10 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Test Number One: Basic Skills

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPHANIE GATES! (her actual birthday day was today)

The thought of my first test this year at Uni hadn’t dawned on my mind until last night when I realised how much I still had left to revise. Although the topic of the test was “Basic Skills”, there wasn’t a lot that looked very basic to me when I went through the practice questions online. Feeling unprepared I decided to do some good ol’ last minute cramming. Fortunately enough, some stuff started coming back to me from last year as I was reading through the notes, namely things like Gaussian Elimination and matrix multiplication. By the end of the night I felt like I had a lot of it downpacked, though some of the integration questions still looked a bit dodgy.

This morning the plan was to get up early and study the rest of the topics for the test tonight. Well, that plan kind of fizzled. I did wake up and stagger to the lounge, but then I thought I’d take a “short rest” on the sofa. Which turned into another half an hour. There wasn’t much time for study by the time I had a shower and got my gear ready; I had to walk to the bus stop myself. Rose was on the bus when I hopped on at Te Atatu Road. I told her about my test tonight and got out some practice questions I had printed earlier. Luckily for me, Rose is the whiz kid at maths and she talked me through some of the integration questions I had question-marked. Phew! That was a relief, thanks Rose

It was the first time this year I had caught up with Rose on the bus today, but the reunions didn’t stop there. While I was studying at the Engineering cafe after my lecture, Ethan and Emily (from Robotics) spotted me at the table and came to join me. It’s been ages since I’ve seen Emily and it was great to find out she’s studying Engineering and Commerce. While I’m on the topic, I must also mention that I bumped into Toni (from Robotics) yesterday on the staircase too! She’s ALSO doing Engineering this year, so hopefully I’ll be bumping into them a lot more often this year.

Also today I met up with a guy from Student Life called Chris. Student Life is “a movement of university students who believe that every student at uni in New Zealand should have at least one opportunity to hear and respond to Jesus Christ”. During Orientation Week I indicated on a survey that I’d like to hear more about their group, so today’s meeting was about getting to know what they do around campus and seeing how I can get involved. Chris talked me through one of their magazine/booklets which had articles about God, successful studying, life’s big questions, etc. He told me about the weekly meetings they have and it was quite a good chat. It’s a pity their meetings are on at the same time as my lecture on Friday, but I’m sure there’ll be other ways I can meet other Christians on campus.

I attended my last two lectures for the day but I was thinking about the test the whole time. When my lectures finished at 5pm, I went to join Luke and Jesse who were studying up on level 5 in the Engineering building. It’s always great studying with those two before an Engineering test or exam, because I always learn heaps in such a short amount of time. I mentioned it to them while I was with them and I was saying how we’d be soo much smarter if we crammed hard like that every day!

Luke was in the same room as me for the test, 060-298 in the OGG Building. Not knowing if I was fully prepared or not, I was a bit weary at first going into the exam room. To my surprise however, the test turned out to be easier than I thought. There were a couple of questions there that were a bit iffy, but overall I reckon it wasn’t too bad. Luke’s mum took me home afterwards and I managed to make it home before anyone else. It was such a lonely place with nobody at home for an hour; only the TV and the cat were there to keep me company. I’m glad the first test is done and dusted, but when I think about the cramming that went on before the test tonight, I have to remind myself again that it was just Basic Skills. Please let the rest of the year not get too much harder!

8 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Soldering 101

The back of my board showing the soldered components

Today I had my second induction lab in the Engineering workshop. Last week we learned how to construct a circuit on a breadboard and today’s lab was all about the art of soldering. Again my session was scheduled for 10am and I made it just on time before the lab started. The teaching assistant who was leading the workshop was a Chinese man (I didn’t catch his name) who, from the sounds of it, has been running these labs for quite some time. He gave us a demonstrated tour around the soldering workshop and explained all the different machines. He then sat down at one of the tables and taught us how to solder a component to a circuit board. The brief instructions can be summarised in a few steps:

How to solder a component to a circuit board:

1. Insert the legs of the component (eg. resistor) into the holes of the circuit board.
2. Place the tip of the hot soldering iron so that it touches one of the component legs and the copper track on the circuit board and hold for a couple of seconds.
3. Using your free hand, move the end of the solder coil towards the tip of the soldering iron and gently press in until the solder melts.
4. Allow the molten solder to fill the hole and encompass the component leg before removing the coil of solder.
5. Leave the tip of the soldering iron in place for another couple of seconds before removing.

