Before and After #1: things to do with some things

Power Source becomes...erm (remains) Power Source
I satisfied my need for a more or less universal power source for low power electronic circuits experiments by forking out $23 on a Winstar AC-DC power adaptor which gives me selectable voltage output ranges from 3V to 15V and sources up to 1.2A. Yeah i know its not a proper lab power source, but do you think i've got a few thousand dollars to spare for one of these things? Besides i don't need extremely precise regulation, and i hope my designs never need any precision regulation. What i do need though, is precisely settable voltages and voltage and current meters. okay maybe i do need one of these toys in future, but for now, i'll just have to build one myself if i need it.

Anyway, i've got some computer power sources from old computers that i disembowelled. The great thing about this power source is its output voltages...positive and negative 12V and 5V. Very convenient voltages. I'll suppose that i can skip the voltage regulator chip when i need these voltages in future. There're many output cables, for differrent types of hardware with
different connectors and connections. I'll combine all of these wires into neat output ports for each of the power source outputs. Hmm throw in a current meter for each of the outputs too. If i can't find anything cool to use as my current meter, i may have to look to sungei road. Would like something that's cool, and reflect the upper limits for each output. But i'd also like a digital readout that's precise and accurate too. Oh why not have the ammeter and voltmeter thingy with digital readout and analog visualisation be a separate piece of hardware? Like a plug-in front -end? And the other power sources i may have could be modified to have proper front ends, which are compatible with this thing so i could just fit this meter thingy in front.


Air Hog Visionary becomes...Remotely Piloted Vehicle
The Air Hogs are a series of air pressure powered toy airplanes. They're supplied with an air pump with which you pump up the pressure in the airplane's fuselage.

Now what if we added a fuel compartment containing sodium azide (they keep this in car airbags, and when they're deployed, its heated up so it decomposes and gives lots of nitrogen gas to fill the airbag real quick) so we could maintain pressure for longer so we could fly it longer, and add a radio control to it? would make a good toy for my nephew wouldn't it! Guess we have to use sth else, because i just found out that sodium azide is a terribly toxic thingy. Anyway, the reaction's too quick...

Assortment of tubes and pipes becomes...many things
These were bought from a very very interesting shop at a place adjacent to Raffles Place. My friend told me about that shop, and brought me down after we had our last O level paper. Wow...it was real cool. The old couple sell a huge collection of many odds and ends that range from exotic spray paints and aluminium rust removers to very very strong magnets and plastic wares and electronic instruments and a really old oscilloscope! Had a great time there...

These were actually for a couple of projects, including a 'spud gun', which is actually a tube which you stuff anything into, spray fuel, ignite it, and watch the projectile as it gets launched into the air.

There's also the dream of making a jet engine. i'm not crazy! people actually make their own jet
engines in their own garages! We Singaporeans are sometimes too boringly sane...oh maybe i'm crazy cos i tried to do so by making the fan blades from aluminium from drink cans and the housing with plastic...of course i didn't intend to use that for the combustion chamber...but yeah it was a bad idea anyway. Never got around to it.

And also the water rocket...yeah i was really excited abt water rockets for a time and sought to make the longest range one...which meant something that could contain really really high pressure. I imagined fitting it with guidance and monitoring systems and the cool toy from RI's field. But i didn't get around to do that...though i still wish i can make it.

Although these were dead projects, the process of making them come true (in vain) taught me quite a bit. Including stuff on making structurally sound parts, and processing aluminium drink cans into sheets of metal, and joining them up to make larger sheets...

Anyway, back to the thing about the water rockets...suddenly gave me an idea:water pressure powered missiles. No heat signature, easy to use and handle. Easy to make too. Relatively quieter. Less Heavy. Except that...there's lower speed, shorter range.
I'll work on it.

And how could i leave out robotics?
Been thinking of creating some collections of creatures from children's stuff...like the sesame street monsters! And Dr. Seuss's strange and intriguing creatures too...and....they could all be investigations and wild explorations into artificial intelligence that can yield serious results for
the field. oh...and schizo robots too...battling opposing forces within themselves.

