The Heartbeat Post
Hi readers! Another very long hiatus, uh? Sorry about that, I am trying to make myself more active in the various activities I participated in. I would have thought I have not blogged for the whole semester if I did not actually check my last post (well, at least it was not THAT bad!). That article must have hit home so hard that I was compelled to post it right then. Anyway, just to keep you all readers (if any) updated, I got an internal offer from NUS for an exchange to Tsinghua University, China, is currently interning (though it feels more like 'working') at Optimai for the summer. Do I miss anything? Those are the important ones anyway.
So why do I decide to update this blog now? Well... I have wanted to update my blog since forever, but I just haven't got the time to do so yet. I guess my effort to make myself more active is quite successful, then? Haha. Actually, it was partly because I am currently hosting (more like squatting) a friend in my room for the summer so yeah. Anyway, yeah so I finally found a time all to myself -- not in my room, for once -- to pour out the things I have in my mind.
The semester has been quite a fruitful one. That's what I felt, at least. I started off by taking 8 modules and dropped one along the way. I came for Capoeira training more often (for the first half of the semester, at least. Wait, have I told you readers that I have been going for Capoeira classes since last semester?). I participated in Capture the Flag competition and won 3rd place (thanks to my teammate, mostly). I became my faculty's student ambassador for the university's open day (I am still amazed how I managed to pull that one off). I became a lab TA for one module (partly for the extra money, partly because many of my friends are taking it that semester).
I thoroughly enjoyed the modules I took last semester too. Computer networks turned out to be a very interesting protocol design problem. I was really intrigued by how intricate yet effective network protocols are, I wanted to take higher level network modules, with strong opposition from my friend who knows better hahaha. Information security, despite the rather incompetent lecturer (incompetent to teach, but I believe he actually knows his stuff), was really interesting as I decided to present about TOR for the open-ended project. Moreover, I just watched The Imitation Game last weekend (at my residence of course, cinemas are not showing those anymore), which was more about encryption than AI, despite the movie's name. That movie deepened my interest in the field of computer security, especially encryption, though I am aware that the actual study on encryption is less romantic than portrayed in the movie. Incidentally, I also took an introduction to AI module. Despite the (again) rather incompetent lecturer, it was pretty cool. Computer Graphics was an eye-opening module. Eye-opening, as in, now I know what those settings in my games are about. The Chinese modules I took last semester turned out to be more interesting than the previous semester, though probably it was just because I decided to make it more interesting by making my essays personal. That, and I was offered an exchange to China, so I need to take my Chinese module more seriously.
I also worked on a project on building a virtual machine for a JavaScript-like language JediScript, which will be used for year 1 students (hopefully for the upcoming academic year!) It was my first real project, but I was not serious working on it (my friend was doing most of the work, and I was basically doing things he felt "too trivial" for him to do. I didn't find it "too trivial" for me though) so yeah. Actually it spans longer than it should; from a semester project, it overflows to the summer, but I decided to pull out because I feel that I was just a burden to the team, or at least, not contributing significantly enough.
The internship (or work) that I am currently on now is also pretty interesting. Not because the workplace is exciting or whatever (in fact it is REALLY boring) but I am just fascinated by myself and the tools I am learning now. I mean, I still remember how I hacked my way out to do things on my last internship last year's summer. In the end, I practically did not learn anything (other than bootstrapping an Android project, which was soon an obsolete knowledge as Android is updated every year or so and they LOVE to deprecate things every version). This time round, I know my way around better, despite having no guidance and never touching the tools before. For the record, I was using JSP in the first week, and my boss decided to port over everything to ASP.NET as they are more comfortable with it (this company has a very strong Microsoft presence, from end-to-end). The only web stack I have used before is Django, and it was with my friend's help I was able to do things on it. I can literally feel I have improved a lot, and I'm really glad I have because this time I am working on a real project, with real deadline, real tools, for real people to use! If it has gone live I will definitely announce it here! =D
Okay so to end this post, I would like to apologize for the techie-ness of this post. This will probably the first of the many to come, but I will try hard to make it less technical for you all. I believe you readers started frowning and thought, "What the heck?" when you reached the part about my fascination with the modules I took last semester, and decided to jump to this last paragraph when you read the part when I told you about my internship. But yeah, I have really improved a lot over the last semester, thanks to the many experienced and talented friends I worked with over the semester. I hope I can keep getting better at this and make things that are useful for people at large! =D
PS. I named this post "Heartbeat Post" because it is just a post to tell you all that I am still "alive", just like how your browser sends "heartbeat" signals to tell the server that you are connected to to tell the server that you are still "alive". Sorry for being geeky again :p
So why do I decide to update this blog now? Well... I have wanted to update my blog since forever, but I just haven't got the time to do so yet. I guess my effort to make myself more active is quite successful, then? Haha. Actually, it was partly because I am currently hosting (more like squatting) a friend in my room for the summer so yeah. Anyway, yeah so I finally found a time all to myself -- not in my room, for once -- to pour out the things I have in my mind.
