17 April, 2012 in Development, Interests, Personal by Aonghas

Aonghas 0.5 Beta Font Released

The 0.5 Beta release for "Aonghas Font" is available for download!

For years I’ve always wanted to create my own font that looked similar to my handwriting but I never had a good way of creating one. I finally got round to doing it recently though, and it’s here for you to download too! Simply click the link of the True-Type Font (TTF) file at the bottom of this post and install it on your computer so you can write like Aonghas as well! Bear in mind that this is still a work in progress, so I haven’t ironed out all the kinks yet. So far there are more than 250 glyphs in the character set, but I’ve still got hundreds yet to complete (and also tweaking current ones as well!). Let me know how it goes and if there’s any problems be sure to tell me so I can fix them up! Hopefully I can create some more fonts in future!

23 January, 2012 in Church, Personal by Aonghas

What Christianity Means to Me

Christianity to Me

Recently I’ve started a bible study course called ‘Experiencing God’ by Henry Blackaby with a few others from my youth group at church. The study involves daily devotion five times per week and a group session where we meet up and share what we’ve learnt as well as watch a sermon-like presentation on a DVD. The course has made me think about my relationship with God, and I’m continuing to learn more as we go. Since several people have asked me about Christianity in the past, I thought I’d share a little bit about how I got to be where I am in my faith today.

Before I get into my thoughts on Christianity, I must warn you beforehand that these are purely opinions of my own and I am not trying to offend anyone in the process! In the past I’ve always felt a little iffy talking about religion with people, especially with those who I haven’t known for long. A lot of people have preconceptions about Christianity and I think many of them are misunderstandings. Unlike some other Christians (often “Christians” are stereotyped as being those people who change every conversation into a conversation about religion and people think their only purpose in life is to convert as many people to Christianity as possible), I don’t believe in forcing my beliefs on any other person in any way. My philosophy, and I think the attitude that Christians generally live by, is that I should live my life in accordance to God’s will and always remember the fruit of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (you can read about them in Galatians chapter 5 if you want ). I think that if I can show other people those qualities in myself, they will see the difference in me and, in essence, God’s character. It’s that difference that I believe leads people to want to know more about God. Simply telling people about God and Christianity has little effect; showing people how I behave differently through my actions will trigger those curiosities. That’s when sharing my faith with others becomes worthwhile because I know their interests are genuine. Okay that was a long disclaimer.

So here we go. My thoughts on religion, and namely Christianity (which many Christians believe is more a relationship rather than a “religion” per se). I’ve taken the liberty of breaking my little rant into a few sections so that I don’t lose track of where I am, since I have a tendency to do so…

The simple idea that a God exists is key to any religious belief system and I think once you make that realisation many other things make more sense. I cannot understand how anyone can deny creation. No matter how you look at it, nothing can be created from nothing. There had to be a higher order or an existence of a supernatural being behind the origin of the universe. So then if we can conclude that God exists, the next question is what religion to believe. One of my friends once told me that he took different things from different religions based on what he liked. The problem with this kind of ideology is that because religions contradict each other, you cannot really believe in one religion and another one at the same time. Truth is absolute, so if Christianity is true, all other religions are effectively invalidated. I know that sounds harsh, but that’s ultimately what it comes down to.

Now I guess you’re wondering what makes Christianity the ultimate truth for me? I guess there are many aspects of Christianity that are unique from the other religions. One of the main reasons Christianity stands out for me is that Jesus provides the link between man’s shortcomings and eternal life. No matter how hard we try, we cannot rid ourselves of sin. That’s why Jesus came to die on the cross for us. There’s a whole background behind that story in the old testament of the Bible, but the whole Jesus dying on the cross story is pretty much the cornerstone of Christian belief and I probably shouldn’t go into too much depth here because it opens up a whole new topic of theology and we can save that for another day. I haven’t really said too much about Christianity itself, but if you’re interested I really encourage you to have a look at this website called www.faithfacts.org because it has a lot of interesting information and it will answer any of your questions a lot better than I can! I think it’s important that you compare the different religions out there. To me the choice was pretty obvious.

