Scripts

I present 3 scripts: 2 of them written for actual presentations, by me and the newest coauthor of this blog, and one by the not-so-new coauthor (RMS), for fun. Challenge yourself, and see how fast you can identify the 2 scripts which were painstakingly worked on (actually only 1, but 2 were actually used!).

The 3 scripts are shown below. Enjoy.


Script 1: Remedies at a distance
--------------------------------

Telemedicine can form a key component of our everyday lives. Imagine going to the doctor's, queuing up to take a number, and waiting for hours on end, every second of agony in illness, multiplying the chance to contract another bug from your fellow sufferers.

We offer you another way out.

With the benefits of telemedicine, anybody - but in particular those who apply to receive its benefits - can enjoy the luxuries of treatment at home. Diagnosis is easily done by a mere description of symptoms, no reason to require a face-to-face interview with a practitioner; a simple videoconference (facilities not provided) will suffice. This stands to offer a whole host of benefits to the users, namely:

- Convenience
- Time-saving due to lack of travel and waiting times
- Psychological comfort of a readily-accessible treatment
- Lower chance of being infected by a TV screen than a flu-ridden sleepwalker

Long-distance monitoring also gifts the ability to divine physiological data of the user anytime, at any convenient location; it also offers conveniently a means to tag one's location such that medication can be delivered, or aid be sent to, should the need arise.

There may be a few non-believing heret- sorry, skeptics, who might view telemedicine from a rather more pessimistic, non-agreeable fashion, choosing to illuminate and expound its drawbacks while cheerfully discarding its guaranteed salvations. Allow me to elucidate sequentially and systematically refute each incorrect accusation:

1. There may be insufficient people to staff the system.
- Telemedicine's focus is on the use of IT to bring the patient-doctor interaction into a new medium, through new windows and adds depth and colour to the otherwise transactional meeting. A lack of doctors is the least of the concerns of the system; nonetheless, a friendly non-Turing compliant "AI" virtual receptionist will be made available to stall patients' otherwise incessant and - pardon me - downright puerile demands for instant consultations.

2. Medication in the physical form is absent.
- Telemedicine, despite the name, does not encourage drug abuse nor pill-taking in any way. It is simply a medium through which patients can talk to their doctors, and for doctors to check on their patients remotely. Any requirements for antibiotics or their ilk may be sent via e-mail or, more slowly, snail-mail. In urgent cases, patients are advised to have a ground-floor window open. Under no circumstances do we wish to precipitate illegal substance usage.

3. The elderly/non-tech-savvy individuals may not be able to utilise the system.
- Much like its cousins CCTV cameras and endoscopes, telemedicine provides a modicum of independence, allowing medical professionals full coverage and operational control of the relevant systems. Little to no technical ability is required on the part of the end-user, save the ability to use, debug and troubleshoot teleconferencing equipment and to conduct self-maintenance of the observation systems.

Having thus addressed surely the most pertinent concerns, we would now like to turn your attention to the future expandability of our project. We have taken Changi Prison as our first case study, and hope to expand the scope of our project to a similar extent, noting the first-rate observation coverage and response times of personnel manning the 'eye in the sky' systems there. Given more resources, a national telemedicine framework could be adopted, perhaps even living up to the pervasion envisaged groundbreakingly in George Orwell's 1984. With such a comprehensive system in place, nobody ever need be afraid of falling ill, for aid is always on the lookout, and help always around the corner. Thank you.

Script 2: Norway -- A Case Study
--------------------------------

I will now proceed to talk about our case study: Norway.

A question springs to mind: what makes Norway an ideal case study?

The reasons are many. The first is that Norway has a long history of telemedicine, giving sufficient time for its impact to be detailed.

Also, Norway has not only successfully implemented telemedicine, but also has had positive outcomes as a result of telemedicine. This makes it a good model for telemedicine in Singapore.

Having seen why we chose Norway as a case study, I shall now briefly talk about telemedicine in Norway.

Norway has an extremely low population density. This leads to problems such as unwillingness to work in rural areas and the economic unviability of setting up clinics in rural areas. Coupled with a rapidly ageing population, which brings along with it a host of problems, as previously mentioned, this makes it hard to offer quality healthcare to all Norwegians.

However, with robust communication technologies already in place, telemedicine was a logical choice to solve these problems.

