Incident in Lab

I went to Uni's lab to do my comp sys lab project today. Needed the hardware board in the lab. 1/2 way through, my comp station suddenly went out. My 1st thought was the internal hardware burnt out as I had this experience before with mine. I started to worry, my mp3 CD is still in the disc drive. It was my 1st time listening mp3 using a CD, I usually just listen to a few songs in my thumb drive but I just gotten FF7AC OST, around 115MB, too much space for my 128MB thumb drive which has already contained my Uni stuff in it. Rotten luck! Further more, there is no where to find a paper clip in the lab to insert into the ejection hole.

Suddenly, it hit me that it could be because of the power supply. The station where I was, is 1 of the 4 stations customly made by the Uni at the centre of the lab, 2 stations back to back, the rest of the stations are along the wall. The power supply is found on the floor opposite the 2 stations where I was and there was a group of 3 people there. I went over and saw 1 of the 2 switches turned off! Must be the feet of 1 of those 3. I told them what happened and asked them to turn the switch on, and my station was back on. They apologized to me as well. Fortunately, I saved my work moments before the power went out.
posted by Estan @ 10:16:00 PM (GMT+08:00). 0 comments

Semester Break - Holiday? Nah!

This week is my 1 week semester break. It is a good time for the break to come, not as in relaxing or having fun but to pick up the pace and rush all the projects and assignments. I was busy with assignments on the weekend and going to school for projects for the past 2 days as well as today. It will be the same for the next 2 days...
posted by Estan @ 5:24:00 PM (GMT+08:00). 0 comments

Stupid SQ Operator

I phoned SQ last friday to re-schedule my flight. My current return ticket is on 23/12. I wanted to change to 26/11. The operator said it is full and put me on waiting list. I asked for any other available dates on Nov and Dec. She said it is full too.

Today, my housemate told me that he just phoned SQ to change his flight to 9/11 and it was confirmed straight away. How come?! I phoned again. This time the operator gave me all the available dates before 26/11, almost all is available! I re-scheduled my flight to 24/11 with 26/11 still on waiting list. For the past 3 days, I have been worrying that I will have to stay here till Dec if no 1 cancel their flights! Stupid SQ Operator!
posted by Estan @ 6:56:00 PM (GMT+08:00). 0 comments

Fined & Fainted

I gotten a fine from a tram conductor on board a tram. My friends & I were going to have dinner after badminton. There were total 7 of us, 4 of us were without tickets so when we saw the tram conductor came up, we made a run for it, 2 of us exit from the middle door, my future housemate and I went for the back door, the rest brought out their un-use tram tickets to validate. The 2 that exit from the middle door were stopped by another tram conductor waiting outside. My future housemate managed to escape but I was not able to.

Here was the twist, 1 of the 3 with the ticket used the validate machine across him to validate his ticket, his arm was in the path where my future housemate and I going to take. His arm came out just after my future housemate passed which resulted in blocking me. That was enough for me to get stopped by the tram conductor rushing to the back door. Ironic!

The 3 of us met up with the rest and had a chat about the incident. I talked about the arm blocking my way too which that guy responded that I was blaming him! Please, we are all adults, I was talking about the event not aiming at any person. I understand that if I was in his shoe I would have quickly validated my ticket too. This shows that he does not treat me as sincerely as to other friends he prefers, I believed, knowing him since last semester, he will not react like that to friends he prefers. I can only blame myself for not buying a ticket and not others. I reacted to his accusation verbally, saying I was talking about the event not person, don't be so sensitive. At the back of my mind I was thinking, what if I said yes? Will he pick a fight with me or start a cold war?

Later in the night, I went to disco with my future housemate and another friend. These 2 are of the 3s that I mentioned that I "clicked" immediately with. These 2 months, the 3s and I really get along very well. We help each other on school works, have fun together and most importantly we speak from heart to heart to each other, compared to none with others I know since last semester.

Back to the disco, I fainted in the disco! We were dancing together and I told my friends I needed to go to the toilet and made my way there. On the way I suddenly felt dizzy and my eyes blacking out. I managed to hold on to the wall and then I told myself to hang on. I closed my eyes to rest and when I opened up my eyes I was supported by a few people! They supported me to the toilet and make sure I was able to stand before leaving. I washed my face and pee before going back to my friends. I told my friends that I fainted and they immediately brought me home.

Strangely, I was totally in control after I woke up from the faint. I still can walk, can talk, and can joke. I guess this is genetic as my brother told me he has experienced this a few times before now it was my turn! It could be because of the lighting too, this disco that we went, the lighting is much dimmer compared to the place we went last time. The only light is at the bar and several disco lightings at the ceiling with only a single color that will kept rotating (think vehicle head light, much smaller (focus) and much brighter). It flashed into my eyes countless times.

