Raving Rabbids

This year NUS Commencement 2010 for School of Computing is on Wednesday, 7th July 2010 at 8pm! Seriously hate the 8pm slot because after the ceremony ended or even before it started it is already at night and can’t really take good pictures.

Met up quite early with Kelvin and Hong Jun at 4pm to take photos while the sky is still bright. The doors open for parents at 7pm and it is on a first come first serve basis, so if the parents are late, they will have to be seated on the 2nd level of the University Culture Center. The graduates have to be seated by 7.40pm.

As there are very little students in School of Computing, the whole ceremony only take about an hour not including the speech by the two valedictorian for our ceremony.

The gown is pretty heavy and definitely very hot. Imagine wearing long sleeve shirt with a tie and on top of that you need to wear the gown over it! My parents saw a PRC graduate wearing t-shirt with shorts and sports shoe underneath the gown. WTF!

After 3 1/2 years in NUS, I have am officially graduated with a Bachelor of Computing (Honors) in Information Systems and Specialization in Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME).

Since 1st February 2010, I have been working in mig33 and I am loving it! Web development FTW!

This is me now:

NUS Commencement 2010

This is me 20 years ago:

Risen Christ Kindergarden Graduation 1990

Photos Taken During The Commencement

Day 01 (Monday, 7th December 2009)

• China Airlines flight CI0752 departed at 10:30am. There was a delay of about 45 minutes because one of the runway in Changi Airport was closed to allow another airplane to do emergency landing.
• Reached Tao Yuan International Airport Terminal One at about 3.30pm and took the Free Go bus to our Nei Jiang Hotel (內江商旅).
• Free Go bus cost NT$240 for a round trip and hotel cost NT$2380 per night.
• Reached our hotel at about 5.30pm and spend about 1 hour to get the Wireless Router up and running but unfortunately it could not work because the voltage in Taiwan is only 110 volts and we need 230 volts. End up using Windows 7 Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) which is a pain in the ass to set up.
• Dinner was at Modern Toilet (便所主题餐厅) located in Ximending (西門町).
• After dinner, we walked almost the whole of Ximending (西門町)!
• Facebook Gallery: Taiwan Graduate Trip 2009 Day 01
• Hong Jun’s Blog: Day 1

Day 02 (Tuesday, 8th December 2009)

• Breakfast was at Ay Chung Mian Xian (阿宗面线) also located in Ximending (西門町).
• Went to Guang Hua Digital Plaza (光華數位新天地) which is like the Sim Lim Square of Singapore.
• Lunch was at Mr.J Restaurant (Mr.J義法廚房).
• Went to Taipei 101 and went up the Sky Observatory.
• After Taipei 101, went to walk around New York New York (纽约纽约) and Shin Kong Mitsukoshi (星光三越).
• Dinner was at Ding Tai Fung (鼎泰丰).
• After dinner went to Shida Night Market (师大夜市).
• Facebook Gallery: Taiwan Graduate Trip 2009 Day 02
• Hong Jun’s Blog: Day 2

Day 03 (Wednesday, 9th December 2009)

• Went to Xin Beitou (新北投)’s 水都温泉馆.
• Had lunch at 满来温泉拉面.
• Went to Dan Shui Old Street (淡水老街) to buy some metal eggs (鐵蛋).
• Had dinner at Shilin Night Market (士林夜市).
• Facebook Gallery: Taiwan Graduate Trip 2009 Day 03
• Hong Jun’s Blog: Day 3

Day 04 (Thursday, 10th December 2009)

• Had breakfast at McDonald’s. The McDonald’s breakfast there is half the price of Singapore!
• Took the Taiwan High Speed Rail (台灣高鐵) to Taichung (台中).
• Went to our Minsu (民宿) called Tomato Rooms which is located near Feng Jia (逢甲).
• After depositing our bags there, we went to Yi Zhong Street (一中街) to do some shopping as Feng Chia Night Market (逢甲夜市) only open after 6pm.
• Had dinner at Feng Chia Night Market (逢甲夜市).
• Facebook Gallery: Taiwan Graduate Trip 2009 Day 04
• Hong Jun’s Blog: Day 4

