There were lots of deadlines at Week 12 and. There was a long weekend but then I was still busy as I joined a Hackathon over the weekend and hence my school stuffs were postponed till I finished it. This week also marked the last NTUBS event of the semester.
On Monday, I went to CZ3001 lecture, in which the lecturer changed back to Prof Meher, which was very boring and slow. Then I went to LILY centre for demoing what I’ve done so far. After that, I went for CZ2007 free access at Software Projects Lab. It was so nice: large monitor in Full HD and quite high specs PC free for usage. After that I went for lunch and then CZ2007 lecture. Next, I went back because CM8003 lecture is cancelled, hence I skipped CZ3005 lecture. I watched YouTube videos and did some LILY work. At night I went to NYH meeting someone from other club who returned our stuff. Then watched YouTube A LOT! I ended the day doing Green Computing research.
Tuesday started with CZ2006 group meeting at lab. After lunch, I went to CZ2007 tutorial and then CZ2007 free access at Software Projects Lab, preparing for the fifth lab queries. After that I did CZ3001 tutorial and went for the final CZ3001 tutorial. Going back, I started MOOC on edx about TypeScript, well seems like fun to learn this new thing. I ended the day doing some LILY work.
On Wednesday, I had my first CZ3005 lab. Yes it started only on Week 11. The lab was about introduction to Prolog. After that I went for Green Computing presentation sessions. I went back after that. Having dinner at Canteen B, I then went for MDT class later till night. I had a long night after that. I met Thiri at NYH (around 9 pm), went to Ivan’s room (hall 6, helping Thiri), then to Chun Hee’s room (taking trolley), then to hall 15 giving the trolley to Su Ann, and then to Giant buying snacks and back to my room at Hall 4. I then prepared the trolley with the Exam Supper stuffs arranged so that I can move easily. I ended the day again by some LILY work.
Thursday was spent on lecture recordings on CZ3005, then at lecture of CZ2007 and CZ3005. After that we went for free access lab for CZ3001 in which we worked on part 2 and 3 simultaneously and at around 4pm, IT WORKED. Like, FINALLY! No more time for testing, I had to go back. BUT IT RAINED :'( So I can’t move the stuffs as effectively as planned. I then came up with some plans to cover the trolley with plastics. I then started moving till hall 6 function room. Trivia: The trolley tripped three times. -_- (and all of them happened when I’m near to hall 6) So, mindfulness is very important. Focus on the present moment, not because you’re near already you can celebrate and lower down the alertness. After that, I had dinner with subcoms and then went up to NYH taking some stuffs down to Hall 6 for Exam Supper setup. Exam supper itself consists of games (ball passing –> up-down-up-down cup –> move bottle –> balance the ball); and then Supper itself. After that we had Song-singing, phototaking, goodie bag distribution, and then finally the clean-up.
I really angry with Thiri that time since when I asked “have you finished cleaning?” she replied “yes” but when I asked “is this all?” she said “no”. That’s mean that she hasn’t finished cleaning yet. I waited and waited till I get out of my patience (as she kept chit-chatting around without any clear sign when she’ll be finished). Then I shouted at her asking whether I can move already or not. I and my team went up to NYH as quickly as possible since it was near the closing time already, leaving the rest of the stuffs at Hall 6 Function room to the rest (most probably Ivan coordinating them) I was really frustrated to those events which ended late since the planner never think of the cleaning up and only focus on setting up and execution of program. After this, it was the end of the all-chaotic-cleaning-up event of this semester. (but the most chaotic one was NTUBS Anniversary, like when finish cleaning up at the venue, it was 11 already). After this, I went back and relaxed myself by watching YouTube videos (well, my kind of entertainment can be said quite strange, I watched educational YT video (like Veritasium, Minutephysics) rather than those comedy channels). I also browsed through the ICPC training problems.
