Liverpool, The Right Choice?
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Regina posted her 2008 resolution, and one of it is to study at Sheffield Hallam University. I commented that I too would be going to Liverpool John Moores. Then she asked me why..
I was kinda stumped at first. Frankly, I did not even see what SHU had to offer. I just went with LJMU as many of my seniors went there, 2 of my lecturers took their Masters there, and we were much more exposed to LJMU’s offerings - with briefing after briefing. Upon seeing Regina’s question, I checked out the course syllabus for LJMU’s BSc (Hons) Computers and Information Systems and SHU’s BSc (Hons) Information Technology (Software Engineering).
LJMU’s BSc on Information Systems covers a wider scope of IT in general, whereas SHU’s BSc was very focused on software engineering. For a moment, the software engineering course seemed more attractive to me. I was caught in a dilemma, as I had already bought the deposit/advanced bank draft for LJMU.
As usual, I consulted my brother, and here’s what he said:
In short, small/minor differences in the degree will not matter a great deal for your job. Do you think employers will actually look into the brochures that describe what your degree is about? They are not interested and they won’t have the time. You just need to have the degree, and keep abreast with changes.
At the end of the day, you want to feel that you have learnt something useful and meaningful, and that you have also enjoyed because the process matters more than the content.
That set aside any fears of picking the wrong course (it’s just 1 semester anyway). So that, is my first step to furthering my education to Liverpool. See you Liverpool on June 2!!
Standard Security Measures, Please
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
I’m so pissed - a group of developers, paid to maintain an intranet/website, don’t even know how to implement the most basic of security/privacy measures.. and they call themselves “experts”.
Dear “experts”,
1) Beware of SQL Injection
SQL injections are one of the things most (decent) web programming books cover in their database access chapters. SQL injection hacks easy to detect and carry out. Fortunately, it is equally easy to prevent - in ASP.NET for example, the OleDbCommand has a parameters property. Always use Parameter.Add() to add in user supplied data to a SQL query.
2) Encrypt passwords!
Never, ever store passwords in plain sight in a database! Anyone who’s able to gain read access to the users table, may be able to execute other parts of your Website. In PHP for example, there’s a MD5() function that encrypts a given string using a one-way algorithm. When a user is registered, MD5() the password before storing it in the database. When the user next logins, simply MD5() the password again and check if it matches the one in database. If you want to provide a “Forgot Password” function, then you’ll need to look for a suitable 2-way encryption algorithm.
Of course, there a lots more security best practices, and I think these best practices should be covered in each and every IT course’ syllabus.
My Favourite Photographers on Flickr
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
There’s more than 2 billion photos on Flickr, some are downright crappy, a lot are the usual family/vacation photos and of course, there are those posted by professionals with gear more expensive than a Kancil. I don’t explore Flickr super actively, but as of now, there are several photographers that I absolutely love.
ç±³æ»ç±³(MSM) and AehoHikaruki
Spectacular portraits, beautiful models :p
Frankly, they’re not my fav simply ’cause the models are pretty, there’s still a lot of technique involved in taking portraits. MSM’s photos tend to be more Photoshop-ed while AehoHikaruki’s tend to more “right out of the camera”. yoccakamada also has some pretty good photos.
mister bokeh, motionid - masters of bokeh
Both great photographers (and damn rich I might add) of bokeh-styled pictures.
Of course, there’s thousands of other great photographers on Flickr, but these 4 stand out due to their styles. Yeap, I love portraiture (more so if it’s female :p) and bokeh-ed out pictures! =)
Tags: out_there, Photography
New Year Resolution
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
New year, new theme! This theme has a dark background and should go perfectly well with photos. Do tell me what you think..
Let’s see, what do I wanna in the year 2008? Well, obviously I’m not getting married come 8th of August..
- Get a dSLR and snap 10,000 photos - more specifically, the Canon EOS 400D. Since I’m going to Liverpool for a summer semester, that should provide plenty of opportunity for shooting. Hopefully I can make good use of the camera and snap more than 10k photos, as I’ve only snapped about 4k photos with my Sony DSC V3.
- Experiment more with composition! It’s time I get more creative when taking pictures - portrait, landscape, wide angle, fill up the frame, from low angles or even slight rotations, anything goes!
- Develop enterprise class applications - I have little experience doing databases! Hopefully I can play with some at my own time, or maybe my future job entails doing real databases.
- Figure out what my career path is like.
- See Christmas celebrations at Singapore! Hey, I would already have a passport by then, so why not? Since my bro can play host, the trip should be pretty economical :p
- Travel more and take more photos - will drag some (unlucky) friends along :p
- Keep in touch with old friends and my dear cousins.
- Watch Band of Brothers - yes, I haven’t!
Happy New Year 2008
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
2007 comes to an end, and I went to kacau Leng Xiang (known to his friends there as Jessie) over at Section 14.
There were some performances at 1Utama, and Leng Xiang got some “VIP” tickets from 1Utama’s royalty program. More pics later - there’s about 300+ to sort through! Anyways, I got a few Happy New Year SMSes, and the most timely of all, was from Kean Keat - ngam ngam 1 minute into 2008!
The laziest of all:
Anyway, happy new year y’all, and good luck in the coming exams!