Norway has implemented the Norwegian Health Net, which spans over more than 700 doctors and 25 hospitals. All GPs and private specialists use EHR, containing information of 80% of patients. Also, applications supplementing EHR such as the Picture Archiving and Communications System, an application to transfer medical pictures, come packaged with the EHR. We can thus say that EHR is highly developed in Norway.

Telemonitoring in Norway is also highly developed, and widely adopted. The pictures shown here depict a telemonitoring suite for the elderly, and even has specialised telemonitoring functions built into appliances like the television.

Teleconsultation is also widely applied in Norway, and spans fields such as telepsychology and teleradiology, and includes both doctor-to-doctor and patient-to-doctor communications.

So how did Norway achieve all this?

After researching, we found that the key steps to implementing telemedicine in Norway includes developing a centralised communications network, which connects the nation's doctors, implementing reimbursement policies for telemedicine for patients, as well as developing educational opportunities for telemedicine. This includes offering telemedicine courses at the National University of Tromso. Also, the Norwegian government has developed a set of standards for EHR and information exchange, volven.

Having seen how Norway implemented telemedicine, I will proceed to describe the benefits and drawbacks of EHR and telehomecare.

The EHR reduces human errors by digitalising the recording process. It also increases the efficiency of treatment, since doctors no longer need to manually search through piles of paper records. Furthermore, the information is more complete and reliable, as it is corroborated across each clinic the patient has been to, and lastly, the EHR leads to cost savings derived in part from less paperwork.

Yet, EHR has its fair share of drawbacks, namely prohibitive startup costs and a steep learning curve of the technology, which leads to diminished efficiency in the short run as doctors struggle to use the program.

This diagram summarises the advantages and impacts of EHR.

Telehomecare has many benefits. It reduces clinical and hospital visits, as patients can now be treated at home instead of at the hospital. This is especially true for routine checkups and minor illnesses, and is a great blessing for sufferers of chronic diseases. The constant monitoring through remote devices also results in more responsive healthcare, leading to improved outcomes for patients. For elderly patients with chronic illnesses, telehomecare can improve their functional independence. Also, the reduction of visits to medical facilities can bring about time savings as well has the reduction of travelling costs.

Telehomecare also has its drawbacks, including high startup costs, issues associated with the open nature of the Internet through which information is sent, as well as the lack of a clear common standard for telehomecare devices, meaning some technologies may be mutually incompatible.

The following slide summarises the advantages and drawbacks of telehomecare.

Script 3: Telemedicine is coming to town
----------------------------------------

To evaluate whether telemedicine is applicable locally, we need to answer the following questions about the plausibility of local implementation, and the applicability of Norway’s lessons.

Telemedicine is highly plausible in Singapore.

Firstly, there is strong funding and support from the government because the government is also actively seeking to improve the healthcare system and is seriously considering telemedicine as a solution.

Secondly, many telemedicine prerequisites are already implemented, such as a nationwide high-speed transmission network required by EHR, are already implemented.

Thirdly, Singapore implemented pilot telemedicine project in the past, and thus already has some prior knowledge in this area.

The above reasons show that successful local telemedicine implementation is highly plausible.

Telemedicine is highly relevant to Singapore. But exactly what kind of changes do we expect for both the doctors and patients. We want to share some of the more exciting implications here.

One immediate change doctors experience is the digitalization of patient records. This has immense implications. Gone are the days where finding patient records is a chore. Electronic records allows doctors to easily access, retrieve and update patient information without going through the tedious paperwork that is needed when keeping physical records. This saves a lot of time and frees up medical personnel to devote more time to the care of the patients.

Furthermore, the EHR connects all doctors under a single system, allowing doctor to share and discuss past records of the patient. In this case, the patient will not be treated by a single doctor anymore. He will be treated by the combined and collaborated efforts of all the doctors connected under the EHR. This allows better treatment to be administered to the patient.

The implications for patients are even more promising. With telehomecare, they will be able to receive treatment at the comfort of their home, under the care of their loved ones. Studies have shown that care in such home environments immensely benefit the patient’s condition. Regular trips to medical centres, especially for those with chronic illnesses, are waived, providing great convenience for the patients.

The development of new telemonitoring devices, from wristwatches that tracks your glucose level to shirts that tracks your heart rate, also allows easy and constant monitoring of the patient’s condition. This effectively allows doctors to keep track of the patient’s condition. They can also easily relate to patients changes in the treatment given, without troubling the patient to visit them in their medical centres.

Undeniably, telemedicine shows much promise and can bring a smile to the faces of both patients and doctors.

