Mixed Entry

Hi, lacking entries for about 2 weeks.
First, let me begin with today meeting for assignment.

Went to school at around 12:15 to explain Java to my friend from Engineering. The whole school was quiet because of school holiday - SUNDAY! At 1:40pm, Ryan and Lokman reached school and we started doing EWAD proposal. I did screen flow diagrams while Lokman and Ryan edited the proposal.
At around 4pm, Kaiwen arrived and we change to SWEN assignment. We prepared ppt slides for presentation.

October Intake Orientation
Last week, I was busy because I was in charge of Logistics for our IIT school orientation. The orientation was 2 days (Thursday and Friday). Being in charge of Logistic together with Ryan, we went to Sports Complex and brought many things such as chairs, amplifier, walkie-talkie, so on and so forth. This October Intake, there are two classes/care groups for Diploma in Information Technology and one for Diploma in Mobile & Wireless Computing. This time, there are very few international students. None of them are from Myanmar. I was also taking photos of orientation. The orientation was very first one organized by our IT SIG and MWC SIG. It was a success because of all the efforts from SIG members and especially good planning and arrangement from Yang Lin and Quin Quin.

Canon Photomarathon
Then on Saturday 20th, I took part in Canon Photomarathon. It was my first time joining that kind of big competition. Over 1000 shutter bugs took part and it was Singapore's Biggest Live Photo Contest recorded in Singapore Book of Records. I woke up early, at about 5:30 am in the morning and went to the registration venue which is Suntec Convention Center Lobby. I reached there at about 7:20am. And to my surprise, there were lots of people. The queue for registration was so long. Need to queue for about 45mins to finished registration. Met with Serena, Suan Yang, Marian, Dickson and Noel there. Went up to lvl 3 for briefing and announcement of theme. The first theme was "Passion". When I heard the theme, I was not sure about what to shoot. We all walked around Suntect and thought of what to shoot. Time given was short. We needed to return to Suntect by 12:30. The time was around 10:00am. We thought and thought. Finally we decided to go to shoot at Maxwell Food Center. We took bus and went to Amoy Street. We did not managed to reach Maxwell Food Court. Instead, we took photos at Amoy Street Food Center. We also took photos at Chinese Temple near the food court. Then, we took bus back to Suntec to upload photos. I couldn't took good photo to submit for the competition. The photo I submitted was just so-so.

Then, we reached Suntec at around 12:30pm. The queue for photo uploading was also so looong. Second theme was "Challenge", also a difficult theme to shoot for me. Suan Yang suggested to go to a underpass tunnel near Singapore River to shoot a photo for his idea. At the underpass, he asked Dickson and Noel to jump and kick at each other in the air. The shot was interesting. For the second time, I didn't shoot a photo. Instead, I submitted a photo taken in the morning.

Third theme was "Playtime". We all went to food court first to have late lunch at around 3:30pm. Then, went to top level to shoot children playing near Toy R Us. After that, we went back to Suntec to submit photos and rested and viewed the slideshow of photos submitted by participants. We all were tired after shooting the whole day. At around 8:30, results were announced. We all did't win any prize. SY challenge photo was in Top 10.

I had gained a new experience of walking here and there, travelling and shooting the whole day.
The follow is some of the shots taken during the day.



Week 1 of October Semester
Finally, long awaited semester started on 22nd October, Monday. First lecture started at 12noon. But I went to school at around 1oam to print out lecture/lab notes. After printing, went to Mensa alone, had lunch and attended 2hours of lecture (Software Engineering and Enterprise Web Application Development). After one hour break, attended 3-HOUR LAB. My first taste of block teaching. I got 3-hour long labs everyday from Monday to Thursday.

EWAD is interesting. Teach about how to develop a web application using XTHML, Java, Servlet, JSP and databases. I now will be able to learn how to create a web application as well as database connections.

SWEN is PBL subject. During tutorials and labs, we need to do our own research for assignment part 1 which will due in one week time. Me, Ryan, Lokman and Kaiwen grouped together and did research from different resources such as wikipedia, the Internet as well as some thick books from library.

Block teaching enables me to focus on only two subject which is good for me to concentrate and find out more about these subjects. But one drawback is that, assignments are due in very short time. So, we need to start and do assignments as fast as we can in order to avoid last minute rush to finish them.

End of a long and mixed entry.

Sem Briefing

Today is the briefing for coming semester. Went to school at 10am. Met with all my classmates in the LT. Today, timetable had not come out yet. So, I am not sure whether we, ENT option students, from C133 will be in the same class or not. Wishing to be in the same class as my current classmates. Need to wait until next morning 10am to know the timetable.

