A miraculous comeback

Almost, that is.

A crappy session by both at 4-4; then both have played better and Ebdon led Fu 9-7; then in third session Ebdon played so well that no one can stop anyway, but Fu was not in form and lost to 9-15. When no one expected he could make it, Marco Fu came back from 9-15 to 15-15 and marginally losing at 16-17 in the final session. Hope he plays better in the future, especially don't start to miss pots when close to reach a safe line...

Marco Fu v Ken Doherty

So Marco Fu finally got past Ken Doherty. Given that Ken Doherty is such a tactical player, this means there is now a genuine chance for Marco to win anyone. In particular the mental strength of Marco is impressive as they played very time-consuming frames, and the 19th frame is "stolen".

Now with Peter Ebdon, however, things can only be worse and reportedly (no i didn't watch it) the 4:4 tie up to now is full of crappy play...

"busy" with various things

These days I have been rather busy with things like:
1. watching Marco Fu and others playing snooker. It seems that Marco is in very good form...
2. and watching too much snooker makes me almost forget the Chelsea-Liverpool FA cup match (only realizing it 5 minutes before kick-off);
3. counting my newly-acquired (yes, again) hard-plastic pieces. It looks like I never get the complete set of pieces in the first instance whenever I get large sets off ebay;
4. looping 傷信 and 1874 (new concert version);
5. and finally on the more serious side, doing assignment. Massification. Commodification. Constructivism. Can you make sense out of these? I was very disappointed when they resolved that "staff development courses" should not be affected by the industrial action...

An interesting MPhil application

Some time ago we received an MPhil application. That actually has nothing to do with me, but somehow it get circulated around. Based on my very limited knowledge about that area (well I did teach that, but that does not mean I know enough), I determined that the "research proposal" is cranky. (The bell starts ringing whenever you see "equations" of algorithms can be "incorporated" together. He already had an algorithm, and a "theory" of the same name. Also plans to have "month by month expansion" of algorithms.)

Then one day I was hoping to get some fun when reading the "proposal" again, and this time I googled the applicant's name. Assuming it is not a name collision, this person had written a software that is claimed to be many times faster than existing products, and hence got an award from a nearby country, and made his name on BBC, Slashdot, etc. This is followed by criticisms about the validity of the speed claim. He claimed the software would be commercialized soon, but of course it is nowhere to be seen now.

He may be a good programmer, but there are many people who are good at one thing and completely cranky on another related thing...

Fake conferences

I come across this web site on fake conferences a bit too late - just a few days before its closure, and when I want to visit it again it is already closed. I then come up with the idea of doing one myself, listing all those "prestigious" conferences that everyone knows, posting their emails with my comments. Unfortunately, someone has already done that (at least on this latest email)...

RAE

Our department head's old April fool joke about RAE become a reality. It is as if after the RAE is scrapped the "burden" on academics will disappear. Like replacing 學能測驗 with... (what's the name?) automatically makes everyone happy. And a metrics-based system - count your papers, impact factors, acceptance rates...

(1) 質量顛倒：學問不是豬牛雞鴨，不適合論斤計件，但是，行內眾所周知，眼前的學術政策恰恰就是要論斤計件：重量不重質。
...

(3) 皮肉顛倒：我們有時會把書籍的封面叫做「書皮」，把書籍的內文叫做「書肉」。一本書的優劣，取決於書肉，而不是書皮；取決於書肉的內涵，而不是書皮上印着的出版社字號。

奇怪的是，現今所謂學術評審，只着重書由哪家出版社出版（或文章在哪個刊物登載——問題的本質一樣，不贅），而不着重書籍的內容；不但不着重，甚至完全不看內容。儒林笑話，無勝於此。

李天命，《從思考到思考之上》

April Fool's day at London

On April Fool's day I went to London. For no particular purpose. I mean, unlike in HK where you might go to some rural places in holiday, here I need to go to some place which look more like a city.

I happened to walk into the British museum, hoping to look at some stolen Chinese antiques...(?) I don't know what they are, anyway, except some... 利是封. With hello-kitty. I never thought that could be in a museum. Then I went to the Chinatown to look for some Chinese food. I ended up at a Hong-kong style 茶餐廳. I'm sure that's very Hong-kong style, not only the food but also hygiene and service. After that, I walked around, e.g. to look at the pool of ducks in front of the Buckingham place.

Silly enough, huh?

The end of teaching

So, teaching is over. Quick, er?

Here we also have module review, the equivalent of course evaluation. The different thing is that it is me to collect the completed questionaires. I just keep on wondering, why don't I throw away some bad ones and make some good ones myself. But in any case, there are too few students to make any statistical significance of the results. Is it a miracle that some Arts students find "relational algebra" and "third normal form" interesting?

中國「語」「文」

據報聯合國將劃一使用簡體字。 這又使我想起：孫國父與毛主席兩大偉人，一個把外族語言拿來當國語，攪到 d 人以為唐詩宋詞以至古裝電視劇應該講「普通話」；一個發明了簡體字，以至乾炒牛河會譯成 fxxk fry cow river。短短幾十年就把中國幾千年文化廢了，對中國語言和文字的貢獻實在太大了一點 ...

1/4 + 1/2 = ?

英國學生嘅數學水平，比香港更高...

話說呢到有個 Game theory in Computer science 嘅 MSc course, 聽眾一般包括 Reader, Lecturer, PhD 學生, MSc 學生及 "Notetaker" 各一名。某日有條數最後係 1/4 - 1/2 + 1, 正當那 MSc 學生要開計數機，那 Lecturer (教的那個, 不是聽的那個) 忽然喝止，於是佢地只好用紙筆計數。雖然那 Lecturer 已說明係等於 1/4 + 1/2, 不過佢仍然攪了半分鐘，仲同隔離對埋，才肯定佢嘅答案: 6/8.

