What do the following shows have in common:
They’re all shows I’m actively watching.
I know, disgusting isn’t it?
am·bi·tion [am-bish-uh
n]
- noun
an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honor, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment
I think I’m one of these people. Or maybe I’m actually a wannabe at it. In that case, let’s call it ‘blind ambition’.
Using my Nokia N80 for about 8 months now, I felt it was time to utilize what this phone has to offer as a smartphone.
Day in and day out, I’ve known that in comparison to my old Sony Ericson s700i, this one is more feature-rich than the old one and was a lot more productivity-centered in its interfaces.
The more I investigated the N-Series and its capabilities, the more I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by it.
My first order of business was upgrading the phone’s firmware to 5.0719.0.2 from my previous 4.something version. Yeah it was that outdated. Nokia has a all-in-one control panel called PC Suite.
Ensuring I backed up the data prior to my upgrade, I cleared enough space from the memory card to expedite the process.
After about half an hour when the backing up and upgrade finished, I started FREAKING OUT when I saw that all of my contacts and messages had disappeared.
…
Then I initiated the restore feature of the backup utility and my world was again complete.
I was surprised that the upgrade could not handle retaining all of the data such as messages or contacts at all. I guess sometimes the updates are just that big of an overhaul.
My next order of business was to determine whether this new version was any good or not. Previously, I had tried to sync my Microsoft Outlook 2003 to my phone’s calendar so I could carry around a schedule of my week all the time. I use Google Calendar so the chain of command is actually:
As my goal this time around was actually to sync my workplace calendar to my phone, I managed to capture all of my work data into Outlook successfully which was my first victory.
All in all, it worked. I can now carry around a updated calendar of my work-related appointments and meetings as I travel around. Perhaps it was a combination of the phone’s upgrade, along with my recent step up to Outlook 2007 that deserves the credit.
Didn’t quite like the theatrical interpretation of DaVinci Code. Yeah…
All I’ll say is that it felt very very rushed, and if you didn’t read the book prior to watching the movie, you would probably have been very very lost. Thats not to say that the movie was an entire failure. I liked the ending, or at least its execution. A few of the discrepancies between the book and movie I would probably disagree with, but that’s probably due to time or logistics or some other contributing factor.
The last book-inspired movie I think I watched was James and the Giant Peach as a kid. That one wasn’t as good as I’d hoped either. (Harry Potter books don’t count for me because I don’t think I’ve genuinely watched any of them in their entirety).
In other news, I’ve installed Vista today. What a learning curve. I don’t know where anything is. I need help. I also installed Office 2007.
HELP!
This computer now has XP, Vista and Ubuntu. I’ll probably run back to XP when things get hairy and scary and I can’t deal with these changes.
I just finished spending the last few days reading The DaVinci Code which I bought a long time ago but never managed to find time to pick up.
I had never read a book so far that drew me in as much as this book did. At the end of some sections or chapters, I was literally thinking that if someone were to take this book from me right now, I would go ballistic.
While reading it, I was thinking of how it would look as a movie, and kinda playing the movie out in my head scene by scene, so it’ll be fun to see how my interpretation matched up to the film-version of the book, which I plan on watching either today or tomorrow.
With that, I guess I’ve so far gone ‘one for one’ on the last resolution on my list for 2008. The next book I plan on reading is The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. Definitely more of a hefty read, I hope I will finish it sometime close to February as I can imagine my life getting busier when my co-op term gets underway.
At the start of 2B, it we preconceived that this was going to be one of the toughest terms faced up till now. I’d now say that I’ll agree in the fact that it was tough, but not for the reasons I thought at first.
In hindsight, while the material learned was challenging (as it always should be), the biggest struggle was definitely time management. With 5 courses and 4 of which consist of a 3-hour lab component every other week, the time management to keep up with the material in class and in the lab (which do not necessarily correlate) with pre-labs and post-labs turned into a very time-consuming process, spending hours on end trying to comprehend and deliver what was to be expected from these lab reports.
