A Few Months On

Has it been six months since the last update? Evidently so. I’m sorry for the lack of responses, be it to emails or comments here – I cannot lie, I haven’t been busy, but I haven’t really been bothered to login and update here. But I herald my brief return with the two updates you see below. Just one thing: I’ve moved all the notes so that they’re hosted on WP now, for your (but mainly my) convenience. In case I linked anything wrongly, drop me a note in the comments, thanks.

Two FAQs below:

1. Can you upload history/literature/physics/etc. notes?
I really wish I could, honest. But unfortunately these aren’t subjects that I took during As and as such I’m not really the best person to come up with notes on any of these subjects. But you know what? You could play a part, upload your notes and drop me a link, and I’ll gladly link your notes from my site. After all, all those biology notes on this site didn’t come from two years of not taking biology.

2. I’ve noticed that your notes are missing sections on _____. Can you append them or upload new notes?
I’d hate to tell you this, but I’ve graduated a good one-and-a-half years and unfortunately, I really am not in the position make amendments/additions to the repository I have here. However, all these notes are licensed under a Creative Commons remix license, which basically means you can take them and do whatever you want with them – yes guys, I’m telling you to edit them or make suggestions to improve them. (More info on the About page.)

From the Sidelines

Just a quick follow up from the previous posts: to all J2s this year who are starting their As (and this comes late for the few that have already started their L3 As, but, yeah): all the best in the next few weeks! This is all that you’ve been slogging out your guts (at least I hope you have) for in the last two years. Like I’ve been telling all my juniors, it’s gonna pass faster than you think it will, so don’t worry too much. Dive in and do your best!

I’ve been getting a whole lot of hits in the past two months, and I’m really hoping that these notes are making something of a difference to you. So here’s my best regards from the sidelines now, one and a half year on since I started the site – you’re gonna shine. (:

Overtime

Hello all! This is just a shoutout to all the J2s this year (especially my juniors), whose Prelims have already started. All the best, and hang in there, this is your second last lap, give it your best and it’ll be over soon!

(Update! I’m halfway through this list of study tips, but the army has been keeping me a little busy. I’ll try to get it up sometime this weekend.) Update again: I’ll probably never get down to it.

Resurfacing

Okay, I figured since I was back to put the previous post up, I might as well write something here. It’s been some four months since I did anything substantial here… but I guess it’s been an eventful four months. Army has been interesting, and thank goodness, my A-level results were pretty good. (Okay, so I can’t technically say that wasn’t an endorsement for this site since I made most of the notes here :D) Haha anyways, I see the traffic is picking up (almost hitting 20k!) a little over the past week in preparation for the J2 CTs that are a few days away.

To the J2s this year, don’t worry, you still have a while to go before the big As, but study hard because, more often than not, hard work more than makes up for where you lack in smarts. All the best, and hang in there!

Anyway. One thing. Check iPaper out. Sounds like something cool to implement here? I’m considering also, so you won’t have to bother with plugins and applications to view these documents. But we’ll see. (Since WordPress doesn’t like JavaScript embedded on its posts… yeah, it gets annoying)

Over!

Alright, I’m pretty much done with what was the rather unexciting culmination of twelve years with the Ministry of Education.
But to the biology/physics/literature/TSD/random H3 people, all the best for your remaining papers – hang in there for just a while more – you can almost smell the freedom.

So this marks the end (somewhat) of what started out early this year as an unassuming attempt at what I’ve called utility maximizing since this site’s inception at the old page. And as much as I’m the RJ guy with nothing better to do than to make and upload his notes, I honestly hope that all this effort has been worth the while and have made some sort of a difference. It’s seriously been pretty encouraging for me all this while to see all the comments, the emails, the mysterious hits I get from Hotmail and Gmail, and I guess the end of the As more or less ends my job here.

So I’ll leave all this at that, and assure whoever’s interested that this site will remain online as far as I’m concerned. I won’t be checking or updating it much for now on – but we’ll just see what happens. If you’re interested in continuing this site, or doing something more, feel free to contact me at any time.

