What have I been up to?

This is the first time I am keeping a blog like this. I actually have one other blog which I update some of the thoughts I have whenever I feel like I want to, maybe once a month, maybe once a year. This is going to be a challenging task for me, cos I don't have the habit of blogging. I wonder what I should say and what I should not, hehe...

I managed to put up a Facebook profile badge and an embedded Google wave gadget. Yay!

Why this blog name? 

If you have noticed, I have changed the blog name. It is called “Stop! Look forth-back-forth. Run!” This phrase came from the phrase "Stop. Look left, look right, look left again. Walk.", something that your school/parents would have taught you since young. This blog has three levels of significance.

1) Blog
Blog title is a branding. So just to make sure it sounds catchy enough to attract attention. Hope I have done so.
2) Programming
Make sure you don't cause any bug. Stop for a while, check your code then run your program. LOL.
3) Life
I think it would be good to be brave but careful in life. Be brave to try something new and be careful in the process of planning. When you recognise your target, head for it!

I have watched the two recommended videos "The Last Lecture" and "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish". I watched both some days ago, so what I am gg to blog below would be those statements that left me the most impression. I looked through their transcript again to search for those statements that touched me the most.

The Last Lecture

Randy Pausch is an excellent speaker and he presents his speech in a very humorous way.

The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

We should not give up when we face obstacles; he used the metaphor of a brick wall very well.

Oh yes, I just remembered I read about sth like this recently. I think it was a story in Chinese, but I can't really rmb where exactly I read it from. So I would just provide the translation here based on my memory. It was a story teaching us abt financial education in English. I accidentally come across it again=P

It is about a person who is very interested in beverage business. So he came out with a drink called 1UP, but it didn't sell. He did not give up, and he improvised the drink to 2UP, yet it didn't sell. He didn't give up, and he came out with a newer version 3UP, still it didn't sell. He kept improvising his drink until 6UP, but still it didn't sell. So he gave up. Years later, someone came out with the drink 7UP.

This story is not the truth about how 7UP came about, haha. It is rather an analogy that we shouldn't give up so easily. And I believe many of the time it is the stubbornness and the determination that make us move on.

And I said, Andy, I just gave a two-week assignment, and they came back and did stuff that if I had given them a whole semester I would have given them all As. Sensei, what do I do? And Andy thought for a minute and he said, you go back into class tomorrow and you look them in the eye and you say, “Guys, that was pretty good, but I know you can do better.” And that was exactly the right advice. Because what he said was, you obviously don’t know where the bar should be, and you’re only going to do them a disservice by putting it anywhere. And boy was that good advice because they just kept going.

It was so funny and so enlightening. Yes, it is indeed very true. There is no boundary in life in achieving something. It is often yourself who set the boundary for yourself. For instance, you become lazy and sloppily finished off something, so you don’t do well. We must always hope for something better, must always be strict on ourselves. There is always room for improvement.

Stay Foolish

Steve Jobs speech is more solemn and short, but is very meaningful.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

My interests have always been very diverse. There is a saying about one possessing many knifes but none is sharp. I don’t wish to be one of those; I want to have at least a sharp knife. But I believe I don't have to make all the knives sharp, and it is alright to keep many blunt knives, but at least know the right knife to sharpen at any particular time of life. I really hope the dots will connect.

Cone of Learning -- CS3216

Just to share about this Cone of Learning which I just learnt about... and relate it to CS3216. 

I believe in this module, we will be doing a lot of active learning. And by the end of the semester, there will probably be many unforgettable experience.

What I hope to learn in CS3216

When I started out as an undergrad in the School of Computing, I have absolutely no idea what programming is about. So learning programming is sth very new to me. Level 1000 and level 2000 modules were crash courses one after another; it was like seeing everything through a fog. Luckily I met good people who helped me in understand what I was learning all along. But still my basics are not very firm.

Everything is still like a dream, so unreal. "I am a computing student and I know programming?" It was until I am able to finish a lab at a speed faster than I have thought I could have taken and I am able to contribute my ideas and help my project teammates, i know everything is getting real. When it comes to level 3000 and level 4000 modules I start to see more familiar stuff here and there, and I know this is where I belong.

Last time when I heard of ppl who knows a lot of programming languages, I really admire them. But coming to this stage, I realised I actually know a lot of programming languages... but just that I don’t know not know them well. The most confident languages I know of now are Java and C#. And some of the programming languages I know of are pretty impractical to the real world, though they are good for learning theory. In job advertisement, who will state Haskell and Prolog as part of the programming language requirement? And I heard a saying that most things that we learnt in school will become obsolete when we graduate.

Half a year from now, I will not be an NUS undergraduate anymore. So I want to learn as much I could now.  I want to learn practical skills which can put what I have learnt all these while into good use. I want to learn about the latest evolving technology, hope I can apply these to my working life later. I want to learn how to “capture eyeballs” (a phrase used quite commonly when I read abt CS3216), which I think involves some psychology aspect. I like the satisfaction feeling after finishing a project, so I hope to get more of this feeling by coming out with innovative applications. I know I will have to go through another crash course once again, but this time with more preparation and confidence.

Furthermore my CS3215 project wasn't up to my expectation, many regrets. So I don’t mind going through another hectic semester once again and make up for whatever regrets I have. I wish to learn more about team work in this module, learn how to work with people from different faculties and major. I wish to know how things can be thought in different ways from ppl immersed in different teachings, which I think will help me to enhance my creativity. Last but not least, learn how to have fun and make new friends!