Taylor Swift - Love Song Live

Dear all,

Today I would like to share a video from Taylor Swift - Love Song Live Performance. She sang very well even it's a live performance.

the correct way to cook instant noodle

Dear all,

As a university student, Maggi, Mamee, Indomee, you name it, are very popular. I bet all of us have eaten instant noodle before. And we all are completely aware about the dangerous of eating it but we still do. As I was browsing through a website named Oh! Tidak just now, I bumped into a very informative plus useful article about the correct way to cook instant noodle.

The correct way to cook instant noodles without harming our bodies and health. `Normally, how we cook the instant noodles is to put the noodles into a pot with water, throw in the powder and let it cook for around 3 minutes and then it’s ready to eat.

This is the WRONG method of cooking the instant noodles.

By doing this, when we actually boil the ingredients in the powder, normally with MSG, it will change the molecular structures of the MSGcausing it to be toxic.

The other thing that you may or may not realize is that, the noodles are coated with wax and it will take around 4 to 5 days for the body to excrete the wax after you have taken the noodles.

CORRECT METHOD :

1. boil the noodles in a pot with water.
2. once the noodles is cooked, take out the noodles, and throw away the water which contains wax.
3. boil another pot of water till boiling and put the noodles into the hot boiling water and then shut the fire.
4. only at this stage when the fire is off, and while the water is very hot, put the ingredient with the powder into the water, to make noodle soup.
5. however, if you need dry noodles, take out the noodles and add the ingredient with the powder and toss it to get dry noodles

credit to Oh! Tidak and rEdpeanut..

Task 6 - Blog Questionnaire

Dear all,

As for our final posting for SKBP 1032, we are required to fill in a questionnaire. Happy reading!!

Blog Questionnaire

Age : 20 years old

Tutorial Group : Group 1

Lecturer : Assoc. Prof. Datin Dr. Norizan Abdul Razak

1. Do you enjoy blogging? Why?
Yes, I do. This is because blogging is something that most people all over the world is 'crazy' about including me. Actually I've been blogging ever since 2005 to 2006. This is because I enjoy reading others' blogs whereby most of them use blog as their online diaries. They uploaded pictures, videos, songs and their experiences and what have happened to them which attracted me to own one. I really enjoy 'blog-hopping' even though I don't even know the owner of the blog. It's more fun when there is people come and give comments to my posts, doesn't matter whether it's my friend or a total stranger. In terms of blogging for assignment like this blog that I have here, I found it's more students-friendly. What I mean here is I get to choose when I want to post the task given, as long as it's before the next tutorial class. I don't even have to go to SoLLS just to hand in my assignments. With only one click I can publish it. Plus, we are given the freedom to decorate our blog which added more fun to blogging.

2. Based on your experience what is the benefit of blogging?
Based on my experience, there are a lot of benefits of blogging. Well, the question ask only one benefit though. Datin, can I give more than one? Hee.. I'll just list down the important one okay. First, in terms of my language learning. Even though we cannot see the progress, but somehow towards the end of the semester, I feel like I have more confident in writing online. Besides improving my writing skills and my Grammar awareness, I also get to improve my vocabulary because in order to complete the task, I have to read at least one article regarding the topic given. Second is in term of my ICT knowledge. The more I explore the blog, the more I learn. Everytime I see someone made something nice to his or her blog, I will always have the urge to find out how to do it and I ended up learning it like something about HTML coding and CSS.

3. Do you need more assistance to set up your blog?
No. Usually I'm the one to help others because they are quite new to blogging in terms of changing the layout and adding more widgets to their blog. Feel very pleased to help my friends because at the same time I get to learn something new also.

4. Do you have any memorable/favourite topic in your blog?
Yes, I do. It is in my personal blog, when my schoolmates and I were featured in a local newspaper for getting good results in SPM 2006. Since I don't have a scanner, I just captured the picture from the newspaper using my handphone's camera. Even though I'm not the best student that day, but that was my first time being featured in a newspaper. Here is the picture. I'm the one with the circle around my head.
As for this blog, the most memorable posting was when the whole class of Group 1, was invited to go to E-KOM National Conference at PNB Darby Park Hotel. We had so much fun and gain new experience. Thanks again to Datin for inviting us there.