I think I did stumble to the ground as my nose had the impression of the spectacles I wore and the area near the eye bags, the places where the spectacles rest, felt pain when I pressed. My friends said from now on they will accompany me to the toilet...lol.
posted by Estan @ 6:29:00 PM (GMT+08:00). 0 comments

Exam Results and New Exams Dates

The results of my 2 supplementary exams I took last month are out. 1 is a pass and the other is a distinction! Funny right? Supplementary exams are supposed to be just pass or fail. I was quite confused when my status on that exam was "deferred" instead of "withheld". I guess the co-ordinator of that subject is lenient or it may be because of my lab results were not bad or he knows he did not teach really well in lecture. :P

The dates of this semester's exams are out too, I am taking 4 exams. 1st is on 25/10, followed by 26/10, 4/11 and 9/11. They are Computer Systems Engineering 3, Mathematics for SECSE (Discrete Maths), Electronics Engineering 3 and Software System Engineering 3. There will be an oral presentation cum examination for my 3 semester project as well but the date is not finalized yet. It will be a standard presentation followed by answering 4 questions out of 100 questions, Every 10 questions base on 1 lecture. The 4 questions weight 40%, 1 question 10%! How huge is that!

I think I will go back to SG around 20+ of November. My parents may be coming over for holiday and my girlfriend is having exams as well, no point returning to SG while she needs to prepare for her exams.
posted by Estan @ 6:29:00 PM (GMT+08:00). 0 comments

Australian Idol 1st Final Verdict

Monday was the verdict episode of the Australian idol where the finalists performed the day before. 2 out of 13 finalists would be going home after the verdict episode. I support the most for Milly, followed by Tarni and sadly, both of them ended up in the bottom three. This meant either both of my favorites would be out or 1 of them with the other bottom three would be out! The host announced the finalist with the lowest vote and she was my 2nd favorite Tarni. Guess Australians are not very into rock. After she sung, it was down to my favorite and the other finalist. All the 13 finalists performance was good, the judges also said that there was not a single bad performance from anyone, whichever 2 to go will be sad for everyone. The finalist with my favorite Milly was a very good singer too and was 1 of the few performance that I enjoyed so basically all 3 was the least expected to be in bottom 3 even to the public. Well, what can I say, I am not Australian but in the end my favorite Milly survived. I am thinking of not watching Australian idol anymore if both my favorites are out but it is not meant to be. Hope my favorite Milly will not be in the bottom anymore. Her individuality is what makes her stand out. My friends like her and agreed with me too. :) Here is a photo of my 2 favorites, Milly is on the left.

posted by Estan @ 11:46:00 AM (GMT+08:00). 0 comments

Current Social Situation...

I have not mentioned anything about my social life for the past few weeks. I have widen my social circle, started to approach classmates and gotten their msns or mobile phone nos. I gotten to know 3 more Singaporean classmates. 2 of them and I are taking a same subject. The other 1 is the cousin of 1 of them and is my neighbor too. All of us are staying in the same rental building. I have to say that I immediately "click" with them. They gave me the feeling of being with my friends in Singapore which I did not have with others. My neighbor said that perhaps we are in the same level of maturity! No arguments from me! We played soccer and badminton during the last 2 weekends and went to watch EPL match in the pub every week as well as helping out in each other in school work. Life is so much better compared to last semester! I guess I can put them in the ‘friends’ category. I will be sharing a 2 bedroom apartment with 1 of them next year but we have not put pens to the papers yet. There are still some issues that we have yet to sort out with the management.

I also gotten to know 2 Malaysian classmates, 1 is in my lab group. The other 1 is on a different lab session but was introduced to me by the Malaysian in my group. We helped each other on assignments and during labs. There is nothing that we do not talk about! They are those types of people that you will want to sit beside during classes. Sadly, they do not go out during weekends. I know this girl from the same group with 1 of the Malaysians. She is from China and had stayed in SG for the last 5 years. She studied in TP, the same Poly as I. I graduated 1 year earlier than her. Then I became government slave for 2 years and 4 months while she worked for 1 year plus before coming over this semester. We will be working on a term project together. The project needs 2 groups. Each group will be working on different parts of the project.

I also became closer with some of the classmates from last semester. 2 are locals while 2 are from an island somewhere near Africa. We talk about school work in every labs and tutorial sessions which I seldom did during last semester. They know a lot more students than me in the class so now I have quite a number of contacts and I am linked to their contacts. Courtesy of Social Network!
posted by Estan @ 10:47:00 PM (GMT+08:00). 0 comments

Yes, They Are!

Locksley: Websites are not made to interface with IE. HTML is a standard, not controlled by MS but by W3C. The layout problem is because of Firefox, so save your energy...