Once again, thanks everyone who’ve been supporting me and this site for the past few months or so. Just so you know, I end this with 15,000 hits – an immense number that would’ve seemed unimaginable when I first started on Google Pages in the middle of March. This has been awesome.

Signing out for what would probably be the last time,
Zhuoyi

Update: 17/11/07
Richard Baraniuk speaks to my heard in this presentation well worth watching. I just felt like I needed to remind all users that everything (at least, everything by me) on this site is on the Creative Commons under the license you see in the right hand sidebar. This means that everyone out there has my express permission to not only use, but to modify and improve on the notes that are on this site and distribute these derivatives. The only conditionality attached to this is that you redistribute these works under the same license as the original work.

I just felt like I needed to make this clear that you are free to continue whatever legacy you feel like I’m leaving. This is my experiment in open-source so that you don’t have to start from scratch.

Do Something Good

If you’re busy studying, take some time off to play Free Rice – each correct vocab definition means that 10 grains of rice will be donated through the UN WFP (funded by the site’s sponsors) to feed the world’s hungry. Ten grains does not sound like much, but it doesn’t take it long for you to accumulate quite a pile for a good cause. Consider this: 188 million grains of rice were racked up for the WFP yesterday. That’s a lot of rice. And even if you don’t really care about feeding the world’s hungry, the words do get pretty challenging.

Meanwhile, a few more papers to go – hang in there!

Halfway!

Just a quick update this weekend. I’m halfway through my papers and it feels pretty awesome. As always, thanks everyone for the hits I’ve been getting (even in the past two weeks or so of silence here), and I hope you guys doing your As are all surviving as well.
Anyway, I’m one week away from finishing my As next Friday (and if that sounds like I’m gloating, well, maybe I am – after all, I get very few perks from taking my strange combination anyway ._.), and that feels rather good.
And as for whats going to happen to this website after I finish my As? I’m not really sure, but I’ll figure something out. And don’t worry future J2s! All the notes will still be online, and so will this site.

As for updates. Three updates, today, and in particular, you might want to check out the heavily appended Singapore notes.

Oh, and some of you out there might find this amusing: Japan Looks Like Its Phillips Curve.

Cheers, and all the best for the rest of your papers!

Day of Reckoning

So this is it, the As are here. Nothing much to say apart from all the best to all of you who’re in this with me. You guys are gonna do great.

10, 000

I hit the 10,000 visitor mark on Thursday at around 11:30pm, and that is pretty awesome – at least for me it is. Thanks goes out to every single person who has been supporting me in what I thought was a rather small endeavour at first, but turned out to be, well, more enthusiastically received than I would have ever imagined. And just in case you didn’t catch it the first time round – thank you.

But I guess the notes have been coming a little slower at this time when you guys need it the most. I wish I could do things more efficiently, but I’ve been spending most of my time practicing and a lot less time on the computer these days, so pardon me there. But I’ll leave you with a whimsical display picture I made for the sheer hell of it.

Meanwhile, hang in there - a week and a half left!

Back!

I’m back from the post-prelims break and (hopefully) better than ever. Will be continuing to update this site as the As draw closer, and as usual, still open to any submissions from anyone – drop me a message via the Contact page. Hope your prelims didn’t treat you too badly, but at any rate, it’s back down to serious business for the last lap. Study hard people!

Alright, random links time.
If you find yourself snacking a lot when you study, why not eat something that’s good for you while you’re at it.
From the same site, 10 Ways to Make Your Study Sessions More Productive.
And finally, two articles worth reading: How to Study and Hacking Knowledge.

I’ll leave it at that for now. And we all have to get back to mugging. D:

Winding Down

End of prelims almost in sight for most of us! Hope it went well for most of you people out there, now on to the next big thing which is, of course, the As. These past few weeks have been hectic for me, and I guess I’ll be slowing down work on the site for a while to get over the incredibly stressful month. Thanks again for spreading the word, for the encouragement and the support – you guys are awesome. Take a break before you get back on the mugging track again!