5. List 5 advantages of blogging for you

• student-friendly - I can choose when I want to post as long as it does not exceed the time given
  
• money and energy saving - I don't have to print out my assignment and submit it at SoLLS
• get commented directly by lecturer and even friends
• can improve my writing skills, my Grammar realisation, my vocabulary
• get to know and learn more things regarding ICT

6. List 5 disadvantages of blogging

• tend to copy others' work or failed to give credits
• problem with internet connection - sometimes too slow sometimes nil
• wide usage of "bad language" which refers to ungrammatical sentences, wrong spelling, colloquial language, etc.
• technical problems - unable to post comment, unable to play songs, etc.
• at risk of being flamed by others not only by local people, but the people from the entire world

7. Will you continue blogging after this course?
Yes, I will because I've been blogging for about 4 years and there's no reason to stop blogging as it's a very fun activity. I can share my experience and even my problems in the blog and some friends of mine who read it will comment and give some advices to me. It's a win-win situation. Besides, with writing what I've been through in these days, when I re-read the posts again, it is very nostalgic.

8. Do you think blogging improve your writing?
Yes, it does.

9. Do you think that we should continue with blogging activity for the next batch of students?
Yes, I think you should.

10. Will you recommend your friend to blog?
Yes, I will. This is because I get to know their latest condition just by referring to their blogs and I can get to widen my blogging network.

Girls and High Heels

Dear all,

This post is especially for all girls out there. Do take a minute to click this poster below for larger view:
Just think about it kay. Till the next post.


Truly,

Task 5 - All About Concordance

Dear all,

For this week, we are required to write about "Concordance". Sounds familiar to you? Or not? Well, I heard this word for the first time during the lecture given by Mr. Dr. to be, who is Mr. Affendi on concordance. After he explained then I figure out what concordance is. From my understanding, "Concordance" is a list of each word that is contained either in a short story, a poem, a novel, an article, lyrics, etc. I used to call it "index" because that is what they wrote in few pages of the book at the back. It's very useful and seriously, before this I've never been bothered on how on earth they do that. It's a LOT of work to list out and to count each and every word. Concordancing a poem is still okay if we want to do it manually, but can you imagine to do a concordance for a novel? How stressful it is. It is such a waste we are not introduced to concordancing software before we did our assignment on analysing the 10 e-mails. It is because it's easier to analyse and can get an accurate data compare to do it normally which I spent hours just to count some frequently used words in the e-mail. Well, the good side of it is, now, I am fully understand why they say it is very difficult to do a concordance in the pre-computer era.

If you want a clearer meaning, "Concordance" is an alphabetical arrangement of the principal words contained in a book, with citations of the passages in which they occur, (OED). I took this from an article on concordance from here.

It is one of the article that I read in order to complete the fifth posting besides getting more information regarding concordance. Concordancer is very useful in analysing:

• Allows us to see every place in a text where a particular word is used
• Detect patterns of usage
• Marshal evidence for an argument
• Detecting patterns of meaning

Sounds like very useful to language students and linguists. But, I was a bit shocked that as being told by Datin Dr. Norizan in the tutorial, concordancer is also used by the military to read messages. They hire linguists to study or analyse the pattern of words in newspaper for example, to figure out the hidden meaning in it. This is how a concordancer looks like:

According to wikipedia, usage of concordance in linguistics are:

• comparing different usages of the same word
• analysing keywords
• analysing word frequencies
• finding and analysing phrases and idioms
  
• finding translations of subsentential elements, e.g. terminology in bitexts and translation memories
• creating indexes and word lists (also useful for publishing)

In the lecture, the term KWIC is also mentioned. KWIC is an acronym for Key Word In Context, the most common format for concordance lines. A KWIC index is formed by sorting and aligning the words within an article title to allow each word (except the stop words) in titles to be searchable alphabetically in the index. It was a useful indexing method for technical manuals before computerized full text search became common.

