Month: March 2008

Realistic Science Fiction

It occured to me today, that I have developed quite a penchant for science fiction novels. When I was younger, I used to read lots of fantasy instead. The reason that I used to detest science fiction is because I have never gotten the correct exposure to it, until I picked up Cryptonomicon at an MPH warehouse sale back home. That changed my entire perception about scifi.

The author of Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson, is an extremely good author of science fiction. I loved the way that he blended real world events in with fictional events, to advance an extremely believable plot along. That was my first ever exposure to, what I call, realistic science fiction.

When I tell people this, they tend to ask me what I mean by realistic science fiction as fiction, by definition, is not real. Well, believable science fiction would be fiction that is so grounded in reality, that you can believe that events actually transpired as described in the story.

Since then, I’ve read his other books, The Diamond Age and Snow Crash. I also have the Baroque Cycle sitting on my shelf. This is his first massive 8 book work and is a series of historical novels. I’ve not touched it yet as I know that once I do, I would not be able to put it down and it will suck up weeks of my life. I’m saving it for when I finish my PhD.

Sitting right next to this set is another important scifi set from William Gibson, his Sprawl trilogy. Right next to these two are a bunch of books from Alastair Reynolds. I am presently contemplating on getting some books from Ian Banks. I’m still looking for his books at the local cheap book store.

The only issue that I have with the bookstores is that they tend to shelve the science fiction and fantasy books together. I guess that, sometimes, it’s not easy to separate the two categories. But, there is a very simple rule of thumb. Science fiction involves the use of technology while fantasy involves the use of magic.

Sufficiently advanced technology is like magic, though.

Engineering Drama

I was just wondering why there aren’t any popular engineering based shows on television. There was never a shortage of police and lawyer shows when I was growing up. I am sure that anyone can name a whole bunch of them. There is also currently no shortage of medical nor science-based dramas today. There is even a successful series based on mathematics! But there really isn’t any popular engineering based show on television. The closest that we ever came to one was probably MacGuyver. I loved watching the show when I was a kid and I even got myself a penknife because of it. But the only beef that I have with the show is that he always solved any and every problem with his penknife, which is thoroughly unrealistic.

So, I was just musing to myself these last few days about what some of my friends said. An engineer’s job is not sufficiently dramatic enough for public consumption. There is plenty of drama in our work but it’s just not particularly exciting to people outside the field. If you stick a bunch of engineers in a room together, we can get very worked up over how every little thing works in this world. We are very passionate about what we do and our jobs affect the lives of everyone in this world, even if nobody will really realise it.

But, I don’t really see how our work can possibly excite regular people. Our daily jobs basically involve studying lots of documentation, attending endless meetings, and working with such total focus that we zone into our own little world where nothing else exists other than us and the work. We do not work with regular people and so, although our work touches their lives, it does not do it directly. So, there is no human drama either.

This isn’t to say that engineers do not lead regular lives. We do face all the same trials and tribulations as any other person in this world. We learn to handle them as well as we can. Sometimes, our intensive training in logic and reasoning is useful in helping us cope with the problems, while sometimes it can be a bane at our side. But I sincerely believe that if somebody wants to make a dramatic series about engineers, it is certainly possible. If they can turn a boring mathematician’s life into a successful series, they can certainly make an engineering series.

So, I doubt that drama is the main reason why it’s difficult to make a television series out of it. I think it’s the fact that the normal kind of work that we do, takes many months and possibly years. Engineers do not work in the here and now but we have to work on something that will only see the light of day in the distant future. Our work cannot be rushed simply because the laws of nature cannot be rushed. It isn’t going to be so interesting to watch a bunch of people go through the same daily mundane routine in order to slowly work towards building something beautiful.

The only people who can stomach this kind of drama are probably bird watchers and other engineers. But I still think that it’s possibly to make a show about engineers as long as we focus on the human element, rather than their jobs. The engineers could always have family who are non-engineers and we can borrow some drama from their work to spice things up. It is certainly something that can be done. Let’s give the series a classy French name, like “Ingenieurie” and make a serious show that highlights how, although engineers have a rather different take on life, we are still all the same in the end of the day.

PS: Remember to not make the show about an engineer saving the day with his penknife. We do not use penknives and we do not always save the day. In fact sometimes, people die when we are not careful with our work.

SPM Chinese and Islam

I’ve recently read a blog (here and here) about the problems facing students who take the Chinese language paper for SPM examinations. The blog discussed the perceived problems with the difficulties in scoring a 1A in the exam, which leads to students losing opportunities for scholarships. So, I did a little bit of haphazard research and I found that there are bigger problems in the issue than just the question of results.

