australia – Page 9 – sixthseal.com

Sexually Explicit Entertainment May Offend

February 4, 2003 by HB

I’ve got an exam tomorrow – the final paper of BUS 3650 Business
Applications of Neural Networks. That’s my summer semester subject if
you’re wondering. Well, the subject is not as easy as I thought due to
several formulas that requires knowledge of DIFFENTIATION.

/me makes a gesture to ward off evil.

I never would have thought I’ll come across that word again after
Additional Math in high school. My thinly disguised attempt to solicit
specific hints didn’t go so well either:

I suggest you make sure you understand
the tutes and examples given in the lectures. If you don’t understand
something, come and see me during my consultation hours this week (see
web site for times) with very specific questions.
regards,
kate

Dr. Kate A. Smith
Deputy Head & Director of Research
School of Business Systems telephone: +61 3 9905 5800
Monash University    mobile: 0438 112912
Clayton, Victoria 3800    fax: +61 3 9905 9422
Australia email:
kate.smith@infotech.monash.edu.au

WWW:
http://www.bsys.monash.edu.au/staff/kate/kate.htm

Chu Er

February 2, 2003 by HB

Day 2 of Chinese New Year

Who?

Me.

What?

Nothing much basically, I’m just trying to finish reading my lecture
notes today for my final exam. Oh man, I am sooooooooo not prepared.

When?

Wednesday.

How?

I don’t know.

Why?

Fish sandwich and chips from slops.

My head feels like someone had a go at it with a sledgehammer. My
brain feels like porridge. Someone eat it before it gets cold. Note to
self: Everything in moderation.

Chinese New Year Eve dinner

January 31, 2003 by HB

This is what I got for the New Year reunion dinner without the reunion today.

Honey chicken, kai lan in oyster sauce, sliced fish with scallops and ginger.

Steamed rice, garlic prawn and char kueh tiaw.

Magnum almond ice cream, Sara Lee Bites – frozen cheese cake and fudge brownies.

Mmm…I’m going to attempt to eat everything in a gross, disgusting and totally unacceptable manner. 🙂

A$20 million Powerball

January 30, 2003 by HB

I was having lunch at McDonald’s today when I noticed this large
poster at a newsagent advertising the Powerball draw for tomorrow
(well, technically today) which is for A$20 million. Powerball is a
national lottery which runs into the high millions about once a year. I
think. I’ve only bought it once, and that was about two years ago. A
couple of us went past the Tattslotto agent at the campus center after
finishing the final exam for the semester and saw the draw for A$30
million. We each bought one and we were discussing the things we could
do with that kind of money over dinner. Heh.

Well, I also got a ticket today, and in the unlikely event that I
win the A$20 million, well…hmm…well, I don’t know what I’ll do with the
money, but I’ll do something with it. Probably fly to Amsterdam and
have coffee in one of those coffee shops I keep on hearing about. I
think that’s what they do in coffee shops over there anyway. Drink
coffee, that is. I hear they have some really good coffee with unusual
names like White Widow, Purple Haze and Durban Poison. Nothing beats
having a good coffee and snacking on something healthy like mushrooms.

Anyway, today was a really warm day as well. There was a lot of
smoke too, from the bushfires still burning in country Victoria. This
photo was taken at Richmond station. The heat only dissipated an hour
ago, according to this
[theage.com.au]. Good thing I wasn’t planning on sleeping tonight to
finish up my Industrial Experience stuff for tomorrow. I wouldn’t have
been able to sleep anyway.

Oh God, Yes!!!

January 29, 2003 by HB

function get_max_or_weight_from_itemsubjid_and_criteria_id($conn,$itemsubjid,$criteria_id)
{
$sql = “SELECT max_or_weight FROM assessment_items_criteria WHERE itemsubjid=$itemsubjid AND criteria_id=$criteria_id”;
$stmt = ociparse($conn,$sql);
ociexecute($stmt,OCI_DEFAULT);
ocifetchinto($stmt, &$result_array);
if ( sizeof($result_array) > 0 )
return $result_array[0];
else
return 0;
}

Such exquisite beauty in such a simple function.
/me rubs tears of joy from eyes
Hmm…solving a coding problem that’s been bugging you for a long time
is very much like having a big fat line of coke. Not that I would know
of course.

43.9 Celsius

January 25, 2003 by HB

*sizzle* Help, I’m burning up. Melbourne hit a record high temperature
[theage.com.au] in 64 years – it was 43.9 degrees Celsius today. And
man, did I feel it. I went to the city today and I lost more water than
I could drink to replenish. People were going around shirtless and in
bikini tops, and the heat in the train carriages was simply oppressive. I felt like I was either going to melt or spontaneously combust.

