to find this place. They only operate in the night, Mon-Sat 6pm-10am, Sun and Public Holiday till 12noon, closed on Tuesday Night.

皮蛋粥

葡式蛋撻, 鲜虾腐皮卷

奶黄流沙包, 小笼包, 虾饺, 烧卖

奶黄流沙包!!

Receipt:

皮蛋粥	2.50
葡式蛋撻	3.00
鲜虾腐皮卷	2.80
奶黄流沙包	3.30
小笼包	4.00
虾饺	2.20
烧卖	1.60

I would say the food is pretty good, very exquisite, better than what most of the restaurants can offer. But the price is extremely expensive as you can see. The portion they serve is extremely little, the amount shown in the pictures is the actual amount served, I didn’t 偷吃! Good to makan once in a while, the food is really nice.

Both places offer different style in food and dinning; for sure not the atas kind of restaurant, but nice place for people (and couples) to hang out at.

Priorities re-visted

The manager of the team which I’m having internship with was leaving, it was at a farewell dinner, I had a chance to chat with my colleagues. I was on the topic that when a person in the team leaves, the rest of the team starts re-thinking about their priorities, and starts to leave as well; a very experienced colleague taught me a very valuable lesson this night.

I was on the topic of money versus experience on my friend’s facebook some time ago. I said: “internship or part time job, on the most fundamental basis, it is trade. It is the commodity you trade with your boss/host company that is different. And the terms that constitutes a fair or proper trade varies among individuals … … when I say the terms varies with the individual. It is how much emphasis you put in experience or money. In today's world, quantifiable terms such as money, modular credits, and grades tend to be more dominant. I am no exception. I’m a greedy person who wants high remuneration and good experience at the same time, I’d be lucky if the other party is willing to offer me more than what I offer in return.”

In other words, my priority in life is money; it has always been that way. My logic was simple, no matter what job you do, good or bad, if you aim for the best monetary remuneration, at least you can see that you are compensated for your time. But one thing I didn’t manage to figure out: why did I think that way? I have been talking about trying to figure out what I want in life for a long time, and I didn’t have the answer. This colleague pointed out a simple fact (rough quote): “A lot of people are constantly trying to figure out what they want in life, but the fact is: you will almost never find out. Just like love: people are always trying to know if that is the love of their life, but you never do. Very few people actually do find out or even achieve what they want in life. They are really lucky. There is really no good answer to what you want in life, some people spend all their time chasing after money, climbing up the ladder, but they find that they are climbing it for the wrong reason; they weren’t happy.”

The learning point I derived from that is: I do not know what I want in life, but I chose money. As always, it was a defensive measure. I mentioned that I am an extremely defensive person who hates to be taken advantage of. So I chose money, this ensures that no matter how bad the job is, at least I am getting quantifiable returns. Not a very smart choice, maybe, but it seem to be the best path I can follow right now.

A friend asked her if she finds me negative, since the views I hold is often considered extremist by my peers. Her reply was really reassuring: “no, he is not, he just have more awareness of things going on.” This gives me good confidence that my train of thought is quite correct. I was very much affected by how people view me due to the events going on around me; I was starting to think that I am indeed being extremist. But I am not. In her words, I am more aware of things going on in the world than my peers do. My peers grow up in relatively protected environment compared to myself. I had to pay my own bills, I have to earn my own upkeep, I was forced to work while others are enjoying their holidays, and even when my peers are also working on internship, they get good allowance from their parents, I don’t. Yes, I’m complaining quite a lot, many of my peers think that it's not a big deal, but it was always a big deal to me, I took it to heart. But I am grateful for some of my experiences, I’ve seen and know that this world is not a pretty place. While the many of them read to 'learn' that the world sucks, I've lived it. For the record, I know I am still extremely shallow compared to the world out there; but compared to many of the rest, I am well better, for now.

I received a lot of compliments tonight as well, and these compliments coming from people I respect, that is really reassuring. Having a mindset different from other people is tough, many people fail to see what you see and tend to think that you’re just an insolent asshole. Mixing with them for long makes you feel like an outcast. When living in a box, you tend to only see the corners and begin to forget about the world outside, you start to accept the box, and think like those with you in the box; and the box gets even smaller. I am glad that there are in fact quite a number of people who agree with me and these people are well achieved in what they do, I am not alone.

