Sunday, January 31, 2010

Reality is a bitch..

Reality hits you hard..

Thought I could have a little break after I complete my facebook application.

That thought apparently is just a fantasy..

Saturday was a blur.. Went for workshop, followed by another 3216(not CS) project meeting, then went out to buy materials for that project.

Sunday, trying to read my readings and settle my seminar...

Here's my todo list:

Monday:
Reflection essay for NM3216, for playing 4 games that one have to obtain himself and a 22 page redaing.
1st draft of game design project with prototype and basic rules.
Facebook seminar..

Tuesday:
Seminar blog..
Slog through 40 other blogs and comment
3103 tutorial
3103 lab
Many weeks of 3103 lectures..

Wed:
Many Many Many sets of new media readings..
2101 tutorial

Thurs:
Google Wave Assignment!!!!

Dear Ben, I know you are starting a "cs3216 for mortals" course next sem.

But if it's possible, do keep the current program available and remodel it into a pseudo ATAP program.. I.e. industrial attachment+cs3216 - other modules..

p.s. All my classmates for CS3216 will become my default beta-tester for my NM3216(Game Design) project. Penalty for rejection will be death by tickling... Muahahaha...

Friday, January 29, 2010

FInally...

The whole of last week was over in a flash. And this is me finally having time to write it after staying awake for 50 odd hours.

First liuliu and yinchao dropped, leaving me and angad on ourselves.

Then AWS lecture, the technical aspects really was interesting, but not exciting.

On the other and, Simone, was a much more inspiring presence by himself, I imagine that he will have to explain all these technicalities to customers who don't really care except for their profits. He probably speaks quite well. I hope he enjoys the perpetual summer here in singapore.

Photo of Tanenbaum was... well.. Lets just say he wrote my OS textbook, and that was a module I did NOT enjoy.

What really was entertaining was how prof ben got a taste of his own medicine with "It depends"

Now.. back on assignment 1. Finally finished after 3 sleepless nights, we had to shave alot of functions because we didnt have the required knowledge and the time to figure everything out. But I was very proud of my final submission, although it was ugly piece of code I've ever written, with almost zero abstraction, copy-pasted code everywhere and we have to scramble through our pages just to find a piece of code to edit.. It was still immensely satisfying to see soemthing of your own creation work.

One thing I will tell you though, is that while the current implementation won't draw alot of users due to buginess and lack of features, the underlying concept is one that I believe in(oh the whole project has gone a longgggg wayyyyyy)..

And lastly, thanks Su Yuen, Jason and Yuen Hoe for being around com1/msn when we needed you guys/gals..

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Post lect reflection, and my very late piece on success

Back from jogging, first time since I injured my back last june. Felt really good, and much greater clarity of thought.

First off I think alot of people are freaked out about the mid assignment milestone. Last night, at 3 am, between the 12 people in SoC basement and outside tech services, 11 were CS3216 students. On hindsight, they weren't actually that hard, and they exists so that we would plan our application better, so I really didnt have to camp overnight in SoC..

On to the software engineering lecture, so I've yet to take CS2103, and I don't plan to do it in NUS, since as a CM major there are pitifully little core modules I can map for SEP. Now the lecture by prof ben is really quite intro, and as he said himself, it's aimed towards the non-cs people, whereas for us the main course of the day was the sharing session by wei man and justin.

Now this is where it gets quite interesting, earlier this week I was involved in a little leadership crisis myself, since I was really had no experience taking charge, especially in a software engineering project, and so my work allocation was really terrible. At least that can be justified, since I really had no idea what to do, but I also neglected on the team communication aspect, and that if I had properly spoken to all my team members, I would have saved myself alot of trouble.

That said, all is well now, and I dare say this is one hell of a useful lecture :).

Now, I know this is really late, but I have my own little piece on success.

There was this issue of reader's digest, where there was this food for thought column.
And the story went like this, a very rich, retired old man was enjoying life on his yacht fishing around the pacific. He met this fishermen one day, and they had a great time chatting. To his horror, the fishermen had no concept of financial investment, or any sort of long term planning at all, so he took his time and taught him how to invest in stocks, build up his portfolio etc etc.... After he was done, the fishermen looked at him puzzled, and asked, 'so what would I do with all this money?' To which the rich man answered ' You could retire to a small island and fish in peace everyday'
And the fishermen responded immediately, 'But thats what I'm already doing now'..

Well, I know the whole point of this anecdote is to tell you that happiness lies in a peaceful and contented life.

But think about it this way.

The rich men, had he been in his 30s, how much would he had enjoyed his life is he spent the rest of his life in fishing peacefully in a serene little town?