Day 05 (Friday,11th December 2009)

• Had breakfast at 小品屋 which is provided by the Minsu (民宿), we top-up some money for a better meal.
• Took the Taiwan High Speed Rail (台灣高鐵) back to Taipei (台北).
• Had lunch at Fei Tian Mala Huo Guo (飞天麻辣火锅). The buffet includes free-flow Haagen Dazs Ice Cream!
• Went to Wufenpu (五分埔) to take a look at clothes.
• Went to Rao He Street Night Market (饶河夜市) after that.
• Facebook Gallery: Taiwan Graduate Trip 2009 Day 05
• Hong Jun’s Blog: Day 5

Day 06 (Saturday, 12th December 2009)

• Took the Taiwan Railway (台鐵) to Ruifang Station (瑞芳).
• Went to Jiufen (九份) to get some snacks to bring back to Singapore.
• Went to Carrefour to get 满汉大餐 – 麻辣锅牛肉面 to bring back to Singapore as well. Love the instant noodles there!
• Went to Luxy but unfortunately there is some private event there and we ended back up in Ximending (西門町) and we caught a movie, Law Bidding Citizen.
• Law Bidding Citizen is good! Quite similar style to Prison Break.
• Facebook Gallery: Taiwan Graduate Trip 2009 Day 06
• Hong Jun’s Blog: Day 6

Day 07 (Sunday, 13th December 2009)

• Last breakfast in Taiwan at Ay Chung Mian Xian (阿宗面线).
• Had some drinks at Cafe 85 °C (85度C).
• Took the Free Go bus back to Tao Yuan International Airport Terminal One.
• China Airlines flight CI0751 reached Singapore at about 8:45pm.
• Facebook Gallery: Taiwan Graduate Trip 2009 Day 07
• Hong Jun’s Blog: Day 7

Looking back last year on the 14th December 2008, I was also going to Taiwan.

This will be my second visit to Taiwan, this trip should be focusing a lot on food. I will be going with my NUS classmates whom I knew since year 1, shout out to Weiquan (knew him since Polytechnic), Kelvin and Hong Jun.

My flight, CI0752, will depart on the 7th December 2009 at 10:30am and I will be coming back via the flight, CI0751, on the 13th December 2009, reaching Singapore at 8:45pm.

I will be going with Li Xiang on a seperate trip to Hong Kong on the 19th to 27th December 2009.

• 24th November 2009 (Evening Paper) – SSA2211
• 30th November 2009 (Morning Paper) – GEK1101
• 1st December 2009 (Evening Paper) – CS4266
• 3rd December 2009 (Evening Paper) – CS4259

Once I have finished my exams, I will be going to Taiwan for my graduate trip and after that Hong Kong with Li Xiang!

• 7th to 13th December 2009 – Taiwan
• 19th to 27th December 2009 – Hong Kong

Wish my luck for my last exams!

Filed For Graudation (FFG)

Last Friday, Li Xiang has no school, so I skipped my lecture (the lecture is quite useless as that module is not examinable) and we spend some quality time together. I sent her to school to loan her Canon 20D DSLR camera for her photography assignment and then we went to Singapore Botanical Gardens to re-take some of her shots for her photography assignment.

After spending an hour there, we proceed on to Orchard Road to catch a movie, we caught Big Stan. It is the first movie directed by Rob Schneider and the movie was good. Personally, I love movies starring Rob Schneider and Adam Sandler as I have not been disappointed in any movies with them in it yet.

On Sunday, we went for Tim Sum at Crystal Jade Dining at VivoCity as our Thailand friends are leaving, they are here on a business trip to discuss something with my mom. 3 years ago when we visited Thailand, they really took good care of us! I will definitely be going to Thailand again when it is more stable over there. After the Tim Sum, Li Xiang and I headed home to catch some sleep while my mom and brother went to Takashimaya as they are having a storewide 15% discount because of their 15th anniversary in Singapore.