Some things are better left un-said

Words of the wise: some things are better left un-said.

I have a notorious reputation for saying the most controversial stuff to people (and in public). That has caused me quite a lot of problems. I was chatting with a friend just now, and it suddenly became apparent that I should know when to keep my mouth shut. I always thought that facts are facts, even if I don't point it out, the stupid are still stupid; the useless are still useless. But my friend presented a better perspective, funny why I've never tried to see it that way. The logic is simple, saying it doesn't change anything or anyone, but it brings hatred towards myself.

A lesson that many had told me in many ways, but learned only now: certain things don't need to be said.

ROM, RAM, Program, Firmware, Operating System

The terms used in memory systems can be very complex to understand, with so many different kinds of memory; this gets even more confusing when one name can be used to refer to many things, and one thing can be called by many names. In this post, I shall attempt to explain the myriad of names and things in the memory hierarchy. The things that I write below are from my understanding in this area, if there are any inaccuracies in what I write, please do drop a comment, I will be happy to correct it.

ROM - Read-Only Memory

The read-only memory, as its name suggests, contains data which are read-only. But it is not that simple.

To understand the ROM, I should talk about Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). ASICs commonly refer to customized integrated circuits which are designed in hardware to do a specified task. However, in a broader view, ASICs have 3 main categories: full-custom, semi-custom, and programmable. Technically, ROM is a type of full-custom ASIC, which logic/program is implemented by mask, and cannot be altered after the IC is fabricated, hence the name “Read-Only”. Advances in the IC fabrication processes gave rise to semi-custom and programmable ASICs. In these kinds of IC, the logic/program stored in the IC can be altered using a programmer device. One example of such IC is the Erasable and Programmable Read-Only Memory (EPROM); its name is oxymoronic: since it’s both ‘erasable’ and ‘programmable’, but yet “read-only”.

This gets even more confusing when it comes to larger embedded systems and devices such as the mobile phone. The memory used in these systems is mostly flash memory, a more advanced memory storage compared to the EPROMs. Flash memory is technically classified as Read-Write Memory (RWM), which is capable of both read and write access.

The memory of interest when talking about ‘ROM’ actually refers to the non-volatile memory of a system where the program of the system resides in (non-volatile means the data does not disappear after power supply is cut off) .Technically, a more suitable term to use is “program memory”. The type of memory used as program memory may not be just read-only; they can be programmable, or read/write capable memories.

The term ‘ROM’ has been casually used to refer to the program memory, as well as the program stored in the memory. This is because, although the type of memory used as program memory may technically be programmable or read-write capable, the data stored in the program memory is mostly read-only; it generally doesn't alter itself during runtime.

It is now clear why it gets confusing as ‘ROM’ is used to interchangeably refer to multiple things. For example, when I say that I am “flashing the rom to my phone”; it means that I am rewriting the program memory of my phone with another program.

RAM  - Random Access Memory

By definition, Random Access Memory (RAM) is any integrated circuit that allows stored data to be accessed in any order with a worst case performance of constant time. By this definition, it basically covers all the memory storage devices today, even the hard disk drives. Yes, the HDDs are considered as RAM as well. Although there are significant timing differences when accessing different locations on the HDD, it is still considered as a RAM as it is random access capable. This is because in older times, magnetic tapes were a popular form of memory storage, to access a certain data on a tape, it need to scroll to that particular location (sequential access), in comparison with the tape, HDD is a random access capable memory.

But the above is just the technical definition, the term ‘RAM’ now refers to the main memory of a system.

We’ve talked about the program memory of a system above: the program memory holds the program of the system. The program is basically a set of instructions which the system will perform; it defines what the system will do. But just having the instruction is not sufficient for the system to work: the system will need to handle and work on data. To do that, it needs memory. That is why this memory is known as the main memory, or simply memory.

The main memory and program memory are different in many ways, access timings and technical details aside; the main reason why it is different is due to the difference in functionality: the program memory and main memory have different purpose, and the system should, generally, not alter its own program during runtime.

The program memory stores the instructions for the systems, the tasks performed by the systems is defined by these instructions. The main memory holds the intermediate data of the system, when the system performs some tasks, it will usually require an input and generate an output according to the instructions. In most cases, the input/output can be stored in the main memory and will be accessed when the system needs to use them to perform task.

