Pledge your blog to the Singapore Memory Portal

National Library Board (NLB) asked is I would pledge the Cycling in Singapore blog to the Singapore Memory Project (SMP). They are tying to “collect memories that are already manifested in existing online channels.”

So you needn’t rewrite your blog posts or resubmit them to SMP, they will figure out how to extract relevant content. The definitions are vague so they rather err on the side of caution.

It’s al explained here: http://www.iremember.sg/?page_id=2822.

My friend Ivan Chew had told me in December last year to please pledge as many of your blogs as I could, so just now I submitted these, which I manage:

  1. Cycling in Singapore (with Chu Wa and Paul Barter) – http://cyclinginsingapore.blogspot.sg
  2. Habitatnews – http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg
  3. Otterman speaks… – https://otterman.wordpress.com
  4. News from the International Coastal Cleanup Sinapore – http://coastalcleanup.wordpress.com
  5. Raffles Museum Toddycats! – http://toddycats.wordpress.com/
  6. The Biodiversity Crew – https://nusbiodiversity.wordpress.com
  7. The Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium – http://biodiversitysingapore.wordpress.com/
  8. Aboard the Swedish Ship, Götheborg – http://gotheborg.wordpress.com
  9. Mac Meetup Singapore – http://macmeetupsg.blogspot.sg
  10. The Biology Refugia (with Brandon Seah) – http://biologyrefugia.blogspot.sg

Okay job done!

They had explained,

“The Singapore Memory Project (SMP) is a national initiative to collect, preserve and provide access to Singapore’s knowledge materials. Spearheaded by NLB, the SMP aims to build a national collection of content in diverse formats (including print, audio and video), to preserve them in digital form, and make them available for discovery and research.”

If you are keen to pledge your blog to SMP, you can fill up their response form here: http://singaporememory.simulation.com.sg/Public/Pledge.

Holy cow! The 2030 Central Line cuts through the forest!

Although my note about the Land Transport Authority’s announcement about new MRT lines last week was dispassionate, I was really breathless.

Why? Well, their plans included a 50km east-west line which right through the forest, and obvious even in the smallest map! Alert friends saw the blog post on Facebook and asked the same question.

This was an area we thought was inviolate, a nature reserve.

I thought. oh, surely this was not what it seemed to be. I asked a few people and then was away cycling in KL. Back home, no one knew anything, so we’ll just have to ask LTA. Perhaps they are so experienced with underground drilling that the concerns we have will be all explained away.

Without biologists on their team or an EIA, though, I’ll still have questions.

Meanwhile, I thought I should explain to others what I was concerned about. So I revived Habitatnews and illustrated, with the help of a few maps, that “LTA’s proposed Cross Island Line (CRL) cuts through the Central Catchment Forest Reserve”.


The red indicates the path of CRL through CCNR,
derived from singeo’s overlay of the LTA map on Google Earth

Ladybug saw the map I was preparing and said in disbelief, “no lah, they are going around, this is just a concept”.

One hopes indeed.

Direct link to the large map here.