The Battle Between L and Kira

2007-01-21T16:02:00.000+08:00

The most important lesson I had learnt in the process of developing my UIR portfolio, well, honestly, to me, everything is important, from cusomising and designing my blog and putting my reflections in it, to searching for resources and then to evaluating the websites. At first, I was wondering why there was such a course in the first place, I was confident that I could use the internet well enough, but after I took the lesson, I realised that there were a lot of things that I did not know about, for example what are the different ways a word can be searched in a search engine, how a search engine works to find results. Well, if I were to say what was the most improtant lesson I had learnt in UIR would be about the search engines. I learnt that there are many ways and methods that can be used to search up information in a search engine and also the search engines would rank the results in order of relevance, which I never knew before. I also learnt that there are a lot of functions in the search engines that can be used, for example to search for pictures and videos. Another very important thing I had learnt is about the blogs, in the past, I had thought of the websites to be easy to create and maintain, but now, when I created my own, I learnt that it is very hard as the blog design is edited by html coding which learnt how about in the process of designing my blog, all the nice and fancy stuff that others have in their blog must have taken ages to write out and create. All in all, UIR has taught me many things about the internet which has greatly helped me in terms of my schoolwork and has prepared me for future work relaterd projects.

2007-01-16T17:34:00.000+08:00

My overall impression of the Smithsonian Institute’s Website

url:http://www.si.edu/

Rating: 8/10

This website allows the public users to access information of museum and events that are happening. It also has information for the public whom are interested to visit the museums. It also has an online shopping service which allows the users to purchase items online and take advantage of any offers available. The research section allows users to search on information on the various museum findings, art and culture.

It covers topics on art and design, history and culture and science and technology. Visitors are able to get information before visiting the museums. It also covers the business area, whereby there’s an online shopping service. There is also a membership scheme that allows users to get privileges and benefits. Users are able to view information on upcoming exhibitions and events. Most of the links provide easy access to other museum websites. All the links are accessible within one page which saves browsing time.

The information is well presented and arranged. The site has interesting combination of colors as to attract viewers to look through their site. The information is clearly, consistently and logically arranged. The site has a lot of nice pictures to show the viewers. There is a search facility on the site. The search facility is quite convenient to use as it provides a lot of options to choose from when we type a keyword.

It is easy to use and navigate around. There are a lot of links which lead to other pages. These can help us view the whole site a lot easier. The site serves people from different countries. They can read the site in their own language since the site provides 10 different languages.

This site is free for others to use although you can sign up membership for a fee to enjoy exclusive benefits which is a lot better than most sites which require payment to view their information.

This site also organizes its information very well; it classifies them according to subject and then further classifies them into sub-topics.

Reflections on evaluation of the 3 websites

2007-01-14T14:42:00.000+08:00

Evaluating websites is a tough job as I have to closely go through the websites to spot any errors or flaws they might contain, which may be hard, escpecially looking for spelling errors in the website, but this also improved my understanding of the different websites, how different people organise and design their websites and how to use the facilities in which the website contains better. I also find myself getting more and more used to evaluating the website and now, even when I am surfing other websites during my free time or for my school work, I find myself looking for facilities that the website may contain and also giving scores to the website, and if the website is a wiki website and I have a high opinion of it, I would go back to use the website in the future as I am fully aware of it's strong points and facilities such that I can use them easily and easier and save lots of time in my homework and projects. Evaluating websites has help me to better determine whether a website is useful which a quick glance of it. All in all, evaluating websites may be a tiring job at first, but as I proceed on, it gets easier and easier as I get more and more used to evaluating them. I also learned, from evaluating websites, how I can, in the future design my websites according to the specifications I have been given to evaluate the websites and then evaluate it's mistakes and errors myself so as to better improve it, to create a website that is a close to perfection as possible

2007-01-05T13:11:00.000+08:00

Here I am, after evaluating a website. Evaluating a website is not easy as there are many criteria in which would be used to grade the website, like currency, purpose and usability.(more important factors to me as I think they are the ones which contribute most to my scoring) I have gone through many websites and, honestly, there is no such thing as a perfect website, every website has its own flaws, like a website may have diverse information, which is good but it may have some information that is useless to the topic I am looking for example, a website is free but since it is free, everyone goes to it, it would be very laggy and slow, this would waste lots of presious time. Even if a person designs his/her website according to the criterias, everybody's opinions would differ according to their their interpretation of the criterias. That is why I am evaluating to the best of my ability to see which website is good and what are its flaws. To me, the hardest part about evaluation is on the authority part as I do not know whether the website has been included in gateways and virtual libraries because the website itself cannot tell me that and I had to go and look it up myself, which is a very tedious task and also the fact that some helpful stuff in the website actually contributes to it's flaws. All in all, after looking at all the criteria, I find them all important as they help me to sucessfully rate a website in its overall effectiveness, although some options like "Is there any strong points in the site which you find hinders its effectiveness in some other way?" so as to fully and impartially rate a website.

Reflections on using different search engines for searches

2006-11-27T20:52:00.000+08:00

While searching for infomation this time, I have decided to try out different search engines like yahoo, metacrawler and galaxy.com. They yielded different results and I was exposed to search results that I am not familiar to. The subject directory, which is galaxy.com maybe too specific that if too many keywords are used, the results may be very close to zero. While in the case of the Meta search engine, the results are not placed in order of relevance to all the keywords and it is hard to retrieve information easily. I think that Yahoo, because it lists the most relevant searches first and highlights where the keywords appear in the text and even gives me a short summary of the text, coupled with the fact that it searches fast with many results even if there are many keywords used, it can also perform advanced searches which can help me greatly increase the speed of researching and getting hold of online resources.