Listening to: Maurice Ravel: The Piano Concertosvery dynamic and lively and intriguing and interesting pieces. love 'em!

The Students' Sketchpad

This is coool.
Its so great to see such creative ppl around. There must be many more among our youth...hidden somewhere in some corner.

I wish i had enjoyed by times in RI. Could have been more interesting, more vibrant.
probably like these guys...

junk repository

I've got too much junk at home lying around and waiting to rot...
this junk collecting business is a relic from my prehistoric days (see the article on 'my scientific prehistory') The idea was that you could have this huge repository of junk lying around, and when you wanted to make something exciting you could just look for the appropriate junk ingredients, disembowel and dissect to remove the required components, then mix and mash them into a new exotic creation. Instant gratification, instant realisation of some crazy idea. Doesn't need to be a groudbreaking work (although occasionally i thought i might have had one)...perhaps just a computer chassis fitted on a small inverted table with my bicycle wheels painstakingly bolted to the table with pieces of scrap metal and nuts and screws...mind you this creation is for real! I really did assemble it. But i couldn't find the appropriate motors (wish i stopped my dad when he took my little electric landrover that you ride in circles around the small confines of the porch after begging your parent to park somewhere else) I couldn't get them at sungei road either...

speaking of sungei road...that place is a heaven! at least for me...even better because its next to Sim Lim Tower (not Square) where i can get my electronic parts. There's so much junk there...you can even find a corner specially for old laptops! and the karang guni ah peks look so cool and knowledgeable when they play around with those relics of technology. I almost wanted to junk my present laptop and get a replacement from these guys. There's also a really old vacuum tube radio! i'd wanna get that! And there's boxes of CCTV cameras on sale...though its hard to determine if they still work.

i've been working on the circuit fabrication process again...this week i spent a whole night at camp thinking about refining the process. Its just picking up where i left off (??!! language doesn't sound right) two years ago. No...more than that. It first started in like secondary three i think? i had just learnt about the process by which printed circuit boards are made.
That's when i realised that PCBs aren't literally printed out from printers. Though i wish this could become a reality. Anyway, i was making circuits with chips and microcontrollers on them, and soldering them on a prototype board was challengine for me. A prototype board is a fiberglass board that's perforated with holes, and one side of it, the holes are encircled by copper. So you can insert a component on one side, and solder it to the board on the
other. You see that the problem this gives me, being the easily confused person that i am, is that when i make my connections, i have to insert the parts on one side and flip to the other to solder the wires, and this entails laterally inverting your mental picture of the circuit diagram, which means i routinely get confused between the two. And so i make lots of connection errors, and this means lots of debugging. Which is a waste of time and effort, and wears my patience real thin.

Hmm not in much of a mood to describe the detailed evolution of them process...suffice to say that till this day i remain extremely grateful to my RI Computer Science Club teacher-in-charge, Ms. Fong Lay Lean, who has since left the school. She gave me the freedom and latitude and permission to work in the chemistry lab. Even when she wasn't convinced of my idea. That alone is enough. That is one of the best gifts a teacher can give a student, in my
opinion...FREEDOM TO EXPLORE. The process has since gone through many iterations, and in its current form, is considerably cheaper, more environmentally friendly, easier for us home-
experimenters to use, more convenient...than the standard PCB fabrication process. But it still needs refinement, and its primary purpose is to make circuit prototyping easier for the home-experimenter...not as a replacement for the industrial method. Anyway i've been looking through the junk in my home for the materials i need to carry out my plan for the circuit fabrication process. I have a list of projects called 'enabling technologies'. The accomplishment of these projects will open up more possibilities...they will enable the realisation of a lot
more projects. They are an enabling factor. This process is one of them. Without it, i cannot do anything else.

hmm don't seem to be in a mood for writing...apologies to the reader for the absence of coherence and good writing in this piece. haiz...