Anyway, I managed to get a pair of shoes today. I don’t usually go
for Nike, but I was seduced by the air-conditioned comfort of their
store in Bourke Street. I ended up buying a pair that caught my eye –
Air Zoom Courtposite. It’s a pair of tennis shoes, I don’t play tennis,
but who cares, my previous pair was supposed to be for squash anyway. 🙂

Look at this, I saw it while walking down Swanston Street. This was
pasted on the door of China Express, a takeaway Chinese food place. Heh.

Well, while seeking refuge in the air-conditioned comfort of a book
store, I also saw this new (?) calling card called Planet Telecom
Australia that is only 3.9 cents per minute to Malaysia. That’s a whole
lot cheaper than the closest one – Indo Card at 6.9 cents. There was a
large “No Connection” at the front, which one would assume to mean no
connection fees, this however is not true. They simply call the
connection fee a “service charge”, which they conveniently wrote in
fine print at the back.

No connection apparently means you could hardly hear shit while
calling. I had to say “hah?” more times than I cared to count when I
tried out the card just now. There were periods of silence where I
couldn’t hear anything at all and those happened more than a few times
throughout the phone call. Very, very distracting. The only redeeming
factor is that you can talk for 255 minutes if you call a land line in
Malaysia. This goes way down to 66 minutes if you call cell phones
though. I think using Indo Card will turn out to be more economical
because all the time spent going “eh?” and the subsequent repeating of
the previous sentence took up most of the phone conversation.

Where there is smoke

January 24, 2003 by HB

Melbourne is covered with smoke again from the bushfires. The
visibility today is worse than the smog from a couple of days back
though. To top it of, it was pushing 40 degrees today and I was down
with heat exhaustion again. Come to think of it, it seems that I’ve
been very prone to heat exhaustion ever since I was young. It always
goes away after a packet of those ‘Chi Kit’ Teck Aun pills (or as I
like to call it, Poh Chi Kit pills :)) though, so all is good.
Wonderful stuff, those. Miraculous, even.

Anyway, about my mid-term exam, I didn’t do really well. I was
expecting a different question for the second part and yeah…It’s too
hot to write today.

That’s the view of the pond behind my hall if you’re wondering.

Perceptrons, my dear Watson

January 23, 2003 by HB

I’ll be having my mid semester exam for BUS3650 – Business
Applications of Neural Networks (my summer subject) tomorrow. I was
chagrined to find out that the subject requires a rather extensive
knowledge of equations and other math type stuff. I overcompensated by
raiding the library and checking out a stack of books related to neural
networks. I only need one though; the book that was written by my
lecturer, but having all those books does give one a certain sense of
security during the preparation phase. :)

Hmm…why do all library books have this st and greasy feel to their covers?

It is now my duty to completely drain you

January 21, 2003 by HB

I missed my supervisor meeting today. It was all good though,
because the supervisor wasn’t there too, due to some miscommunication
regarding the meeting. The only guy that turned up was one of my group
mates, the other one was sick. Heh.

Anyway, the reason I missed the meeting was due to the strange phenomenon where a USB cell phone charger will drain
the battery instead of charging it when the computer is off. How
interesting, I’ve only see this once, I haven’t replicated it, so I
don’t know if it works all the time or under certain circumstances only.

Well, I did set my alarm clock (I use my cell phone as my alarm)
before I went to sleep last night, but neglected to pull out the USB
charger (which connects to the USB port). When I woke up, the cell
phone battery was completely drained and I couldn’t even turn it on
until I recharged it. Strange huh?

Anyway, no harm done, we’ve rescheduled the meeting to Thursday instead.

Oh, I overheard two people conversing in Heng Hua while I was
walking from the Clayton train station today. I’m Heng Hua and I’ve
never heard that language used much over here.

Spin!

January 20, 2003 by HB

My small but trusty SunAir dual speed personal fan is losing the
battle against the 35 degree heat today. I was woken up in the morning
by the MRS staff who wanted to change the fire evacuation procedures
map at the back of every resident’s door. They blacked out some stuff
with a felt tip pen and stuck some new stickers and then were off. I
could not go back to sleep though, courtesy of the extreme heat that
was apparent even in the morning.

Anyway, I watched Amelie
[amelie-lefilm.com] today. I’ve seen it around the network but I didn’t
bother to watch it because I didn’t think I would enjoy it. I’m glad I
gave it a chance because it’s a very sweet and endearing movie. Very
nice indeed.

I’m very scattered today.