When I have shared my faith with friends in the past, they have usually been interested in hearing my story, but they haven’t yet made that decision themselves. One comment I got once was “the difference between you and me is that I’ve never let myself go”. I think I kind of understand what she meant, in that she was afraid to take that leap of faith because she still wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do. Maybe she felt like she didn’t know enough to make an informed decision yet, or perhaps she was worried about trusting in something that seems intangible. I think it’s normal for people to feel like that (I think I did too at first). Like, you cannot see God so how should you be able to rely on Him? That’s a fair question to have. For me personally, I wouldn’t say I have “let myself go”. Instead I like to think I have made a conscious decision to “grab on” to God to become more stable. It’s interesting to hear from some friends that they felt that “throwing yourself out there and believing in everything” would make them feel vulnerable and insecure, whereas I can only imagine vulnerability and insecurity in a life without God. This reminds me about another conversation I had with a friend where we were talking about what we value the most. My friend said the thing we value the most is our greatest weakness. I value God/Jesus Christ the most in life, but what if He was taken away from me? How would I cope? Well, the simple answer to that question is that it’s impossible for that to happen. God is the constant in my life and I know that He will be there always. I’m reminded by a Bible verse we learnt years ago in Sunday School class. In Deuteronomy 31:6 Moses said to Israel, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” And that verse is so true. God is with me wherever I go and will never leave.

My illustration of how we are connected with God

When I was talking to a friend a while ago, she was telling me how she relied on her family and her friends to get her through the tough times. I told her how I relied on God first and foremost and used an analogy of a baby mobile hanging over a crib to describe my situation. Basically God is the backbone (or the hanging bar on the mobile) and I am one of the hanging objects. Although I can interact with others (the other hanging objects) and have relationships with them, everyone goes through difficulties and can fall if they’re not careful. If I was to completely rely on another person and he or she fell down, I would not have anything else to support me and I would also fall. However, having God is like wearing a harness (which can also be thought of as Jesus, who took away our sins and bridged us directly to God). It’s that safety that keeps me afloat and also provides support for others around me. Ideally in future, my whole family will be attached with their own harnesses, and together we’ll stay strong together under God’s care and provision.

Since becoming a Christian, I feel like my life has changed. Pretty dramatically actually. I used to wonder what the purpose was in life. I think many people in the world spend their whole lives trying to discover the answer to that question and end up going round and round in circles. Believing in life after death (which is in heaven) adds a whole dimension to the way I think and how I approach my everyday life. I’m not scared about death anymore. Money and financial wealth isn’t everything. I thank God for everything good that happens, and I’m storing my treasures in heaven rather than on earth. Why satisfy myself with worldly temptations just to enjoy my short time of earth and sacrifice an eternity of paradise after I die? That’s not to say you cannot enjoy an enriched and fulfilling life as a Christian. I remember a Bible teacher at primary school telling me how she always prayed for a car park when she went to Bible College and God would always provide her with one even when it was really busy. I’ve never forgotten that story, and only recently have I realised that behind the scenes, God has REALLY provided for me over the years. I know this might sound cheesy or lame or whatever, but I honestly feel like I can always turn to God for anything at all and I know He’ll be there for me. It truly amazes me how many things happen by “coincidence” to the point that I cannot put it down to chance anymore. Some call it fate; I call it God working in my life.

So there you have it. I don’t think that was fully comprehensive but it’s a start at least. If you’re not a Christian yet but you’ve considered God or wondered what your purpose is in live, I strongly encourage you to have a look into Christianity. Find a Christian friend or ask me if you have any questions. I don’t have the all the answers but I’d be happy to help by sharing what is true to me and what can be true for you as well. I know this topic can be a sensitive area sometimes. I just wanted to be open about it because it’s a pretty important part of my life and I wanted to share it with you.

4 January, 2012 in Personal, Thoughts and Reflections by Aonghas

2012 Has Arrived!

Happy New Year everyone. Yeah woops this post is about 3 days overdue now but the partying has just finished… no I lie, I’ve been working at Cotton On for the last 2 days because I’ve been appointed acting manager while our company tries to find a replacement. Over the last few weeks I’ve learnt several things about managing people and dealing with others. The Christmas period was hectic as predicted, and I was given extra responsibility to lead my co-workers at Cotton On. It’s definitely a change from working by myself normally on Sunday afternoons. I’ve thought a lot about this coming year as well and it’s going to be an important one. My final year of my degree (if all goes well), as well as new responsibilities and my first proper year of “adulthood” – it won’t be easy but I’m excited to see how it will unfold.

