"The best way to predict the future is to implement it."

Friday was the Final Day. We all went to DCU to demo our projects, and five of us were chosen to present to everyone (even the dean of Engineering in DCU and Prof. Barry Smyth's friend were floating around. Eeek!), I'm suprised and thankful to have been one of them. I was super impressed by the ones with professionally printed posters, but in the end a few people found the ghettoness simplicity of mine appealing. All of the people I heard presented so well, and Dr. Muntean's speeches were very inspiring.

It's only been 2 days and I already miss everyone based with me in the fourth-year lab! I'm so glad to have been part of the 2010 programme, and a little sorry that I didn't get to know more people (especially the international interns) better.

I did many things for the first time, such as:

- Visited the Guinness Storehouse and discovered that I really hate "the black stuff".
- Signed non-disclosure and IP forms.
- Relied on my own abilities and pushed myself to grow where they were insufficient, given the lack of demonstrators - usually I whine to the poor demonstrators in labs whenever I get stuck with an assignment. No more!
- AoE II: The Conquerors LAN parties!!
- Gave a presentation (twice) on my own, which was good practice for fourth year. No more relying on project team members!
- Wrote a research paper. I like writing so it wasn't too hard, but it's always good to get some practice and become familiar with the format of academic papers (as opposed to reports and essays).
- Visited Microsoft Ireland and learned about programming techniques from Amazon speakers. It's always interesting to interact with people who are already in the industry.
- Visited Leinster House and was oddly impressed with the interior.
- Met so many smart people and fellow interns who are truly passionate about computer science.
- Had the kindest and most enthusiastic supervisor and was given the chance to work with Twittomender, an upcoming friend recommender system.


All of the interns minus Emma and Victor, organisers minus Dr. Nicola Stokes and some supervisors. Click on the photo for a link to my public Facebook album for that day.

I was introduced to Weedle is a careers-/skills-oriented site which can improve your ranking on search engines. Everyone join!!


Finally, I can't decide whether or not to keep this blog open to talk about compsci-related things, or stop posting and keep it as a time capsule (does that make sense with a blog?). I miss ODCSSS already...thanks to everyone who made it possible and enabled me to learn so much!


Subject title quote by David Heinemeier Hansson.

Languages to Learn (when I have free time)

- Learn Python. Looks easy enough.
- Learn Ruby (on Rails). I've been interested in learning some kind of scripting language for a while now, and I was very inspired by a seminar I went to last semester, in which Paul Campbell talked about Ruby on Rails.
- Learn proper bash programming, since I fell in love with Linux...


The Mid-Term Research Day is finally over, it was fun to see the different slideshow designs and presentation styles! The three people who won definitely deserved it. Well done everyone!

ODCSSS Mid-Term Research Day Approaching + Anti-Procrastination Tips

The ODCSSS 2010 Mid-Term Research Day is fast approaching (12th @ B1.06), time to put together a set of shiny and informative slides, as well as brush up on my rhetoric and admittedly rather poor explanatory skills. For our Software Engineering Project III last year, I enjoyed putting together most of the slides.


z.ky's Anti-Procrastination During Programming Tips

• Read Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder (or any kind of philosophy 101), it will fill you with philosophical insight and help you think clearly. I spent all weekend holed up in my room reading up to Hellenism (yes, I'm very exciting), and enjoyed an extremely productive day today.
  
• Make sure you know what you have to achieve, and how to go about it. Sometimes when I find myself completely stuck, it's because I don't actually realise what my next task is, or how to do it. The next point follows on from this!
  
• Try planning on paper: dissect the architecture of your program, write down problems to fix/what to implement next, optimizations that could be made...don't spend too long poring over a notebook though, set a time limit so you can return to the screen without coming to a complete standstill while planning.
• Surround yourself with other hardworking (I think everyone from the lab will laugh at this...) people for motivation.
• If you work well under pressure (like me), remind yourself of all the people who believed in you and your work, and helped you get to this point - don't disappoint them! Think of deadlines which seem very far away...if you procrastinate more, they won't remain so far!
• DON'T KEEP A BROWSER OPEN! Once you get on any sort of social networking/media site, the temptation to keep refreshing and waiting for updates (to procrastinate on) is immense. I was working so hard today that I forgot to check Twitter :P
• If you're working with nice people, ask them to keep you on point by reminding you to get back to work. Sometimes it works better than telling yourself.
  

Remember: many minor (coding) breakthoughs lead to a big breakthrough! As long as you keep working hard, things will only get better (:


I just realised that I really hate my vocabulary and 'blogging persona' here...hopefully that will change next time.

