Speaking of which, I’m taking one last course which is CS 349 – User Interfaces. Hopefully I can remember how to code in Java to pass the course. There are no other options available for me that are as simple as User Interfaces. I’m likely to be developing an app for Android devices for one of the assignments, that should be very interesting.

As for what I’m doing post-graduation, I’m still undecided. I’ll look for a job starting in May and I’ll hopefully have something confirmed before July. I’m looking for jobs in Waterloo and Toronto, either is preferred, it makes almost no difference to me where I end up working.

For me, being a CS student, I’m given the option to have 18 of my 40 required courses be electives. 10 of those electives are slightly more restrictive than the other 8 but that simply means they cannot be offered by the Faculty of Math.

PHIL145 (Critical Thinking) It’s mostly learning how to solve problems with logic/reasoning. Very fun course depending on your professor.
ECON101/102 (Introduction to Microeconomics/Macroeconomics) An easy course depending on the professor. The course is usually 2-3 midterms and a final and all multiple choice.
FR151 (Basic French 1) If you remember any French from high school (Ontario students) its easy. The course doesn’t drift too far from Grade 8/9 French and only touches on some of Grade 10.
PSYCH101 (Introduction to Psychology) Interesting course, I did mine online and wrote an essay about procrastinating and got a 92% on it. All multiple choice, possible to pass the course prior to the final.
SCI238 (Introductory Astronomy) (237 is the alternative) Very basic course in astronomy, all multiple choice but the course does require a lot of math.
PSCI291 (The Canadian Legal Process) Very top level view of Canadian Law. All multiple choice, material very easy to understand with very minimal memorization (memorizing details about cases).
SCI205 (Physics of High Fidelity Sound Reproduction) The course has not been updated since the turn of the millennium. All multiple choice, the answers for homework assignments are readily available online and the final hasn’t changed since at least 2005.
SCI206 (The Physics of How Things Work) Extremely fun course, all multiple choice again. The course is basically a mixture of Bill Nye and Mythbusters, it’s a very hands on course because of all the experiments in class.
PHIL216 (Probability and Decision Making) Homework assignments are very easy for a Math/CS major. Course is very passable before the final. No midterm, and highly participatory.
AFM101 (Introduction to Financial Accounting) You might think this is a bird course though it’s probably better to do AFM123. I made that mistake.

Courses I haven’t taken yet:
ACTSC221 (Mathematics of Investment) It looks like an easy course, there’s only 4 formulas needed and a lot of problem solving. It’s the type of Math that I like.
SPAN101 (Spanish 1) Only in the Spring as a Block Course. Any course that’s a block course (in the Spring) should be easy because it ends in July which means an earlier final (or in-class final) — which implies less studying during normal exam time in August. SPAN101 shouldn’t be too hard with some basic French knowledge since these languages are very related.

/**
 * filesize_to_str()
 * Converts filesize to a string value.
 */
function filesize_to_str( $filesize ) {
    $sizes = array( 'B', 'KB', 'MB', 'GB', 'TB' );
    $i = floor( log( $filesize, 1024 ) );
    return sprintf( '%.2f%s', $filesize / pow( 1024, $i ), $sizes[$i] );
}

The network lab process was pretty bad. We were given 6 computers to use, all of them had Fedora 16 installed. I’m glad it wasn’t some weird OpenSolaris setup given the keyboard.

We were greeted with a terminal. I did the logins and set up all the network devices to the proper IP addresses. Then I had to run Wireshark. Wireshark needs a GUI, unless they wanted us to run Tshark. No prior instructions were given to us to launch X to get into Wireshark.

Just typing X hung the terminal at a X with no inputs or window manager. From experience, Fedora came with Gnome so I typed gdm and I was given a login manager. Unfortunately, gdm prevents root logins by default — and rightfully so. I had to manually add a dummy user so I can log into Gnome and launch Wireshark.

Tests were done and outputs were saved. Then I had to bring the data home for the lab report (the instructions were to copy them onto a floppy disk — I’m glad we were implicitly told to ignore it).