Postscript:It was originally intended that this article be an exploration into the potential creations i could make from the junk i have in my house. This junk was accumulated as a result of past prehistoric creational fantasies and also projects that all died.

I was looking through my junk today for things i needed for the circuit fab process i talked abt above, and suddenly thought i should conceive some ideas so i could expend my current stock of junk...to make room for more junk when i go shopping at sungei road in the near future (hopefully)

The 'outside world'

The past fortnight has been pretty relaxed and easy. And i find myself at home for a couple more days. This is a good thing. Gives you a longer taste of what it feels like to be at home, not bound by the stresses of school and schoolwork, nor by national service. Okay the latter is an illusion...and not a very convincing one too. But for the past four days (minus) that i've been out of Sungei Gedong Camp, its been liberating. There's a good vibe to it, even though my spectre of depression likes to haunt me and remind me of its stubborn persistence to which i can do nothing about.

Being around at home...watch TV, read the papers, read some books, surf the net; especially surfing the net, and reading blogs and poking into other people's lives and looking at photos of them enjoying the freedom of civilian life. Yes i know civilian life has its problems too, but the rules of military life are more binding. I know that watching TV can be a dangerous thing to do, because the realisation that you've wasted precious little bookout time channel-surfing and making do with some bad tv programme can immediately invoke the Spectre of Depression. Which i must always remind myself to avoid.

Thinking about my close friends...i yearn to spend time with them. Friendships are too important to lose, and i want to rebuild what i may have lost by attrition due to the flow of time. How i yearn to be free to devote time to good study and work on my artificial intelligence endeavor. Then spend time with and for family, and then enjoy the company of friends.

And as i look at the lives of others, mostly through the tiny windows that are their blogs, and also sometimes from encounters with my friends, i am constantly reminded of my own mediocrity. But i also must not let the Spectre aggravate those feelings, for these are useless and a burden. It is more important to wash away any sense of complacency and superiority, adopt a neutral judgement of oneself (that is, in other words, NO self-judgement) and keep working hard at those dreams. And enjoy the joy of life. And of virtue.

I must judge no one, nor myself, nor make comparisons. That will increase my sense of insecurity. Insecurity can create moral problems.

Keep working. Be disciplined. Hard work and honesty will pay off.