Now that we established the promise and viability of telemedicine in Singapore, we need to start implementing. Firstly, we drew some lessons that we learnt from Norway.

From the difficulties that Norway faced, we came up with some areas of improvement that needs to be worked upon. We need to set up common standards in telemedicine implementation to allow for the inter-operability of telemedicine in different medical centres. We also need to provide support to ensure long-term sustainability of telemedicine, and subsidies to attract more users. Measures to ensure the privacy and security of medical information should also be in place. As such measures are geared towards building the foundation of telemedicine, we derived from these our guiding principle of structural development.

Next, we noticed that telemedicine users need to be fairly proficient in telemedicine in order to get the most out of it. Therefore, we aim to provide educational opportunities for telemedicine. This is under our guiding principle Education.

The land of the sticks

In the land of the sticks, there was once a great committee of 52 stickmen. The committee was made out of wise sticks from all over the land and sea, and it governed the laws of the land of the sticks.

The committee was divided into 4 subcommittees, S, H, C, and S', each comprising of 13 members, officially known as A,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,J,Q,K.

At the head of the committee, was a tall and long stick, called Chopstick. He was the pinnacle of the committee (due to h8), and he stood tall, towering above the committee on the podium one day, and with a booming voice he nearly roared, "Today, we have a chemical bonding exercise. The purpose of this exercise is to improve the chemistry of members of the committee, as well as to make sure the members of the committee are strongly bonded."

"In this exercise, you will first do 20 pushups (O,N,E,1,T,W,O,2,...) and 5 chinups, and then get into your assigned groups."

The truth is, Chopstick had not assigned the groups.

To make matters worse, each person in Stickland hates exactly 3 people in the committee, and it would be counterproductive to put 2 sticks who hate each other in the same group.

Chopstick wants to minimise the number of groups, as the efficiency of his program to analyse the data of each group runs in O(n!) time.

Given that Chopstick is a very unlucky stick (Worst case scenario), state the minimum number of groups possible.

True Meaning of King's Gambit Declined

This is what it truly means to advance deep into the enemy territory and come out alive.

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2010.11.01"]
[White "Windarcher"]
[Black "TheProNewb"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "1856"]
[BlackElo "2292"]
[TimeControl "1|0"]
[Termination "TheProNewb won by checkmate"]

1.b3 e6 2.Bb2 Ke7 3.g3 Kd6 4.Bg2 Kc5 5.d3 Kb4 6.e3 a5 7.Ne2 a4 8.a3+ Kb5 9.b4 c5 10.c3 d6
11.Nd2 d5 12.Qc2 Kc6 13.O-O b5 14.c4 Kb6 15.cxd5 exd5 16.e4 d4 17.e5 Ra7 18.bxc5+ Bxc5 19.Rab1 Rc7 20.Qd1 Be6
21.Nf3 Nc6 22.Nfxd4 Nxd4 23.Nxd4 Bxd4 24.Bxd4+ Qxd4 25.Re1 Bb3 26.Qd2 Ne7 27.Re4 Qc5 28.e6 f5 29.Rf4 g5 30.Rf3 Bd5
31.Re3 Bxg2 32.Kxg2 f4 33.Re2 Nf5 34.gxf4 Qd5+ 35.f3 Nd4 36.Re5 Qxf3+ 37.Kg1 Rc2 38.Qb4 Qg2# 0-1

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2010.11.01"]
[White "Windarcher"]
[Black "TheProNewb"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "1856"]
[BlackElo "2292"]
[TimeControl "1|0"]
[Termination "TheProNewb won on time"]

1.h3 d6 2.g3 Kd7 3.Bg2 Ke6 4.b3 Ke5 5.Bb2+ Kf5 6.d3 h5 7.e3 h4 8.g4+ Kg5 9.Qf3 e5 10.Qd1 Nc6
11.Ne2 d5 12.Nd2 f5 13.Ng1 Kh6 14.gxf5 g5 15.fxg6 Kxg6 16.Qe2 Nf6 17.O-O-O Bf5 18.f4 e4 19.dxe4 dxe4 20.Bxf6 Qxf6
21.Kb1 Ba3 22.c3 Qxc3 23.Nc4 Be7 24.Qc2 Qxc2+ 25.Kxc2 Rad8 26.Ne2 Bf6 27.Nd4 Nxd4+ 28.exd4 Rxd4 29.Rde1 c5 30.Ne5+ Bxe5
31.fxe5 Rhd8 32.Rhg1 Kf7 33.Bf3 Ke6 34.Be2 Kxe5 35.Bg4 Rd2+ 36.Kb1 Bxg4 37.Rxg4 R8d4 38.Rg5+ Kd6 39.Rg4 Kc6 40.Rxh4 Kb5
0-1