In my view, it is obvious enough that concordance is very useful for both language learners and language teachers. Language is very complicated and we can obtain a lot of things just by analysing a text. For example, for laguage teachers, especially in secondary school. They have to mark the essays for the whole class, which normally consists of 30 to 37 students every week. Well, that is one class only, what if the teachers have more than one class? By using a concordancer, it will lift the burden on the teachers' shoulders. I'm not saying that the concordancer will do the essay marking. But at least, the teachers can know the usage of words, like their vocabulary, spelling and even the gist of the essays' content by using concordancer.

That's all from me on concordance. Till the next post.


Truly,

something fun that Najihah wants to share =)

Dear all,

Today I just wanna share a very interesting article that I found while browsing through a forum that I frequently visited. It's about:

10 Most Creative Business Cards

Business card from "Lush Lawn and Property Enhancement".
The bus iness cards were letter pressed by hand and stuffed with grass seed.
The best thing about them is when you hand one out, the seeds
shake and instantly pay off the idea.

Business Card from a Couples Therapist

100% discreet business cards for head hunter Aert van Seggelen. Completely edible business cards with 'read it then eat it' instruction.

Business card from a divorce lawyer. The perforated card demonstrates
what a divorce lawyers can do.


Business card from a Furniture Company


Business Card from a Personal Trainer


Business Card from a Second Hand store

Business card from an Acupuncturist


Business card from a Dentist


Business card from a Graphic Designer


credit to: kewek

Creative aren't they? Hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I do. Till the next post.




Truly,

Task 4 - E-Kom National Conference '09

Dear all,

Here I am again, posting but this posting is slightly different from the other postings as I actually attended a conference with my tutorial mates. It's "E-Community National Conference - Bridging Digital Device" which I translated from "Seminar Kebangsaan E-Komuniti '09 - Merapatkan Jurang Digital". I hope I translated it correctly. Hee.. Basically it was a conference about finding a way to make sure that not only people who are living in the city get to know and use ICT, but also the one living in rural areas like in the fisherman's villages and so on. Well that's only from my understanding but they were also discussion about other things like OPSP which stands for Online Practicum Placement System from UUM, Bridging Digital Device in SKMM perspective by Dato' Jailani and also Tele-centre Transformation by our one and only Assoc. Prof. Datin Dr. Norizan. So, I've chosen two papers which have caught my attention to be shared here.

1. Reducing Writing Apprehension Through Blogging Activities
This paper was presented by Madam Azianura Hani Shaari from UiTM Penang. Thanks to her now I know what does 'apprehension' really means. To those who still doesn't know, 'apprehension' means worry or fear that something unpleasant may happen. Let's get back to the paper. The issue that she pointed out was; what are the factors contribute to writing apprehension. Apprehensive writers basically have negative attitudes and perceptions towards writing like anxiety, fear and worry. Sounds so like me but not when writing, but when presenting. Guess I am having 'presenting apprehension' then. LOL. The symptoms for this writing apprehension are:

• Scared to write
• Hands cramp
• Hate writing
• Produced shorter essays
• Ideas hardly developed

Hmm so guys, is there any of the symptoms above that you're having? If so, please consult your written communication lecturer ASAP for the 'cure' okay and in my case, it's Dr. Zaini Amir. There are also some factors that result in writing apprehension:

• Culture - face saving
• Proficiency level
• Lack of confidence
• Examination
• Teachers' comments
• Lack role models
• Audience

And this is when blogging comes in handy for those who are having writing apprehension. There are some reasons why blogging can help which are:

• Student-centered
• Face-saving
• Huge audience - native speakers
• Boost up confidence and motivation
• Increases involvement among passive students
• Promote brainstorming and peer review activities

So, there's no reason for us to be scared to write anymore. Practice writing everyday as "Practice makes perfect". I'm totally agree with Madam Azianura Hani because as a student, when I have my own blog, It's more flexible as I can write anything that I want, but still finishing my required posting for Language and ICT. I were given the freedom on how to decorate my blog and it makes writing more interesting and enjoyable. Besides, it can also enhance my knowledge about networking and stuff like HTML coding as I have to learn in order to be able to decorate my blog. For example like how to insert picture or video into my post and how to adjust their width and height.