There are 2 major changes announced by our course manager, Mr Lim.

1st change is that name of our school. Our school name had been changed from Temasek Information Technology School to Temasek Informatics & Information Technology School. Before the briefing, I was not very sure about the meaning of the word "Informatics". During briefing, CM (course manager) explained that in short Informatics means information technology for people. We are now focusing on solving problems faced by people by using IT. So we must not only know IT but also know other important domain such as business, banking, etc. So that we can apply our knowledge effectively.

Another more important change is that this coming semester we will be in block mode. There will be two blocks "Block A" and "Block B" each 10 weeks (actually 8weeks+2weeks of holidays). During "Block A", two subjects will be taught and 4 will be taught in "Block B". These two subjects are purely 100% CA subjects meaning that there will be no exams. But instead we need to put much effort in assignments and problem packages. And they must be done and submitted within 8 weeks. So, quite short time given for projects compared to last sem.

One of the good thing about block teaching is that we can focus in two subjects. No need to handle 5, 6 subjects at the same time. But we must be focused and quite be fast-paced to catch the fast speed of teaching.

This Thursday and Friday, I will be helping out in October Intake Orientation. Will upload more photos I have shot after the orientation. :)

Disposable Camera

Here, I would like to share my photos taken during VC's latest "Back to Basics" Photo Expedition on 6 October 2007 (Saturday). As the name suggests, all of us were really back-to-basic of photography equipment: Disposable Fim Cameras which were bought by Suan Yang, the organizer of the expedition from Triple D. It is the simplest photographic equipment. No need to load film, no manual control of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, zoom, etc..etc... Just frame the shot through the viewfinder and click the shutter release button. Just Point and Shoot. So, this expedition emphasize on a person's eyes for photography and composition skills, which are vital in photography.

Every body can shoot and showcase their eyes, passion, love, interest in photography without considering or wondering about photographic techniques and jargons which are used commonly in SLR/DSLR cameras. I don't mean you no need to know those stuff in photography. But for a normal person who is interested in photography but using normal digital cameras, this is the first step for the big photography world.

This reminds me of myself when I joined Visual Central last year. At that time, I have very limited knowledge about those photography terms and techniques and I was just using a simple digital camera to shoot photos. All I knew was to shoot photo when I saw something interesting. But after joining Colour/Black and White photo expeditions, I gained invaluable experiences from my seniors in VC through interacting with them and learning from them.

So, in my opinion, this expedition triggered every body's interest to shoot and learn about photography. I had a very nice time interacting with everyone, members and among main comm. It was Fun. I believe all participants also enjoyed the expedition. I also had seen many interesting and nice shots during the critic session. And I belive that VC will have many more interesting and exciting events/expedition in the future. :)

Ok.. let me stop my writings here. I have upload some photos taken during the expedition below.

#1 Reflection 1

#2 Under Construction

#3

#4 Merlion

#5 Entry Denied

#6 Reflection 2

#7 Up

#8 New

#9 Number 9

China Town Mid Autum Lighting

These photos were shot about 3 weeks ago... It is delaying in posting. Now, the mid-autumn "Moon Cake" Festival is over. Had eaten mook cakes bought by my gradma as well as from Myanmar. The taste and the formula is different. Both are nice.

Sunset @ TP

Sunset scenes in TP are very spectacular and beautiful sometimes. With the backdrop of Bedok Reservoir, the evening sun rays and sometimes cloud patterns paint a perfect picture. But all time time, I never had my camera with me and didn't have a chance to shoot.

But, on the 25th of September, I was attracted by the sunset and sun rays coming out from the back of the huge cloud when I was on the way to shoot for Magical Autumn Festival at school. The scene was so beautiful. I quickly took out my camera and snapped a few shots. Then I walked around the Koi Pound area to shoot for preparations for the event. Then, about 10 mins later, I saw another photographer shooting the sunset near the design canteen using Sony Alpha DSLR. He showed some of the shots he had taken, and his shots were also nice.

So, I took out my camera again and starting to shoot. First few shots, I just use my zoom to shoot the sunset scene but I realized that I wanted to add some interesting foreground element with the backdrop of the sunset. Then I used a tree as silhouette, used ISO 100 to get smooth picture and Clear Picture style to make the shot more contrasting. The end result is below:



The other shot without the tree:


Larger sizes of photos can be seen here.