Problem: there was no Internet connection on any of the computers. Luckily, we had USB keys with us and were thinking of just copying files to the USB key. The first computer (these aren’t exactly desktop towers, they were 1U rack servers) had the metal cage unlocked so we put the USB key in and copied it without problem.

• CS448 – The course is very fun and challenging. I completely understand the concepts but I’m having a hard time applying them.
• CS456 – The course is everything I expected but it seems very outdated. For the first half of the course, there is barely anything new to learn that I haven’t learned in high school or while reading my Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) books. We’re just entering network programming, which is completely new to me, but I understand the gist of it.
• CS490 – The course is mostly taught by students as that is the model that our prof adopted. The professor taught us the first 3 chapters and the rest of it is student presentations. That seems to be a good model for the course, I’m not complaining.  There is no final for the course and only 2 presentations and 2 tests.
• PHIL216 – I barely have to read the textbook for the course. The course is on game strategies and making decisions while playing games. I love the course. We even get fed.
• AFM101 – I thought this would be my bird course but apparently it’s harder for me to grasp than the other ones. I have no ability in accounting. I’m really not interested in it at all. I should have taken AFM123 which is “Accounting Information for Managers”. I can’t do AFM123 next term because the 101 conflicts with it.

Reading week is next week, I won’t be coming back to Toronto until the Wednesday or Thursday. There is an OverPower event happening on the Saturday so that’s the main reason why I’m coming back. I plan to spend reading week doing a bit of homework and a bit of developing for the OverPower site.

For the first time in 5+ years, I’ll have to make my apartment look clean so that my landlord and rent it out to new people. It’s a weird feeling so leave this place. I’m still mostly undecided on what I’m doing after graduation. If I end up with a job offer in Kitchener-Waterloo, I’ll likely stay in KW but definitely find a new place. If not, I’ll be back in Toronto and going job hunting — though I should really make use of the job bank we have on UW campus to look for a job.

Luckily, with Photoshop CS 5, I can fill in the missing corners with Content-Aware deletion. I created many Actions to help me automate this process but it still took a while as the process was never perfect. Cropping out the images from the scans were also pretty easy with Photoshop’s Crop and Straighten Photos tool. Again, it wasn’t perfect because some of my scans had cards that were too close to each other. In then end, all of the cards (minus about 50 of them) are processed and ready to be created into PNGs for the OverPower website.

Photoshop doesn’t have a nice tool to batch ‘Save for Web’ on directories with sub directories, so it was a manual process to select each folder for exporting.

And here’s where OptiPNG comes into play. After creating any (regularly visited) PNG for the web, I always run it through OptiPNG to shrink it down further. I don’t understand the algorithms behind it but it works. OptiPNG gives you an option to select optimization levels, with the -o [0-7] flag. Zero being nothing, 7 being sufficiently optimized. Basically, these levels sets up parameters for the program to brute-force compress the PNG file and finds the best type of compression.

So today I reverted to the default Windows 7 provided drivers and my prints look amazing. You’d think that using the most up to date drivers provided by the manufacturer would yield the best results.

The update required Windows for the Sony Ericsson PC Companion software to push the update. Update took about 10 minutes and went smoothly. However, after updating, the phone was un-rooted and required me to run the zergRush script from DooMLoRD to root the phone again. The update also pushed back a ton of applications that I had previously removed. Apps such as the Facebook sync, Chinese/Japanese keyboards, etc. The update also pushed back the bootanimation.zip that shows the Fido boot screen when the phone starts up. This required me to go through them and re-delete them all but it wasn’t an issue.

I haven’t had time to see what’s new with the update but one thing that I really like is USB device support. I used to have to load modules with busybox insmod but it looks like the phone has those modules now and I won’t have to load them. With a simple USB-OTG (USB On-The-Go) adapter, I can plug in keyboards and mice to my phone. It’s actually pretty neat to see a cursor on the Android desktop. Keyboard is extremely useful as most of my passwords are partially formed through my Yubikeys. It doesn’t look like USB keys work by default. It also doesn’t seem to like things that draw too much power.

EDIT:

There’s a screenshot button (power off menu)!