Quote from a Journal from University of California-Berkley Lab on Science Direct, the 1st paragraph: Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) is currently by far the most widely used Web browser. Its dominance is all likelihood originally largely due to its being built into Windows systems, which in and of themselves have a disproportionate share of the operating system market. But the dominance of IE is also due to a vicious cycle. As IE gained in market share, Web sites were virtually forced to interface with IE; those that did not face the risk of extinction. Today there are many Web sites that interface only with IE or that interface better with IE than other browsers such as Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera, something that now continually gives IE the proverbial upper hand in browser competition.

I know HTML is standard, I just want to tinker with it to make it look nicer on Firefox. :)
posted by Estan @ 10:55:00 PM (GMT+08:00). 0 comments

Better Software?

I have been trying out Firefox. It has the same effect to me as Openoffice. I think it is better than IE. I love the extensions it has. 1 is the Noscript extension. It lets you choose whether to allow the javascript of the webpage you visiting. The button is located at the status bar so you can just click the button to allow script to website you visit frequently. There are options to allow or temporarily allow script on webpages. This is very useful for surfing webpages for the 1st time.

Secondly the ad blocker extension, I do not know whether it is the result of this extension or the built-in pop-up blocker it has that is better than IE, some of the website I visit frequently keep having pop ups even if the popup blocker is active together with google tool bar's popup blocker. There is no popups when I use Firefox. There is also the Chatzilla extension. An IRC software build in to Firefox. I usually use mIRC to chat with my girlfriend but with Chatzilla this has became more convenient.

I love the tabs extension that allows Firefox to open webpages in tabs within the browser window. IE usually becomes slower when there are a lot of browsers, it hangs my system once! It is also troublesome to click on the taskbar than click the website browser you want, or press alt+tab to choose the desired website browser/application. For Firefox, you just click the tab you want or press ctl+tab to move from left to right, ctl+shift+tab to move from right to left or ctl+1 to the 1st tab, 2 to 2nd tab and so on.

I also like the weather forecast extension. The icon display is on the status bar instead of those standalone softwares on the system tray. The weather forecast also allow multiple profiles, I can change from Melbourne weather to Singapore weather with just a right click to select the profile. Another thing I notice, Firefox loads website much faster than IE. IE usually takes a long time to load certain pages, even for ages that makes you sit and wait, and then an error page comes up and you start to curse and swear. This is not the case for firefox, it will popup a message saying the website could not be connected after a few seconds. This is what software should do.

I am beginning to look for alternatives in software I usually use since there are so many free 1s. My lecturer who recommended Openoffice said people tend to be bias on the softwares that they used 1st and do not attempt to test other softwares. He purposely made the report template in Openoffice format to make students try out Openoffice. It was a great strategy; I am a good example of it. I heard of how good Openoffice, Firefox and some other softwares that are better than or as good as softwares that come along with Windows. However I was reluctant to try them but not any more! I think I will try GIMP next time. GNU Image Manipulation Program, see if it is better than other image/photos manipulation softwares.

Sadly, some websites are solely made to interface with IE. My blog for example, Firefox can still display the webpage but some of the layout will be out of alignment. I tried to play with the html code on blogger but to no avail. I will keep trying though, to see if it is blogger's problem or the html code problem, during my short leisure time. :)
posted by Estan @ 10:26:00 PM (GMT+08:00). 0 comments

Brain Overload Again Soon

Met up with my 2nd supervisor on my 3 semester project. I have to submit a 'Design Proposal' (DP) 2 to 3 weeks later. He showed me a DP done by a group under his supervision a few years back. It has 40 pages!!! Some of the stuff will be quoted from the analysis report. Mine has only 15 pages!!! New assignments will be given to us soon, other subjects' term projects have also began. This means more work for me, my leisure time going to be over soon. My brain will be overloaded again soon......

Been using Openoffice for the past few weeks. The lecturer recommended the software for us to do our 3 semester project report. I have to admit, the writing format is way better than MS Word and the document file also take up less space. A blank Word document took up 11K memory, a blank Openoffice took only 3k memory. I input 10 characters in both documents and saved them. Words used 24K memory whereas openoffice used 5K. Imagine the statistic! However, Openoffice has 1 downfall, that is, the spellchecker. It does not work as good as MS Word. I really like Openoffice, it is a very good tool to use for report writing. I did not test other features of Openoffice as I do not need it. This applies to MS Word as well. Therefore I recommend Openoffice to those who wants an easier report writing tool. Oh, there is 1 feature that Openoffice outshone MS Word that is, Openoffice is able to convert documents to PDF format. MS Word needs acrobat reader professional version to do that.
posted by Estan @ 5:25:00 PM (GMT+08:00). 0 comments