School is coming to an end in just a few weeks time and I'm truly grateful at having given the chance to be able to learn more about internet research which I think will be useful to me after my conscription. In a nutshell, I am lucky to have chosen EIR as my CDS (considering this is my final semester as well).
The most important lesson that I've learnt through the course of the module is the use of boolean operators and other various search facilities as Google was my primary search engine. With the practicals and tutorials in EIR, I've gained quite abit of knowledge. Thank you, Ms Faridah, for the guidance!
around the world in 80 days
[5:32 PM]
Monday, January 19, 2009
My dream holiday
I was told that I have to write about my dream holiday for this particular reflection and the first place I thought of was Japan since I'm rather interested in their animation but I decided against choosing Japan as I predict most students will talk about Japan and the cherry blossoms. After Japan, there is only really one country I will be most interested in.
England. The above is an image of Buckingham Palace. I am rather intrigued by such ancient architectures since our island doesn't happen to have one and the only way to look at them is from books or pictures on the web. It will be interesting to find out more about their culture as well I guess, but my main purpose in visiting England isn't just all about castles.
This place would be the main motivating factor behind my pilgrimage in England. It would be great if I could actually watch a game LIVE, but we'll leave that for another time.
around the world in 80 days
[11:00 AM]
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Evaluating talkingcock.com
I'm not a real fan of websites like this despite having some rather questionable views with regards to the current organisation which consists of certain elites who encourage us to move on with life after a some embarrassing moment on their part (like the incident involving a limp, a detention centre and a toilet) and yet are not taken to task for their inefficiency.
The articles on talkingcock.com are undoubtedly done tongue-in-cheek and are usually spoofs of the original news that are controversial but I find the stories rather bland after a while.
We had a 'role-play' session in class as well, with my group role-playing as the PM of Singapore who happened to chance upon talkingcock.com. It was rather interesting as we have to see things from a different angle and rethink our perspectives along the way.
around the world in 80 days
[3:43 PM]
Saturday, November 29, 2008
In a way, using databases is effective as compared to the rest as the results are quite limited. By that I mean only credible research papers can be found. It is also rather accurate as boolean operators are used to filter out the irrelevant results. Using search engines usually yield many irrelevant sources as they are mainly keyword based while meta-search might not give you the desired information as well. Subject directories? I think they are the worst of the lot as the results are rather inaccurate.
Personally, I've used ebscohost for one of my modules in year 2 and I have to say that it is rather efficient in churning out accurate results. Given the chance, I will still use databases for research.
around the world in 80 days
[11:41 AM]
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
From the comfort of my seat, the various information that strangers have gathered are all in my hands. This beats having to prowl through various books and newspapers in order to look out for more information. Furthermore, search engine facilities have since improved, with special features such as the advanced search to help you narrow down and limit your search in terms of date and relevance, to cite a few examples. Google is my preferred option due to its compatibility with boolean operators and its advanced search option. It is also able to take random snapshots of webpages, which will be then cached so that I can actually see what was published on the website previously. Pages similar to what my search query are also presented, thus giving me the freedom to choose whichever information I want to use.
Opinion on sitefeeds
Though it is useful in conveying updates of websites that I may have a morbid genuine interest in, I somehow think that it is rather redundant as I would rather click the link and head to the intended target's blog instead. Unless I have a very good reason to use site feeds, I will not use it.
around the world in 80 days
[11:34 AM]
Monday, November 10, 2008
The EIR lesson last week taught us how to use the relevant search terms on Google and its sister site, Google Scholar.
On the whole, I found that Google is pretty good as the information generated from a search query is pretty diversified. That said, there are quite a lot of unnecessary information which were thrown at me during the search. But after comparing to Google Scholar, I think Google wins hands down. Although there are tons of research papers found via Google Scholar, they are mostly pay-to-read kinds.
Creating a discussion thread in a forum is nothing new to me. Although the replies are mostly irrelevant to the topic, some interesting alternative perspective and insights were shared. And besides, it is where I get to save random funny images like this one. So in a way, the waiting time for replies are always pretty exciting as you never know if you'll get flamed, a good/bad answer or some funny idiot who decides to post for the sake of increasing his post count. Then again, I could always use a good laugh and I actually killed a few threads by being 'un-serious' in the past. I am still like that now, but that's another story.
And the last part regarding why we have to do citations for sources, we are using someone's intellectual property to give credibility to our own work. It makes our work seem authentic and allows interested parties to read up on the source at their own leisure. In addition, I'd say we should do citations to show our appreciation for the information that the person provided.
around the world in 80 days
[8:11 AM]
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Assignment: If I had $500 to spend, what would I buy?
Requirements:
Online Sites ie Amazon, Ebay, yadayada
Lets screw the $500 budget. So cheapo...
If I had a million bucks, a million bucks...
Ok now that I got that out of the way, it is time to look at the unrealistic items that I can actually find from the almighty interwebz.
Portable Hard disk? Check. Hugearse space for lossless (aka FLAC/ALAC) files?. Check. Bonus sweetener deals: Cheap and 'brand new/refurbished' item with 1 yr warranty beats buying off from someone else who might have subjugated the iPod to some explicit treatment.
Cash remaining: SGD 251
Not even enough to get the earphone which I am currently using, but I suppose I'll give my friends a treat at the end of the torturous semester.