Coffee, Red Bean and Lab Antics

- Today's displeasing discovery: a tall americano (or a substantial breakfast?) in the morning increases productivity during the day...in both coding and sketching (shhh)! edit: mild heart palpitations have prompted me to quit caffeine (yet again) since then. Stimulants are bad...



+ I came back from a smoothie-procuring trip to find this artistic chair pile-up:



+ HeyStaks abuse amuses us. Pro search queries: ant reproduction, scorpion reproduction, incidence of early onset of Alzheimer's disease in child prodigies...

~ Recently I've been worried about my laptop's health, I think I should really open it up to get rid of the dust inside. I've resorted to ghetto laptop-cooling by placing a fan directly behind it!

+ Now for today's happy discovery: Korean red bean cake for 75c and made with agar agar instead of gelatin! Very filling! Though with this very un-Irish weather, I wish I could get a red bean ice instead...

+ My very own command centre:

Things I Learned Today

- Having the right JARs set up properly in Eclipse is really important!
- Despite having exalted the helpfulness of Google in the previous post, it's important to check through a couple of things before running to Larry and Sergey's wonderful masterpiece: all in your code! Take note of the console messages, exceptions, and trace all of your variables and objects with Ctrl+click for any null pointers. Sometimes it can be a simple thing which doesn't necessitate hitting up your favourite search engine.
- For UCD-CSI people only: WaveLAN is evil!!!! I spent hours trying to debug what I thought were faulty SQL queries, but when I connected to eduroam, everything worked!


Since we, the interns, have been populating this lab for two weeks now, we've naturally been rearranging our workspaces (no, not Eclipse)...


Setting up Alvis' command centre


The stack of computers Mark has amassed...


Mark's mess desk

Day...something

Had my second meeting yesterday, came out with a more concrete task for next week. I'm working with SQL, which once again makes me feel guilty for being less than enthusiastic about my Databases and Information Systems I class in second year. Working with remote data is confusingly scary at first, but I definitely appreciate the way this programme is pushing me to learn at a quicker rate.

Good resources for any type of self-guided research:
- Google: The power of Google saved my ass during my search engine implementation project, as well as a number of (initially) impossible assignments. There are definitely techniques to searching, but practice makes perfect. Don't just look at the first page of results!
- Forums: Again found via Google, hopefully there's a thread of more learned users who are discussing the exact same problem you're stuck on. Hooray for the web!
- Other people: Simply by discussing and/or your problem out loud, details/solutions you hadn't though of before may suddenly occur to you, even if your listeners cannot offer any enlightenment. Seek out classmates, friends, demonstrators, lecturers and any other people related to the field. With the ubiquity of social networks enforcing the concept of six degrees of separation, there's no excuse for not being able to find a suitable person to talk to.


CSI ant farm update: at first we didn't see any so we were sad, but they seem to move to different locations throughout the day...

Day 1 (of actual work)

Welcome to my blog! I'm a UCD student and ODCSSS 2010 research intern. Here, I'll be documenting my experience, with a bonus jumble of resource links and updates on my progress. I'm not very good at writing without being sarcastic/using cryptic references, but hopefully I'll get better at writing like a normal person!

Yesterday was the kickoff event for ODCSSS (Online Dublin Computer Science Summer School) 2010. All of the interns met in the Golden Harp room in the Guinness Storehouse. There were a number of presentations from both industry people - NDRC and Microsoft, who talked about cloud computing technology and Azure - and academia, with tea and coffee and a posh lunch in between.
At the end of the day, we took a self-guided tour and had a free pint in the Gravity Bar (fyi, Guinness is disgusting and I couldn't finish mine...). I feel like I could have introduced myself to more people, but I felt that I took a lot from the talks. See the rest of my photos in my Facebook album (if you don't have Facebook/aren't my friend...too bad!!).


the Golden Harp room



Today we moved into our workspaces...interns in UCD are based in either the fourth-year lab or in UCD CASL. I will be working in the lab, since it's closer to CLARITY, where my supervisors/mentors are based. I'm lucky to be working with such dedicated yet laid-back and understanding people...basically I don't have the strict time schedule that I panicked about imagined. There's also a good atmosphere with all of us in the lab.


my space


I got a keycard and a key! I'm a pro~


Things I did today:
+ Saw a squirrel playing (?) on the tree right outside the window
+ Tried out all of the games available on Ubuntu
+ Visited CLARITY
~ Briefly read through the Twitter4J library (which I'll be using)
- Just gave up fighting the Ubuntu terminal over ssh