Stanford Sleepiness Scale: Are you getting enough sleep?

Find out whether you are sleep deprived using this helpful scale!

Source: https://web.stanford.edu/~dement/sss.html

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

How Dark is Your Personality?
Which TED Talk are you?
Find out your EQ score!
How old are your ears?
How many colours can you see?
Whose #brainchild are you?

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?

Highlights - Hidden Word Puzzles and Answers

I love hidden object games and well, if the "object" happen to be words, that's even better! :)

You can give it a try by checking this link out: http://shareably.net/six-hidden-words-highlights-challenge/ The puzzles were featured in a magazine called Highlights, I think.
(Update: Apparently, 9GAG picked this up and featured the pics on their site as well :P)

Anyway, all you need to do is find 6 related words in the picture. It isn't too hard and is quite entertaining :)

For answers though, I'll be posting them below for your reference. Have fun!

Answers for the first picture

From top to down, left to right:
1. Words
2. Book
3. Story
4. Page/ Pages
5. Read
6. Novel

Answers for the second picture

From top to down, left to right:
1. Storm/ Stormy
2. Clouds (This one can be harder to spot :P)
3. Puddle
4. Showers
5. Wet
6. Damp

Answers for the third picture

From top to down, left to right:
1. Frost
2. Mittens
3. Ice/ Iced
4. Snow
5. Chill
6. Boots

Answers for the fourth picture

From top to down, left to right:
1. Hungry
2. Cheese
3. Party
4. Yummy
5. Red (I think I might have gotten this wrong though)
6. Music

Answers for the fifth picture

From top to down, left to right:
1. Bloom
2. Garden
3. Dig
4. Mine (I think I might have gotten this wrong as well)
5. Seed
6. Farm

Answers for the sixth picture

(Okay this is super tough, since the words are not exactly related to the scene)

From top to down, left to right:
1. Orange
2. Wow
3. Guitar
4. Iowa
5. Laugh
6. Cow

Answers for the seventh picture

From top to down, left to right:
1. Biggani??? (I know the word's there, but I'm not sure what it is yet... gah, I need fresh eyes for this :P)
2. Ice
3. Frost
4. Chill
5. Cold
6. Sled

Answers for the eighth picture

(This is very easy :))

From top to down, left to right:
1. Mirror
2. Straw
3. Couch
4. Tiles
5. Cat
6. Cord

Answers for the ninth picture

From top to down, left to right:
1. Tree
2. Nice
3. Boy
4. Fish
5. Hot
6. Wave

Answers for the tenth picture

From top to down, left to right:
1. Cut
2. Man
3. Cool
4. Tell
5. Snow
6. See


Anyway, have fun! :)

Which TED Talk Are You?

This is a pretty fun Quiz to do, and to some extent, it is surprisingly accurate as well.

Do check it out if you've got the time: http://blog.ted.com/quiz-which-ted-talk-are-you/

And as usual, since this is my blog (hah, IKR!), I'll be posting up my results :)

Do let me know about your results in the discussion forum/ comment below and we can all laugh about how strangely accurate this quiz is :P

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

How Dark is Your Personality?
Stanford Sleepiness Scale: Are You Getting Enough Sleep?
Find out your EQ score!
How many colours can you see?
Whose #brainchild are you?

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?

Most Anticipated Free-to-Play MMO Games for 2016

I've written 2 very lengthy articles on this :P

As I've put in quite a lot of effort in arranging them based on the preference of the majority of players, I would very much like to share this article to you all :)

Enjoy! 

Black Desert

http://www.wwgdb.com/articles/most_anticipated_f2p_mmos_in_2016_part_1

http://www.wwgdb.com/articles/most_anticipated_f2p_mmos_in_2016_part_2

Dreadnought

So you're now 26 years old...