Don't I look groovy with my safety glasses on!

At each of our workstations, we had a coil of solder (with its own flux), a Weller solding iron with a temperature display, a magnification overhead lamp, a fume extractor, a box of tools (that we didn’t end up using) and a metal sponge to clean the soldering iron tip. We got to solder random resistors and capacitors to a holed circuit board just to practise, as well as solder an IC chip to the board as well. We also learned the different ways to remove solder, including the copper wick and the suction pen tool thing. Overall it was a pretty fun lab and I’m looking forward to designing and soldering real circuit boards that actually do something!

7 March, 2010 in Social by Aonghas

“Party in the USA”

Make a wish!

Tonight Stephanie Gates had her 19th birthday party at her house. As you can probably guess,  the theme for the party was ‘Party in the USA’. After feeling a bit overdressed last year at the Sizers’ Christmas gathering, I didn’t know how extreme to dress up for tonight’s party. In the end I just went in some casual clothes, nothing too out-there. Though I did have blue shoes, a blue hoodie and some blue on my T-shirt so as to keep with the American colours (or should I say colors). I arrived at Steph’s house not too long before 9pm and made my way round the back of the house. From the looks of things, the American atmosphere was definitely buzzing with all these American flags and balloons hung around the place, along with those cool red plastic cups you see in all those teen American movies! I actually later found out that there’s a company that makes those red cups called the Solo Cup Company and the ones we had at the party were the real deal!

Having a good time chatting on the deck

"Yea-eaa-ea-eaah! It's a party in the USA"

There was already a decent-sized group of people at the party when I arrived. I said my hellos and wished Stephanie happy birthday before I blended into the scene. Some people were dressed to the American theme a lot more than others, notably Luke who didn’t actually have a shirt on at first (and I didn’t even get a photo!). Hand-painted T-shirts was a recurring style in many outfits too. From feeling overdressed last time, I started to feel a bit underdressed this time! But it didn’t faze me for long once I started chatting and mingling with some of the peeps.

It turned out to be a really good night of catching up with old friends and finding out what everyone was up to these days. I had a nice long chat with Cresilda as we reminisced about the old days way back as far as primary school! There turned out to be heaps of people at the party that I didn’t know (or at least I didn’t think I knew them from vaguely seeing them in the dark). In fear of missing someone out, I won’t attempt to recall everyone I caught up with, but to everyone I talked to – thanks for the catch-up! We should do it more often.

See more photos from the party in the photo album.

From left: Shaun, Stephanie, me, Hannah, Rosie

P.S. Happy birthday to my other friends, Claire and Rebecca from church! I hope you both had a great day and got a chance to relax and enjoy yourself on your special day

5 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Breadboard

As part of Second Year Electrical and Computer Engineering, students have to attend an induction tutorial in the lab to get familiar with some of the devices and materials that will be used throughout the course. This morning I had my induction lab at 10am in Undergraduate Lab 3 (UG3). To begin with, we were given a talk by a guy named Rogan (I think?) about the Regulations for use of IT Equipment within the ECE Department. He basically outlined the rules of computer use, and told us not to play games online, look at porn or download any movies/television programmes etc. Pretty self-explanatory really. He told us about one time when a student was caught downloading a Harry Potter movie and tried to justify the download by explaining how it related to his coursework. Although that seemed funny to me at the time, Rogan spoke with a serious tone so I refrained myself from making any comical gestures.

We had quite a few things connected to our breadboard.

The crux of the lab was spent using these things called “breadboards”. I hadn’t seen anything like it before but apparently they’re quite common. We worked in pairs and my partner was a girl called Reya (sorry if I got that wrong!). She’s another student doing Computer Systems like me – I’m slowly meeting more people who are in Computer Systems which is reassuring. The basic outline of the lab was to get familiar with using a breadboard and connecting components to make a circuit. We got given a lab manual with detailed instructions, but there was a lot of background reading at the beginning which we just glossed over. Mr. Rob Champion was supervising us for today’s lab, along with several teaching assistants who floated around to help us when we needed it.