I just thought I’d start the year fresh with a blog post but it’s not very long! My deeper thoughts about this year will come out in a later post perhaps

21 November, 2011 in Personal by Aonghas

Summer is Just Around the Corner!

It’s been just over a week since my last exam and it’s been so refreshing to have some spare time for a change. The semester just gone sure did have its moments of stress, and at times I wondered how I’d ever make it through to the end. Thankfully I survived three exams and, fingers crossed, hopefully I managed to pass them as well. Now that I have three and a half months off before uni starts again next year, it’s that time of the year to plan what I want to achieve over the summer break. So straight off the top of my head, let’s see what I can think of:

• Finish all the video projects I had to put on hold
• Start cycling again; go to the gym regularly
• Sort out all my paperwork from uni this year
• look into setting up a green screen studio
• find a summer job for engineering
• revise everything I learned this year at uni

Summer is just around the corner so don’t let it pass by without achieving what you set out to do! Hopefully I can listen to my own advice!

2 November, 2011 in University by Aonghas

An Extra Day’s Grace

Today I woke up later than I wanted to (again) to start another day’s study (again). After a couple of hours I decided that I wasn’t making much progress and the fact that Jeremy Kyle was trying to give advice to another set of bogans on TV in the background didn’t help either. My mum tried to keep me awake by giving me some green tea but I still found it hard to concentrate and actually make some progress. I decided to take a shower and go into uni so that I could start studying with a fresh mind away from anything that might distract me.

When I got into uni I walked through the quad and bumped into Vas and Sushi who were both having lunch. They told me that they had already had an exam and that Systems and Control was their last exam next Wednesday (which is my first exam). They said Wednesday. And I told them it was on Tuesday. But they insisted it was Wednesday so I checked my phone and sure enough they were right! Suddenly a micro sigh of relief passed through me, because it meant I had an extra day to study (believe me, I can do with ANY extra time to study right now), although it also meant I had one less day to study for my other two exams. But that didn’t matter at that moment, because I was most worried about Systems and Control. I headed to the undergraduate labs and found a space to study. There were a couple of other people in the room when I arrived but they left a few hours later. For the rest of the evening I spent my time looking over Laplace transforms and I was pleased when I managed to do some questions I was stuck on last night.

Slowly but surely I think I’m learning. I just hope I’ll be somewhat ready this time next week! Tomorrow I’m planning to go to uni early in the morning, so it’s early bedtime tonight!

29 October, 2011 in Guides and Tips, University by Aonghas

Time to Cram!

Don't be tempted to sleep while you're cramming!

So you look at your calendar and realise your first exam is less than two weeks away and you haven’t studied. At all. Not only that, but you were half asleep in most of your morning lectures so you don’t even know what you were supposed to have learnt. You really have two options in these situations: you can either (a) not study and just wing the exam, hoping for the best or (b) start cramming like there’s no tomorrow. Hopefully if you’re like me, you’ll have come to to the conclusion that simply winging a test or exam never goes down too well, so your only option left of course is to start studying like crazy!

But how are you supposed to cram all that information into what little time you have left? Is it even worth the effort? Although cramming for an exam is never encouraged, desperate times are unavoidable sometimes, and you have to work with what you’ve got. From doing a little research online and from previous experience, there are definitely tips that can help get you on your way to becoming a Master Crammer. Here are some important pointers you may find useful:

Before you start cramming

• Find the right place to study. I often try to study in a silent environment away from others I know I will get distracted by. Avoid places where distractions like TV or Facebook access may become tempting. Some people like to listen to music while they study, but I find that it can be distracting sometimes, especially if the songs have lyrics. I would suggest listening to quiet non-lyrical music if you feel uneasy in a silent environment.
• Good lighting. You will want to study in a well-lit area with enough working space on a table.
• Sit at a table. I try to avoid lying on a sofa or on the floor because these positions get too comfortable and encourage me to fall asleep too easily.
• Be prepared. Make sure you have all the stationery and resources you need before you get into it. It’s not only annoying to have to find a glue stick or highlighter half-way through your study, but it can interrupt your flow of thoughts and concentration.
• Make a plan. Have a rough estimate of how long you want to be studying for each subject/topic. The worst thing would be to spend a whole day studying one topic and still not understanding it, whereas you could have moved on a lot earlier and completed more as a result.