As one of the key feature of the main memory is its fast random access speed during operation, the term ‘RAM’ is commonly used to refer to the main memory, and lesser used for the original technical definition it stood for. This, however, creates confusion when the same memory is refer to as 'RAM', "main memory" and "memory".

Program, firmware, operating system

Let us being this section by looking at the definition of each item found in Wikipedia:

• Program - a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer.
• Firmware - the combination of read-only memory and program code and data stored in it
• Operating System - a set of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programs.

With the above definitions, it is easily seen that a program is part of a firmware, and an operating system is technically a super larger program which is capable of managing hardware resources and running other programs within it.

The confusion arises when different names are used to refer to the same item again.

Let’s look at an example of android: android is an operating system for devices such as mobile phones, tablets, media players; no confusion with that right? The problem: these devices are traditionally devices using small program memory (ROM); the architecture for such devices is called ‘firmware’ by definition. Operating systems are originally terms for computers, where the OS is stored in larger HDD auxiliary memory. However, small operating systems such as Android, while being less powerful than computer OS such as Windows/Mac/Linux, also qualify for the name “operating system” by definition.

This is why the program on a mobile phone can be referred to as both ‘firmware’ and “operating system”. And as mentioned above, it is also casually referred to as ‘ROM’ since it resides in the program memory, which is casually referred to as ‘ROM’ as the memory used as program memory is traditionally read-only memory.

Endnote

I hope my explanation helped clearing up some of the fog. I am still very green in this area, and my knowledge may be superficial. As mentioned above, if there are any inaccuracies in what I wrote, please do drop and comment and point it out, I'd be more than happy to change.

Blunder at work

I've been working at my intern company for quite some time now, been wanting to post about the interesting things at work, but I was too busy. Due to a weird twist of fate, the first post that I make is actually about my mistake at work.

I am put in charge of the inventory keeping of my team, logistics has always been my weakest spot, back in NS when I was in charge of the signal equipments, I had a lot of trouble with the paperwork. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to learn to do logistics properly.

My supervisor was on course for these 2 days, so he had some task for me on the inventory checking, I was supposed to filter out a part of the inventory and do a small report and send to my boss, I didn't. After the matching of inventory records, I actually assumed that I should wait for my supervisor to see it after his course, but there was clear instruction was to tabulate and send. Now it is likely that my boss thinks my supervisor and I done nothing.

In my past jobs, I have disappointed some of my bosses before, they had a certain expectation of me, I failed to fulfill it. The biggest problem I have in my work is that I always wait, in some cases it was procrastination, in this case it's not that much, but it may affect my supervisor's appraisal and mine. I kept that in mind for my internship, but still this happened.

I guess the blessing in this misfortune is, this is an internship; while it does affect the chance to work at my host company upon graduation, the impact on my career path is not as strong. This internship has been a really good experience for me, several mistakes including this one serve to be valuable lessons to patch the flaws in my working style and attitude. But change is really hard, the first step to change is to identify and recognize the problem, I think I've done that already; how to patch the problem probably is the difficult part...

The new Bishan Park

Toa Payoh is a pretty centralized concrete area, it's pretty hard to find places to go cycling. I do go to East Coast Park sometimes, but the journey is quite long and dangerous, so Bishan Park is the nearest place that I can play around.

Bishan Park was closed for renovations some time back, and was re-opened recently. I've been wanting to visit Bishan Park for quite a while now, but due to my busy schedule and supreme procrastination, I finally went there today.

My first reaction when I got there was "What the...? They spent so much money on this crap...?" The place looks pretty messy and somewhat ill maintained, but as I proceed further, I realized it's done on purpose. It's easy to see that design of the park was made to be as 'wild' as possible, the greenery look like it has never been trimmed before. It brings you closer to the nature, but in my opinion, ubin will be a better place to do that. There are also some touch of urban construction, bridges, pavilions, artistic-looking-steps, in all the combination makes the place feel pretty cosy and nice, a good place for the family to hang out during weekends.

Here's some pictures:

Combination of messy greenery, bridge, and HDB in the scene

Wild grass that looks untrimmed

Random artistic sculpture in the middle of the park

Entrance at Ang Mo Kio

Do you really need to tell people that it's a pond?