Onto the reviews!
ECE 204: Numerical Methods for Electrical and Computer Engineers - D. Harder
What can I say about this course. While the core concepts focus on ways of interpolation/extrapolation/root-finding approximations, it was interesting to learn some of these techniques which may be applied down the road whether it be in everyday life or in the field. While I personally can’t say that I’ll remember many of the formulas or techniques, the material was worthy of getting up for 8:30 classes 3 days a week to listen to. I’ve also gained a stronger respect for matricies and Matlab.
ECE 222: Digital Computers - A. Hasan
This has got to be one of my favourite courses to date in this program. 222 focuses on digital computers and the technical aspect as to how data is processed and moves within a computer. Focusing on the CPU operations and memory systems, I learned a lot that can be applied directly to using my own computer. You also learn how to program in Assembler through the labs, but those are definitely more of a giant frustration if anything at all. You WILL spend hours staring at seemingly-viable code only to realize the tiny tiny minuscule error which you will end up beating up your partner, asking why he didn’t see it earlier, and then proceed to rip out your hair. Yes it’s THAT much fun.
I hope I never have to program in assembler… ever again.
ECE 231: Electronic Devices - C.R. Selvakumar
Where do I start with this course…
A continuation of ECE 209, 231 deals with the atomic-scale workings of transistors. That’s essentially the course. By the end of the four months, you will have the most in-depth knowledge as to how a transistor switch works. A transistor switch of which CPUs contain millions of. I could summarize the basics of how it works in a very short paragraph, but that would take away the fun of learning it yourself. Selvakumar isn’t the most organized of profs either. Be prepared to do a lot of reading on your own, and don’t you dare miss a lecture otherwise you are SCREWED.
ECE 241: Circuit Analysis and Design - D. Narin
Professor Narin is a funny guy. His jokes are subtle but hilarious. That is all the good things I can say about this course. Not coming from a strong background in digital circuits (as demonstrated by my poor poor ECE 100 grade), this course essentially combines all of the courses I am worst in (circuits, physics, calculus). Luckily I survived this course (miraculously). The labs are even worse. Be prepared to stare blankly at reams and reams of nonsensical material and be expected to fully understand what you are doing for those 3 hours in the lab.
ECE 251: Programming Languages and Translators - P. Dasiewicz
It took me 3 tries to spell our prof’s name correctly on the line above. One word to describe this course+prof combination: snorefest. Please don’t ask me what I learned in these lectures because honestly I wouldn’t be able to even construct a single convincing thought around what this course is about. The only advice I would give is to just wing it. The projects ask for a lot, and are very specific in what they are looking for, so be prepared to spend a lot of hours getting your compiler to behave exactly the way it is ’supposed’ to.
ECON 201: Microeconomic Theory 1 - D. Picard
Uhhhh ECON is grueling. I took this course as a DE above the other 5 courses above. Being a DE course, I didn’t pay as much attention to it as I probably should have. I found myself cramming at times before midterms and exams to read and catch up in the material that I was lacking. It doesn’t help either that it was only when studying for the final exam did I realize there were audio lectures within the modules (idiot justin…idiot). In essence, the theory built onto the ECON 101 course I took the previous work term quite nicely, and I ended up walking away with a fairly decent final grade. In hindsight I’ll say this one thing that I learned while studying for the final exam. As long as you know how to do a derivative, you can pass this course. Everything kinda ended up boiling down to taking the derivative of your equation and manipulating or substituting.
While I would’ve hoped for a higher average, I’m pretty content with this term, balancing the crazy hours with an intrusive co-op interview schedule. And as one would customarily say, I hope to do better next term. I hear that it is going to be one of our easier terms, but I suppose we’ll have to wait 8 months from now to see if that’s true.
Resolutions:
I think I’ve set myself up for a pretty big fall, but I’ll still hope for the best and try to knock some of these off throughout the year.