This paper also got a very surprising feedback from the members of the floor as blogging is something that is very popular among people all over the world nowadays. Even our former prime minister own a blog. A lady from MIMOS express her concern towards blogging by saying that blogging can also make the students to get use to using bad languages in academic writing as well. For me, it's not a problem because we are mature enough to know when to use and when to not be using bad language. We wouldn't want our marks got cut up just because we won't bother about the language we are using in academic writing. I'm agree with Dr. Sufian's comment when he said that we have to look on what is the purpose of writing in blog first. If we want to concentrate in fluency, then the usage of bad language is allowed. If we want to concentrate on the rules of writing like grammar and such, then the students have to use a proper language. In short, blogging really helps in coping with writing apprehension but further research is needed. Who knows maybe I can use this matter for my thesis in my third year.

2. Rural Communities' Information Needs
The second paper that I choose to share here is on Rural Communities' Information Needs which is more related to the conference-bridging digital device. This paper was presented by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Huda Ibrahim. As presented by her, the most important key lesson on the use of ICT for development in rural areas is before launching any ICT initiative, the information needs of a community should be thorough assessed.

The problem statements are:

• 85% of the population in the state of Kedah resides in the rural areas
• ICT penetration and usage programmes have not been very successful

And the reasons behind all this are:

1. Do not have computers - income less than 400 MYR
2. Do not have basics ICT knowledge and skills
3. Do not aware about the existence of online applications
4. Do not have interest in using ICT and online applications (Zulkhairi et al, 2008)

According to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Huda Ibrahim, there are ways to convince those in the rural areas to be more interested to acquire knowledge and to use ICT. Based on her research, the villagers there basically are working in some sectors which are fishery, paddy, palm-oil and also rubber. With the knowledge of ICT, of course they can get to know about weather, types of boats that are available and licenses for those in fishery sectors. And for those who are in other sectors they can use the internet to know about land, fertilizers, pesticides, plantation, subsidy, latest price and many more easily and this can help them to make their lives better. They need more information about business, ICT and computers and career opportunities to improve their lives. It's a win-win situation between the researchers and also the villagers.

Wow, what a long post I have here. I hope you are not tired reading. Hee, just kidding. Well, overall, I really enjoy myself there at the conference although at first I thought it might be on something that is not related to me but I am totally wrong. Actually we can join the conference again the next day but since I got lab test and a group presentation that day, I could not go. Such a waste not only because of the delicious food, but also because of the knowledge and priceless experince that I got from the conference. Thank you so much to Assoc. Prof. Datin Dr. Norizan for inviting us to the conference worth 200MYR per student for free. We really appreciate it. Hope Datin will invite us again for the next conference. Till the next post.
Enjoy some pictures from the conference!!!

Truly,

Task 3 - Search Engines

Dear all,
This week, for our third posting, we have to discuss about search engines and compare and contrast between the search engines that are available in the net. Basically, as being told by my tutor, Assoc. Prof. Datin Dr. Norizan, we are required to discuss about these four popular search engines; mamma.com, google scholar, eric digest and yahoo.com. I'll go through briefly one by one first.



I've been introduced to this very powerful search engine, mamma.com during Language and ICT tutorial. Mamma.com is a metasearch engine, which is a search tool that sends user requests to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source.(wikipedia). Plus, momma.com only collects the top results from the best search engines on the internet. Can you imagine you can get the results of ten search engines by only using one search engine. Before this, I thought mamma.com can only be used for academic purposes, but it is more than that. There are many search options that I can choose like web, videos, jobs, shop, yellow pages and also white pages. I've tried to find some videos on my favourite movie, "Twilight", and guess what, the videos are separated into their own categories like viral videos, movie trailers, music, games and so on. So, it is easier for me to specify my search. Just like google.com, there is a way to make my search more powerful. Here is the screenshot on how we can enhance our search. The one I've circled is the "key" part.