Intellectual Adolescence

On my forays into the field of artificial intelligence...
These are uncertain times. They say that adolescence is a time of uncertainty and self doubt and identity crises. And emotional upheaval. How true this is of me now; though i may be past adolescence in age, for i am 19, the adolescent period is a very apt description of my current state of affairs in my work in artificial intelligence. I should be embarrassed to use the words 'my work in artificial intelligence'...i've not even been through university, nor am involved in any research project under some institution. Its just personal, private 'research'. The big terms were just borrowed for sake of compactness of expression.
It is a mystery how exactly my interest in robotics arose. (oh no i sound like i'm shrouding myself in a cloud of mystery) But given the general interest i had in technology and science and making and (more often) breaking stuff, this is probably not so surprising. In the earliest period of this interest, which was during my early primary school years, i came across this book at the library's children's section, which was roughly titled "how to make a robot". It was extremely interesting to me, and spoke of all the aspects of the robot, in a rather funky childlike way. Caricatures of grey boxy robots filled the book pages. After that first encounter, i never saw the book again even as i tried in vain to find it.
I also recall exploring the issue of understanding human speech during those 'early days'. That seemed like a pretty easy thing to tackle then, and i created sentences and broke them up into parts and put them in trees...a strategy that i now know (or am i mistaken) is called 'semantics'. I now know that this was the approach of symbolic AI, and presently feel that breaking a conversation into a semantic tree is too narrow and rigid an approach.
In those days my interests were neither focused nor quite serious, especially in AI. Robotics just felt interesting, so i'd claim my interest in it, and pretty much left it at that. Occasional encounters with pictures or videos of robots on television and sometimes in books would remind me of my interest and fascination with robots. Probably the only serious book i've ever read on robotics until recently, was 'Behaviour-Based Robotics' by Arkin. It explained things like subsumption, and introduced the bottom-up approach to AI, which was to create animal-inspired robots instead of trying to build humanoids straightaway. I dismissed such an approach then as i saw no reason why we had to build robotic versions of cognitively primitive animals in order to move on to building humanoids. Why not do it straightaway?
It was only later (but i don't know when or why) that i somehow realised that intelligence should be viewed as part of a wider context. That context is the dynamic interaction between the individual and everything else (ie. its environment). I felt that much of the research in the field of AI (that was and still is my immediate impression, certainly a biased one as i have never looked at AI research journals or surveyed current AI research seriously) was dedicated to the solution of very specific problems such as visually guided movement, natural language processing, or to play some games or solve some mathematical problems. I felt that produced very specific answers to very specific problems, which failed to generalise to broader AI strategies. In essence, they ended up exercising their own intelligence instead of trying to synthesise it. And the solutions were very mathematical. The whole exercise altogether seems very rigid and too narrow. Whatever the method or philosophy utilised, i grouped these under the umbrella of 'symbolic AI' (i understand this may be a misuse of the term. But for the sake of convenience...) Or perhaps we could use the term GOFAI (Good Old-Fashioned AI) instead. yeah...
So i harboured this belief, together with some unjustified belief that neural networks could be THE medium for creating an intelligent system (well, nature used it successfully, so why not give it a try too? That's my only justification. I think it's a good one.) With these thoughts behind me, i carried on with my life (which was now in secondary school and most of my junior college years). And occasionally i would claim to have a fiery passion for robotics and artificial intelligence, while the truth was i did nothing in that direction except perhaps marvel at robots i came across (the movie ones), or mostly scorning them, for they reflected the pathetic state of AI and robotics in general.
When i enlisted in NS, the mind was dulled by military routine and excessive and often senseless regimentation. But i managed to extricate myself from progressive brain paralysis by focusing on artificial intelligence. This time, i was able to identify some fundamental questions and provide some answers to them. Those questions include: the scope of AI, the meaning of 'intelligence', the methodology of research...
Having covered the past and the present, it is appropriate to address the future. The reason is also due to the 'adolescence' that i am going through right now. I am reaching the junction of crossroads, quite uncertain about my next move. That is why i have slowed down and spent some time writing this reflection, to reduce my uncertainty.
My ponderings over artificial intelligence led me to the conception of robocology (i'm not done conceiving it yet!), then introduced me to Alan Turing as a pioneer of the modern computer architecture, his role in artificial intelligence, and his anticipation of connectionism. A BEAM article on Nv neurons and nets by Wilf Rigter brought up the idea of chaos in electrical circuits and the potential of Mark Tilden's nervous neural networks to exhibit chaotic behaviour, which many natural systems including our brains exhibit too. That brought in the interest in complexity and chaos, and led me to wonder how we could design systems with 'chaotic potential' which we could channel to create intelligent systems. Such a development led me to think about many issues of artificial intelligence, and the thoughts i had were random and not directed towards the resolution of particular issues. They were scribbled on pieces of paper. I treasure them, and eventually typed them in two documents, called Miscellaneous Ramblings on Intelligence (MRI). I took those points and put some order in them and created a set of principles and methodology and put them in MRI 3.
However, i felt that MRI 3 did not adequately address the issues of what 'intelligence' meant, and the role of emotions. With the purchase of the book "Mechanical Bodies, Computational Minds", whose articles i found interesting and could very much agree with, i found myself moving into the realm of the humanities. I knew we had much to learn from biology, nature, ecology and neuroscience. And also psychology. But now, i found myself asking questions of a really broad nature which involved sociology too. And the realisation of robocology needs artists and writers and imaginative people. It just means that things have progressed to such an extent that i find myself unable to tackle many of the questions and issues that have surfaced in my mind, and also many important needs of this project. An attempt to tackle all these alone will at best lead to answers with narrow points of view, likely misinformed and misguided. There are also many answers to the questions i ask, and many sources which can provide insight, but are not known to me.
I need to chart a course for action from here onwards.
I cannot steamroll my way through those questions. I need to look for people whom i could discuss such issues with. People from diverse academic backgrounds who can offer what insights their disciplines have to offer. Then what would be my role in this whole affair?
Discussions on those issues can last forever. Innumerable amounts of words were put together to address each of these things, and also related ones. I could take forever, or go for a fast food answer. But i can accept neither.
Dank...nevermind...here's what i'll do:
I'll look for people who could better tackles those issuessettle what i can to the best of my abilities, put them up in well-written documents for comments, and identify and state my uncertainties. Then i'd seek comments and opinions and help. Comments, opinions, help and discussion. Contructive interaction with diverse people.For a purpose.
All things will not be cast in stone.Intelligence is a dynamic phenomenon. So should its research.Keep it haphazard. Chaotic, and well organised at the same time.Purposeful, but not stubbornly single-minded.Its okay that efforts sometimes seem confused. Just don't become confused.Making good rojak is not an exact science, but we all know when we've tasted good rojak. (bad analogy...i don't eat rojak... =P)Don't think like a boring adult. You WILL tend to as the cumulative time spent on this pursuit increases.
You are attempting to recast AI as a multidisciplinary art form. AI will travel further that way than in its old, traditional rigid, narrow and mechanical form.
When i get my rough conceptual framework done, i'll put it out for all to poke and touch, and look for people to interact with about this. Then i should be comfortable enough to start working on building a robocology, while the conceptual and philosophical framework undergoes continual refinement.
That's it. That shall be the rough direction i intend to take.