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2010.11.01"]
[White "TheProNewb"]
[Black "Windarcher"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "2292"]
[BlackElo "1856"]
[TimeControl "1|0"]
[Termination "TheProNewb won by resignation"]

1.d3 b6 2.Kd2 Bb7 3.Ke3 g6 4.Kd4 Bg7+ 5.Kc4 e6 6.Kb3 d6 7.c4 Nd7 8.Nc3 Ne7 9.e4 a5 10.Be3 Ba6
11.Ka4 Qb8 12.f4 c6 13.Nf3 b5+ 14.cxb5 Bxb5+ 15.Ka3 Bxc3 16.bxc3 Nc5 17.Rb1 Na6 18.c4 Qc7 19.cxb5 cxb5 20.Qc1 b4+
21.Kb2 Qb6 22.Bxb6 1-0

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2010.11.01"]
[White "Windarcher"]
[Black "TheProNewb"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "1856"]
[BlackElo "2292"]
[TimeControl "1|0"]
[Termination "TheProNewb won by resignation"]

1.g3 e6 2.Bg2 Ke7 3.b3 Kd6 4.Bb2 Kc5 5.d3 Kb4 6.e3 a5 7.Qd2+ Kb5 8.Ne2 a4 9.Qc3 a3 10.Qc4+ Kb6
11.Qb4+ Bxb4+ 0-1

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2010.11.01"]
[White "TheProNewb"]
[Black "Windarcher"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "2292"]
[BlackElo "1856"]
[TimeControl "1|0"]
[Termination "TheProNewb won by resignation"]

1.d4 b6 2.Kd2 Bb7 3.Kd3 g6 4.e4 Bg7 5.Nc3 d5 6.e5 f6 7.f4 fxe5 8.Nf3 exf4 9.Bxf4 e6 10.Qd2 Nc6
11.Bg5 Qd7 12.Qf4 Nge7 13.Re1 O-O-O 14.h4 Rdf8 15.Qg4 h6 16.Bf4 Nb4+ 17.Kd2 Nxa2 18.Nxa2 Qa4 19.Nc3 Bxd4 20.Nxa4
1-0

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2010.11.01"]
[White "Windarcher"]
[Black "TheProNewb"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "1856"]
[BlackElo "2292"]
[TimeControl "1|0"]
[Termination "TheProNewb won by resignation"]

1.g3 f6 2.Bg2 Kf7 3.b3 Kg6 4.Bb2 Kh5 5.h4 Kg4 6.e3+ Kf5 7.Bh3+ Kg6 8.h5+ Kf7 9.h6 g6 10.d3 Nxh6
11.Nd2 Ng8 12.g4 Bg7 13.Qb1 d5 14.g5 f5 15.f4 e5 16.fxe5 Be6 17.d4 c5 18.Ne2 Nc6 19.Nf3 b5 20.Qd1 c4
21.Qd2 Qd7 22.Qc3 b4 23.Qd2 c3 24.Qc1 a5 25.Qd1 Nge7 26.Rb1 cxb2 27.Rxb2 Rhb8 0-1

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2010.11.01"]
[White "TheProNewb"]
[Black "Windarcher"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "2292"]
[BlackElo "1856"]
[TimeControl "1|0"]
[Termination "TheProNewb won on time"]

1.e4 g6 2.Ke2 Bg7 3.Kf3 b6 4.g3 Bb7 5.d3 d6 6.Kg2 Nd7 7.f4 e6 8.Nf3 Qe7 9.Be2 h6 10.h4 g5
11.h5 gxf4 12.gxf4 e5 13.f5 Ndf6 14.Nc3 Nd7 15.Be3 Ngf6 16.Qd2 d5 17.Rag1 dxe4 18.dxe4 Nxe4 19.Nxe4 Bxe4 20.Kf1 O-O-O
21.Rxg7 Bxf5 22.Ke1 e4 23.Nd4 Be6 24.Kd1 Bxa2 25.Kc1 Nc5 26.Bg4+ Kb8 27.Rf1 Bd5 28.Qb4 Kb7 29.Qb5 a6 30.Rfxf7 Qxf7
31.Rxf7 axb5 32.Re7 b4 33.Nb5 Rc8 34.Nd6+ Kb8 35.Nxc8 Rxc8 36.Bxc8 Kxc8 37.Bxc5 Kb7 38.Rh7 bxc5 39.Rxh6 Be6 40.Rf6 Bg4
41.h6 1-0