Having mistakingly forgotten to write some new years resolutions last new year’s eve, this post will probably be shorter than it would have been had i been less careless.
I had the opportunity to spend New Years with friends at Niagara Falls this year. We rented an hotel room by the falls and enjoyed a nice (and expensive >.<) dinner at The Capri. I ordered the New York Strip Steak which was prepared deliciously (bloody and rare).
The rest of the evening included watching a fireworks show at the falls (and lacked a proper count down despite the band playing and stage set up in Victoria Park). There were a lot of people at Niagara Falls that evening and the streets near and around the falls were packed with people walking down in anticipation of the fireworks.
The fireworks themselves caught us off guard. There was no count down or official timer or anything posted, and the fireworks just errupted and we looked at our watches and it was 12:00. After a few seconds of awkward confusion and hesitation there was mass celebration and cheering followed shortly by the dispersion of the large group. After that lukewarm under-hyped welcome to the new year, we went back to the hotel to continue the social and then a couple of us went and paid a visit to the Fallsview Casino.
Though I visited a casino during my workterm in Ottawa, it was a much different experience this time. I had the opportunity to learn how to play Craps as Andrew took a gamble at it and ended up breaking even by the end. It’s a fun game and I’ll try actually playing it next time I’m at a casino. Other than that, I pretty much blew $10 on slots with nothing to show for it.
Niagara Falls is definitely somewhere to revisit and have fun checking out the tourist sites or casino to have a good weekend.
The New Years Resolutions are to follow in the next post,
Justin
Upon receiving an ominous instant message from a friend of mine last night which simply said,
ready?
I was concerned and confused as to what I should be ready for…
I was then reminded of the early Boxing Day Sales by some of the big electronic stores (Best Buy, Future Shop, NCIX) that typically start on Christmas Eve, or as I like to dub, the ‘Pre-Boxing-Day-Boxing-Day-Sales’.
While Future Shop and NCIX’s sites got utterly hammered by incoming requests causing NCIX to disconnect from its domain completely and Future Shop resorting to locking out new visitors in a questionable ‘queue’ system, by 10 I think I managed to get into the site and get my orders in.
All in all, I picked up:
Though I would definitely have wanted to pick up more, I’m saving some of my splurging for an optimistic trip to New York in the beginning of the new year.
I cannot even fathom what I’m going to put on that 1TB of new space I will be getting. The first thing that comes to mind is a tri-boot setup with XP, Vista, and some Linux distro yet to be determined. And if my patience allows for it, perhaps another stab at getting OSX86 working.
The iPod Shuffle is an item I’ve had my eye on for a while. If you don’t know, I currently lug around a dying brick I like to call my 4th Gen 20GB iPod. Dying refers to the clicks and struggling spin-up harddrive noises emanating from the device, and refers to the fact that I wouldn’t know how to carry that thing around if I were to go to the gym.
Though it is the perfect way to bring my music into my car (via the AUX port on the Honda Element), any other use is more of an inconvenience than anything. Thus my interest in the iPod Shuffle. Since iTunes is already all organized for the task, and the thing is lightweight and comes with a clip, I figured it would be the best choice for my situation.
The Sandisk USB drive purchase was really for the sake of having a decently sized USB drive. Apparently it’s frowned upon for someone, let alone a computer engineer to not have a USB drive. Besides the dinky 128MB one given at a Morgan Stanley interview, I never really used or found a use for a USB drive before. Nevertheless, if I were to get one, it would have to be one that doesn’t require a lid. My biggest fear would be to lose the stupid lid and resort to some sort of duct-tape fabricated cap. The Titanium Cruzer uses a slide-out plug so it was put into consideration.
Besides my Future Shop cart always being filled with a KitchenAid 6-speed mixer for some reason, I eventually got out with what I was looking for.
Merry Christmas to me! haha.
I mean,
Merry Christmas everyone!