Amanda’s repaying a blood debt – donation number 11!

Amanda was my red jungle fowl and small mammal research student during her third and honours years with me at the Department of Biological Sciences, NUS. That experience transformed her overnight from ‘sua-ku’ urbanite to hardy field worker. The role of her supervisor was an intense one and she and other students joke that the process made me lose lots of blood!

So as payback, we visited the blood centre on a post-thesis expedition to get her started. Amanda was more than ready and has become a regular donor. Recent hectic periods in her career has meant getting to a donation centre has been a struggle, so today she was glad to inform me she was making her 11th donation at the mobile blood donation drive at her school.

Red Cross Singapore says only 1.87% of Singapore residents are blood donors. If you are hale and healthy, visit the Red Cross blood donation page to learn more and book an appointment. You will be able to waltz in, spend no more than an hour, and leave satisfied about having made a meaningful contribution.

Amanda’s 9th blood donation @ Westgate, 25 Jul 2016

Amanda’s 10th blood donation @ Westgate, 11 Nov 2016

Amanda’s 11th blood donation @ ACJC, 07 Jul 2017

Post-Ramadhan blood stock, 6th Jul 2017

Discussing server migration with Keith Phua at FoS ITU

I have been having an interesting discussion with old friend Keith Phua about server migration to Github, Amazon S3 or Bluehost. This Thursday morning discussion was a long time coming, as first notice was served in April this year.

Keith has been providing me with tech support since 1999, when I first learnt a few HTML commands and how to FTP. I then was bale to become an early adopter of Science servers for webpages and blogs: these were wings to let me fly when it was most needed for mangroves, coastal cleanups, Chek Jawa, Habitatnews, Raffles Museum News, Otterman speaks… etc.

But now it is time to shift!

My many servers are mostly static and dynamic content can be pushed to blogs. Server access is low but the pages are evergreen and I am still referencing pages made over a decade ago. So where to migrate content to?

GitHub allows multiple repositories under a single account so I could push all files to a single site and map domains to relevant repositories. It is really meant for project management by geeks but there a desktop client which eases things for me. I’ll give it a spin and map the old domain to the github URL and decide about permanent residence later.

Converting US dates to UK format in Excel

A simple, lovely way to convert mm/dd/yyyy (US format) to dd/mm/yyyy or any preferred format, e.g. dd mmm yyyy. in Microsoft Excel

1. Select the column of dates
2. Under DATA, select “Text to Columns”
3. Select Delimited, then click “Next”
4. Untick ALL delimiters, then click “Next”
5. Select column format “Date: MDY”, then click “Finish” (this current data format and not your desired format)
6. Excel recognises the text as a date; highlight the column; Format Cells and change the date format to your desired format

Annoying stuff I figured out (or am trying to)

This has bugged me for YEARS.

Take a column full of US dates in Excel that have been formatted as text and convert them to a “proper” format that can actually be used to sort by… i.e. the date format used by the rest of the world.

While annoying, this is relatively easy if all your dates are in fixed width mm/dd/yy (e.g. 03/12/14) or mm/dd/yyyy format, you can just use simple mid/left/right formulas to extract them knowing exactly where each will be.

If on the other hand the dates are in m/d/yy (e.g. 3/5/14 or 25/11/14) or m/d/yyyy format then it gets a bit messier as you now need to start finding and splitting the text at the slashes.

Today I found a really simple way to do it.

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Wed 29 Jul 2015: 4.00pm @ Singapore Zoo – Nick Sun Ching-Min on “Monitoring pangolins in the wild”

WRS invites everyone to this talk on Wednesday by Nick Sun Ching-Min, a visiting pangolin researcher from Taiwan. Please feel free to extend this invitation to friends and colleagues but please RSVP immediately by email to Paige Lee. Thanks!

A message to the biodiversity community about our Chief Gardener

Lena Chan wrote us yesterday,

The late Mr Lee Kuan Yew had always been a strong supporter of biodiversity conservation.  

On 16 June 1963, Mr Lee planted the first tree that on 16 June 1963 that launched the implementation of his vision of a Garden City. The Garden City has now evolved to a City in A Garden.  The intensive tree-planting along our streetscape formed the green infrastructural backbone of Singapore, enabling us to build on green connectivity.  

In 1982, his interest resulted in an ambitious programme to halt the decline in the bird population of Singapore, popularly perceived as the project to “bring back the birds” to Singapore. Today, the conservation status of many of the birds that were thought to be threatened around thirty years ago, has improved.  

NParks is, indeed, most grateful for the unwavering championing of Mr Lee for greenery and biodiversity conservation.

The Singapore Botanic Gardens is one of the Community Site for Remembering Mr Lee Kuan Yew.  It is located at the SBG Function Hall. This Community Site has been opened since Tuesday 24 March 2015 from 8.30 am to 9 pm.  You can view the orchid named after Mr Lee Kuan Yew, i.e., Aranda Lee Kuan Yew, at the SBG Community Site. You still have today, Saturday and Sunday to pay your respects to Mr Lee and pen your condolences.

We will miss the Chief Gardener of Singapore and a stalwart champion for biodiversity conservation.

Kind regards to all.

Lena

Dr. Lena Chan
Director (National Biodiversity Centre)
National Parks Board

“Conservation Action for Asian Otters”

Nicole Duplaix at the Singapore Botanic Gardens this afternoon. Ottergirl Meryl Theng has been ferrying her between appointments today!



Celebrate World Water Day with a coastal cleanup at Pandan Mangrove, Sat 21 Mar 2015: 4.00pm!

Our first World Water Day cleanup!

News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore

In conjunction with World Water Day, volunteers with the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore (ICCS) will be conducting a cleanup at Sungei Pandan mangrove on Sat 21 March 2015: 4.00pm – 6.00pm.

Sign up here by the 11th of March 2015 if you want to join us!
We will provide transport to the site.

What is World Water Day?
World Water Day is a day designated by the United Nations to highlight the importance of water and to advocate sustainable management of water resources.

Why cleanup? Humanity needs water and wetland habitats are an integral part of the water cycle on this planet. Wetlands habitats are especially precious in Singapore and trash causes adverse impacts to wildlife, releases harmful chemicals and are an unsightly presence we should not tolerate! Coastal cleanups are conducted by volunteers around the world to remove this trash, raise awareness of the blight on our oceans and…

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Three fat cats

Prof Chou Loke Ming officially retires today!

Humour, dignity and passion.

The Biodiversity Crew @ NUS

Prof Chou Loke Ming officially retires today – the end of an era which his Reef Ecology Study Team and many students in the department will continue to reminisce about for decades.

I thought I’d share his commencement speech delivered to the graduating class on 10th July 2014. I loved his “coconut speech” delivered with his quintessential humour, dignity and an understated deep feeling.

Thanks for the memories Prof!

Prof Chou Loke Ming heads to TMSI next (See “Marine conservation veteran continuing passion after retirement,” by Audrey Tan. The Straits Time, 15 Oct 2014 [link])

“Member, NUS Board of Trustees, Mr Philip Tan,
Distinguished Guests,
Graduates,
Ladies and Gentlemen.

This is certainly a cheerful occasion for the graduates. It marks a significant achievement on your part and I congratulate you on reaching this stage in the journey of your life.

You have heard time and again the saying that…

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An inspirational Mandela Day to all educators out there

This morning, in the midst of writing a motivated proposal to build bonds amongst people and nature, Adrian Loo wished Cheng Puay and me an inspirational Mandela Day.

He alerted us to Google’s Doodle, and Cheng Puay then shared some of their banners. Keep at it people!

Link
Creating the doodle – Kathy Wu.