Man I’m starting to hate Uni again, I have soooo many assignments this semester (I wish I wasn’t doing so many Commerce subjects!), and we were given all the due dates for the assgingments at the start of semester, and I loaded all the dates and reminders into my Gmail calendar, and it was looking pretty good, I was thinking this should be a pretty cruisy semester. But it turns out that spreading out assignments is a really bad thing, because as soon as you finish one, you have to start thinking about the next one, and so on and so on, and it just keeps on snowballing.
I’m in the middle of the snowball at the moment, and I have still not reached the worst of it, still got a lot more assignments to go though, and in the last week of Uni I will get hit with 3 major assignments due one day after the next, immediately after which I will need to start cramming for the finals (and hoping for the best!).
Just as an aside, I some-times really wished that we used the German academic system, where there is no progessive assessments only one final exam for each course (worth 100% of your course mark), would really make my life alot easier!
May 15th, 2007
Yes, I know my blog has not been getting much attention of late! In case you didn’t know I have been EXTREMELY BUSY! And things aren’t gunna get much better in the coming weeks either 
Anyways, here is a review of my past month:
- Sooo busy at work, my manager was on holidays for all of April, and much of his duties fell on to me, which was so not cool!! Its alright though, atleast now I’ll have an excuse to ask for a payrise
- Sooo busy at Uni, past month has been nothing but assignments, mid-terms, and quizzes, still haven’t got back any of the results yet either, which sux I hate waiting for results. I’m a bit nervous about them though, just had a 35% Accounting exam yesterday which felt OK, but usually means a bad result in my experience, because I always make stupid mistakes in easy exams (I much prefer more difficult exams). Finance mid-sem I am definitely worried about, really didn’t feel good about that, plus it was all MCQ’s, and I had no eraser, so I had to leave my penciling of the answer to the end, however I thought we would get a 10min and/or 5 min warning, but no no our lecturer gave us only a 1min warning, and mentioned at this time “any-one who continues to write after I say time will have their paper torn up”! So I had to scribble in my answers as quickly as possible, not even sure if I put the right one’s in. CLAW, I’m not too worried about, and EBUS I have no interest in at all, although I have a PSD (Project Specification Document) due next week which I should really start working on considering it is worth 20%, meh.
- Of-course its not just been all work and Uni over the past month, I have had the chance to see some really shit movies, FYI don’t see “Spiderman 3″, or “300″, they’re totally over-rated, I mean don’t get me wrong the movies have their moments, but they still come no-where near the hype (as is usually the case). Also had a brilliant easter long-weekend out on the ocean (sailing that is). Went to Double-Bay for the first time as well, really really nice are too, will have to go back their some-time. What else did I do…. obviously nothing else that is much exciting.
Now here is a review of my month to come (ahh!):
- Meetings galore, since my manager has come back, a review of every-ones performance needs to be done, apparently by me, I will then need to prepare all the Stats for the past month, and report on all the things that went wrong while he was gone, I do get to have a meeting with the Boss as well though which is pretty cool.
- Uni assignments!!!!
- Accounting: I am actually free as a bird for this subject except for my final exam, but that will only test on topics 7 onwards, i.e. stuff in the mid-sem will not be in the final, YAY!
- Business Law: Major case analysis due, which I really need to get started on, because there is a apparently a fair bit of research required, plus I have two tutorial assgingments, but those should be alrite.
- Finance: Nothing but my Major assingment, which is due in the final week, which I hate!
- E-Business: Pretty much everything! Got my PSD due next week, got my website due, 2 weeks after that, got my presentation due 1 week after that, eeek (my whole semester of bludging for this subject has come to an end)!
Well thats pretty much it, sorry I have not kept you in the loop over the past month, I promise I will keep you all abreast for everything thats happening in the next month (well I’ll try any-way… :-P).
Peace out.
May 5th, 2007
Geez, in the past 3 days I have gone to 3 seperate Usyd fairs (I’ve had enough!):
- Careers Fair:
This was really worth the effort that went into fighting the crowds, so many employers, and better yet so many IT employers. Also got to find out about the internships available at some of the big banks, as well as the Big 4 (accounting firms), and I even happened to run into one of my old lecturers which was pretty cool, he actually offered me a position with his Investment company. Don’t think I will be able to take it though, requires a fair bit of Maths knowledge, which is some-thing I am not so strong at any more, plus it would mean having to go part-time, which I am not really up for at this stage. All in all it was pretty good though, except for random people who would call you name (I really wish they hadn’t made us wear name tags), then I would turn around and find out its some-one for RailCorp (or some-thing like that), and I’m like buddy I don’t want to work at RailCorp, if I did I would’ve stopped! Anyways its all good, atleast I know where my internship opportunities lie now.