While you are cramming

• Stay focused. It’s easy to let your mind wander about what you’re going to have for dinner/breakfast, what your friends are saying on Facebook, etc. but you can’t let those thoughts distract you. Often when I find myself starting to lose concentration, I remind myself when my exam is and how much I still have left to study. Usually that’s enough to scare me back into study mode.
• Stay hydrated. When people think about studying/cramming for long periods of time (often throughout the night), they immediately think that energy drinks will do the trick. While they may work for some people, I find that green tea or even just hot (not boiling) water works best for me. Milo is good the first time, but if you’re planning to study for a long time you don’t want to have that warm milky after-taste lingering around. Hot drinks help you stay warm during those all-nighters as well!
• Track your progress. You may feel like you’re achieving nothing after several hours of study. Don’t worry, keep going. It’s a good idea to test your knowledge after each chapter/section by trying a practice question or trying to recall facts you have just read.
• Active studying. Don’t just read your notes. Write key points down, say something out loud a few times. Come up with mnemonics to help you remember steps or processes easier. They say that your brain can only remember 5-7 things at a time, so break bigger chunks down and group similar points together to trick your mind into thinking it only has to remember a smaller number of things.
• Look at previous examples. If you have access to previous exam papers, have a look through them beforehand and if you have several years’ worth of previous exams, compare them to see if there are trends. If you have access to the answers as well, don’t look at them before you start studying. Have a go at the questions first, and then see what the answer is. That way you can see how closely you answered the question, and see what you have to change. It’s easy to simply look at the answer and understand it without trying to answer it first, but often it’s coming up with an answer yourself that’s the hardest part.
• Take regular breaks. By regular I mean around once every 3 hours. I find 3 hours to be a good length for each sitting because it’s generally the length of an exam so you can train your mind to concentrate for that long. And by the way, breaks are only supposed to be long enough to go to the bathroom, maybe a quick snack and have a stretch. Don’t even think about going near Facebook.

After cramming

• Lather. Rinse. Repeat. One session of cramming is not enough. I would like to think you would have thought about studying at least a few days prior to your exam and not just the day before. The more cramming sessions you have, the more information you will retain.

All the best with your cramming. I better get back to mine.

28 October, 2011 in Social, University by Aonghas

CompSys Class Rep Lunch

I had Thai green curry for lunch

We’ve been meaning to have a lunch for the CompSys class reps this year but it was always postponed – until today. Thanks to the second year class rep Kenny, we managed to meet up for lunch with Dr Partha Roop, our course director and Head of Department. Partha suggested we go to a Thai restaurant close to uni called Khao Thai, so we met at his office at 12pm and walked down to the restaurant together. The purpose of the meeting was to thank all the class reps for their efforts this year, especially the Part 4 reps Jonathan and Isuru as they are graduating next year, and also to discuss ways in which can give the Computer Systems programme more exposure to businesses and connect with industry. We talked about hosting an event to show businesses in the industry what we’re doing (project work etc) and I also suggested that we make a promotional video that shows what CSE is all about. Partha really liked the idea of a promotional video, so I might get started on it after exams are finished. The lunch was really nice, I had Thai green curry and Partha paid for all of us which was very generous of him!

From left: Aonghas, Kenny Doria, Jonathan Foulkes, Dr Partha Roop, Isuru Pathirana, Haihao Zhang, Jervis Ferreira

30 June, 2011 in Personal by Aonghas

A Coughing Start to the Holidays

I was really looking forward to the beginning of the holidays. After I finally finished my last exam (which just happened to be on the last day of exams!) I thought things were going to get better, but unfortunately for me it was just the start of what would become a downward spiral of health. I should start from the beginning though…