That pond looks quite nice actually

Lily-pads in the pond, nice.

 

McDonald invades everywhere

Joe Ten turns two!

Yay~ Joe Ten is two years old now~!

I didn't really expect that I'd be keep this blog for so long, since I have such a short attention span, I usually end up being lazy and give up. Joe Ten now has viewers across the globe, with over 9000 views to date, around 500 views monthly.

For those who landed in Joe Ten through google, I hope you found what you're looking for, and I'm glad that what I wrote is of help to you.

For friends who visits Joe Ten regularly, thank you for your support, it's nice to know that you have interest in what I write.

Keeping a blog is pretty fun, sharing the things I've seen and done, and keeping tracking of my own thinking (and rubbing my ego sometimes). I do read some of my old posts every now and then, it brings back memories, and allows me to look back on my train of thoughts; looking at all the stupid things I've said and done makes me realize how far I've gone. It's easy to lose focus of what you're doing sometimes, but looking back on those records, you are reminded of things, good or bad,  that you have slowly forgotten.

From single, to happily attached with 宝贝, this blog has recorded some of my best moments in life.

Happy birthday, Joe Ten.

Pride

It’s been quite a while since I last posted something; this semester is my most hectic semester yet, with several projects piled up my neck. NUS education has always been just mindless mugging with brute force work done till wee hour in the morning, so I didn’t expect to learn much other than the usual dead stuff, and I end up viewing my projects as “yet another project”. But the very viewpoint that I have taken is the lesson I’ve learnt this semester.

All the while, I thought my projects are just very simple projects, projects that have almost zero complexity; I had no pride in what I was doing.

But during my 2001 project demonstration, I found out that isn’t entirely true; I was surprised by how impressed my peers are, I was really happy with all the “wahhh” that I heard. To be honest, a great deal of credit is due to CK, he was the one who spent one entire week putting such an awesome model together, I was very impressed myself when I first saw the model.

 So I thought, wow my project is useless, but at least it looks really awesome. But that isn’t true as well, my project really had substance. The most crucial point is when assessors are impressed as well.

Quoting some of the comments:
“This is quite an elegant system”
“The touch screen is quite responsive”
“This (Pseudo-Mobile) looks nicer than the PCB”
“The RF communication is quite stable”

That was when I really felt pride in my project. At that moment, my team had a glimpse of hope at getting an A. But of course, we know that the final demo is only 20%, getting an A is still quite a distance.

I haven’t mentioned anything about what I was working on in my blog this whole time, so a little background: the Pseudo Mobile is an attempt to simulate an actual mobile phone communication via RF communication as GSM module was too expensive. There is just one problem, and the problem lies in the backbone of how it is supposed to work: RF communication is extremely hard to harness. I had a lot of trouble getting the RF to work and I really thought my part of the project is going to be scrapped. But luckily, with an algorithm modified from the suggestion of the EE god AZP, RF finally worked at the very last minute.

The part on the touch screen: the touch screen was done by JY, but when my portion integrated with hers, the system hangs. Long story short: I spent one night working until 3am to rewrite her entire program. It was really tedious, as the flow of the program is quite complicated; handling each state and action had to be planned properly. But hearing “The touch screen is quite responsive”, it all paid off.

In the entire semester, there’s just once setback after another. At a certain point, I was so discouraged, I keep saying that we should just stare at our project and cry; I didn’t notice how hurtful and disrespectful that can sound to my teammates.

It is really funny that I’m talking about taking pride in our work, given that extraordinary high amount of ego I have. Then I realized, I was hiding behind my ego. I've been told that I am arrogant, I don’t deny that. But the thing is, I know how capable I am, and I can gauge if other people is more capable than me or not. For example, there is this salesman I worked with last holiday, and he was trying to show off his tech knowledge (particularly in android system) in front me. Although I am green in my field and not even graduated, I know how much of what he said was true, and he was just trying to impress the girls. I agree that correcting him was the manifest of my arrogance, but the fact stays: my competency larger than his. Hmmm, to think of it, pitting me against a salesman does sound quite degrading now.

Anyways, in this case, the project was at the point in my circle of competence, I thought it was out of circle of competence, and hence it went out of my circle of confidence. I underestimated my own level of competency.