- International Exchange Fair:
Wow! This fair definitely opened my eye’s, it really gave me a chance to talk to people who are on exchange, and here about what studying is like in The Netherlands, Germany, GBR, and Norway. This has definitely narrowed my choice to two countries: Germany or The Netherlands. I was so pissed off though, because the fair ran from 12pm - 3pm, but I couldn’t get their until 1pm, and then when I got there I found out that they were holding lectures every 30mins on the various locations, and in the first hour they held two lectures on The Netherlands, and I missed both of them! I couldn’t believe it, I was dying to get some more info on this place! Wasn’t a total loss though, the people there were very helpful, and I got quite a bit of info anyway. So anyway back to my point, and I am wondering now whether I go for Germany, which would be great because the level of education there is so high, and it would make my degree much more international, but of-coarse people’s English skills are not all there, although many courses are taught in English. On the other hand I could go to The Netherlands, where almost ALL the courses are taught in English, but of-coarse the quality of teaching would be lower there, but it is more central to Europe, which would be good for travelling, will have to give it some more though I think…
- IT/Engineering Fair:
Not really sure why they called this an IT fair, it was basically all engineering, and sad to say that means very little software engineering. Seems to be quite a bit of demand for Civil engineers, Chemical engineers, Aero-Mech engineers, even Electrical engineers, but basically nothing for software engineers (at this fair any way ;). So this one was a bit of a waste in the end, but it wasn’t a total waste, got some free merchandise, and the positions on offer at Macquarie Bank look promising (both on the IT, and Finance side).
March 30th, 2007
You wanna know why I never registered to vote, well there are two main reasons:
- If I register to vote it means, that I have given up my right to choose whether I want to vote or not, if I am not registered to vote, I can choose to at any time register to vote, and then go about placing my vote in the polling booth, however what this means is that for any future voting years I will no longer get that choice and I will be forced to vote!
- If I forget to vote, I have to pay a fine, and I don’t like paying fines (I have payed enough of them in my lifetime)!
The first point is the one that really annoys me, I mean why can’t I choose whether I want to vote, and I mean its pretty stupid if you force people to vote who don’t want to, because it only means that people who do not care about their vote are either going to throw away their vote or worse vote for some-one stupid (e.g. Paul Keating). Why not leave voting as optional, that way only those that really want to vote will vote, and the final decision that is made will be much more sensible.
And the thing that really annoys me is that I would actually like to vote (especially in the upcoming election), because I actually have an interest in politics, but I am not going to, because I dont want to take the risk on registering to vote and then forgetting to vote later on down the track and end up with a fine. And believe me they are not bluffing when they say you will get a fine, both my parents are registered to vote, and they have been pretty impeccible in remembering to vote most years, however there was one year where they happened to go overseas for three months, and were completely oblivious to the fact that the federal election was to take place while they were gone. So anyway they come-back from their holiday and sure enough they check the mail and what did they find, not one but two fines for not voting (and just so you know the Government actually has a policy that says that if you are going to be away during an election, you need to place your vote in advance — how stupid is that!).
By the way I think it is pretty weak to use the fact that we have a small population as the reason to make voting mandatory, it should make absolutely no difference whether a country has 20 million or 200 million people! Well thats my whinging over for the day 
.
March 24th, 2007
Well, what a race to start off the year, wasn’t really excitement from start to finish (I must admit), but the end result was good — Kimi was victorious (in case you didn’t already know ). I do have to say that I was extremely impressed with Lewis Hamilton’s debut effort of getting on the podium, I fancied that he might even have finished ahead of Alonso at one stage, but he ended up being unlucky with traffic, still podium result in his first Grand Prix that is impressive. Speaking of the podium, here is a shot:
I have to re-iterate my thoughts about Renault though, because they should definitely be fighting for podiums, but the honestly have one of the worst driver line-ups on the grid. I mean we already know how bad Fishichella is, but I didn’t realise how bad Kovalainan is! Granted it was his first Grand Prix, but still that was one of the worst racing efforts I have ever seen, I can’t believe this guy has had sooo much hype surrounding him, he’s completely useless.