At night, they went to Serangoon Gardens because my mom’s cousin baby is one month old while Li Xiang and I headed to Central for the famous Ma-Rutama‘s Ramen. They are opening a branch soon in Liang Court on the 1st November 2008. We walked around Clark Quay and Liang Court and took some pictures along the way. Last weekend was the best weekend I had since school starts.

Our 4th anniversary is coming on the 24th October 2008, going to bake her a chocolate Chiffon cake. It is my VERY FIRST attempt in baking a cake, hopefully it does not fail. I think it is easier for me to do programming than baking. LOL

*UPDATE 2* There is a bug in iOS4 which cause .mobileconfig files not recognized by Safari. For more details, read here. To overcome this issue:

1. Using your computer, go to http://lesterchan.net/nus/iphone/
2. Key in your NUSNET UserID and click Generate
3. Your browser should prompt you to download the NUS.mobileconfig file
4. Once you have downloaded the file, email the file to yourself
5. Using Mail.app in your iOS, open up the the email which contains the NUS.mobileconfig attachement
6. You should now be able to install the NUS.mobileconfig profile

*UPDATE* It is now working with iOS 3.0.

Instructions

1. Launch Safari in your iPhone/iPod Touch
2. Go to http://lesterchan.net/nus/iphone/
   
3. Under Your NUSNET ID, key in your NUSNET UserID (EXCLUDING the domain (NUSSTU, NUSSTF or GUEST) portion)
4. Click Generate
5. A Install Profile screen will appear
   
6. Click Install
7. A Install Profile Warning Popup will appear
   
8. Ignore the warning and click Install Now
9. A Enter Password screen will appear
   
10. Key in your NUSNET Password
11. Click Next
12. A Profile Installed screen will appear
    
13. Click Done
14. Go back to your Home Screen
15. Go to Settings -> Wi-Fi
16. Under Wi-Fi, select ON
17. Under Choose a Network…, select NUS
    
18. Wait a while, while it trys to connects
19. A Certificate screen will appear
    
20. Click Accept
21. You are now connected to NUS WLAN SSID
    

Notes

• At Step 18, you may need to re-try Step 14 to 17 if it takes more than 1 minute to connect.
• At Step 20, you may need to re-try Step 14 to 20 if nothing happens when you click Accept.
• If you are going to reference this tutorial anywhere, please credit it to me. I spent a lot of time on figuring out how to configure my iPhone 3G to connect to NUS Wireless network and I have put together this tutorial to make life easier for all NUS students.

Privacy

• The generator DOES NOT save your NUSNET UserID on this server.
• At Step 10, when asked to key in your password, it is iPhone authenticating with NUS and NOT with this server.
• In short, you can rest assured that NONE of your information is saved on this server.

We will be using NUS WLAN SSID “NUS” instead of “NUSOPEN”, as “NUS” is protected by PEAP.

Lets begin:
Part 1 – Defining NUS SSID

1. Go to Menu > Tools > Settings > Connection > Access points
2. Click on Options, then New access point
3. Under Connection name, key in NUS
4. Under Data bearer, select Wireless LAN
5. Under WLAN netw. name, key in NUS
6. Under Network status, leave it as Public
7. Under WLAN netw. mode, leave it as Infrastructure
8. Under WLAN security mode, select 802.1x
9. Click on WLAN security settings, and you will get into a new page
10. Under The WPA/WPA2 , leave it as EAP
11. Click on EAP plugin-settings, and you will get into a new page
12. Ensure ONLY EAP-PEAP is ENABLED (check mark will only appear beside EAP-PEAP). You can disable the remaining EAP types by going to Options > Disable
13. Click on EAP-PEAP, and you will get into a new page