I mean, none of you would go back and tell your parents, "I think true happiness lies in a peaceful and contented life, I shall go become a fisherman in Indonesia" after reading this right??

So what I want to say is, success is a state of mind, it's always up to you yourself to determine how successful you are, all the fame and glory in the world does not make one successful if he/she himself/herself thinks otherwise. Not only that, but your own priorities can change, what you value with your life today you may toss it aside the next morning. So don't go all in and think of what you must achieve at all costs. Take a deep breadth, go with the flow, and enjoy the ride.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Grouping woes and 3216 reflection

I just realized for my previous post I kept ranting about the china/google situation that I left out my post show-and-tell session.

Lets get that in first.
Apparently everyone was talking about prof Ben's speech, on learning how to learn and stuff..

What I think, really affected me is when he said that teaching is a calling, and that he wants to teach students to learn how to learn. I just read an article on how students from 清华 just blindly regurgitate books and teachers who try creative methods get punished by the school and the party.. And here we are, given the chance to do anything we want and magnificently flop, to work with all these talented people(seriously, with that kind of show-and-tell, we can charge performance fees) is a really lucky oppurtunity.

Next up, 'the world is in deep shit'.. Really.. not just the economy.. For the last 4000 years, the human race population is kept under wraps by the most efficient forms of population control, War and Famine. Now, war is minimal and the worse type of famine is flu, people are living longer than ever, and are wanting more than ever. Yet it is econs 101 that wants are unlimited but resources are finite. So we keep taxing the planet itself, like prof Ben said, energy is the big thing, its the most important thing we take from the environment.

In keynes theory(correct me if I'm wrong) the Economy is NOT zero-sum, meaning that its possible to have every country in the world having positive economic growth.. however, we can't really sustain that, since our planet will run out of resources really really fast. Already the US is left with 40 years of steel and 20 years of coal, so...

Well.. i don't really know what I can do to help, but I can jolly well try.. Laurence got it right, 我生存的意义就是, 让世界因为有我的存在, 改变一点点.

Ok.. Now onwards to ranting.. If you do NOT already have an application group by this moment, DON"T think of getting an 'actual' designer. They're all taken by now.
I mean, think about it, we're the best NUS is supposed to offer(well, at least, the better) just get any 3 others, suck it up and learn how put your ideas into reality, I dunno how hard its gonna be, but I sure as hell am gonna try. I've seen groups with 4 engineers/ computers(socians).. Mine is something like that, and I am pretty sure all of us will be both designing and coding.

Take a step back, take a deep breadth, have some self confidence, and forget about grades.. Given the average intellect of the class, I'm pretty sure all of us will do well as long as we put in the requisite effort/all-nighters..

I guess thats all for now.. I just finished a marathon chatting session looking for group members consisting at its peak, 2 FB convo, 3 MSN convo, 2 Gchat convo, 1 Wave, and 2 QQ conversations, at the same time.. Finally done, yet still I'm 1 short for my seminar group.. Please drop me a msg if interested.. Thanks..

Post Google, Post show-and-tell thoughts..

For the less informed: Times and Google Blog

Quite stunning news, in fact, also inspiring.. Having just returned from China, I can attest to how bad the internet situation in China. It would seem they have a temporary IP jammer that blocks your IP each time you try to access sensitive content. We were tasked to work on a project that involves industrial pollution in china. Guess what, all the photos are blocked when you try to click on the links, your IP is then recored(I speculate) and any URL that links out from your search page are then blocked.

eg. Suppose I open a google page and search for 'starbucks', I next open a page for 'dalai lama', The dalai page will be blocked. And when I go back to click on a starbucks links it'll be blocked too.

T
his is added upon the fact that twitter, youtube and facebook are blocked. It would seem that China has willingly excluded itself from the internet. And with the incoming google departure Chinese netizens may be left with a regional network for themselves.

Now, I want to do a bit of speculation as to what will happen post-showdown. Google is taking a very unconventional hardline stand against the traditionally very hardline China. This should imply they've expected that China will not give in, coupled with the "breaking borders" award they announced on the 6th, which is given to outstanding individuals/websites that uphold freedom of speech and human rights, we should see Google taking a much more active role in maintaining integrity on the web.

Google's share price dropped by 3.84% after the announcement, but David Drummond, the Chief Legal Officer of Google, seemed unperturbed when interviewed by CNN, citing that profits in China are insignificant. He may well be right, already there are critics questioning if everything is a self-orchestrated publicity stunt, whatever it may be, the announcement has, without a doubt, gave Google a massive publicity boost. Now on the absolute high ground in terms of human rights and freedom of speech, Google is expanding it's brand name beyond the field of IT, to some other field that can affect everyone in the world. One wonders if it may become like some sort of red cross, since it allows information to be conveyed across the internet like no other.

