The Sing-Off is an acapella contest/tv show that has been airing in the states over the past two christmas. This year, the show has returned bigger than ever and features a much more varied teams. Out of this season's contestants the teams that are most likely to win this season's competition are Delilah, Vocal Point and Urban Method. Pentatonix also deserves a mention as they're a black horse that could easily rock the boat by being totally unique and talented.

Similar to last season's Backbeats, Delilah took some of the best female singers from past seasons of The Sing-Off to form this all female acapella group. Even though this performance comes from the very first episode of the season, many are already hailing Delilah's performance as the best one of the season.

The boys from Vocal Point are not the first acapella group from Brigham Young University to participate in The Sing-Off. Noteworthy from season one was also from BYU and like Noteworthy, Youtube have a collection of their past performances. And from their performance of this Frank Sinatra song, it is clear that these boys are strong at singing oldies.


Urban Method's call themselves a rappapella group who incorporate rap in their performance. Thus far, Urban Method have mostly been featuring two or three of their members with the rest mainly singing backup so it is hard to judge if they have the versatility or talent to win the competition. So far, they are ahead in the competition because they are seasoned musicians who are good at arranging their performance to showcase their strengths.


Finally, we come to Pentatonix. They come off as a young and possibly one of the least experienced groups remaining in the competition, but each of the five members that make up Pentatonix compensates with having insane talent for making club and techno style acapella. It is impressive that they are able to reproduce the music of the genre with no musical instruments or electronic equipment.

I just wanted to note down something Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, recently said at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

"Trust me - if you gave people at Google free rein to produce TV you'd end up with a lot of bad sci-fi,"

I lol'ed a bit at the amount of truth in that statement.

I took a snapshot of search trends on all four Singapore Presidential Election candidates using Google Search Trends and Yahoo! Clues Trend Analysis on Saturday, 27 August, 2011 at roughly 8pm, when the polling stations close.

Google Search Trends
Historically, Google search tends to be used by the more technologically savvy web users such as young working professionals.

Google only reported search trends up to 25 August. Dr. Tony Tan leads the pack with the most number of searches, closely followed by Dr. Tan Cheng Bock. Tan Kin Lian's sudden peak on 23 August seems to be an outlier, possibly due to some controversial report on him, and the number of searchers seem to return to their original level roughly two days later. Tan Jee Say's searchers have consistently been lower than the other three presidential candidates thru-out the campaign period.

My analysis is that young, working professional voters were originally inclined towards Dr. Tony Tan but Dr. Tan Cheng Bock's electoral campaign strategy has managed to wrest the momentum away from Dr. Tony Tan. 

Yahoo! Clues Trends Analysis
Users of Yahoo! tend to come from a wider range of the population so it tends to reflect the search trend of the general Singapore population. Yahoo's search report is more detailed and includes gender and age breakdown.

Yahoo! searchers present a totally different perspective with Tan Jee Say getting the largest percentage of searches, followed by Dr. Tan Cheng Bock. Tan Kin Lian comes in third. Dr. Tony Tan came in last with the fewest number of searches, presumably because the Singapore population is familiar with Dr. Tony Tan as he has been a Member of Parliament for many years.

What I find noteworthy are the twin peaks on 11 August and 19 August. All four presidential candidates were awarded certificate of eligibility on 11 August, resulting in a rush by the population to find out more about Tan Jee Say, Dr. Tan Cheng Bock and Tan Kin Lian.

The first speeches by all four presidential candidates was broadcast on the night of 18 August. The very next day, all searches on four candidates peaked with Tan Jee Say yet again getting the most searches, closely followed by Dr. Tan Cheng Bock and Tan Kin Lian. Once again Dr. Tony Ton received the least number of searches.

Recently I read a blog that claims using long phrase-like passwords such as "this is fun" is much more secure than using cryptic but short passwords like "J4fS!2". And on the surface, it seems true. The tried and true method for cracking passwords is the brute-force method of trying every single possible combination of passwords. So it seems to make sense that a long 11 character password such as "this is fun" would naturally require a longer time to crack than a short 6 character password of "J4fS!2".

This is so not true.

The blogger makes an faulty assumption that brute-force crackers treat passwords as if it were a number combination lock. A number combination lock can be unlocked by trying every single possible number combination starting from 1, 2, 3, 4, .... 995, 996, 997, 998, 999 and so on.

In reality, a smart password cracking program would first try the most commonly used passwords first before resorting to every possible sequence of characters. And as a computational linguist, I know there are lots of open and publicly accessible databases/corpora for most commonly used phrases in all languages. These corpora are usually used for language-based applications such as speech recognition, text summarization and question answering, but an evil person can also use the same database to crack commonly used password phrases.

Which musical was transformed into a movie that has been screening in theaters non-stop since 1975 and has a box office revenue of well over $140 million dollars?

Answer: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

It was fresher week in Manchester University when I was first introduced to The Rocky Horror Picture Show complete with live props and impromptu singing. My new English friends could not believe that I had never seen this show before and really "encouraged" me to watch it. I must say, my jaws must have dropped to the floor but the show was indeed an eye opener and I had never, ever seen anything like it in my life. And this was made in 1975, when Susan Sarandon is a young hot babe! It was a side of western culture that I had never even imagine existed, and yet once I saw it so many things about western culture clicked into place. Benny Hill, Monty Python, Black Adder, Mr. Bean, Little Britain, oh my!

For me, I'm comfortable enough in my sexuality that I can watch it for what it is, a fun and tongue firmly in cheek show that's meant to be laughed with and at. Just enjoy the ride and be entertained. My first impressions of Rocky Horror was that its quirky, wierd, strangely interesting, and that if my mum ever saw it, she would decry it as a prime example of depravity in western society and immediately suffer a heart attack.

Indeed, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a western world cultural icon that most Asians probably have never heard or even seen. Or, maybe not...




Anyway, with Glee's special "Rocky Horror" Halloween episode, I'm sure many young Asian kids will go out to the web and discover "RHPS" for themselves. I have to wonder, what would they make of it?