Renault really would have been better off to go for Mark Webber (and Webber would have been better off as well I might add), my prophecy came true, with Webber being well off the pace in the race, and more reliability problems, he’s got no hope for this season.
Well here’s hoping to many more victories for Kimi this season, but there’s a long way to go (certainly Massa’s gear box trouble is a bit of a worry), but we shall see how it pans out, now just a 3 week break till Malaysia . Here’s one more shot of the victor:
March 19th, 2007
YAY!!! 
Another F1 season is upon us and I couldn’t happier! Go Kimi!
The season looks set to be a cracker as well, I’m betting there is going to be a very close tussle for the title between Raikkonen and Alonso, but I also think Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton, will be able to throw some spice into the mix as well, which should make the constructors fight a tight battle. I also reckon that Renault would be much further up in the pecking order then they’re now if they had some better drivers, I still can’t believe they kept Fishichella and what’s more as team captain! I really believe that Mark Webber should be driving for Renault, and I think if he was he would do a much better job then Fisi, it really sux that Mark has gone to Red-Bull Racing, that is a huge step backwards for him, and I think it is the final nail in the coffin for him, because that pretty much pays paste to any opportunity (future or present) for him to be in the title fight, which I think is a bit disappointing because I would put Mark near the top 5 in terms of top drivers currently racing, but anyway his chance is gone. BMW have been the big suprise for mine, I did not expect them to be anywhere near as competitive as they are, their in the top 3 and comfortably so I might add, and I think that they may be able to give the Mclaren-Mercedes and the Ferari team some head-aches this year, but we will have to see how that pans out, still not sure about their driver line-up (Heidfeld is good, probably the equal of Mark Webber or there abouts, Kubica is fast but quite irradic).
Anyways I could go on for hours, so I better stop. One more thing though: “Go Kimi!”
March 17th, 2007
I’m sad I just bought my text books for this semester, now I’m poor again and after all that hard work spent saving over the holidays :(.
Well I’m not really broke again, but $400 bucks is a fair bit to spend on text books, especially since I probably wont be using them beyond this semester, and even more so when that is only for 3 subjects, I decided not to pay for the EBUS (HTML) text book because that would be a complete waste of money. Whats even worse is that the text books I did buy will all be necessary if I want to pass the courses. For the Law subject I’m doing, the final exam will be open book, so I would pretty stupid not to take advantage of that. In accounting I had to buy an 2007 accounting standards book which I am also able/required to bring into the final exam, so stupid though because they release new standards each year, so I cannot use this book beyond this year. Lastly I had to buy my text book for Finance, which I was not so sad about, because it is actually interesting, and I can use this text book beyond this semester.
So whats the lesson here? Don’t do Law or Accounting subjects!
March 14th, 2007
I have just made the switch to Ubuntu (Linux), and man I sooo wish I had of made the switch earlier! Their slogan is: “Linux for humans” and does it ever ring true. So easy to install, so easy to use, and very easy on the eye as well. Its like a cross between: Windows XP and MAC OSX, all of this on top of a wonderfully secure (and locked down) Linux Kernel. Here’s a screenshot to wet your apetite:
This is not actually my first dip into the Linux world, my first solo experience with Linux was Suse 9.2 (commercial version), and it wasn’t really that bad. There was alot more leg work to set it up, but after that it came with alot of nice built in features, and their was alot of programming software pre-installed which was very nice to see, but I think I much prefer the Debian style package management of Ubuntu, over the YAST package manager. Purely because if you don’t have the RPM package for some software for Suse, it is a nightmare to install and even harder to keep all your software versions consistent, and in the end it really isn’t worth the effort, cus if I want to install software, I don’t really want to think if I have the appropriate dependencies, and man if you dis-regard those dependecy warnings, does it ever cost you! My system became virtually un-usable!
But anyway back to my main point, Ubuntu kicks ass, who needs Windows, and yay for open-source software!
March 11th, 2007
Well that wasn’t too bad. It was actually quite a casual first week back in-fact.