ERICDigests.org
Even after using a very powerful search engine, I still couldn't find any logo for ericdigest.org. So, if anyone has one, please do share with me. My first impression when I opened ericdigest.org is, "dull". No offence. Well, it's 100% for educational or academic purposes, how can I expect it to be colourful right. Let's talk about what is ericdigest.org. According to the website itself, ericdigest.org is short reports on topics of prime current interest in education. There are a large variety of topics covered including teaching, learning, libraries, charter schools, special education, higher education, home schooling and many more. Ericdigesr.org is designed to provide an overview of information on a given topic, plus references to items providing more detailed information. This search engine is very useful for students and teachers especially in English Language field like me.



Next is Google scholar. I bet all of us have heard about "Google", but not google scholar. The first time I bumped into google scholar was when I was using google search engine, to find information for task completion. One of the search results highlighted was, "Google scholar". In short, google scholar is a search engine that provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google scholar helps the user to identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research. For example, when I typed "Twilight", none of the result is on the famous movie, "Twilight", but all are articles related to the word "twilight". Google scholar even stated on the first hand for each articles on how many citations, from where the article is and how many versions does the article has. How useful isn't it for students and teachers or lecturers.



Last but not least is yahoo.com which is a very popular search engine for all the internet users all over the world, be it children or grown-ups. Yahoo.com has its own sentimental value for me. The first time I was introduced to internet, I only know and use yahoo.com and I really like it. I like yahoo.com because everytime I typed something in the search box, it will appear no matter what, unless I typed it wrongly. For a primary school student like me during that time, I felt like yahoo.com is a miracle and I don't really use google because it has less colours compare to yahoo's websites. What to expect from a little kid right. And now, I'm almost turning 20, and I am barely able to count how many times have I used yahoo.com per year. I prefer google because it is not distracted by other elements that are featured in yahoo.com like news, advertisements, services provided and many more which make the page looks very crowded. I don't really explain what yahoo.com is since I believe that most of us know what it is and basically, yahoo.com is another search engine apart from google and mamma.com.


Simmilarities

• All are used as a search engine whether to find informations regarding academic, entertainment or just simply searching for something or pictures.
• For yahoo.com and mamma.com, we can use these two sites to not only find information about academic information, but also for entertainment.
• Google scholar and Ericdigest.org are search engines for academic purposes only. Here I am talking about "Google Scholar", not "Google" if in case anyone is confused with my explanation.
  
• For google scholar and mamma.com, we can specify our search so that the hits that we are going to get is less and precise.

Differences

• Not all search engines can be used to search for everything like ericdigest.org and google scholar, which are for academic purposes only.
• Only yahoo.com provides e-mail service and once again I emphasise, I'm not talking about "Google".
• For me, yahoo.com is not very user friendly because the whole thing is put into one page, including news, advertisement, services provided by yahoo and also search box. It is very crowded and I choose not to use it because it is a bit slow to finish loading.
• Mamma.com is the only metasearch engine among these four search engines that I have to discuss. Of course it's search result is the best.

That's all a little bit about some powerful search engines. But still, I prefer to use Google.com because it has all in one. You just have to know the correct way to use it like what have been lectured today on "Google-Fu" which is something new, very informative and useful. I'm not saying that other search engines are not good. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. That's all from me, hope to hear others view also. Till the next post.




Truly,

Task 2 - How blogging can assist language learners

this is an article that i found related to how blogging can assist language learners to improve and enhance their writing skill

Blogging for language learning

This post is part of my Chinese learning experiences series but is not tagged as such, it is something I can pull out and link to so that my next post on the first three months is not too long.