The most important thing i must do for myself is to maintain the faith in myself. Doubt is a highly effective destructive weapon.

crazy ivan

Wow...first photo i've posted in my blog...haha this stuff was taken in between crowds of visitors to our booth showcasing the not-so-big 'big guns'. After you've played with them for a while, they don't seem so huge after all...though most people who have served NS aren't quite accustomed to seeing anything larger than a 5.56mm round. 40mm launchable grenades can blow most people off their feet. Though i've never admired big guns...and i think such hardware is pretty crude anyway...light sabres are more elegant and civilised.


Not quite a "Knight of Valour" eh?

You can see above that i'm trying to look like a Crazy Ivan, but the facial expression didn't turn out to be as loony as i hoped it would be...shucks... = (
Nevertheless i'm still crazy enough for many people haha

The reason i'm blogging so late is due to my bondage with the television. They were showing two documentries on WWII in a row, and the second one was about sunken barrels of heavy water in a lake in Norway...which were suspected by British intelligence to be meant for construction of a heavy water nuclear reactor, as part of Nazi efforts to create the nuclear bomb...

the advent of electronics in the 20th century, especially its involvement in the second world war, is particularly intriguing to me. It must have been exhilarating to work on those electronics-related projects, such as in the invention of radar (even till this day, electromagnetics and radar projects invoke a sense of mysticism in me). In those days, radar must have seemed so magical; to realise the immense capability and potential of a brave new nascent technology whose birth you play a part in...it must feel great. Also, the creation of computers, and the promise of intelligent machines that would follow with the inexorable increase of computing power until human intellect would be triumphed by the very machines they borne through their engineering pursuits. And those large instrument panels with huge dials and meters, big warning lights, all mounted on a light grey or pale beige metal frame...and monochrome cathode-ray tube displays with either displayed an eerie green or a sobering orange. Before the days of LEDs and LCD displays...these panels in their seemingly complex and cryptic and inaccessible appearance were an icon of cutting edge technology at that time. They also give me a strong feeling of mystery and an abundance of enigma. Human-machine interfaces of the present will never ignite such strong feelings in me. They're pretty bland by comparison. Maybe its just a passing period of lull, before another leap occurs.

And artificial intelligence was so young then, cybernetics was just created by Wiener...then they moved in the direction of greater processing power and symbolic AI, and gave everybody lots of promises and cautioned and braced the public on the supposed impending arrival of really intelligent robots.