My last exam was on Monday 27 June in the morning – hardware design programming. Seeing as it was my last exam and I didn’t want to fail, I thought I could probably stay up really late and study into the wee hours of the morning. I figured if I could just make it through the 3 hour exam, then it wouldn’t matter if I was completely wasted afterwards because I’d be on holiday by then and I could just sleep it off for the rest of the day (or even week for that matter). so after falling asleep close to 5am and then having to wake up at 7, I didn’t really get much sleep and I was feeling a bit woozy in the morning. Nothing that a cup of green tea couldn’t fix, I thought to myself. In fact the exam turned out to be not as bad as I thought, and I think I probably answered most of the questions adequately. When the exam was over, I was exhausted. I just wanted to go home and hibernate. It wasn’t until then that I realised I was fostered on to work at IC that night from 7pm till midnight! Uh oh… Either way I still needed sleep so I decided to catch the next bus home and I slept until I had to catch the bus back into town. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make it through the whole shift awake, but because it was the last day of exams, there weren’t many students still at uni that night thankfully. At 7:45 I had to go downstairs to cover the break for short loans. It was probably the quietest 45 minutes I have ever worked at uni. Not one person came in the whole time I was there and I ended up giving my eyes a rest without realising. Near the end of my shift I started to feel lightheaded. I didn’t feel nauseous as if I wanted to vomit, but my head felt like it was taking longer to move than the rest of my body. I didn’t want to be a nuisance so I tried to press on, but it was quickly becoming apparent that I needed sleep. Luckily the taxi ride home was swift and I managed to get to sleep before long.

The next couple of days were not much better. In fact, Tuesday was probably the worst. I ended up lying in bed, restless with a headache and cough. Not exactly the best way to start the holidays. I’m starting to feel a bit better now but I just hope I’ll be fit enough to go to the V20 Conference tomorrow.

9 June, 2011 in Development, Personal by Aonghas

Introducing PicStream

PicStream is a new initiative for photo sharing

I often take random photos on my camera, phone or iPad whenever I see something interesting, but I never knew how to organise or categorise them properly into albums. As a result they always ended up stored in memory somewhere and I’d never look at them again. I wanted some easy way to share these moments and memories with everyone, so after some thought and quick brainstorming I created the PicStream initiative. Similar to photo blogging in some ways, PicStream is a running stream of photos that I plan to add to everyday which basically displays things I come across in my daily life journey. Whether it be people I meet, places I go to, random signs or symbols I see or friends sleeping in lectures, PicStream will hopefully one day become quite a unique album of photos. I’m planning to extend PicStream in future, but I hope you enjoy browsing through the photos in the meanwhile. You never know, you might end up in the PicStream yourself one day!

Note: Initially you will only be able to see the 8 most recent photos on the homepage. In future there wil be a gallery where you can view all the photos in PicStream.

7 June, 2011 in University by Aonghas

Two Weeks to Go

In exactly two weeks from now I will have my first of three exams for this semester. My first exam is for the management (ENGGEN 303) course and I’ve got to admit, although the content isn’t conceptually hard to understand for the most part, there is a lot of content to cram into two weeks, not to mention the other two subjects I still have to study for. For the management course we were pretty much introduced to some important aspects of business management, specifically management relating to the engineer. We started off by learning about accounting and all the different financial statements that are usually involved when it comes to dealing with money in the professional industry. Our lecturer’s name for the accounting section of the course was Jordi Garcia, and I created a Facebook fan page just for him after he succeeded in delivering what is perhaps one of the most boring subjects (in my opinion!) in a way that was somewhat interesting. I’ll never forget about the “magic pen” business model he used throughout all his lectures as a way to demonstrate examples. Luke Dickinson, you know what I’m talking about

The second half of the semester focussed more on project management and strategies that businesses use to schedule projects etc. We were taught about innovation and had several guest lecturers come to talk to us about their respective careers involving management of some kind. The only reason I remember this much is because we had to write weekly reflections about what we had learnt in class. They were kind of a pain to do at the time, but I guess in the end the did actually help me retain at least some of what I had learnt in class.

The next two weeks are going to be a tricky balancing act for me as I try to work out how much time to spend on each subject leading up to the exams. I’m sure procrastination and distractions will try their best to lead me off track, but I’m going to do everything I can to stay focussed! Studying at uni till after 10pm tonight is perhaps the first step in achieving that goal!