Pre-Liverpool
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
In 2 weeks time, I’ll be at Liverpool. Thankfully, I’ve become more excited bout the “excursion”.
I think one of the reasons that drove down the excitement is the numerous sources of information and differing, often contradicting advices. Some say stuff are uber expensive in England - so expensive that the simplest of things will burn a gaping hole in your pocket. One of my friends got to know from friends, relatives and some lecturers that prices are pretty much simlar what you pay in Malyasia. And what of living expenses? A wealthier relative of mine claims 100 pounds is needed for a week, the Uni lecturers estimate 50 pounds for a week, a friend studying there says most use less than 100 pounds a month and my friend who checked with seniors, says 35 pounds a week. What the heck?! After some quick check with the friend who’s studying there though, turns out that 50 pounds a week is more realistic.
Oh, and what bout travelling in England after my studies? My dad’s badgering me for the lack of planning - hardly anything definite other than visiting my cousins in London. On the other hand, detailed planning is exactly ruins a holiday, according to a friend of mine. But then again, he may probably have much more information, owing to 3 months of free-time that I spent working instead.
Some people take this UK trip as a reason to spend - to get this and that. I admit, I may have fallen for this for a while, but after some good thinking - no, I had better be careful - it’s not worthwhile to buy some stuff just for 3 friggin’ months.
But really, who cares what others think? I mean, the important thing is that I don’t starve or freeze during these 3 months right? Yups, that’s what I’m gonna do. Find out all I can, throw my worries behind and enjoy the trip! Oh, I almost forgot - pray that I can fit my tripod into my suitcase, and clear plenty of hard disk space for the pictures..
Plain Lazy or Incompetent?
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
Or worse, is it me? When I work in a team for assignments, some of my teammates will just keep quite, and won’t pay shit attention in so called “discussions”. They’d be looking elsewhere, busy texting on their cell.. wtf? Ok, fine.. perhaps they don’t like dicussing stuff.. so go home and do your bloody part.. oh yeah.. they sure do their part, the results were just excellent!
For a momment, I think it was me. I think that it’s because I’m sorta like a dictator (what to do? they just keep giving you bullshit..) but then, when I see the parts of the assignment they do, it’s sorta clear that little effort was put into it.. fuckin’ lazy asses.. perhaps it’s because they think they can do shit work, and I’ll cover for them.. sigh..
I’m an atheist.. I don’t believe that the man upstairs will help me.. I’ve got not much choice but to work extra hard myself.. so 5-hour-sleep-a-night-week(s), here I come..
Tags: rants
Books with Disputable Facts
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
I’m sure you’ve heard of plenty of books where the reliability or accuracy of facts/information presented is arguable. The best example, is probably our Sejarah textbooks. As a student, I rarely come across technical books that present doubtful information, up till now.
It’s a long story, but I evetually bought the book “Data Structures with Java” by John R Hubbard and Anita Huray. I havn’t cover till the data structure parts yet, but I have to say, I don’t really agree with the OO principals it presents in chapter 1.
You see, the authors seem to champion the use of composition. Aggregation is implemented by defining class A with a field that can reference class B. Simple. However, for composition, the author suggests defining those classes, within it’s parent class. For example:
public class Person {
protected final String name;
protected final Phone phone;
class Phone {
private String areaCode, number;
public Phone(Phone that) {
this.areaCode = that.areaCode;
this.number = that.number;
}
}
public Person(String name, Phone phone) {
this.name = name;
this.phone = new Phone(phone);
}
}
Tags: rants
Lady Luck, Where are Thou?
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
This week really hasn’t been all smooth going for me. There isn’t one of those happy days.. everyday seems full of worries.. sigh.. today, one of my “not too close” friends gave me a call. I don’t have his phone number, so I thought he was another friend.. he said a friend of his needed help with his final year project.. agreeing with him, turned out to be a bad decision. To cut a long story short, I spend like 30 mins going through that guy’s spaghetti codes, and showing him a solution that was so freakin’ simple, he should have figured it out himself. Yeah.. for final year project, he (and another guy) was doing a air ticket reservation system.. and he couldn’t even do it well.. sigh.. that’s the kind of crap TARC is churning out..
Things don’t get better. Another “not too close” friend asked for help with her PC. I thought it was some simple stuff.. to my horror.. it’s those “no audio driver” kinda problem.. it’s no big deal if it’s a spanking new PC.. however, it as a 6-7 year old HP. Worse thing was, it was her housemate that did the formatting, and she probably installed a whole bunch of crap trying to make the sound work. Weird thing is, she claims that before formatting the PC, her sound works, and no additional driver was needed.. weird huh? In the end, I couldn’t help her at all.. I’ve never encountered such a problem, and I just realized I had a “take home test” waiting to be done..
It’s not as easy as writing the answers down.. I hardly know what the heck the questions are asking about.. sigh, OS isn’t that easy.. I really havn’t done much reading these few days.. I’m tired now.. and my only choice now is to wake up earlier tomorrow, and hope for the best..
Rants on TARC, Again..
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
So here we have another rant post on TARC, or more specifically, the School of Arts and Science. You see, last semester (advanced diploma, year 1, which is equivalent to a sophomore year) we took “Object Oriented Analysis and Design”. So yeah, we were exposed to OO basics. Our assignment involved designing a system, any at all. Designing here means, doing the analysis, and specifying how the system works - class diagrams etc.
This semester, we have “Software Engineering Practice”. Weirdly enough, the assignment didn’t require us to use any OO language. Hence, students can use VB6 if they like. Most students in TARC are familiar wit VB6, so it’s highly likely that everyone will be using VB6.
We also have a “Data Structures and Algorithms”. The medium of instruction, is Java. Ok, this subject seems fine. But unfortunately for Computer Science students, there’s no Data Structures. Only for Information Systems Engineering students. Weird eh? My friends taking Computer Science, will take something on Object Oriented instead. However, it’s more like a VB.Net subject.
I just don’t understand why the can’t make it compulsory for students to use a OO language. Courses today (at TARC) already lack focus on low-level logics, or in-depth knowledge of particular topics. And yet, they don’t even make sure students can program well with Java (or .Net).
We also have “Database Systems” this semester. Looks promising at first glance, even ambitious I would say. We have 14 weeks in a semester, and they plan to cover SQL Server and Oracle in our 2 hour a week practicals. We spent last week in “SQL Server practical lab”, practicing SQL. So the next time some TARCian tells you “I got learn SQL Server/Oracle before”, he’s talking crap..
All of these, seem to show the lack of coordination within SAS. It seems like subjects/modules are simply thrown together with little regard of the overall effect.
Tags: rants