And now that failed and we're at a bland period...or maybe i'm wrong...because i'm not in touch with the latest developments in AI. But i think its either GOFAI researchers presenting yet another solution to a very narrow problem, or other people asking for or practising a more holistic approach, and yet aren't making much concrete developments. This is solely my personal impression, which is entirely unreliable because it arose from my own biased, unevidenced judgement from an incomplete perception.

yikes that was a lot of rambling and yada yada...

working on some issues on artificial intelligence. will take some time to work out. involves lots of humanities, zero math (yay! pretty ironic? we'll talk abt this some other time. suffice to say that i'm not an "i grew up doing really well at math and engineering was just a natural progression" person.) Hope to publish the essay soon, but the questions are really broad and difficult and it would be horrible if i were to give solely my own narrow, most-certainly-biased opinion. Note 'opinion'...because there is no 'answer', for the word implies an absolute truth to the question i'm addressing, and that question can only invite opinions...no assertions, no answers. Just opinions, which i will compile and list and seek further insight from. Like a survey.

getting too long-aired for my own good...

the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

I've seen those lyrics below in many blogs many times.
I only really read them last night. Oh it really does echo my life.
I'm interested and intrigued and bothered by stuff no one else seems to care much, or as much. Its been like this since i was really young. And now i'm thinking about artificial intelligence and all that, i don't know what else i could possibly do in my life, though the terrible experiences and trials i've been through have been most discouraging. The dirty past projects a dark and uncertain future that seems to indicate failure, not success.

my petty self's wounds are still raw, from DSTA's rejection of my scholarship application. look for affirmation elsewhere...


I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
and I'm the only one and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah,
Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

Read between the lines
What's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk alone

I walk alone
I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone

Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Ah-ah, Aaah-ah
Ah-ah, Ah-ah

I walk alone
I walk a...

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Where the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk a...

My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone...

ahh...

bookout again! after booking in yesterday night.

the feeling of being in your study by yourself, at your desk typing and working away, the cool air-con and the chilling classical music that's playing from the radio in front of you...ahhh what a great and relaxing feeling...

there's lots of violin, and now baroque pieces over the air right now. so calming...the oboe melody blares clarity into my sleepy clouded mind. every note of the accompanying harpsicord sounds sharp as a razor.

followed by the Spanish guitar pieces of Granados...so much action, yet it sounds so lonely

and then the clarinet with piano accompaniment. so queer and lonely and moaney the clarinet starts, then the conversation between the piano and the clarinet begins...in a tone of wonder and discovery and awe.

oh boy...i love this quiet, lonely feeling. its so pleasant.

time to eat pork chop noodles... =P

My Scientific Prehistory

A long time ago when i was really young, still in primary school, i had a couple of ideas. And ambitions. But i was still not quite ambitious then...even though i tried to make an airplane out of cardboard boxes and gliding out of my house from the top floor balcony. That was when i had a vague but strong interest in science and technology and engineering, tried to set up my own "electronics lab". I had a "fume chamber" to perform hazardous experiments with, like creating this "highly potent" solution which required liquefying an insecticide spray...so you can imagine me spraying that aerosol can in that chamber onto a glass bottle that once contained "Brand's Essence of Chicken"...or maybe i used some other bottle...but boy i loved those bottles...very "scientific-looking". Very pro...hahaha Hey don't laugh! The chamber really worked, and you can't smell a single thing. Until you had to open the flaps(?) to remove the bottle of potent solution. The chamber was built from i think a scaffold of tough cardboard fax thermal paper rolls, cling-wrap, disembowelled computer keyboard chassis...