Reflections on my recent searches

2006-11-20T22:02:00.000+08:00

Well, here I am after posting those searches online. After the experience I had the last time with looking for links on a particular subject, I realised that, this time, I took lesser time to look for the information I needed as now I know what keywords to use and what summary I should look for on the search engines displaying a portion of the site to me. I have also found some sites that are interlinked to each other on the same subjects which are rather nice as I can directly link to other sites to look for more information. I also learnt that search engines organise their information in the way that the most relevant and the one which the most keyword springs out first, which facilitates the finding. Well I hope that this information can help all of you in your searches!

Reflections on my searches

2006-11-07T22:49:00.000+08:00

Well here I am after my search, tired and worn out. I realise today that searching for information in the internet is not easy, but if you have the correct search engine and the correct keywords it would be easier, having the correct method used like using commas, pluses and minuses help too. Of course, with something as big as the net, you will require some time and patience to find the information you need, and when you do, the satisfation is enough to cover up any unhappiness or complaints you have with using the net or the particular search engine! Well to what I have learnt from the sites which i found information from, i found out that they have many reasons to post the information. Some are purely to educate you while some post it to justify their actions, some to critcize, some to get others' opinions and some to attract others to the website. All in all, no matter what their reason is, I am glad that they post the information so that I could find them.

Some interesting sites regarding microorganisms

2006-11-07T22:41:00.000+08:00

Hi people, I am currently studying microbiology as a subject and i have teaken keen interest in it; but I am appalled that some microorganisms in biological warfare and are used by terrorists and even some governments consider using it if there is ever world war III. Therefore i have researched and come up with sites telling you more about microorganisms and how they are related with biological warfare.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/462676 : This site tells about how bacteria agents are
used for bioterrorism and the methods in which they are applied.

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1999_hr/99-10-20alibek.htm : This site explains what are biological weapons and how they are amazingly kept from dectection.

http://www.bis.doc.gov/news/2003/ForeignPolicyReport/fprchap7_biologicals.html : This site explains why the government must License and control biological agents and certain microorganism exports and import
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare: This report introduces biological warfare and
mentions the use of microorganism orother toxic products derived from microorganism in the past.

http://www.remoteviewing.com/discussion-forums/bb/showthread.php?t=796 : This site is a discussion on biologicalwarfare and how to protect yourself form it.

My Course

2006-11-06T21:47:00.000+08:00

The course I am taking right now is BMS, which stands for Bio-medical Science. So far, the subjects which i have learnt have all got to do with mathematics, chemistry and biology. The mathematics and the biology are hard subjects for me cause, believe it or not, i did not take biology or additional mathmatics as subjects for my 'O' levels, so I am new to them. But i have managed so far and I am going to work hard to get better results this semester!

A little about Death Note

2006-11-05T17:30:00.000+08:00

Death Note is about a boy, Yagami Raito a bored genius, and is unsatisfied that there are criminals scot free when he hacks into the police records. That all changes when he finds the Death Note, a notebook that can kill people,; simply by writing down the name of the person he wants dead, Raito can kill anyone at will without getting caught. He immediately starts work killing off all the criminals that are scot free, but the cops are hot on his trail; after all, when they conclude that its a mass murderer that can kill without even lifting a finger on the victim! When the enigmatic and seemingly unstoppable detective L goes after Raito, the result is a engaging battle of wits!

A little about this blog

2006-11-02T21:16:00.000+08:00

This blog will be about my coursework in Biomedical Science and Death Note. I will be posting more links to sites regarding Death Note and also give a review on Death Note. I also will be posting about any interesting things which I will learn in BMS which I hope to share with everyone!

2006-10-31T17:57:00.000+08:00

A Website I Am Recommending

A website that is interesting to me: http://www.friendster.com/ It is a website where there are many people and you can make friends. It is a great website where people can meet each other and make more friends. I used this website to make new friends and keep in touch with old ones. This site also helps promote relationships between different countries, as people from other countries might add you as a friend.. I myself have a Japanese and some Philipino friends.

2006-10-31T17:56:00.000+08:00

A website that is interesting to me:
http://www.youtube.com/It is a website where there are many videos which people upload so others can see it. The are many variety of videos and i am sure everyone can find a video regarding their hobbies there. I like it a lot as i can view many funny videos like hard gay and many more. This website is amazing as although it has many videos uploaded by others, it does not tolerate piracy and thus, is a very good and reliable site to look for videos to include in your projects.

2006-10-31T17:55:00.000+08:00

A Little About Myself

Hi, I am currently studying in Temasek polytechnic. And I am currently pursuing the biomedical science course. This is my first year here and there are many things that i find fresh and interesting. This is my first time creating a blog, so i hope you will not be bored by my nonsense. So, a little about why I choose this course, actually i also do not know why, maybe because the name sounds cool, but after I got in, I realised that the course is though and i have to try hard to keep up with the workload, but i managed to scrape through the first semester, so I'm quite optimistic about the work in the years to come. A little about my hobbies, I like going to the arcade to play drummania, it is a very fun game. I also love Deathnote very much, it has an interesting story and plot, i also love the way Raito and L play mind games with each other, it is very interesting!