Having pride in what you do is not easy, even with my theories on confidence, I lack that confidence at crucial moments. Project is one, interview is another. I had an interview for my summer vacation internship recently, the reason why I didn't get the job is likely to be administrative issues, but I did quite badly for the interview. I take pride in my social skills, I talk a lot, but it was really funny how I had nothing much to say for the interview, I should have had a lot of things to talk about. The good thing that came of that is the experience: I didn't get the job, but the exposure put that into my circle of confidence now.

Enough for the great wall of text, here’s the pictures of my 2001 project:
 

Main model

Pseudo Mobile

Love. Cookies.

Why does Jon keep a cookie jar even though he knows that Garfield would always finish it?

~ Because he loves his cat.


I was munching on some cookies and for some reason I thought of Garfield.

Jon rages each time Garfield steals all the food, despite of that, he still keep food around for Garfield. Sometimes that's what love is about. You do things that you know will eventually make yourself angry; yet you still do it because it something that you do for your loved ones.

http://foodphd.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/365-cookies/
I ate all the cookies, so here's a picture of that cookies I ate from Food Ph.D

Faith. Passion

I have been thinking: what makes a successful person successful? First up, let’s be clear about “success”, I’m not talking about what success is, I’m talking the factor which propels a person to attain success. In order words, what drives them to continue doing what they do?

One thing which is easy to spot: some people are highly motivated, determined, and disciplined in the things they do. So what fuels this motivation?

I arrive at two things: faith, and passion.

The faith I mean here is simply religious faith, of any religion. My belief is aligned with the agnostic-atheist thinking, which basically mean I don’t believe in religion. However, my point here is not about whether god exists, which religion is true, blah, blah, blah. I have a good share of that debate. My point is, having faith gives amazing strength to a person. Quoting a common line heard in my secondary school days as they go major rugby competitions: “If god is with us, who can be against us?” This roughly sums up the idea. As much as I hate to admit, this faith is indeed powerful. This faith in god empowers a person to believe the “I can do it” concept.

A valid point raised by a friend as I told him about this concept: “Not all successful people are religious”. Yes, good point, but that’s not my point, my point is: faith can drive people to success.

Okay, so having said that I have an agnostic-atheist belief, acquiring faith is extremely unlikely, and I went on to explore the “non-religious” people. You see, the people I mix around with, they’re some pretty awesome people. I have a friend who is a volunteer at Red Cross. I have a friend who is a volunteer for MINDS. I have a friend who is a scout, and stayed with that CCA for many years. I have a friend who was a dedicated rugby player, went on to being a rugby coach, and recently featured on international news. Being a mercenary, I do not believe in volunteerism, CCA, or anything along that line. It’s just a waste of time. But taking one step back to analyze what keeps these people doing what they do, I see the thing called “passion”. My 2 volunteer friends have passion in helping people, and my other 2 friends who are committed to their CCAs have passion in the very thing they do.

What do I have passion in? Money? Probably. I’m not saying that money is a bad fuel for passion, but it’s just that after so long, it feels hollow to be doing things just for money. I know this contradicts several things which I have talked about before, but after so long, I need to start being true to myself.

I have yet to find the answer to my passion, it is not something which you can acquire overnight. And finding your passion is tough, especially after worshiping money for so long, you develop a “f**k this, it aint worth the trouble” attitude to everything which is not lucrative. Now, for those reading this, don’t expect to be asking flavors from me, I will show you the finger. I’m not saying that money is not important, I’m just admitting that it may not be the most important thing, and I probably knew it all along.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Handmade rose bouquet for my love.

Okay I'm actually a minute too slow in posting, so it's past valentine's day already..

 but anyways..

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody!

For those who are attached, hope you guys will stay in love!
For those singles, your love comes in the most unexpected times, keep your hopes high!

"True love isn't so much a dreamy feeling that you have as it is an enduring commitment to give sacrificially -- even, or perhaps especially, when you don't feel like it."
-- William R. Mattox, Jr.

PS. My girlfriend is AWESOME =D

Baked Rice

Mum went to Malaysia for cousin's wedding dinner, so I got 宝贝 to come over~

And.. I made Baked Rice for lunch, not bad for the first attempt~!