Merry Christmas!

Posted by Way Siong | | Posted On Tuesday 25 December 2007 at 7:35 pm

hello everyone, just to wish you all a merry christmas! :)

Journal article on Magic??

Posted by Way Siong | | Posted On Saturday 22 December 2007 at 2:35 pm

So some researchers have nothing better to do.. so they decided to pick up a few harry potter books and came out with a study called: "Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects".

It's weird.. haha! Everything is done so professionally that you woould think it's a real study.. Hang on.. it is a real study.. check this out:
Abstract

Objective To assess the evidence for a genetic basis to magic.

Design Literature review.

Setting Harry Potter novels of J K Rowling.

Participants Muggles, witches, wizards, and squibs.

Interventions Limited.

Main outcome measures Family and twin studies, magical ability, and
specific magical skills.

Results Magic shows strong evidence of heritability, with familial
aggregation and concordance in twins. Evidence suggests magical ability to be a
quantitative trait. Specific magical skills, notably being able to speak to
snakes, predict the future, and change hair colour, all seem heritable.

Conclusions A multilocus model with a dominant gene for magic might exist,
controlled epistatically by one or more loci, possibly recessive in nature.
Magical enhancers regulating gene expressionmay be involved, combined with
mutations at specific genes implicated in speech and hair colour such as FOXP2
and MCR1.


The even quoted a twin study from the book..

Twin studies: Although assumptions are made, complete genetic determination
of a disease would result in monozygotic twins being concordant.12 The two
pairs of twins in the Harry Potter books, the Patil and Weasley twins, are
monozygotic and both have magical abilities. Although two sets of twins is a
small sample size, the finding does add credence to the idea of magic being a
genetically determined trait.

This is weird. Certainly not something I expect to see from BMJ :P

References:

Ramagopalan et. al. (December 2007). Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects. BMJ 2007;335:1299-1301. Retrieved December 22 2007 from http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7633/1299

Modelling kits

Posted by Way Siong | | Posted On Saturday 15 December 2007 at 7:03 pm

Bought a cheap Gundam model from a shop in the place opposite QVB, making one is quite a fun. Made another one last time so this one is no new adventure. Thought I'd write about it a little. :)

This is the model I worked on, 'High grade' 1/144 scale Mobile Ginn from Gundam Seed. The 'high grade' is actually one of the cheapest grade available, don't let Bandai fool you.



This is my working space, it's just my normal table with ample lighting.

These modelling kits come with the parts placed in plastic frames where you take it out from called the 'runner'. More advanced people would spray colour these runners before starting their work, but I'm a beginner so no colouring.

Taking them out piece by piece and sticking them together is basically what it is, Bandai has made some cheats into their models coz you don't need any cement or anything, just snap lock them and they work.

That's a torso and a completed arm and parts of the left arm left. In no time they will be this:
Finally, with the legs together you'll get something like this:
This one is quite good, the joints are very articulate and you can use it to make many kinds of poses, including weird ones.. haha!

It takes around 3 hours to finish this, so it's fairly simple. If you have more cash, you could get more advanced models with articulating fingers. It's a great thing to kill time and to add some nerd decors to your room. :P

A good tutorial can be found here.

Just for fun

Posted by Way Siong | | Posted On at 6:56 pm

This is my dog, STORM a.k.a "tin kosong", hehe!

That day half of IH was awakened by this fella chirping like nobody's business, took of pic of it coz it looked like it's wearing some kind of mask :P