I looked up the Education Ministry’s latest guidelines for exam registrations and found that the Chinese language paper was a totally optional one. The only compulsory languages are Bahasa Melayu (isn’t it supposed to be Bahasa Malaysia?) and English. Every other language is optional. I’m actually happy to find that French is still offered as a language paper, alongside Mandarin, Tamil, Arabic and Iban. I personally know someone who did French in secondary school. While I was digging around the document, I also found that Pendidikan Islam is wajib (compulsory) for Muslims while non-Muslims were wajib to take Moral instead. Plus, it is stated in the official guidelines that a student can only take either one of the two.

Firstly, it surprised me to learn that in vernacular Chinese schools, the students are forcibly coerced into taking the Chinese language. In fact, a common excuse used is that if the student does not want to take the language, the student should just go to a national school. When I heard that, it brought about images of certain parties waving the keris and telling everyone else who doesn’t respect Malay rights to keluar (get out) of the country. School principals who behave so irresponsibly little Napolean and abuse their powers, should be stripped of their positions and never be allowed anywhere near an educational institution again. If a student is not interested in taking the subject as an exam paper, he/she should not be coerced to do so, by any means. A school should be a place for learning and allowing students to explore different areas of interest.

Secondly, it surprised me to learn that non-Muslims were essentially barred from taking Islamic studies. I know for a fact, that this was not the case in the past. I personally know someone who got an A1 in Islamic studies and whose parents were both Chinese school teachers. If it was possible in the past, there is no logical reason for it not being so today. In many parts of the world, people are beginning to realise the importance of having different points of view. So, learning how Islam sees the world will help us understand each other better especially since the Islamic countries are beginning to feature more prominently in world affairs. Furthermore, nobody should be denied the right to learn anything in school. It is against the whole idea of education, if someone is not allowed to take any subject due to his religion.

So, I wondered what could be a way to solve some of these problems.

Obviously, the very first thing would be to allow anyone who wants to, to take Islamic studies as a paper. Nobody should be denied the right to learn anything in school. This artificial and arbitrary restriction should just be gotten rid of. It cannot possibly be healthy for the nation as a whole, when students are segregated in such an arbitrary manner. It might even be unconstitutional, to deny someone their right to an education in school. Maybe some brave soul could challenge this decision in the courts.

Next, would be to do away with vernacular schools entirely. A common reason why students are forced to take the language paper is because the schools wish to retain their cultural identities. I am surprised by the fact that an inanimate object has the right to assert any form of identity. We already have an existing system in place to teach vernacular languages in national schools. I would think that this should be improved upon instead of just being like detention classes that force you to stay back in school for.

Instead, have the languages offered as an officially time-tabled subject in all schools, alongside every other non-national language and allow anyone to take it regardless of race. We could have a period for international languages and have all the students file off to different classes for their language lessons. There is already precedent for this, our Islam/Moral classes. So, the system is already in place to allocate time-tables and classrooms for such a thing.

Finally, just get rid of the Moral paper because I have a personal beef with it. It is such an idiotic assumption that there is such a thing as a universal moral standard that can be preached in a classroom. The only way that anyone can score for that paper is to blatantly lie and/or just memorise the answers. A common quip during my time in school was that when you accidentally killed a chicken in a village, the morally correct course of action is to run away (something about not being berani membuta tuli).

But as usual, the solutions sound very simple here but are almost impossible to implement on the ground. There are just too many entrenched interests in the problem to come to a lasting solution. The extremists on both sides of the fence would not be willing to let go of their outmoded ideas on identity. But in the mean time, let us start moving in the right direction.

PS: It should be blatantly obvious from this post which side I am on.

Hail BigDog

May I be the first to say: All hail our new robotic quadruped overlords!. It’s name is BigDog.

Well, it’s only a matter of time now, before our machines develop enough capabilities to wipe us off the planet. As this video patently illustrates, it is not longer impossible for them to mimic real life physical movement and reflexes. The only thing that this robot lacks is an autonomous thinking capability.

The engineer in me can see and appreciate the amount of engineering elegance that must have gone into the design of such a marvel. Walking on four legs isn’t so much of an issue but being able to quickly recover from being suddenly thrown off balance, is a great accomplishment. At the very least, this will see such a robot being useful for ferrying things around. The present robot can already carry a few hundred pounds in weight, which brings to mind a very useful application.

The project is currently being funded by DARPA. So, it is being designed for military applications. Now, we can all imagine how this could easily be turned into a AT-AT walker from Star Wars. All it needs is the ability to ferry around a few tonnes of weight. Then, we just need to plant a big set of guns and some seats on it. I’m curious to know if it’s reflexes can scale well with it’s size.

Besides the obvious military advantages of having a robotic pet that can ferry huge equipment and supplies along, there are also very practical civil applications for such a robot. It could be tasked to carry disabled people around a hospital, for example. It would clearly be able to navigate the various “terrain” present within a suitable medical establishment and have enough reflexes to keep it’s balance when it is knocked around. It could also carry some obese individuals around town if we just add some seats onto it.

Well, that’s enough from me. Just watch the video and tell me that it doesn’t send creepy chills down your spine at some point.