The semester has been quite a fruitful one. That's what I felt, at least. I started off by taking 8 modules and dropped one along the way. I came for Capoeira training more often (for the first half of the semester, at least. Wait, have I told you readers that I have been going for Capoeira classes since last semester?). I participated in Capture the Flag competition and won 3rd place (thanks to my teammate, mostly). I became my faculty's student ambassador for the university's open day (I am still amazed how I managed to pull that one off). I became a lab TA for one module (partly for the extra money, partly because many of my friends are taking it that semester).
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| Price for the CTF. Used S$7.5 to buy CS:GO =D |
I thoroughly enjoyed the modules I took last semester too. Computer networks turned out to be a very interesting protocol design problem. I was really intrigued by how intricate yet effective network protocols are, I wanted to take higher level network modules, with strong opposition from my friend who knows better hahaha. Information security, despite the rather incompetent lecturer (incompetent to teach, but I believe he actually knows his stuff), was really interesting as I decided to present about TOR for the open-ended project. Moreover, I just watched The Imitation Game last weekend (at my residence of course, cinemas are not showing those anymore), which was more about encryption than AI, despite the movie's name. That movie deepened my interest in the field of computer security, especially encryption, though I am aware that the actual study on encryption is less romantic than portrayed in the movie. Incidentally, I also took an introduction to AI module. Despite the (again) rather incompetent lecturer, it was pretty cool. Computer Graphics was an eye-opening module. Eye-opening, as in, now I know what those settings in my games are about. The Chinese modules I took last semester turned out to be more interesting than the previous semester, though probably it was just because I decided to make it more interesting by making my essays personal. That, and I was offered an exchange to China, so I need to take my Chinese module more seriously.
I also worked on a project on building a virtual machine for a JavaScript-like language JediScript, which will be used for year 1 students (hopefully for the upcoming academic year!) It was my first real project, but I was not serious working on it (my friend was doing most of the work, and I was basically doing things he felt "too trivial" for him to do. I didn't find it "too trivial" for me though) so yeah. Actually it spans longer than it should; from a semester project, it overflows to the summer, but I decided to pull out because I feel that I was just a burden to the team, or at least, not contributing significantly enough.
The internship (or work) that I am currently on now is also pretty interesting. Not because the workplace is exciting or whatever (in fact it is REALLY boring) but I am just fascinated by myself and the tools I am learning now. I mean, I still remember how I hacked my way out to do things on my last internship last year's summer. In the end, I practically did not learn anything (other than bootstrapping an Android project, which was soon an obsolete knowledge as Android is updated every year or so and they LOVE to deprecate things every version). This time round, I know my way around better, despite having no guidance and never touching the tools before. For the record, I was using JSP in the first week, and my boss decided to port over everything to ASP.NET as they are more comfortable with it (this company has a very strong Microsoft presence, from end-to-end). The only web stack I have used before is Django, and it was with my friend's help I was able to do things on it. I can literally feel I have improved a lot, and I'm really glad I have because this time I am working on a real project, with real deadline, real tools, for real people to use! If it has gone live I will definitely announce it here! =D
Okay so to end this post, I would like to apologize for the techie-ness of this post. This will probably the first of the many to come, but I will try hard to make it less technical for you all. I believe you readers started frowning and thought, "What the heck?" when you reached the part about my fascination with the modules I took last semester, and decided to jump to this last paragraph when you read the part when I told you about my internship. But yeah, I have really improved a lot over the last semester, thanks to the many experienced and talented friends I worked with over the semester. I hope I can keep getting better at this and make things that are useful for people at large! =D
PS. I named this post "Heartbeat Post" because it is just a post to tell you all that I am still "alive", just like how your browser sends "heartbeat" signals to tell the server that you are connected to to tell the server that you are still "alive". Sorry for being geeky again :p
love it gan, keep it up!
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