The lab induction tutorial detailed instructions to design an RC band-pass filter and amplifier. The circuit was split up into four sections, each section building on the one previous. The first section of the tutorial was the Current Amplifier. We had to play around with the function generator, multimeter and oscilloscope to get the correct readings of voltages and currents, but first we had to plug in all the resistors the BC639 transistor to the breadboard (don’t worry, I don’t even know what a BC639 transistor is either). It took a bit of time to get used to using the breadboard but after a while I became more comfortable with it. By the end of the tutorial we had only completed nearly two of the four sections, but they weren’t expecting us to finish everything and I think we put in a pretty solid effort!

A bit of a blurry photo of me and our breadboard.

There were only three lectures for me after the lab today, everything except MM2. Just quietly, I think MM2 is my least favourite paper right now. I don’t know if it’s just because we’re doing statistical analysis at the moment, but hopefully once we get into some REAL maths it’ll be more enjoyable. On the flip side, my most favourite paper would have to be COMPSYS201 (Computer Engineering) because our lecturer is quite funny (the Elmo T-shirt guy!) and I really like the content in the course. Computer Engineering was our last lecture for the day and afterwards I went to the gym since I missed it yesterday.

Tonight at youth group Calum led worship with the song Indescribable. I played the accompaniment on the piano, well tried to! Tonight’s topic was Bible Study and it was Fiona who led the lesson. We read out of Philippians chapter 2 – looking at Jesus’ humility and how we should be like Him. During our sharing time, we talked about our experiences with being humble, and putting others first before ourselves.

Week one of Uni is over already. Time just goes way too fast.

3 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Sore Limbs

The cicada that flew into the bus

Day 3 of my Uni year. I was really lazy this morning and didn’t decide to get up until after 10am! Shocking I know. I only really had time to have a shower and a quick bite before I had to rush out the door and catch the bus. There weren’t any empty seats when I got on the bus today so I had to sit with a stranger half-way down the aisle. At the next stop one of the ladies near the front of the bus got off just as Julian Tang was getting on. He took her seat, but by that time it would’ve been awkward for me to join him from where I was sitting. Luke Dickinson also caught the same bus as us and he sat next to Julian. They were both wearing the same green-coloured T-shirts and from behind they looked a bit like twins! As we neared our stop in town, a cicada flew into the bus somehow and landed by the window right next to me. I didn’t want to make any sudden movements just in case it leaped off the window and sprayed that cicada fluid stuff all over me (they do that right?). So instead I took a photo of it

After my first lecture finished at 1pm, I went to the gym to continue my 2-day attendance streak since Monday. I was still feeling rather battered and sore from the previous two workouts but I told myself that I couldn’t break the routine! Not long after I started, I was walking through the gym when I heard someone call my name. I turned around to see a beard-faced man on one of the machines. Staring at him for a few seconds jolted my memory before I clicked and realised who he was – Jonathan Wilson from Rutherford! I didn’t even recognise him at first; he looked so different. We had a quick catch-up which was really good after so many years since the TDI Originals in 2006. He’s now studying for his Honours in Jazz Music and plays drums with Nathan King from the NZ band Zed. He’s also the drummer for Life Church in the city and anyone who has heard him on drums will agree with me when I say he’s amazing! He also told me that Michael Elliot (the guy who used to play the bass guitar with him at Rutherford) is now married in Australia! That was a pretty big shock, but congratulations Michael! In our Computer Engineering lecture today, our lecturer was wearing a really cool Elmo T-shirt. I just had to get a photo of it!

My lecturer's Elmo T-shirt

I’m still sore from the gym… I really hope it doesn’t get any worse or else I’ll have real trouble getting up that hill at Albert Park tomorrow!

2 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Student Representative

Beautiful sunrise

I woke up early this morning because I had to be at Uni for a 9am test. The sky in the early morning was really nice too, a kind of peachy-apricot colour. I hadn’t seen anything like it for ages, but then again maybe it’s because I haven’t been awake that early for quite some time!

My dad dropped me off at the bus stop just after 7:40am and I waited there for nearly 20 minutes for the bus to arrive. Angie joined me at the bus stop too, but when we got on the bus it was packed and there were no seats left. Luckily we only had to stand in the aisle until the bus got to Rangeview, since a bunch of kids hopped off and we took their seats. The traffic was pretty bad on the way into town, and I was worried that I might not make it to Uni in time for my test. As it turned out, I made it into my lecture room just on 9am!

Not having studied for the test (because the lecturer told us not to!) I had mixed feelings about how I’d do. The first question was:

The frequency of a sinusoidal signal is inversely proportional to its

a) amplitude
b) phase
c) power
d) period.

