Tag Archives: School

In Soviet Russia, you pay to work!

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Replace “Soviet Russia” with “Temasek Polytechnic”. In case you’re not familiar with the title, see Russian reversal.

Students in my school have to undergo a period of internship and/or complete a major project for the first semester of their final year. In my case, both were lumped together in one huge chuck. Its been about 6 weeks since I started, so now would be a fair time to review my experience.

Once again, the czarist school planners fouled up and the company my group was supposed to be attached to pulled out after our initial meeting, claiming they had too many students. Good foresight by the management right there. However, we inherited the original proposed project anyway. I’ll skip the technical mumbo jumbo associated with the actual project.

The objective of the entire semester is to simulate a working environment. Thus far, the only thing they got right is the dull looking work cubicle and stiff hours.

SIP Lab
Reading nerfbat.com on my laptop

Other than the fact that my group wasn’t attached to a company to begin with, and hence no pay (you don’t get any even if you were attached anyway), we had to fork out an additional $4.80 for a stack of paper with horizontal and vertical lines across it and a formally dressed up page smacked right on top of that, otherwise known as the log book, intended for some apparatchik to gloss over and penalize you for leaving out the minor of all details. As of now, 6 weeks in, I’ve written zero things in it.

Time management is of utmost importance. When you spend your entire day locked in a cubicle, you have to make the most out of it. Therefore, I allocated the entire chuck before lunch for perusing through all my RSS feeds. Now that I’m updated with the intricate happenings of the world, great! Time for lunch!

Despite my rants, I genuinely enjoy working on my project, something that not everyone can agree with.

Vista hits me, again

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Quite literally this time.

Last Tuesday, Microsoft held a Vista and Office 2007 launch down at my school, reiterating all the marketing slogans you’ve seen and love to hate everywhere. Little did I expect myself to walk away with a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate Retail.

There was a series of talks held at the Auditorium which showcased various technologies and innovations, two of which were the recently introduced Popfly and Silverlight. Before concluding the session, 5 volunteers (6 went up actually) were asked to summarize the entire presentation, and the most comprehensive version walked away with copy of Vista Ultimate. I guess my daily readings of technology news from The Inquirer and ArsTechnica helped me out here as I was able to highlight the details (and probably more) of each presentation just by glancing at the schedule, even though I might have neglected to pay my utmost attention during some of them.

I’m not going to sell it on eBay like most would. Even if I end up not using it before the next version of Windows gets released, who cares? I cherish the memories associated with the item, the rare occasion of me actually winning something, much more than its financial value. Don’t forget, I’m a gnome too!

PS: Remember the bear with a copy of Windows Vista Business OEM? Here is the same bear, pleased with his upgrade.

Vista Ultimate

Beaten the IRL game

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I’ve beat the IRL game, for now at least. Its been a few weeks in to my holidays and I received my results for this semester today, and I performed beyond my expectations. Probability is once again, on my side. Officially, the results are to be released tomorrow, but the czarist calender of the school is to never be trusted.

Holidays have been pretty uneventful, but not boring by any means. Quite the contrary, I appreciate this slow and democratic pace of life, instead of being dictated by some timetable issued by an institution. The past weeks have spent mostly replaying Neverwinter Nights, watching Battlestar Galactica which I just picked up recently and have an entire 3 seasons to catch up, or reading my pile of books which I previously never had the chance to.

Some of my peers have already been issued their major projects and are required to report to school for them, but I am thankful I’ve not. If we were workers, that would be violating some sort of labor rights. Of course, that last statement would be from my fantasy and what is a “holiday” is pretty much determined by them.

Back to watching Battlestar Galactica.

Myanmar? Lol?

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An invitation to Myanmar was extended to a member of my SIP/MP group yesterday and he is still shuffling back and forth on his decision as of this moment. Many other such invitations have been sent out to students in my diploma all over the place. Other than the obvious displeasure I felt as a result of the poor management and organization on the school’s behalf, extending such offers after the SIP selection instead of before, I would support his decision either way.

On the other hand, why anyone would choose to do his/her internship in Myanmar is beyond me. Myanmar, wedged between India and China, is a third world country, inheriting all the problems a third world country face such as poverty, a less than efficient transportation system, a poor social system and hygiene issues (diseases). Those are not the only issues. Under the military junta that runs the country, it faces a whole plethora of problems ranging from inflation to oppression of free speech and outright violation of human rights. As far the city is concerned, living conditions are way below Singapore’s standards. In fact, a draft resolution was proposed to the UN Security Council by the US and UK early this year on the issues of virtually non existant human rights this year, although it got vetoed somewhere along the path. To be perfectly honest, it sounds like a hell hole, no offense to all you Burmese.

This hardly sounds like a land of opportunities that one usually looks for outside of Singapore. If you choose to leave Singapore, be it temporary or permanently, you would choose a destination superior to Singapore, not worst.

The only positive outcome of this entire adventure is that it’ll look good on your portfolio. Personally, I wouldn’t accept such an invitation if I was going to live in such conditions. You choose to do something because you enjoy and love it, not just because it looks good. And no, I don’t buy the “it builds character” reason either.

If you do go, watch your words and pray that you don’t end up like Aung San Suu Kyi, or I won’t be seeing you for a very long time.

