Strange Symphonies The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Winter Days

Well its not exactly Winter to say as its not snowing here, but my Semester break has begun! Wohoo, up to the 2nd of January. Time to rest, relax, and enjoy myself. Do a bit of coding, maybe a bit of that, and a bit of this, perhaps a tad of that. But either way, I'm FREE, for now...

I was just looking at the MyOSS Planet , there are many blogs, but most of them are really FOSS oriented. Since its the winter season lets hear abit more about your lives people and the excitement you guys are having .

I'm eager to join Monash Malaysia and hopefully move to Australia for my final year, if finances and everything work out. I hope I can pull this off as I really want to get out of APIIT. Monash was having an open day ( 17th December 2005 ) so I decided to attend, if only just for the free registration, I didn't want to cough up 100RM, and yes I'm cheap. The event began at 10:00am, so I got up at about 9am, packed my laptop, documents, and a book.

Since I had arrived early, I had a small breakfast in the cafeteria, and took out my laptop to look at the presentation schedules they were having that day. Monash had invited companies to give presentations so I wanted to at least attend some of them to see what crap they were talking about, and worse comes to worse just leave it. I came on hand thinking it would be all marketing, because of the big companies they invited. There was a wireless signal available, and I could connect to it, but I couldn't get through their squid proxy, as well as ssh to another box. Luckily I had saved the website. I assumed that the open day would be held in front of the cafeteria area like previously, so I went there and looked for the 'Computer Science' booth. After a few minutes of discussion with the people and being told the common bullshit, I noticed that this was the 'Sunway' Booth. FSCK, what a waste of time, so I hurried into the Monash area and found the actual place. Stupid, stupid me. Sunway itself is quite smart I have to admit.

On the way to the hallroom where Monash was having its open day, there were posters stating Monash's rank and comparison amongst other Unversities. The numbers were good, and it stated it was better than Nottingham. But then again this is all marketing bullshit, which I admit they are good at.

The first presentation was at 10:30, and was titled "Java Technology & Sun Software", but this was cancelled and instead a lecturer came in to present to us about future job oppurtunities in IT and what Monash has to offer. He emphasized that what the news papers publishing about 'lack of job oppurtunities in IT' was false, and gave several examples of colleagues he knows that can easily quit their job and find another in less than a week. What was interesting was that he mentioned some current trends in companies and how many of them were adopting "open source" to lower their costs. Overall not too bad. Once finished we were handed a 'passport' and a Monash keychain, hmm. The passport is this pamphlet where if you get 4 stamps you can win a prize at the lucky draw at the end of the open day. Thus I got my first stamp.

Once the presentation was finished I had another 15 minutes to kill before heading to the Oracle one. I decided to get the appropriate forms and procedures from the IT side, and just talk with them abit. Nothing too interesting. Also they had a demonstration of a video conferencing software they developed, along with an Ecommerce website. When I approached them about more examples, they wouldn't stop going on about the Ecommerce website, and I blantly said "No offense or anything, but I do not want to see an Ecommerce website." As you can see I wanted better demos than just that, but no. Those were all the demos they had. So I proceded to the Video Conferencing, and asked them what protocol were they using. All he said was that it was created in Java, and uses 'https'. Hmm. I further questioned him if this was being developed in all the universities at once using source control, the guy said 'Yes' but I wasn't to sure if he knew what I was talking about. *sigh* Well the Oracle presentation was about to start so I just rushed off to see it. Got my second, and third stamps just by going to the booths, woot.

For an Oracle presentation I was really suprised that it wasn't marketing, well there was marketing but most of it was actually followed the title of the presentation: "The IT After Tomorrow". Again another presentation on trends in the market and what not. Also another small blurb on "open source". Man this was really suprising, here I come from APIIT where FOSS is not spoken mentioned at all, and hearing this was quite something. I won myself two tshirts by answering some questions at the end, but I didn't accept the 2nd tshirt. The first one was to name some web services, the other was to mention 4 points about "open source". So now I got myself an oracle tshirt, snazzy. Scored my final fourth stamp, victory seemed so close!

On to the next presentation by Lenovo ( formerly IBM ( computer division ) ) presenting "The Cutting-Edge of ThinkVantage Technology." I think all of the IBM users in #myoss would have enjoined listening to this presentation. Eventhough some of the advantages come from running Windows, it wasnt too bad. The design of the case was quite interesting, and the testing. The lady even dropped a T* laptop from a height of over a meter, just to demonstrate that it works. Funny enough it didn't turn back on, the battery was apprently dead *ahem*. Just curious though, because in Windows it can detect the motion and stop the harddrive, would dropping it in Linux work? I know that the motion detection has been added into 2.6.14, and they were discussing about stopping the harddrive. Hmm. In the end I got myself a nice 'ThinkPad' magnet. A marketing presentation at a university open day, right. Got my third stamp, one more to go.

Now come a long break, so I decided to fill in the forms and photocopy APIITs coursework description. Still alot of time to go, so I just started surfing the web. Ahh wireless fidelity. Reception wasn't too bad. Also talked to the student administration about my PTPTN loan and scholarship. Apparently I have to talk to PTPTN before applying to a different university, and because I was planning to come into 2nd year, I would not be able to apply for scholarship. Not good especially because the fees were damn expensive, at 25000 RM a year. Either way I handed in application form, and just thought 'fsck' it.

The last presentation for the day was from, that Ecommerce stuff earlier. Nooooooooooooooooo. This presentation was from a final year student, so I thought it may be somewhat interesting to see what they have learnt throughout their three years. Okay, hold it in. Developed using ASP, and MsSQL. Alright, I asked him why did he use those tools if he can provide good reasoning, then no comments, plus I haven't used those tools so I cant really talk back. His answer: "Because this is what they taught us". Crap man, that was the worse reasoning ever. To be honest, the presentation was crap. The website itself was crap, an overall crap peice of work. After seeing that presentation I felt really dissapointed, and believe that there really is no hope for a better education in IT in Malaysia. The lecturer who guided him was so hyped up about the him building it I found it unbelievable. Especially earlier when they had Monash's rank marketing, it was quite a disgrace. After receiving a fifth stamped, I handed in the passport.

Since by now it was already 3:15pm, and the lucky draw was at 3:30pm I just waited a bit. Pulled up my laptop and started surfing the web and chatting on #myoss, Khairil was on. Luckily enough for me there was some nice looking girls going around, and Khairil suggested to do my magic. *ahem* Come 3:30pm, they announced that the lucky draw would be postponed to 4:30. Damnit, another hour to kill.

The prizes? Linux Training, 256MB Thumbdrive, 512MB Thumbdrive, 6 * Antivirus + firewall software ( EzArmor ), 3 * 128MB IBM Mp3 Player, 3 * IBM laptop bag, and a iPod Shuffle.

What did I win? The Antivirus + firewal software, which only runs on Windows! WOOT! With all that done, I just quickly went home, dissapointed that I didn't win anything, and dissapointed with that student's final year project. Also not being able to apply for a scholarship, and paying a huge ammount for nothing isn't exactly good. Maybe I just have to stick with APIIT.

Oh yeah, people in the APIIT forums don't like me. I have a reputation of -2, I love the karma Oh well, stupid popularity contest, I was never good at those anyways.

With that done and said enjoy your Winter Days everyone, next place to apply Nottingham!