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2010.11.01"]
[White "Windarcher"]
[Black "TheProNewb"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "1856"]
[BlackElo "2292"]
[TimeControl "1|0"]
[Termination "TheProNewb won by resignation"]

1.b3 e6 2.Bb2 Ke7 3.d3 Kd6 4.e3 c5 5.Nd2 Kc7 6.g3 Nc6 7.Bg2 d5 8.a3 Nf6 9.Ne2 Bd6 10.c4 b6
11.cxd5 exd5 12.Bxf6 Qxf6 13.Bxd5 Bb7 14.Bg2 Rad8 15.Nc4 Kb8 16.b4 cxb4 17.axb4 Bxb4+ 18.Kf1 Rxd3 19.Qa4 Bc3 20.Nxc3 Qxc3
21.Na3 Qxa1+ 22.Ke2 Qc3 23.Bxc6 Rd2+ 24.Kf3 Bxc6+ 0-1

SPhO!

I wish myself good luck (Recurrence!) XD

RJT Chess

RJT Chess is a relatively new variant of chinese chess (yes really, it only started this year). It is an immensely tactical and mindboggling puzzle suited for the mentally prepared, and is definitely not a game for people who do not like to think.


Random advertisement!:

"d/th" -- bet you can't solve the riddle


First of all, the rules of RJT Chess. In RJT Chess, pieces move as in Chinese Chess. It is not difficult to find out the rules of Chinese Chess on your own, and as such I save words. However, there is one key variation (and 1 more sneaky unimportant looking tweak to the rule) that changes the gameplay totally: the fact that captures are not allowed.

The aim of the game remains: to checkmate the opposing general. No collateral damage. No mass murder of civilians and troops alike. No bloodshed. Only a forced dignified resignation when one general realises that the end of the road is inevitable.

Hence, the game is all about strategic blocking of pieces.

First, let us ignore the second changed rule and proceed straight into the game, for the seemingly mysterious rule will be clearly explained by the nature of the game.

The idea is to stick a piece into the opponent general's face, no matter how poorly it is defended and how well it is attacked, for it cannot be captured anyway. For example, two chariots will nearly always kill the king should it get sufficiently close.

Hence, much of the resulting strategy revolves blocking the enemy pieces from swarming your king and even from crossing the river (just because it can be done). What does this naturally lead to? A disastrous blockade by the river which neither side can bypass. This naturally leads to a position where no checks can be made (since no pieces are sufficiently close to the king to even threaten to give check), and hence the game ends up in a draw. This is clearly not fun, and leads us into the rationale for the second rule.

Rule 2 (Check Existence Rule): From any given position (not halfway through a move, naturally), if side A cannot give check assuming side A is given an infinite number of moves in a row (ie. without side B moving), then side A wins. This rule prevents people from setting blockades around their kings, whether direct, or by barricading the river with buckywalls.

Naturally, what results is a NEARLY blocked up position, through which flies can barely pass through, and a very very tedious game (although it is easy to blunder into the Check Existence Rule, especially when the opponent moves into a position where he suddenly cannot make any more checks (eg. moving his knight into an enclosure of 4 "hostile" pieces).

Furthermore, there are no draws in this game so far except by agreement, and by having extremely convoluted positions unlikely to happen in-game. This is unnatural; drawing is a peaceful resolution, a compromise, a sign of civility and education and moral standards.

Hence, a new set of variant rules were added to firstly speed up the game (which took 40 minutes in a match of 2 relatively careful people -- and they were moving relatively quickly, at least at the start), and to implement forced draws, which are otherwise hard to prove due to the large number of variations with all 16 pieces on the board.

There are 3 important rules in the variant:

1) Perpetual check is a draw (a little desperate here =P)
P.S. Stalemate is not a draw -- coming to that later
2) In the unlikely event that the Check Existence Rule is flouted by both players at once, it is a happy peaceful draw.
3) Bings, the main barricading resource, now has a new move. When 2 bings meet head on, any player may command his bing to displace the "hostile" (still like that word) bing, and the two bings swap positions.

This blog will focus mainly on the variant, which has more spice and more fun stuff to write on. Don't read on...

Yao'an PWNZZZzzz

By obvious this is true.

I fail

Enough said.