The next to consider is the domino effect. China has been known to protect it's domestic industries against foreign industries. Google's stand may lead to various other MNOs deciding to do the same, Google leaving may not be a big deal, but how many different MNOs can China lose in a time of economic turmoil. Not only that, but this stand has propelled Google to a moral high ground, meaning future enterprises that enter or associate themselves with China will face pressure from human rights groups should they comply with the rules China impose. Should that become the case, the negative impact will make things really difficult, because its not worth it to lose the rest of the world for the market of China. 1.3 Billion VS 5 Billion is simple maths anyone can do.

That said, I'm really excited about how this whole thing is gonna play out, never has a corporation stand against a country, and the funny thing is that most netizens of china are with Google. Today a group of Chinese went to the Google HQ to offer bouquets, they were denied by the security guards and the official statement made by the science park is that one has to make an official request to offer flowers, or its illegal, or 非法献花. I think will be epic, the history of China has traditionally consisted of revolutions after revolutions, this particular government has been pretty good at preventing a change in leadership, with their various tools, but it would be interesting to see how they deal with this particular episode(my guess is extreme downplaying)

Anyway, here's something from world war 2, written by Martin Niemoller, a polish priest..

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak out
because I was a protestant;
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Best day in NUS

//Something I wrote for my chinese facebook page after being //inspired by the 1st
//session, shall come up with an english version soon.

今天上了两节不同的3216.. 浑身都是激情... 好像就是之前3个sem在NUS受的crap都值得了..

首先是NM3216, 一开始老师就说: "Playing games are fun, but learning why playing games are fun may not be fun." 话虽如此, 但是她还是光明正大的在班上打起了游戏, 还越打越起劲.. 一直到了break..

之后是小组游戏.. 非常之exciting哇.. 而且同组美女巨多~
不只如此, 第二节课还是到settlers玩桌游! 巨爽无比!!

然后晚上CS3216.. 这个就是完全不同的league了.. 完全是自我挑战, 自我发挥的module.. 虽然第一天就已经发了25%的assignment, 而且还是一月28号交!! 但是不知道为什么就是感觉很好..

虽然大家都狂骂美国霸权主义怎么样怎么样.. 但是在NUS给我感觉最好的老师是prof Brown(直接是美国人), prof Kan(秋民彦 - 哥伦比亚大学) 还有prof Ben(麻省理工)..就拿来跟其它的lecturer(cough, Ku Ching Yew, cough)比是完全不同的概念..

然后3216的show and tell, 从9点搞到了11.15.. 50个人加起来可以办一场演唱会, 一场舞蹈表演, 编一个不下于魔兽的游戏.. 反正就是大家都很牛X, 可以做一个NUS GOT TALENT, 收视绝对保证.. 有会倒背ABCDE的, 会跳桑巴的, 会N种乐器的, 有各种business idea的, 会用模型车漂移的, 会声乐的.. 原来大家都这么talented..

人品从去年底就一直爆发.. 本来有点担心会有所下滑, 但是貌似趋势是持续往上攀升..

如果我能让我选一个命格.. 就给我自以为势吧!

Sunday, January 10, 2010

What I hope to learn in CS3216? (Official title)

Actually..

I can't really answer that question, I really didn't have a checklist in mind when I signed up for the course. I know there's all kinds of cool APIs like actionscript, flash, wave API etc, business models, negotiation techniques and whatnot, but its never the proper way to learn if all you learn in the end is what you've set out to learn in the first place.

I started off with applied mathematics, but instead I found programming. I can't say that was what I had in mind in the first place, but it most definitely is a much more rewarding experience.

If I have to say something(at the expense of sounding like Watson).
I want to learn something USEFUL.

Now, the real title for this entry should be,
"What I hope to achieve this Semester"

I'm taking CS3216(obv), NM3216(Game Design), NM2101(Theories of New Media) and CS3103(AKA CS2105++). A nice set of modules that I hope can complement each other and at least allow proper entry into the world of Game Development.

I hope to confidently put forth the ideas in my head into programming languages and therefore reality.

I hope I have fun this sem, instead of memorizing calculus and stats formulas or learning OS, I want to enjoy programming, much like the fun I had in CS1101X.

I hope to have fun playing the games I designed.

I hope others have fun playing games I designed.

I hope I take my work seriously enough to NOT leave everything to the last minute(seriously).

And of course I hope to learn something useful.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Rushing for deadlines - Before School starts :(

Schools starting in 2 days, stuck home writing papers for my Wuhan Winter
Program.

Looking forward to school starting, taking NM/CS3216, NM2101,CS3103.. Hopefully NM and CS3216 complement each other.. Hopefully...