Part 2 – Configuring EAP-PEAP

14. Under Personal certificate, leave it as Not defined
15. Under Authority certificate, select Thawte Premium Server
16. Under User name in use, select User defined
17. Under User name, key in your NUSNET UserID (EXCLUDING the domain (NUSSTU, NUSSTF or GUEST) portion)
18. Under Realm in use, select User defined
19. Under Realm, leave it as BLANK
20. Under Allow PEAPv0, select Yes
21. Under Allow PEAPv1, select No
22. Under Allow PEAPv2, select No
23. Move to EAPs tab, by pressing your right arrow key

Part 3 – Configuring EAP-MSCHAPv2

24. Ensure ONLY EAP-MSCHAPv2 is ENABLED (check mark will only appear beside EAP-MSCHAPv2). You can disable the remaining EAP types by going to Options > Disable
25. Click on EAP-MSCHAPv2, and you will get into a new page
26. Under User name, key in your NUSNET UserID (EXCLUDING the domain portion)
27. Under Prompt password, select No
28. Under Password, key in your NUSNET Password
29. Click Back about 10 times or enough times to reach the standby screen

Part 4 – Scanning For NUS SSID

30. Turn On your WLAN scanning and you should be able to detect and connect to NUS wireless network

No screenshots are included as I think it is pretty straightforward.

FULL CREDITS goes to Zit Seng‘s Configuring N95 WLAN for NUS Wireless

The School of Computing will be offering a new 4-MC Facebook Programming module on next Semester (AY2007/2008, Semester 2) – CS3216 : Software Development on Evolving Platforms. This is your chance to be a part of this new global Internet phenomenon, currently valued at some US$15 billion.

This new module is not your traditional software engineering course. Enrollment will be open to students of all faculties and students will work in small inter-disciplinary teams to create their killer Facebook applications. Programming experience for non-SoC students is not a pre-requisite (since work will be done in teams).

As it turns out, Trey Phillips , the winner of Facebook F8 Hackathon, is a philosophy major. This suggests than ANYONE can be a Facebook Developer. The nominal pre-requisite is thus CS1101, but students who do not have formal programming background but who have a keen interest in e-entrepreneurship or a background in design. Students will not be assessed individually, but in groups, so individual programming proficiency will not be assessed. Students need only to be able to contribute substantively to their team projects. The success of social networking applications depend a lot on the concept and execution rather than good programming ability. The students can develop their applications in their language of choice, but will likely use PHP or Ruby with mySQL.

Assessment will be project-based and there will be no examination component. The course will begin with several lectures on the fundamentals of web development. Subsequently, students will work in teams to analyze and critique existing Facebook apps in a series of seminars. There will be three team-based assignments and a final team project of the students’ choice. Students are welcome to use this opportunity to develop applications that have commercial potential or can be used as entries to Startup@Singapore.

Places for the course in this initial offering will be limited and some places will be reserved for non-SoC students. To avoid timetable conflicts for students from other faculties and because we be inviting external experts to give occasional guest lectures, the lectures and seminars will be held on Monday evenings from 6.30 to 8.30 pm.

We expect that we will have more students who are keen to take this course than the available places. To ensure a diversity of talent and students have the necessary background for the course, places will not be assigned by CORS bidding. Instead, interested students are to submit a personal statement (with their matriculation number clearly stated) to cs3216staff@googlegroups.com by 15 December 2007. Students will be informed by 26 December 2007 if they are offered a place in the upcoming offering of the new course (and students will automatically be pre-registered for CS3216 on CORS if their bid to take the class is successful).

The personal statement should address the following questions:

(i) Why do you want to take the course?

(ii) Describe your background and how you think it would enable you to contribute to the diversity and vibrancy of the new course and to the team projects.

(iii) Describe a cool Facebook app that you *really* want to build. Explain why you think your app is really cool.

Students are welcome to throw in a resume or portfolio of sorts if they think it would be helpful in demonstrating that they have what it takes to succeed in this new module.

For more infomation: http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~bleong/cs3216