White Easter

http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf
Most of my Malaysian friends have been waiting for it to snow because they have never seen it snow before. Many were disappointed when the promised snow did not come yesterday. But their wishes have been granted today, on Easter Sunday.

I woke up this morning to see a nice blanket of snow covering everything in sight. I contemplated what to do with the snow. Every year that I’ve been here, I’ve gone out to take photos of things covered in snow. Snow photos are interesting because everything just looks white. So, in accordance to tradition, I picked up my trusty SLR and braved the cold, to get a few good shots. As I was living just by Midsummer’s Common, I decided to just go down to the green to see what I could find.

Although the results were quite good, I decided to try a bit of experimentation with Gimp. A good photograph is a wonderful base for creating something a bit more interesting. I spent the rest of the morning tinkering around with things until I found a combination of processes that would produce something that resembled art. The results are all in my Picasa gallery. You can see the slideshow on top. There aren’t that many photos because I only put up the best ones. Me personal favourite of the set is the “objects in snow” because of the stark colour contrast and how it is a very believable painting.

Some people may not like what I’ve done to the photos because I’ve made them less real. Well, that was the point in the first place. I did not want to just showcase a photograph of people and objects in the snow. I wanted to make it look like art. I’ve started playing around with this concept when I started this new blog. I needed a nice graphic to put into the header. So, I found a good photo that I took last year, of the Cambridge skyline at sunset. That’s why you can see John’s Chapel tower and King’s Chapel spires in a pink sky.

I will try to briefly describe my process here:

  1. Take a good photograph with exposure compensation set to a high value, around +1.0EV.
  2. Open it up with Gimp.
  3. Make a copy of the original layer and apply a Sobel edge detect filter to it. Then, desaturate the image into a grey scale image. Copy this image and use it as the layer mask for this layer. Finally, invert the original grey scale image.
  4. Make a copy of the original layer and apply white balance and colour enhancement to it.
  5. Make a copy of this enhanced layer and sandwich the Sobel later between the two.
  6. Then, apply burn and dodge layer processes to enhance the colours. There’s a tutorial here on what dodge and burn does.
  7. Create extra layer masks for each layer if necessary, using either the layer, or layer mask, from the Sobel layer.

That’s it! Not too difficult, but it took me a while to figure it out through experimentation. I’m starting to like post-processing photographs a lot. Good thing is that Gimp is a solid tool for performing the job. Now, I need to find some time to go out at night, with my tripod, to take some really good night shots that I can play around with HDR.

TehTarik Next

At our most recent TehTarik gathering, I have been asked to anchor our next discussion on Malaysian issues. The last session was a success and we all managed to learn things about Malaysia that we did not know of before. So, I would like to try to build on that and make the next session a good one too.

My areas of interest are fairly limited and in order to be a good anchor, I will need to be sufficiently knowledgeable about the subject area, so that I can inject stuff to keep the conversations going.

A friend suggested that I might want to talk about the MSC. It may be a good idea, if only to discuss ideas on how to reinvigorate the whole project. I’m fairly certain that not many people know what the MSC is actually about and what has happened to it. So, for some of the passport Malaysians here, it would be an opportunity for them to learn something about our past.

Another possible topic to talk about would be local universities. I doubt that many people here actually know of what’s happening in the local universities and there are many misconceptions. Therefore, it might be educational to actually talk about local universities and what we should do about them. And for this topic, I can actually invite some other postgrads here who were from local public universities, to help with the discussions.

Yes, that would be a good idea. Even if it isn’t educational or useful, at the very least, we would be able to get some foreign and local grads to exchange views and dispel myths. Personally, I’d like to leave race out of the picture and talk about academic aspects of the system. It might even be possible to broaden the topic to tertiery education, in order to include topics on scholarship fundings and foreign universities.

So, all that is left now is to find an angle to approach the subject and come up with a short, concise, reading list for everyone to read, in time for our next gathering in a fortnight.

With Metta.

First Post!

Update: In case you didn’t realise, you need to click on the “Front Page” link above to access the main page of the blog!

Hah! I’ve finally decided to cast away the old and start anew. I have had a lot of fun, blogging, this last couple of years. However, it’s time I grew out of the cradle of a hosted service and do my own independent thing.

I am hoping to make a clean break from my old blog, which I feel, has become a little too emotional for my own good. Even the layout and design of this new blog reflects the clean and clear policy. In addition, I have not imported or brought over any of my previous mad ramblings from the old blog. I am hoping that this experiment in re-engineering myself, will work.

The result is this non-personal blog, which I will update as regularly as I can. This will hopefully become the focal point for my thoughts on various subjects viewed through my highly myopic lens of a technology romantic. I shall try my best not to make things too dull.

Previous readers who used feedburner as the feed subscription, would not need to change a thing as the feed has been transferred over. I did not want to lose all my faithful readers either. Other readers who wish to subscribe to this new blog can click on the feed subscription link at the top. Email subscription is also available via the same service.