Stanley Sim

PDF Annotation for Submission on Google Classroom

PDF Annotation for Submission on Google Classroom

Published by Stanley Sim on March 14, 2020

An iPad with Apple Pencil is a formidable tool for learning. Teachers are able to provide digital resources in place of traditional paper and students are able to annotate their answers on the digital PDFs for submissions. In iPadOS 13, there is a peculiar bug which causes a PDF document to lose its annotations when it was submitted through the Google Classroom. In this post, I investigate the bug and provide a solution to it. The test I created two PDF documents. One would be annotated with the Files app while the other would be copied to Noteshelf to be…

Setting up WordPress instance in Digital Ocean

Setting up WordPress instance in Digital Ocean

Published by Stanley Sim on February 16, 2020

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. As on 2020, 35% of all the websites are created with WordPress. WordPress is an easy-to-use blogging system that debut in 2003, and has outgrown to a full-fledge extensible content management system that could be customised into e-commerce platforms. In this post, I am going to explain how to use Digital Ocean droplets to create WordPress in one click. Digital Ocean Digital Ocean is an online provider of cloud services. Web applications hosted on the cloud in the form of virtual private servers (VPS) has some advantages to traditional…

How classroom technology should not be implemented

Published by Stanley Sim on December 28, 2019

This MIT Technology Review piece by Natalie Wexler titled How classroom technology is holding students back discussed how technology fails to help students in learning. As an educator who uses technology extensively for learning, I disagree with the view of the piece and I wish to discuss the view of the author. In a first grade classroom I visited a few years ago, most of the six-year olds were using iPads or computer. They were working independently on math problems supposedly geared to their ability, while the teacher worked separately with a small group. Six year olds are students who…

Cambridge Physics AS Level Multiple Choice

Cambridge AS Level Physics multiple choice questions full solutions

Cambridge Physics AS Level Multiple Choice

Published by Stanley Sim on December 25, 2019

Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE) Multiple Choice Questions could be easy for some, but hard for others. Many students who felt that MCQ questions are hard think so because they often select the options based on what they feel are correct. However, Physics is science, and science should be objective and not based on feelings. In this series of AS Level Physics Paper 1, the author seeks to explain the solutions of various past paper questions by using a systematic approach of PEM: Physics, Equations and Mathematics. Physics involves determining the angle of approach to solve or explain the solutions…

The New Mac Pro Review by Lunar Animation

Published by Stanley Sim on December 24, 2019

Lunar Animation had the opportunity to use the mid-tier new Mac Pro. The fact that it’s possible to have a simulation running and a scene rendering while being able to review and edit animation, really shows the potential for a professional user. This capacity really blew us away. The size of files they use is phenomenal. That the Mac Pro is able to handle the assets with ease is just awesome. They also had the opportunity to use the highly controversial Pro Display XDR, a monitor that cost $4999 without stand. It provided us with a phenomenally accurate visual representation…

Low latency of AirPods Pro

Published by Stanley Sim on December 24, 2019

An investigation of the latency of AirPods Pro against the Gen 1 and 2 AirPods. They drop from 274ms to 178ms going from the first to second generation, and the AirPods Pro take it down even further, to 144ms. The low latency of AirPods Pro is not something that gadget users compare against other Bluetooth headsets. Such “unseen” features are what distinguish Apple products from other brand products. It is hard to understand the kind of work go into lowering the latency, but it is easy to infer from the high latency of other Bluetooth headsets that such a feature requires a lot of…

Determining the Original Voxel Densities

Determining the Original Voxel Densities

Published by Stanley Sim on October 20, 2019

Introduction In A-level Physics Remote Sensing, one particular concept that students were required to apply was the idea of using voxel to build up the x-ray image of a body. Some students were wondering the very arbitrary idea of performing certain procedures to arrive at the answer. In this article, I am going to explain the reason why the series of steps work as described. Procedure Assuming four voxels with unknown densities,w, x, y and z, are investigated with an x-ray beam. When an x-ray beam is directed at the region, the detected intensity could be received at the other…

Copy Files to and From Virtualbox ubuntu from Mac host

Copy Files to and From Virtualbox ubuntu from Mac host

Published by Stanley Sim on October 4, 2019

Ubuntu and other variants of linux offers many free open source apps. Often, one may want to use some of these apps for testing purposes but it is not possible to always find available PCs to run linux. Using Virtualbox to run linux in virtual environment is a cost effective solution to overcome this problem. However, there may be situations where one may want to send or retrieve files to or from linux in Virtualbox. In this article, I will explain how to set up the Virtualbox and use scp to achieve this objective. Setting Virtualbox Network The first step…

Multitasking on iPadOS

Published by Stanley Sim on September 29, 2019

iPadOS evolved from iOS to take advantage of iPad’s larger screen. With a larger screen, it’s most naturally to think of enhancing multitasking capabilities on the device. Two particular features that will help anyone with using multiple apps at the same time are explained clearly in Apple Support’s YouTube channel. Multitask with Split View Slide Over

Install FreeRADIUS on Ubuntu Server 18.04.3

Install FreeRADIUS on Ubuntu Server 18.04.3

Published by Stanley Sim on September 27, 2019

FreeRADIUS is an open source application that allows network to authenticate users who want to access network resources, such as the internet. Some routers provide built-in hotspot features that provide such function, but they usually lack comprehensive features for school use, such as tracking of usage. Since FreeRADIUS is available free for use, most enterprises use it to authenticate their users. In this tutorial, I would go through the steps to install and set up FreeRADIUS on a Ubuntu Server 18.04.3. The tutorial is divided into two parts: Apache, MariaDB and PHP, and the installation of FreeRADIUS itself. Install Apache…

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