That is most likely because of the fact that I am doing 3 Commerce units (one of which is 1st year - and I am a 4th year student remember), and the final unit I am doing is an Engineering unit which is little more then a glorified HTML course, which I really didn’t want to do, but was forced to if I wanted to get my Software Engineering Degree.
Anyways as far as the lecturers go its a bit up-and-down. My CLAW 1001 (Corporations Law) lecturer is one of the best (and funniest) lecturers I have had at my entire time at Uni, he curses more then any other lecturer I’ve seen before, and it’s quite funny when he does. On the flip side of this my ACCT 2011 (Financial Accounting A) lecturer is one of (if not) the most boring lecturer I have ever had at my entire time at Uni. It was a 2 hour lecture, the first hour the lecture theatre was packed out, the second hour (after the break), the lecture was half empty (I wish I was in the half that left early ). With regards to my EBUS 3001 (HTML) lecturer I had no real complaints, but the subject matter is that boring that I probably wont be showing up to that lecture till the end of semester. And the final lecturer I had for the week was for FINC 2011 (Corporate Finance I), and they were not too bad, funny at times, wierd at others, more or less the middle of the pack as far as lecturers go, but that is enough for me to drag my ass to the lecture each week.
Anyways I hope this first week is a sign of more bludging to come this semester…
March 10th, 2007
Wow that was really cool!
Just went to a seminar hosted by none other then a Mr. Vint Cerf. For those of you non-geeks out there, Vint is widely known as a “Father of the Internet,” he is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and basically responsible for the standardised architecture of the Internet. He is currently the Vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for [company name removed because of too much spam!] [I’ll give you a hint though: this is one of the few companies that takes on Microsoft and wins!]. If you want to find out more about Vint, check out:
[link removed because of too much spam!]
So anyway, I was lucky enough to be invited to this seminar (ah the advantages of being on the honour roll), and it was one of the most interesting lectures I’ve ever been to. There was firstly a 5 minute pre-amble where Vint had the biggest introduction I’ve ever heard, and then Vint himself spoke for about an hour on some really interesting topics:
- Firstly the invention of the TCP/IP protocols, and the trials he had to go through to get it working, I remember one particular quote: “Our initial goal was quite simple, to be able to send packets from one machine to another with a probabilty of success higher then 0%”
- Then on the future of the Internet, particularly focusing on the IPV6 protocol, which is set to make widespread changes across the globe when implemented allowing 128-bit addressing, thereby furthering the advancement of the Internet to more mobile and more portable devices across the globe.
- He also humourously spoke about the numerous inventions that already exist as well as the one’s that could exist. For instance how about chips built into our clothes, so that we can always find that ‘missing’ sock, or networks set-up between the bathroom scales and the Fridge, so that the Fridge knows what we should be eating…
- He spoke of the political battles, and difficulties surrounding setting legislation for the Internet users.
- But the most interesting topic he left for last, which was the efforts that are currently taking place to set up an Interplanetary Internet. He said that at the moment there is no standardised architecture for communicating with other satellites around the galaxy, so each space mission will have a pre-programmed protocol for sending and receiving information, of-coarse this then adds the problem of future missions not being backwards compatible with prior missions, meaning re-programming of satellites and other annoyancies. So there was an intial effort to simply implement the TCP/IP protocol for these satellites (I mean it worked on Earth, why not accross the Galaxy). However what they found out was that when you start a transmission across such a large distance, there becomes an incredibly large delay when you want to stop the transmission (from here to Mars would mean a 20 minute delay). Now the delay still exists here on Earth but it is in the order of a few milli-seconds, and buffering such transfers can take care of this problem, but this wont work for such large delays. So a new protocol was invented with the help of Vint, to account for this problem of Interplanetary networking, the new protocol is called the: “Delay-Tolerant Network”, now I can’t actually remember how this protocol exactly accounts for the problem so Google it if you want to find out.
So then we had a bit of Q & A time, and Vint finished with one final joke, which I found quite humorous:
- Customer: “Hello I’d like to get an airline ticket to Paris, and my bags delivered to Istanbul.”
- Airline Staff: “I’m sorry we’re not able to do that.”
- Customer: “Why not you did it last week.”
Get it? Well I thought it was funny, he was actually quite a personality, so it was really cool experience for me, and definitely worth the early 8am start (I’m so not a morning person).
March 9th, 2007
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