Archive for the ‘uni’ Category
CSE Postgraduate Performance Award
I think this is a mistake or someone is playing a prank on me, I am named the tenth recipient of CSE Postgraduate Performance Award for 2007.
Oh well, if this is a mistake, I hope they won’t realize it until I get the certificate heh heh.
I hate COMP4317
6 damned assignments, which were said to be “easy” and should take only roughly 6-8 hours of programming. NO WAY!! Unless you are a genius and don’t have other subjects or in my case working full time. Sigh!
Assignment 2: 427 lines of codes
Assignment 4: 497 lines of codes
Assignment 5: 663 lines of codes SO FAR!
Seriously.. I don’t think I am that dumb.. is this a course for Phd students only???? ARGH!
Exam is on 14 Nov, can’t wait to finish this bloody subject..
Unmotivated and stupid
I am currently doing XML and Databases course, this shall be final subject for my master degree. Sebastian the lecturer, is quite good, he’s definitely knows his stuffs and he can communicate well. If I have other choice, I would probably not have chosen to this subject, as it is quite academic and heavy on theory. I mean what are the chances that in my working environment, would I be required to write an efficient XML parser that uses minimal amount of memory?
The assignments are freakinly hard! And there are 6 of them, most subjects would usually have 2-3 assignments. Because of the number of assignments, the weight for the exam is actually quite small, only 30%. This doesn’t play up well with me, as I usually do well on exams. Anyway, this is the only subject that I can take this session, I don’t have any other option.
I got 2.75/10 for my assignment 4. I just don’t seem to be able to program this damned XML parser well, I must be getting more stupid nowadays.. And worse still assignment 5 is based on assignment 4 and judging by the spec, this would be the hardest assignment. I really feel unmotivated to do this assignment, frankly.. Arghhh.. I hope I can pass, I am not even dreaming to get a credit for this one..
COMP 9117 Software Architecture
Missed the 1st lecture as Lina was having a labour. The 2nd lecture is quite good, jam packed with materials, it’s quite rarely a 3 hour lecture really last that long, and the lecturer had to skip over few pages otherwise he wouldn’t be able to finish on time.
Learnt some interesting stuffs. Software architecture is not about technology, but it is really about people. There is usually a gap between business team and the technology team. Programming is a repetitive practice. India has moved on from providing coders/programmers to now providing end to end solutions, they are outsourcing programming to other countries (China), thus the lecturer challenges us to think beyond just being a programmer. Companies ca
ot rely on having brilliant programmers, in fact it’s dangerous to have a dependency on the people, but they can instead have a solid framework so that average programmers can get the job done.
You Think You Get
Well that’s the motto of Webratio. I have been sleeping late lately struggling to make things work in Webratio. The idea is good, rapid prototyping, but the learning curve making it not rapid at all.. And come to think of it, why does one need to rapid prototype a web application? At the moment, i feel quite constrained in terms of site data modelling as well as site presentation layout. Some simple things become u
cessarily more complicated…
You Think You Get, but You Don’t, that’s our group’s motto now.
Prolog
should’ve skipped the 2nd half of the lecture on mon. Just now been skimming some notes on prolog, it looks quite tough. It’s similar to SQL, but apparently it can be more complex.
JINI Resources
I give up, it’s either I’m stupid or Deitel’s way of explaining with codes, just doesn’t work for this particular chapter on Jini and P2P. I think if I read Deitel’s firs book on Java, I would’ve got better idea about Jini. Anyway, I can’t get ch28 example to work, I mean it compiles and run, but the peers don’t talk to each other.. I hate using people codes without really understand what it does.. So I am resolved to learn Jini from ground up.
Jini resources to print and read:nhttp://v2getsmart.jini.org/nhttp://pandonia.canberra.edu.au/java/jini/tutorial/Jini.xml
JINI
Ok, so for this assignment, I need to write a Peer to Peer (P2P) application using Java, the example from the book is using JINI and RMI, I have no clue whatsoever about this two technologies.
So JINI is for resource discovery over network and it can use different backend, with one of them being RMI. Still don’t get it, and I can’t run the program.. argh! @@
PS: First try of using Scott’s mtsend.py wasn’t sucessful. But I like the idea of blogging from commandline tho. will give it a try again later.
Update: OK, so LookupBroswer in JINI works now, apparently I have to specify a non existent directory for Reggie for log files.n Read the rest of this entry »
Observing during lecture
Bored with lecture today, got a
oyed by fellow students, came to finding a pattern amongst UNSW students. In a lecture you would expect to find:n- At least one mobile phone ringing, if the person has some sense, he would turn it off quickly (apalogizing to the lecturer and fellow students is a plus), but he might chose to run outside quickly while shouting, or he might answer the phone on the lecture, or he might be putting it on silent mode. Rude rude rude, I’m tellin ya, I dont mind buying and bringing a mobile phone jammer to lecture (and church).n- A person who thinks he knows it all, heck he thinks he is smarter and has more experience than the lecturer (well, he might, but..). This person might shrugged his head, murmuring something in disagreement, seems irritated and agitated. He might also ask a lot of questions just to show that the lecturer is not as smart as him. I don’t mind this kind of people as long as they are REALLY smart not a pretender.
- A group of people who are whispering or worse talking in an audible voice and worse still not in English ARGGGHHHn- to be continued
Australian education system suck! UNSW suck! Overseas students suck (hm i am one of tem tho)!! Heck students suck!!! nI hate this uni.
COMP9031 - a short review
As mentioned before, I am currently doing COMP9031: Internet Programming and am about to take its mid session test in 1.5 hours 
What I like about this subject is, it’s pretty hands on, the lecture and the assignments are closely linked. The lectures are mainly discussing Java internet tech by actually looking at codes, so this course it’s quite “low level” compared to more on the conceptual level like COMP9316.
I am happy to learn stuffs from Deitel’s Advanced Java How To Program and then use them in the assignment. For instance: I’m currently wanting to change the session tracking algorithm that I use for my assigment (using hidden input in HTML form as I am accustomed to do) and play around using Java’s HttpSession. I am not a big fan of this Deitel book, mainly because the codes are: 1. using older version of Java 2. the style doesn’t follow Java Convention (hm i forgot the actual name, but there’s a standard on how you should write your code like where to put linebreak etc2) -> look a bit messy to me. 3. BUGS everywhere!!! Not to mention the performance issues associated.. Anyhow it’s good introductory book on the ever extending Java features, I just hope it doesn’t produce bad programmers.
The lectures aren’t not too much of a value to go to, as lecturer just “read” the lect notes and very often lost track of the codes and have to ask the students to find “which line that does something”. I don’t understand why the lecturer doesn’t push doing assigment in linux system and in fact encouraging development in Windows and then test the assigment in CSE linux lab, pretty stupid I say, why do double work? Encourage the students to use linux for the assignment and then easily port them to CSE. This particularly tedious process to do as assignment 2 requires installation of Tomcat and MySQL, the enviornment variables etc2 will look quite different on Windows and Linux, the inexperienced students will undoubtedly spend meaningless hours to get the assignment to work on “both” windows and linux, I only need to make sure that it works on linux at CSE and at my home.
Got a deeper understanding of servlet and JSP compared from COMP9316. A little touch on J2ME. Will learn JMS soon (well today if I dont skip the lecture to study and write this entry 
).