Prudence's visit

Yesterday Prudence came to give a talk. I believe there is a more than usual number of people in the audience, including quite some people that has never appeared in any "algorithm" talk.

The dinner was in a south Indian restaurant. While I do not particularly enjoy Indian food, I'm ok with it and the dosa taste quite good. The starter is too "plain" for me though...

I drank more than usual amount of beer in the whole day, but that has nothing to do with the talk, or the St. Patrick's day.

Algorithms course

由於最高指示下年要整個新嘅三年班 Algorithms course，我走去睇吓佢地一年班嘅課程。有一科叫做 Algorithms and data structures，內容十分別開生面，包括 Exceptions, Inheritance and Polymorphism, GUIs and event-driven programming, applets 等等。唔，三年班學 sorting...

我就唔係好認為佢地識 Inheritance and Polymorphism 呢 d 嘢。佢地好似連 variable 係有 scope 嘅都唔係好知。其實老細改革課程都好不遺餘力。例如佢地終於 compulsory 要學 semaphore, thread, socket 同 TCP/IP layers 了...

罷工

罷工咁好玩都唔早 D 通知... 不過都係無我份... 但以下呢句野真係呢:

The AUT said many students had also shown their backing for the strike by not attending lectures and classes.

其實學生長期都很支持我地，佢地不嬲都唔係點上堂的...

殺校

閱報得知 N 年前就讀的小學遭殺校。據阿媽說，學校早前想聯絡我，大概都係關於呢件事咁話。其實撻我個朵出來都係無濟於事，不過如果有乜野可以幫到手嘅，我係好樂意做 的。間學校好好係講唔上，但總算係生活左幾年，留有回憶嘅地方，盡下人事都好的。其實佢地捱到今日都算係咁了，不少同學的小學早就倒閉了...

Bioinformatics, English department, and matrix

話說因為別人家有急事，我早幾日幾乎被召去代課教 database，即係我教緊既嘢 ─ 不過要頂既係 MSc Bioinformatics 既。喺 LG101 混了幾年聽返嚟既幾乎有用到既一日。不過最後唔洗，於是可以繼續去教英文系學生...

不過，結果今日都係頂左一堂。同三年班學生溫習 matrix multiplication。我都唔知點解 2x2 既 matrix 乘數都可以講到四十分鐘...

TV

As if my research isn't bad enough, I finally got (after being here for several months) a mind-distracting machine from a colleague.

I don't really understand how they come up with this system of paying a "licence fee" to watch TV. I think we can guess how well the system is working when letters are continually delivered to the ex-tenant here (or ex-ex, or ex-ex-ex...) asking him to pay. "Sophisticated equipment" to detect whether you have a TV. Sounds quite interesting...

Miscellaneous

(1) One day I was flipping through an MSc application. It says the applicant has a term with GPA 4.0 in MIT, but clearly he has never studied outside of his third-world home country. After 5 seconds I realized that MIT stands for "Master in Information Technology"...

(2) Alan Smith:

When I looked, the leg was lying one way and my ankle
was pointing towards Hong Kong so I knew I was in
serious trouble

(3)
【明報專訊】就特首曾蔭權任用民主派出身的劉細良為中央政策組全職顧問，民建聯行政會議成員曾鈺成與立法會議員鄭經翰展開罵戰，曾鈺成日前在報章批評鄭經翰﹕「主人都未出聲，狗唔需要吠住﹗」

不唔係通常主人未叫，狗就吠定先，要主人喝止架咩...
就好似你咁，上面都未出聲，你就...

Exam meeting

We have the exam meeting today. No, I'm not going to tell you anything. Except that I possibly over-worried - our module (i.e. course) is perhaps the only one among third year modules that does not require the application of some continuous bijective mapping from a compact set to itself. These mappings are not arbitrary, e.g. they must be piecewise-linear, and have at least two fixed points, one more than the theoretical minimum. We discussed how to design mappings that optimize different objectives, e.g. the power mean of order 1, or the difference from the required statistical distribution.

Yum Cha

Today I go to Yum Cha with Thomas, his wife who is from Hong Kong, his daughter, and Rajeev.

We have it at Peking restaurant. I know it but have never been there since it is an expensive place. It looks like all staff there speak Cantonese. And for the food, it is very close to Hong Kong standards except maybe the Har Gow which tastes a bit strange.

Thomas's wife is an alumni of HKU. She lives in a very different spacetime from me: she asks "Is 黃麗松 still the vice-chancellor?" I list out all the vice-chancellors after 黃麗松, none of which known to her, and I keep on wondering "did I miss someone?"

becoming a student again

Today we have the first regular meeting of the course Postgraduate Certificate in whatever blah blah blah. I am given a student card. That's perhaps a good thing since there is no such thing called "staff card" here and I always wonder how people prove themselves to be a member of staff. And perhaps I will finally remember to purge the HKU student card, Octopus card, etc. out from my wallet.

The meeting turns out to be a discussion where participants complain about universities turning into vocational-training factories, business-oriented management of universities, taking more students and thus lowering the quality, and continental Europeans complaining the spoon-feeding system here etc etc. The instructor hopelessly, repeatedly mention something like "well that's very much a double-sided sword" etc. After all, isn't that the whole point of the course - to transform us into whatever they want us to be?