Then there was the 'wet lab'...it was in this toilet that we never really used. I can't recall what i called it in the past, when i would put up signs on A4 paper on the doors, which would name the labs too. Its the kind of thing that a primary school kid would use to show he was 'in-business'. The wet lab was the site of one of the most crazy experiments...i read somewhere that you could cause a piece of muscle to contract by applying electricity to it. One day in school, our teacher performed a crab dissection for our science lesson. I took home the claw. At home, i opened up part of the shell, and probably did some crazy things with it. May have included applying electricity from some battery. I did sth similar with pork, and saw it turn blue. I'm not sure if these two experiments were done at around the same period, or if they were separate pursuits.

Of course, the 'wet lab' contains my prized possessions of 'chemical collections', such as Boric Acid, which came in the form of my dad's overdue eyedrops, silica gel, which i had read was a dessicant, and Isopropyl Alcohol, which was rubbing alcohol, and i pretty liked the name. I think there may have been some glycol thymol thingy, which is actually mouthwash. haha...Of course, the most prized possession was my carefully synthesised 'potent chemical' which was supposed to be extra corrosive and contains insecticide and rubbing alcohol, among other things. I never had a chemistry set. I'd pass these things, and toy microscopes and all that, and look at them with contempt. haha the crazy chemical collection was all stocked by myself, reading labels on my own. it was a matter of ego and i'd tell myself those 'toy sets' were for ignorant 'scientist wannabes'. It was also a sign of envy and jealousy at whoever may own them...those who have money to get them.

The only successful product of my crazy prehistoric chemical pursuits was the 'anti-pimple lotion'. I gave it some name that was a slight modification of 'calamine'. After all the active ingredient was calamine. But there were other ingredients; i added rubbing alcohol (goodness...my fasination with rubbing alcohol...haha) and Johnson & Johnson's baby powder. AND i tested it on myself...to astounding success!!! If only temporary.

I SWEAR it made my pimples (yeah, it all happened during the onset of my puberty. also known as the time you peer into your pants and discover to your horror the emergence of pubes in the nether regions! *cough*cough* apologies...)
Anyway, I SWEAR it made my pimples disappear TOTALLY in just 5 minutes!!!
Though experimental evidence suggests this disappearing act is only temporary. Good enough for a quick beauty fix if you're meeting your first crush in the early blossom periods of the tween age. Of course i didnt have a crush at that age, so this wasn't necessary. My pimples bothered my mum more than they bothered me ahaha.

I love using the term 'prehistory' to describe these early scientific pursuits. they're my medieval times, my dark ages. the crazy times when i did all the crazy things, with no proper scientific knowledge and no one to guide me...obviously primary school science class is too lame to be taken seriously...i'm still as amused as i was at the end of primary two, just received my P3 texts and eagerly flipping through the pages of my first science textbook. Only to see sth that goes like : "Change. Changes are reversible or irreversible. Flip the switch on the wall, and the light turns on. This is a change. A reversible one." Of course this quote is inaccurate...the actual one probably sounded more stupid. haha i was amused. terribly amused. also very disappointed.


Must talk about the earliest working engineering creation of mine now. That was like in kindergarten. Bought a toy helicopter from some fair or sth at the kindergarten. It works like this: the heli rests on this mechanical thing that you hold with your hand. Use the other free hand to pull a cord, and through some gearing, this pulling would make the blades on the heli rotate fast enough to let it fly away from the contraption that it rests on. Pretty amazing. But what happened to the heli after that initial play with it, i can't remember. But i know what i did to the contraption. I had a pen whose nib came off or sth. Attached that to the contraption, pulled the cord, and the pen rotates. Out comes the ink, and onto the floor. Kewl. Call it "the ink sprayer". Wow. As i made a mess of the concrete floor, i thought about its potential use as a paint spray gun, and how the house's white walls would become blue from its use. I also remember feeling the Sense and Sanity Department of the Brain nudging me into accepting that this was not possible and that 'the ink sprayer' would not work well as a paint spray gun. Early signs of what is called "Feasibility Study/Assessment" in the so-called 'professional world'? haha


Oh no there's so much to talk about my scientific and engineering dark ages. I've just opened a can of worms. Couple of cans left...but too much to take for now...So that's all i'll recollect for today.