So you're now 26 years old... what have you accomplished in your life?

~~~

I was inspired to write this blog post when I saw someone, who is 26 (same as me! :D), wrote something similar on Quora in response to the question asked :)

I just thought it is something interesting to do... and so here I am... doing it xD

Okay so here are some ground rules if you guys want to try this:

1. Accomplishments - Stuff that you personally felt you've accomplished. Something that you are personally proud of. Don't only put in stuff that you think other people will consider as an accomplishment. It is your life after all :)

2. Keep your number of accomplishments the same as your age. Summarize or group stuff up if you need to (and if you feel like you've achieved a lot in your life)

3. That's it! Let's start :D

So you're now 26 years old... what have you accomplished in your life?

(in no particular order)

1. Wrote several gamebooks, stories and poems
2. Published a poem on the UK Poetry Library (for amateur/ upcoming poets) - the website is currently suspended though :P
3. Took up the role of Program Manager and, with the help of my friends and my juniors, organised UTAR's first Biological Science Week successfully.
4. Graduated from university with First Class Honours and managed to keep my scholarship intact
5. Obtained my Masters degree in science (Research mode some more!)
6. Learned how to set up a basic online/ freelance business
7. Worked at one of the most boring jobs in my life - a salesgirl at a shopping mall
8. Managed to land a job writing reviews in the video game industry (well, technically half of it is in the marketing industry though :P)
9. Set up and maintained a personal blog that is quite successful :P Thanks guys!
10. Experienced the joy of being a part of a choral speaking team
11. Experienced virtual reality and had loads of fun with some virtual reality games
12. Purchased a gaming laptop... I've always wanted a good laptop to play games on :)
13. Went through a rather gruelling "military-like" camp for prefects (though I'm not a prefect :P)
14. Learned the family recipes for a variety of CNY cookies
15. Learned a bit of French, Spanish, Latin, and even Morse Code... lol :P
16. Set up my own websites... although I've taken shortcuts by using templates and free website hosting, or that they aren't very successful coz I don't have the time to invest in them :P
17. Created and uploaded my own pretty cool typography music video which has taken me months to learn and create (But I've lost it forever when YouTube banned my account... cries internally)
18. Participated in 2 online karaoke contests - didn't win but well, the experience was fun :P
19. Represented my school in several sports competitions (I'm not the sporty sort... so this is an accomplishment for me :P)
20. Had a 60% success rate in getting a job offer after going to the job interviews (out of 5 interviews)
21. Tried to defend Playstation in a console debate (the other consoles in question are Wii and Xbox... Wii won lol) and lost... apparently, no one cares about the graphics. (Do take note that I'm not a console gamer)
22. Discovered a new passion for designing and creating digital diagrams
23. Became a teacher (tuition teacher to be exact) for a year - it was tiring but meaningful
24. Overcame several "major" mistakes that I did in life without resorting to dire methods - the word "major" here can be very relative term
25. Got a job I enjoy - well, there are ups and downs
26. Haven't died yet.

Oh and I would like to add these at the end of this blog post:

1. To have seen my friend's face when I casually bend my thumb backwards at a 90 degree angle (I have Hitchhiker's thumb :P)
2. To see the amazed expression on my students' faces when they feel the solution turned chilly after being mixed together (endothermic reaction :))

but as they aren't actually accomplishments, so I didn't add them to the main list :P


Have fun compiling up your own list of accomplishments! :)

Infograph: Most Popular Usernames in MMO Games

I was playing around with Canva, a web-based application that allows you to create and save infographs for free... as long as yo don't use any of their paid elements. I've gotta say though - they do have a lot of free icons and images for you to use as you please.

That said, Canva has some really nice templates, fonts and images/icons, but I really dislike that the tools provided are very clunky and restrictive. In fact, I can do an even better job using PowerPoint to create my infograph... lol... minus the free icons and stuff, of course.  

But well, if you need a somewhat freeware that can do the job (infograph) without needing any installations, Canva is a pretty good bet. 

Anyway, here's the infograph that I made for lulz (just to try out the application I mean). Oh and the info in it is pretty accurate I'd say :P

Click to Enlarge

I wanted to add a picture of various anime in the "anime" box, but well, I gave up lol. As mentioned, it's tough as hell to move things around especially when you can't see the layer order for each item and kept clicking/ moving on the wrong stuff. Texts are super tough to move as well.

It turned out okay though, so... guess there's that :P

Alright, have fun with Canva! Ima go grab some dinner now :)

Thesis: Acknowledgement

Okay, I've promised myself that I'll put up the acknowledgement of my Master's thesis here so that perhaps one day, the people that I'm grateful for might stumble upon it and get a very pleasant surprise :)

So here goes! 

P/S: Do not copy my Acknowledgement ya? Obviously, the people you will want to thank and the reason/s you want to thank them for will be drastically different from mine. You can use this as a template to get you started, but I find it easier to simply write from the heart. I'm sure you will realise that too :)

P/P/S: Names have been shortened to protect the people in this acknowledgement. The initials should be enough to let these people know that I'm referring to them :)

Acknowledgement

Firstly, I would like to convey my deepest gratitude to my esteemed main supervisor, Assoc Prof TTH for giving me the opportunity to pursue my masters’ degree. His advice and support is invaluable to me during this arduous postgraduate journey. I would also very much like to thank my honoured co-supervisors, Dr Subash G. and Dr Citartan M.. Their years of accumulated expertise on aptamers proved to be indispensable to this project. I’m also very grateful for their willingness to share what they knew to me. A special thanks goes to Dr HCH who was my mentor during my earlier months in the lab. His advice on lab techniques as well as on life (in general) is something that I will remember for as long as I live.

A huge shout out of thanks to my fellow lab mates at the Infectomic Cluster, especially to LLP and Kak Siti, for their constructive comments and guidance, without which I may not be here today. I wish them the best of luck in their own journeys! Another significant individual that I would like to express my utmost gratitude is to my dear friend and ex-lab mate, TYR (Lyra). Her cheerful outlook on life and her enthusiasm towards science are extremely contagious. I’m very proud to list her as one of my best friends (It is a very short list). Just in case I left anyone, who had helped to bring this thesis to fruition, out in this acknowledgement, sorry and thank you!

I would also like to express my appreciation to my family and also my boyfriend, TSY, for their loving support and encouragement, particularly when I had faltered in my journey. They saved me from the murky depths of depression when I could not see bright light in the seemingly endless and dark tunnel that embodies my postgraduate study and I am forever indebted to them.

Last but not least, my sincere gratitude to Advanced Medical and Dental Institute (AMDI) for giving me my student grant, which helped tremendously in getting some vital lab reagents that I could not do without, and also for awarding me with the position of Graduate Assistant that greatly reduced my financial burden.  Thank you!