After reading that question, my brain  already felt as if it had a mind-block! In the end I chose period just because I vaguely remembered frequency and time being related somehow (is that right?!). The test was supposed to be 30 minutes long but everyone seemed to have finished well before time, except me. I like to think I was just taking my time, though really I was searching every inch of my brain for residual knowledge of last year’s coursework. Thankfully I got to the end and handed my paper in, thinking nothing more of it. After the test I thought I’d go to the gym to clear my mind. Actually I was still feeling quite sore from the gym yesterday so I didn’t expect to go hard out today. There weren’t many people at the gym when I went downstairs, maybe it was still too early for the majority of buff bodybuilders to be working out in the morning. I stayed in the gym for maybe 40 minutes before I decided I had had enough.

There were many clubs set up in the quad

After getting changed I headed back up to the quad where I took a little squiz at the different clubs that were set up. I joined the Hong Kong Engineering Students Association (HKESA) again, mainly for the speed dating night they have which I missed last year! I also joined the Dessert Club again since returning members got a discount to re-join. After circling around the quad for the third time and realising there was nothing left to see apart from the uh, hip-hop dancers, I made my way downstairs and sat outside UBS to eat the sandwiches my dad made me this morning. With still 20 minutes to go before my next lecture, I thought I’d have a little doze while I waited. The nap was short-lived however. I was awoken by Luke Dickinson, who had just arrived at Uni for his afternoon lecture as well. Jesse joined us shortly after and we had a quick chat before we had to split for our lectures.

Today was my first lecture for Fundamentals of Computer Engineering (COMPSYS 201). Our lecturer’s name is Dr. Oliver Sinnen. When he started speaking, it was obvious he was a German. I met a girl who was sitting next to me called Alice, who is a first-year Accelerated Pathways (AP) student in Engineering. She told me that she went to Epsom Girls’ Grammar School last year and knew Jenny from church! The first half of the lecture was spent with introductions before he announced it was time to elect the Student Representatives for Year 2 Electrical and Computer Engineering. Originally I wasn’t going to nominate myself because I didn’t really know what the job involved, but Alice encouraged me to volunteer so in an impulsive moment of spontaneity, I raised my hand. There were five students wanting to run for the position of Computer Systems Student Representative but only two people could be chosen. We had to give a short speech explaining why people should vote for us, though I didn’t really have anything planned. I was fourth in line to speak, and when it was my turn I pretty much just introduced myself and told everyone that I’d stand around outside after lectures if anyone had any concerns they wanted me to bring up with the department staff. Surprisingly enough, I managed to get enough votes to get the position! I had a look at the email we got sent last week about student representative elections and the description says,

As an elected student representative you become a voice of your corresponding student cohort, which is a privilege and a responsibility at the same time. For that reason we do not want students that have been involved in any unprofessional behaviour, like cheating, as they would not have the moral authority to represent the student body.

The student reps have the power to make problems, concerns or comments of the students heard within the organisational structure of the university. Foremost, this is done through the Staff Student Consultative Committee (SSCC) meetings which take place four times per year (11th March, 13th May, 5th August, 30th September, always Thursday 1-2pm). Attended by all student reps and the executive staff members of the ECE Department, each year and programme has the chance to make their issues heard in the department. Two of the reps will also attend the SSCC meetings on Faculty level, also taking place four times per year.

Examples of issues that have been successfully raised by the reps are: better workload balancing, lab equipment, improved room allocations, course material, available software etc. But its not all so serious, the student reps are also involved in the organisation of social student events such as bbqs, student parties, soccer tournaments and part 4 dinners.

I’m starting to wonder if I’ll have what it takes to be a good student representative, but I guess I’m glad I’ve finally taken a step forward and put myself out there. So if you’re a second year Computer Systems Engineering student and you’ve got any questions or concerns, please feel free to let me know!

We had another test in our Circuits and Systems lecture this afternoon. Luckily this test was also just a diagnostic test and isn’t worth anything towards the final course grade. It’s only been two days at uni but already I’m starting to feel immersed in it all again. Yay for afternoon lectures, I can sleep in tomorrow morning!