Until the next time, cheers and take care y’all.

Please Don’t Die

Hey all. Just figured I would post something since I was updating anyway. It’s been a rather productive week as you can see from the output over the last few days. I still have some notes from random friends that need to be uploaded, and I promise I’ll get these up by tomorrow. Just FYI they’re for economics (globalization) and geography (urban and population overviews).

That said, I’d like to thank the people that have left comments or messages in my mail to tell me how great you find this site. Thanks once again! And this week I’ve passed 2,500 hits with more than 500 on Wednesday – it’s pretty freaky but rather cool as well. You guys are awesome.

Before I go, some random sites that you might just find interesting.
10 Benefits of Power Napping, and How to Do It
How to Learn More and Study Less

All the best for Prelims! (Oh and just in case you wanted/needed to know, I’ve made changes to the macroeconomics cheatsheets and the latest essay outline – very minor ones that don’t really warrant a full-blown update, so if you’re that OC, feel free to download them again.)

Edit: New category - ”Essay”. Three guesses where that brings you.

Updates T4W0

Here’s a quick roundup of the changes from 3rd to 8th Sept.

07/09/07
Update: Group VII Cheatsheet
New: Microeconomics Essay Outlines 2

06/09/07
Fixed: The link on Physical Properties of Organic Compounds is working now. (Thanks, chuzanna.)

05/09/07
New: Economic Growth cheatsheet
New: Math Notes

04/09/07
Resource: Math Sites
Update: Math Stuff v6.1.5
New: Unemployment cheatsheet

03/09/07
Update: Economic Geography Summary
New: Group VII Cheatsheet
Update: Chemistry Definition Summary
New: Inflation cheatsheet

Updates-of-sorts

Alright. This has been a rather unproductive week for me, as you might have gathered, but I promise you that I’ll have some notes up by tomorrow when I get my laptop back. Cross my heart and hope to die (alright, maybe not). All of that, of course, is a rather roundabout way of saying I haven’t done much this week.

Anyway, hope y’all are coping fine even with prelims up and about, and I’m heartened to see the awesome jump in visits from who knows where. I’ve almost got a thousand hits as I’m typing this and it’s immensely gratifying – which you all know is an euphemism for ego-boosting. So, much thanks to all who’ve been keeping this site busy and useful – you guys rock. Show some love and leave a comment sometime. :) Study hard this week during the break!

Just a random note before I retreat to my scheduled doldrums, if you people want to read up more about globalization for econs, you might want to download the summary I did for economic geography. Though not entirely relevant, it, as I hear, comes in useful at times.

Updates: T3W9

Here are all the changes for the week 18-26th August in case you missed them. For the people whose Prelims are starting next week – all the best!

25/08/07
New: About Singapore

24/08/07
Link: Check out Joon Faii’s Biology Notes
New: Essay Outline: Future forms of Cities
Update: Microeconomics Summary v2.0

20/08/07
Resource: A-Level Syllabus
Resource: GP Linkfarm

One week

Alright. I’ve moved over for a week now without much issues. Not many new notes yet, so my apologies for that. In place I’ve put up the linkfarms and resources etc that I’m hoping you’ll find useful for now. Just FYI, I’ll be working on Econs and Math notes most of this week. They should be up by the weekend, but don’t keep your hopes too high. ;)

Meanwhile, as you might or might not have notice, I’ve reorganized the way the categories worked on this site. I figured that the subjects under a notes parents was kind of annoying for navigation, so they’re not longer nested but have their own separate categories. Hope this helps.

Updates as they warrant. Continue telling your friends about this page. :)

Transferred!

Alright! Moved almost all my notes here. Updates as they warrant.

Shifting

Hello all! I’ve decided to move my notes page to WordPress for the ease of use and the search functions. Will be trying to integrate the previous site fully with this one. Hope the switching is less laborious than I’m thinking it is.