It was Good Friday and we had a NTUBS Support Team Outing (Resource + Marketing + Business + Treasurer + Hon Gen Sec). At 1100, it was planned that we met at Boon Lay. But in the end we only started moving from Boon Lay around 1120. We had lunch at Eighteen Chef at Jcube, Jurong East. I had an expensive meal but it was a nice one. There were lots of seafood in my meal :) Although expensive, I haven’t eaten this much seafood for quite some times. But yeah there are other cheaper food available at half my food price. After the lunch, we went for ice skating. Suteja turned out to be so zai already. I started the session forgetting the grip of ice-skating (I ice-skated twice before, and can move around quite freely; and has never fallen down before). In this session, we took numerous photographs. I also fall down for the first time. It was during me almost tripping to the front that I then put weight to my back and I fall down to the back, hitting one side of my butt to the cold ice; it was painful, but I recovered quickly. At this session, I rested quite number of time, as my base of feet hurts (the shoe size does not fit foot size). The session ended just before 3 pm and I had found out the hard truth that my water bottle has broken :( I like this bottle since it can carry 1 litre of water. But yeah, never mind, I still have the edventure water bottle from NTU. We went back after that and I separated from them at JP, I went to Fairprice buying some milk before going back to my room, rested and started to browse edx on TypeScript. I also attempted the ICPC training problems.
Saturday
#startathon2015
#30hourofYOLO
I woke up around 7.30am. After quick pack-up. I went to RTP via South Spine –> School of EEE. At 9:00, there was introduction, descriptions, more descriptions. Then they gave out the hackathon theme and subthemes. After that, idea pitching was started. Team was formed soon after that and we started to hack! First, we receive the “HackPack”: Arduino Uno + breadboard + sensors + cables + etc. For our team (me, Peter, Robert), we decided on one of the idea given out by organizer: Real-Time baby Tracking. Not long after that, we had lunch, but I was too late and hence not much food left. After lunch, we went to Masterclass 1 about sensors. Masterclass 2 was on experience design booth, and we skipped rest of classes. By 3pm, Gyroscope + accelerometer started to work! But we did not how to transmit data via the Wi-Fi module provided. A consultant named Mike came to help setting up the Wi-Fi module. Spent around an hour and it finally connected to the Wi-Fi.
Around 5pm, another masterclass by Mike on Wi-Fi module but quite useless since he had taught us personally. Went there anyway and turned out that we helped other teams setting up also (and I managed to help a team which later won the Startathon :P )
Then we had dinner: so much food, much amaze, wow. And after that we observed that seems like it never send data to thingstalk.com that we used as database. Turned out that it was an issue with every team. We did debugging and debugging and debugging. Replacing library by library. Nothing seemed to work. Around 10pm, then a consultant came and tell us to change “HTTP/1.1” to “HTTP/1.0” and it worked. -________________________-
Okay, 7 hours wasted on debugging this thing. Then continue adding module: humidity & temperature; and heartbeat sensor. We quickly combined everything and things start to work! Then, we quickly show the data via webpage using Google Chart API.
Sunday
#startathon2015
#30hourofYOLO
12am, “counter-proposal” time where everyone was told to go to other teams and see they demonstrate. Woah some cool stuffs (like gesture to speech, smart light switch) and some lame stuffs (like plant in pipes, simple ultrasonic sensor ONLY). Next, we continue coding and coding. More progress are being seen. Supper was quite nice and it’s packed one for each person. We also had milo for after supper.
We finally made things work and after the feedback, we switched to using only local database instead of thingspeak.com as their API limits data input for 15s. In the meantime when Robert is coding Arduino and Peter is coding dashboard, I actually “steals” (claim) a whiteboard and started to draw something labelling our product. Dashboard thingy and we’re done. Before going asleep, we scavenge some cardboards and then put it nicely such that it become the casing of the Arduino, of which without that it looks scary.
So we slept around 4 am at the sofa at a very bad pose. We were woken up around 6 am for the breakfast. I ate the breakfast quickly and then went back to sleep. Now at the nicer place (on the floor) at the other side of the hackathon area. Slept till 8 am, I woke up and then went to set up the booth.
10 am, we are in the no-touch time! We had a group photo first before going for the pitching booth per booth. 11am,The judges visit the booth one by one and the team should explain what the product did. We’re the fifth.
We also observed a lot of other ideas around the area and some of them are actually very nice (we indeed predicted some winners and some others are just lame like us). It was quite long and time-consuming. And I was really sleepy and hungry (for lunch). Finally everything was finished and it was clean-up time before lunch.
After lunch, they announced the winners and as expected our guesses were correct except for the first winner. It was really unexpected :P Well, maybe because I didn’t really listen well to their demonstration. After that I got my deposit back and then went back to my room. It was exactly 30 hours since I entered that building.
Going straight to my room, I took a nap, intending to have 1-hour nap that turns out to be 2.5-hour nap. Had dinner and then realized that Week 12 will be a chaotic week. The night I spent it revising my slides for Green Computing. I also spent it doing my part of Whitebox testing at Software Engineering documentation; and started the MDT assignment 2 which was unannounced.