1 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

First Day Back

Today was the first day of lectures for me back at Uni. Luckily for me, my first class wasn’t until 12pm so I got to sleep for a little bit longer in the morning. After a shower and a bowl of noodles, my mum dropped me off at the bus stop down by the shops. I didn’t have to wait long for the bus to come as I sat there making sure in my mind that I had everything I needed in my bag. When we stopped at the bus stop down Flanshaw Road, I was surprised to see Jesse and Luke get on the bus together. They sat with me and we were like the three Engineering musketeers from Rutherford. They’re both specialising in Civil Engineering this year and we shared timetables as we journeyed into town.

My first lecture was Mathematical Modelling 2 (ENGSCI 211). On the way to class I bumped into Rebecca Cunniffe, who had a lecture in the room nextdoor to me. We walked down the stairs into the library basement passing Ethan and Sue in the process. It was like a Rutherford reunion that lasted a few seconds. The lecture room was already quite full when I arrived so I sat in the second row down at the front. I met a new guy who was sitting next to me called Nick – he’s specialising in Biomedical Engineering this year. I didn’t talk to the girl sitting on my other side though, not for any particular reason, just because the window of opportunity for introductions passed and then it would be awkward if I introduced myself half-way through the lecture. Our lecturer’s name is Dr. Cameron Walker. I remembered him from my Advanced Mechanics (ENGGEN 150) paper last year. After he introduced himself, Cameron told us that he didn’t have any idea what the time was (the clock on the wall wasn’t working and there was no time shown in the corner on his computer screen) so he went on the internet and searched “current auckland time” on Google. For the entire lecture, he had a window open on the projector with a large display of the time (this one) so he wouldn’t go over time. I thought that was pretty ingenious!

After our Mathematical Modelling lecture, I thought I’d head for the gym since I had a 2-hour gap before my next class. As I walking through the Informations Commons though, I met up with Menglu. She was waiting for her twin sister Mengyun to get out of class. Then I found out that Mengyun was actually in the lecture that I just came out of! She’s doing Electrical Engineering this year while Menglu is doing Civil. They introduced me to one of their friends called Manu, who’s doing Computer Systems Engineering just like me. I was glad to have finally found someone else doing the same specialisation as me! Together we all went to the office of one of our lecturers so he could give us our course notes.

Menglu had to go to one of her lectures, so Mengyun and I went to the Engineering library to do some study for our Basic Skills test next week. On the way into the library I bumped into Clinton who was coming out of the library and he told me that he had a test on his first day! Looks like he got dunked straight into the thick of Engineering. Reading over the practice questions for the test made me realise that I had forgotten a lot of what I had learnt last year. I think I’m going to have to cram for the next week to make sure I’m ready!

My second lecture of the day was Circuits and Systems (ELECTENG 202). After a few introductory messages from the course co-ordinator, our first lecturer took over the class, Dr. Waleed Abdulla. He’s actually quite a funny guy. He gave us a brief introduction of what Electrical Engineering is all about, including a slide about Biometrics, which I thought was pretty interesting. He told us that you can tell the difference between a male and a female by the way they walk, demonstrating for us in front of the class. At the end of the lecture, he left us with this quote regarding study (I’m not sure if he made it up himself or not):

An hour a day keeps the failure away.

Straight after that lecture, I had my last class for the day: Electronics 1 (ELECTENG 210). Our lecture’s name was Dr. Mark Andrews, a name that sounded familiar to me yet I didn’t know where from. His introduction lecture was quite entertaining too. He gave us a bit of a shock when he told us there was no coursebook OR lecture slides for the course, and that we’d have to take notes every lecture. I don’t even remember how to take notes properly since we’ve had coursebooks for every other Engineering course so far! He told us that we have a test tomorrow morning to evaluate the level we’re at with Electronics. I hope it’s not too hard because I’ve forgotten a lot of the stuff we learned in Electronics last year as well.

After my last lecture, I decided I’d go to the gym since I didn’t get to go earlier in the day. Being back at the gym for the first time in a couple of months brought back memories, though several of the exercise machines are now in different positions to how I remember them last year. I didn’t stay at the gym for too long because by that time I was getting a bit tired, but I definitely noticed the effect of not going to the gym for so long. This year hopefully I’ll get into a good routine to go so I can get into shape! This time next year I’ll be a changed man!

My first day back at Uni was pretty good overall. So far I’m not behind in any of my coursework (mainly because we haven’t really done anything yet!) but I’m not sure how long that will last. I better get studying for that test tomorrow morning.