Panic, the mother of all motivators

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The contributions of panicking can once again be seen in the chaotic closing weeks of the semester, as projects and various other assignments are being churned out at a rate rivaling the conveyor belt production line of a factory

It is amazing what one is capable of under the torment of pressure and panic. What used to be a seemingly impossible and daunting task can now be assembled at such a rapid rate, as if I’ve somehow made sense of everything that has been taught, or supposedly taught, in the entire semester all of a sudden.

Panic was what allowed me break out of the “what to do” and “this shit is impossible” cycle for my IA project and led to the production of a program that met the baseline requirements in a matter of moments last night. And right after it was completed, I was tossed into a state of euphoria, with an immediate +1 boost to my level of confidence.

Although this is hardly my preferred method of working, I’ve to vouch for its effectiveness as it has saved me, yet again, from my otherwise doomed project.

One down, two to go

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The past week has been extremely hectic, and the workload would only worsen in the upcoming week as the closing of the semester draws nearer. I’ve finally managed to more or less complete one of my ASP.NET project, which required me to create this web application that that is somewhat similar to the functionality of MS Outlook; a corporate information manager whereby a user can create appointments, tasks and send memos to each other. All that is left of it is some debugging which I will go through with my teammate this Sunday.

My other two projects however, are dead in the water. Coincidentally, both of them happen to be applications for a mobile device, one to be done in J2ME, the other in VB.NET. The problem with developing mobile applications is the lack of resource availability. It is as if these were some obscure arcane knowledge that one could only obtain from a dusty tome locked away in the library of some cultist keep.

Now that I’m 1/3 done, theres nothing like spending a Friday afternoon idly chatting away and then swearing constantly in a 2h 30mins long match of Company of Heroes to pamper myself after the long week. I always loved Fridays as it signaled the start of the weekend, and I declare Fridays to be a ‘no work day’. If you do realise, I’ve rarely stayed back in school on a Friday and I resent doing so. This Friday in particular, was a much needed break.

The situation is only going to deteriorate next week and get worst.

Virus? Lecturer says nevermind

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On Thursday, during my Internet Appliances lab, it was brought to the lecturer, a Mr Shankarappa Kumbar’s attention that multiple computers in the lab were infected with a virus, W32.OlderData, the lecturer’s response was simple “never mind”.

While such a task might not be his responsibility, but for a lecturer, especially one in more or less, the IT sector, to just shrug off such an alert, it is largely irresponsible and ignorant on his part and it prompts one to question his competency, among various other acts of his which I would not disclose here. However, some part of the fault also lies on me.

Out of necessity of needing to get my work done, or pure stupidity, and since the copy of Symantec antivirus on the particular system I was on wasn’t beeping with alarm unlike the others, I inserted my thumb drive into to the system to copy over some files where I had done previous at come to continue development. Big mistake. The virus passed itself onto my thumb drive, which then ultimately ended up infecting my machines back home.

All of the infected computers were Windows systems running Symantec AntiVirus, viruses def as of 22/11/06. The virus was able to replicate and elude detection until an instance of it executed, which SAV then attempted to halt it. This meant that as long as the virus didn’t attempt to meddle with system configs, it wouldn’t be detected.

Only when I became curious of that consistent floppy seek every now and then did I became curious and launch and investigation to the cause of it. As of the time this post was written, I’ve managed to stamp out all the instances I could find using scans from both Trendmicro Housecall and SAV, along with manually removing registry entries calling for the virus.

Wrapping it all up

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Finally done with all my semestral papers and finally, the long anticipated break arrives for about 1 month +. I’m not totally certain of the duration of the holiday because the academic calender, or Tzar calander (for being large, complex and obsolete, quintessentially worthless), as my friend would call it, effective only until 25 March 2006. In small print at the bottom of the page reads “Last updated: 12/17/2004 13:04:27″. Rofl.

I haven’t had anything plan out for this upcoming holidays (not like I ever have any plans for anything), but I guess its going to be spent mindlessly grinding away in L2 and EQ2, though I hope I could find something productive to do, but that is unlikely, especially with a good friend of mine being conscripted soon (damn you Singapore), which leaves me with an option less for things to do.

Back home after the exams, I watched a science program, The Elegant Universe, which explored the history, the development, the impact and the future of String theory, which is determined to be the “Theory of Everything”.

Sounds dull doesn’t it? No, it actually is one of the most interesting aspects for modern science, especially since it explores areas that have previously been thought of as sci-fi, and sci-fi buffs will definitely enjoy this as it shows how those ideas relate to real-life. It covers topics that’ve long been of interest such as parallel universes (which was what I really after :D) and the fundemental workings of the universe etc.

Now, the theory itself is inheritably complex, but the whole 3 hour long series is broken down into 3 major sections of an hour each, and further sub-divided into chapters. The presenter does an excellent job of explaining most of the theories into more easily understood layman terms, devoid of all those complex mathematical equations that I so passionately hate.

I wouldn’t say I fully grasp the whole concept of String theory yet, but combined with watching BBC’s Parallel Universe the previous week, it certainly has helped me understood it a lot better (I was pretty confused after watching BBC’s Parallel Universe).