Sunday, August 24, 2008

Changes to my life

This coming week starts the end of some things which have been, in my opinion, a bad/unhealthy habit. Some things just have to change, hopefully for the better. And I'm adding certain routines in my lifestyle to keep it at a balance. Lastly, tomorrow marks the day where I need to start putting more effort at my school work and spend less time idling or surfing unnecessarily (Goodbye EDMW. . .).

One of the few things that I'm changing in my lifestyle is keeping junk food away as much as possible. I'm not saying that I'll shun Macs for the rest of my life (I doubt I have that kinda persistence) but rather, I'll keep the weekly visits to maybe a fortnight or once in a blue moon when the craving appears. I have been treating my body like a theme park all my life. I guess it's time to have a slight change.

Honestly, I hate routines. I have never been a routine-freak and time-tables just don't make sense to me. Although routines kind of makes you more efficient in some sense but I find it a little suffocating at times. But I think I need certain routines and I have to trick my mind to follow such routines. For example, one of my "must dos" in my lifetime is to run a full marathon. As some of you folks would know, marathons aren't a walk in the park. You've got to train to run a full one or suffer the after-effect of a 42km walk (I hope to run it full). Hence, I need to start running to train myself for the marathon. Therefore, I've set some goals to trick myself to follow these running routines. Wish me luck!

And finally, it has just sunk in that semester has already started. Work is piling up at the moment and a quiz is due next week! haha! It's my final year in school and I guess I'll just make full use of it to make mistakes and learn as much as possible. Please do not mistake me for being "academically kiasu". Rather, I see it as fulfilling my part as a student looking for knowledge.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

It'll be my last year as an undergraduate and it has been a damn fun roller coaster ride. Now I'm sort of at the last several kilometers of my undergrad marathon. I have not yet seen the finishing line but I know it is drawing near. I still have several hurdles to overcome before the grand finish. Let's say I know of the existence of these hurdles but truthfully, I have no idea how high they would be.

A while ago, I managed to get some work going planning my time-table for the semester. Other than my final year project (FYP), I have three other modules to clear. After the disappointing withdrawal of Advance Operating systems, I had to change my module choice again! Thus, this semester I'm taking EE3207 (Computer Architecture), EE4214 (Real-time embedded system) and LAC1201 (Chinese I).

Of all the listed modules, I'm definitely looking forward to doing EE4214. From the looks of past year module syllabus, it seems that the module combines embedded system with Linux. Reading up on embedded system requirement these days, a lot of developers are moving towards embedded linux systems because they are free and well documented. If I'm not wrong, we'll be looking to use uLinux for our project. Embedded linux systems for the win! haha..

Computer architecture is still alive (contrary to some believe that comp. architecture is long dead) with parralel programming and multi-core vs many core processor systems. I'm looking forward to this too!

I have long delayed my undertaking of the LAC1201 module. Well, since NUS provided free Chinese lessons, why not?

Lastly, my FYP balloting results are just in a few days ago. Luckily for me, I managed to get my second choice and I must say it's an interesting topic which I am looking forward to do! hurhur.. My topic is - Wireless Car Communications with an Embedded System. Basically the project about communication between vehicles using mobile wireless communication devices. I'm going to e-mail my professor in-charge soon.

Wish me luck for the up-coming semester! My holidays was spent beautifully with Mer and my PC. =x