Two Steps From Hell - Rise Above

Breathtaking stuff :D

Two Steps From Hell - Cannon in D Minor

This is seriously one of the most energetic epic music that I've heard that has some dubstep/techno stuff in it. AWESOME!

Two Steps From Hell - Star Sky

Lyrics:

Here we are
Riding the sky
Painting the night with sun
You and I, Mirrors of light
Twin flames of fire
Lit in another time and place

I knew your name
I knew your face
Your love and grace
Past and present now embrace
Worlds collide in inner space
Unstoppable, the song we play

Burn the page for me
I cannot erase the time of sleep
I cannot be loved so set me free
I cannot deliver your love
Or caress your soul so
turn that page for me
I cannot embrace the touch that you give
I cannot find solice in your words
I cannot deliver you your love
or caress your soul

Age to age
I feel the call
Memory of future dreams
You and I, riding the sky
Keeping the fire bright
From another time and place

I know your name
I know your face
Your touch and grace
All of time can not erase
What our hearts remember stays
Forever on a song we play

Burn the page for me
I cannot erase the time of sleep
I cannot be loved so set me free
I cannot deliver your love
Or caress your soul so
turn that page for me
I cannot embrace the touch that you give
I cannot find solice in your words
I cannot deliver you your love
or caress your soul

Word Count Tools

Fun stuff! Unlike other word count tools that I've used, some of which are pretty darn awesome, but this tool won the top prize for being amazingly comprehensive.

I've never known anything about "readability" until I posted something up for word counting on this site... and it told me that my writing can be easily understood by people with a college education and above. And then there's the Dale-Chall readability score. Seriously, I've learned loads from the stats and it's rather fun to know what level my writing is :P

Here's a nifty screenshot of the stats of one of my game reviews. :P

Very interesting stuff :)

If you have anything that you've written... an essay, an article or any written work, do paste it in teh box below and try it out. :) Find out more about your writing style!

Powered by Word Count Tools

Whose #brainchild are you?

An amazing quiz that shows you detailed analysis of your brain with every choice you make in the quiz. That, and it also combines all your answers to show you whose #brainchild are you!

Here's my results, what's yours? :)

Check this out: http://adf.ly/1Kuiqi
(Just click skip after 5 seconds and you'll be brought the the site. Thanks!)

Have fun!

For more 'tests' such as this one, feel free to check out my other posts:

Face Memory Test - Do you have the superhuman ability to recognise faces from just a glance?

How Dark is Your Personality?
Stanford Sleepiness Scale: Are You Getting Enough Sleep?
QUIZ: Which TED Talk are you?
Find out your EQ score!
How old are your ears?
How many colours can you see?
Do you ever have trouble telling right from left?
Hooked on Music - What makes music so catchy?
Kuku Kube - Test your eyesight!
Twitch Reflex Challenge!
How Well Do You See Colour?

Random stuff

From Taylor Swift's song - You are in love

Lyrics excerpt:

One night he wakes, strange look on his face
Pauses, then says, you're my best friend
And you knew what it was, -he is in love- (scratch that, should change the lyrics to 'you are friendzoned' lol)

*badumtss*


P/S: I wrote this on 27/11/14 but I didn't post it up coz it's too short. Anyway, I'm putting it up now :P Enjoy!

My thoughts on learning languages

Once during my time as a tuition teacher, a parent - the mother - approached me and asked why her daughter's Mandarin results are still so bad. 

I told her that I personally thinks tuition once a week for 2 hours is not enough for someone to learn a language... particularly when her daughter has no interest in it. Why the lack of interest? Well, it's mainly because her foundation of the language are not well-established.

In fact, her daughter is in standard 2 when she can't even read, or write on her own, words that Kindergarten kids will know. 

I told the parent that languages are unlike other subjects - they require constant use and not  merely memorization, especially for kids. If you don't use them often, languages can be very hard to learn. 

If she had asked me more, I would have told her that I would recommend her to buy some very simple chinese storybooks (short ones, for kids) and read them to her daughter every night before bed. But gradually, she should stop at the cliffhanger and help her daughter finish reading the story on her own. Most kids I know love stories and will be more than eager to find out what happened (this is another tuition anecdote for another day).

Anyway, she did pursue the topic any longer. I did help her daughter as best as I could and i had thought her daughter slightly improved - the girl told me herself that she knew what the word meant and not ting-tong-tiang. I wanted to encourage her to work on her Mandarin, so I believed her and congratulated her for a job well done. Guess, the girl might not have improved after all.

I had another kid in my class as well and she was just learning Mandarin. Her Indian parents wanted her to learn and me having to juggle standard 1 to 3 kids all in the same class, I couldn't afford her too much attention. Since she looks fine on her own, I left her to her own devices and told her to ask me if she got any problems. Eventually, after her book was completed, I made a simple test, testing her on the words, she has learned. I told her to go study again the words and we'll see how she fare. 

I was expecting older words to be forgotten while hoping that for more recent ones, she'll remember. To my surprise, she can't do any of the questions at all. She wasn't learning as I thought she was doing - she was merely copying how the words are written with no knowledge whatsoever whatt he words mean even though there's a picture associated with it. I think she thought the mandarin words she are writing are scribbles.

Tuition classes are NOT the best way for someone to learn a new language, seriously. From that experience, I know that the girl doesn't understand the lines and strokes that she was writing. The book that I was given to teach her on are practically useless.

But her English is okay, so I tried another method. I associate mandarin words with the English words that she knows. Hopefully, by writing and pronouncing the words, she can learn that these two words mean the same thing but in different languages. 

Unfortunately, somehow she got phobia to come to tuition... which according to her mum, is not because of her "fierce" Mandarin tuition teacher as she said she wanted to come to my classes only lol (she had other classes with other teachers too)... but for some other reasons that she refused to say. 

Anyway, those are my experiences. Hopefully my thoughts are written down in a coherent enough manner this time :P Have fun!

Why do we sleep?

A very nice summary from Russel Foster in his TED talk on sleep.

4 sub types of introversion

Apparently there are 4 sub types of introversion... and well, there's a test you can do to determine which sub type you are more inclined to.

Feel free to check it out here.
(You can easily skip the Adfly Ads after a couple of seconds. Thank you!)

Here's my result:

When I read the questions for the "Thinking" sub type, I knew spot on that this will be my predominant sub type. 

However, it's driving me nuts that there are no percentage shown for the other axis (what is the plural word for "axis"? I'm too lazy to Google it :P).

How did you fair in the quiz? Feel free to post your results below! :)

2048

Do try this game out! It's a puzzle game that excruciatingly difficult, yet it is difficult enough to let you have enough fun.

http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/ 

I unfortunately cannot embed the game here for you, so you'll just have to click on that link and head to the site. It's a completely free game with none of those freemium nonsense.

So... enjoy! :)

oh and try to beat my High Score if you can ;) It's not very high I'm sure, but do go ahead and make that your first goal when you play this game

My second round of the game :) Check out my high score! :D

If you enjoy the game, do check out the app version of the game with a city-building theme, City 2048. :)