Almost immediately after starting to learn Chinese I started blogging about it, that was deliberate, there are many reasons for and styles of blogging, this one was part of my objective to learn a language primarily from the Internet, also a loose record of my thoughts and discoveries, on the whole it has been a success. I think that blogging about language learning can be very helpful and an aid to the process, reading and commenting on blogs of other language learners is also very useful particularly if you don't have time to blog yourself.

This blog doesn't attract enough comments to be a really useful place to test new ideas and engage in heated discussion or to refine/test beliefs (some are though, but I only average around 30 visits a day which isn't quite enough) but there have been some surprising side benefits, many people have approached me with resources and ideas via email and two Chinese speakers local enough for local language exchange have approached me resulting in some very helpful exchanges :). Besides that some of the comments I have had have been very useful. I had to engage moderation recently though as there were a number of thinly disguised adverts.

Looking back, I can see how much I have missed out, see how rushed many posts were, but I don't regret that, I am time poor, I need to leave some time for learning Chinese (although there is nothing stopping me from listening to Chinese whilst I blog :))

Blogging has made connections attracted help and helped me organize my thoughts. On occasion blogging has represented a statement of commitment that may have helped me through sticky patches.

A blog is a commitment of time, but the connections, feedback and reflection received have more than payed me back, I am convinced that I would have not have progressed as far with my learning without it and like an iceberg much of what I have gained has not been visible on the surface. A long time ago I was even interviewed by the Financial Times(I was that 39 year old programmer) although I was slightly misquoted and they missed out some key points (I am told that is par for the course though)

Reflection is useful, I have tidied up a few old posts that had duplicated first paragraphs and realized I need to make a blog roll of other learners blogs.

Reference

This comment was made by Chris, an English man who was studying Mandarin. He finds that blog really helps his Mandarin language since he gets two Chinese local, I mean the native speaker of the language, to actually review his writing and assist him and guess what?? It's totally free!! As we all know, "Practice makes perfect" right. With the latest technology today, almost every university student posses a laptop or a desktop complete with internet connection including me. Having a blog meaning I will be updating my blog every now and then. So, the writing is continuous and blogging is so much fun compare to writing using conventional way; pen and paper. How bored and tiring.

In order to write about anything, for example like what I'm doing right now, I am forced to read some articles to get some ideas and facts to support my opinion. At the same time, I get to widen my knowledge, improve my grammar and vocabulary, and compare my writing with others. For those who use blog as their online diaries can also benefit from it. They can share their stories, exchange ideas and gain many network friends. If I am too lazy to update my blog, I still can read others blog and give comments to them.

"Sharing is Caring". Some blogs that I frequently visit are used to share things. For example songs, recipes, tips, wallpapers and many more. Some are used as a platform for business like selling something. You see how useful blog is? The question is how can sharing or selling things on blog can improve your writing skill? It's simple, like it or not, you still have to write isn't it? Just like online reading whereby in order to browse through the websites, I have to read, I must read. Furthermore, this way is so much fun. Like if you are selling things on your blog, then someone is interested to buy it, for sure they will leave a comment to you on your blog and you are required to reply it. Besides helping you with your writing skill, it can also help to improve your communication skill because you are dealing with real people. And once your business is successful, you can start advertise for other big companies and gain money every month.

Here are the list of the blogs that I frequently visit:

• iGoogle Gadgets and Blogger Widgets Collection - blog that shares a lot of widgets for blog
• Mama Leza's Recipes Collection - since I love cooking, this is the right place for me.
• Recipes collection from the internet - another very helpful recipes blog.
• Sharing is Caring - this blog shares everything. (Software, wallpapers, widgets, etc.)
• Boonga Art Shoes - a blog that sells custom made shoes whereby you can design your own.
• Gunting Store - a blog that sells selendang, of course for girls only.
• Aremean - a blog that I manage on "aremean", and indie nasyeed group.

If you have the time, why not try some of the links above, they are very interesting blogs.



Truly,