I’ve been trying to do a Financial Accounting tutorial for over 3 hours now. It’s times like these that I just feel that my brain has hit it’s limit. I’ve taken accounting before during the O levels but for some reason none of the question makes sense. Have to submit answers later on today to the tutor as my group is presenting next week. Why wont my brain work? Why cant I understand? Well I do understand but I dont understand what the question is asking and its just getting tiring. It’s times like this that I just want to go into a little corner and cry. And to think I’m spending all this time on a freaking tutorial when I have more important things to do like my FYP and TDE projects… Man…. Panic mode setting in? I dont know. Why why why? Who knows? Because certainly I dont know much right now except that I’m going to wake up late in Friday afternoon that is IF I do sleep. Sad life I live.

Get free Microsoft products here. Only for NUS students though, but I’m not sure if its only for SoC students and those with Unix accounts. If there is anybody out there without a Unix account can you try to access the site and comment if you are able to get it. If you are I really wonder why this is not publicised to students. I only found out through a friend who is taking a module where the lecturer told them about it as they needed Visual Studio or something like that.

No reference to the SNL Narnia Rap but just that I just want to have a lazy sunday. Just rest and relax despite having FYP work to do.

Happy Chinese New Year to all who celebrate =) Enjoy the holidays especially here in Singapore until Tuesday. My schedule would be to start and finish 1 assignment tomorrow and as always FYP work. Hopefully I’ll be able to communicate properly between the hardware given thus making FYP in a much better standing.

After collecting my clothes I want to make this clothe folding ‘machine’ which is something I prefer to this clothe folding technique

Anyway I guess its back to work now….
Enjoy the holidays people

At least thats kind of how I feel right now. No sleep last night but the good thing is had more breakthrough for FYP! Thank you Lord! =D So in essence my phone application is more or less done minus the communications that should work but dont due to different implementations of Philips and Nokia sides (well at least it should be different implementations since they dont communicate properly :P).
So I was looking for a Java API to access a device through the USB port and I didnt find an actual proper finalised and up-to-date API for USB for Java on Windows which I think is really a surprise for me. Considering USB is kind of the defacto standard of attaching anything to your computer and with Java actually surpassed C++ on Sourceforge last year, meaning more and more people are developing Java applications. There is a Linux version however, and it supports recent versions reports this article at IBM.
Anyway now time to try for a major breakthrough :P If this works its possible that there will be a working demo instead of a simulation at the next FYP meeting with my supervisor =D

Happy advanced Chinese New Year folks and enjoy the holidays if you have them ;-) Back to FYP……

1) I want to redesign my website now, despite having my FYP to do. Just feel a sudden urge haha
2) I dont know what to do right now for my FYP. Kind of run into roadblocks and just realised that I really dont have a real direction on what I’m supposed to do. In this time of helplessness I turn to God who comforts me. I believe this is a test for me to trust the Lord more :) Thank you Lord and I pray that I persevere. I cannot remember who said it but something somebody said just struck me. It goes something like this: “There is no such thing as luck, however perseverse and opportunities will arise that make it seem as if it is luck. Its 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration”. Well it really went something like that :P
So anybody going through hard times just persevere. :)

PS I will have to discipline myself not to redesign the website however more talking of it makes me want to do it even more!!! :P

Having problems installing my old Lexmark Z13 printer. When installing the driver a Software License Agreement pops up but it never pops up fully because it doesnt respond anymore as show below.

This is annoying. Tried uninstalling the old drivers and reinstalling it and still the same problem. Had this problem before and after some luck it just managed to work. Annoying….

Using the Intel Core Duo, the new MacBook Pro and the iMac have been unveiled at Macworld 2006.

Wacth Job’s keynote address: Over 1.5 hours but the good stuff happens just after the hour. Having a bit of a problem watching it despite being in the school network. Some times the audio just disappears.

And yes dual booting with Windows is possible. So now who wants a mac?

Back to fyp…

Just finished a Quake 3 session :D
KQuery rocks!
Night people and Selamat Hari Raya Haji

** Updated at 14:54:51 on 2006/01/09 **
And as always I never finished my holiday list :P
Note to self, try to fix my amx mod. Went out to to buy a new phone today due to the fact that the phone that I’m using for my FYP died on Friday. Just couldn’t switch on. I would see the white backlight then it automatically switches off. And since its an overseas phone (from Europe I believe) its not covered under the warranty here. I sent it to Nokia care centre in Suntec and got a quotation of $488 to repair the phone. Now who would want to do that if it cost $210 to buy a new phone? Anyway last semester 3 modules + FYP on top of that leading to a official 3 day week but if you include FYP it could be like a 7 day week? :P

Anyway have fun for the coming semester people. Have fun and all the best and I continue to stuggling with trusting God and socialisation (which I believe I have had little exposure to in my school life after primary and pre-University). Attended the 1st session of my church’s (COOS!!!) Baptism Membership Class.
Memory verse
John 1:12
Yet to all those you receive him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.
Memory Psalm
Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepard I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
He leads me besides quiet waters,
He restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil, for You are with me,
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies,
You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows,
Surely goodnes and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever

With that good night folks and God bless

Finally some progress on Philips side. The hardware, which is an NFC shell, for 1 part of my FYP (final year project) has finally arrived and will be picking it up on Tuesday =D After getting the phone (cant seem to remember when I got the phone due to the hectic schedule I’ve had since I got back) that supports this shell I’ve been trying to work out the kinks in the programming and stuff. The SDK that Philips provided to us (which is actually from Nokia) is kind of screwed up. Had to install them in the proper order and kept getting funny errors. It could partially be my fault as I am lazy to read the installtion and manuals. Out of the little that I did read I was able to configure it properly and finally got the 1st part of the 2 part installation to work. I could develop handphone programs using Eclipse.

I’ve never used Eclipse before so getting used to the IDE and trying to find out how it works is always a pain to me. The tutorial provided seems to pathetic to me, unless there was a more indepth one which I missed. What I hated most was the fact that I could NOT Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+Tab to alternate between tabs in the program. That completely sucked. I remapped the keys but that didnt seem to work either. However I couldnt get the NFC part to work with Eclipse. From problems with ANT where I accidentallby put a trailing ” at the end of the ANT_HOME variable caused ANT to not work properly to Eclipse seemingly compiling the application downloading it to the emulator phone and the phone not being able to find a class required by the program thus giving an error on startup to not being able to create a JAR file due to the fact that it could not load a class in the SDK JAR file. Like what the heck. Something to note, why do IDEs have to make things so complicated??? Just trying to run or compile the project was a pain as I had to go an extra step to just create a special configuration for it. There doesnt even seem to be a compile option just run which compiles and automatically runs the program.

After the whole day trying to get Eclipse to work nicely with the NFC SDK, I decided to give up and try Netbeans. And guess what it works! Kind of. When I run the program in Netbeans it runs on the emulator however it uses a different emulator compared to Eclipse. It uses the Java Wireless Toolkit emulator instead of the S40 Emulator that I downloaded from the Nokia Forum. So when I added the S40 SDK that would run the program in the S40 emulator the program decides to not work on the emulator. However using Netbeans I could create the JAR file which I can use the S40 standalone emulator (where I manually start it up, not via Eclipse or Netbeans) to manually download that JAR file created to run the application. So I guess this is my workaround. It’s times like these that makes me wonder if I should just spend time (who knows how much of it though) to actually find out what the problem is and try to understand how both Eclipse and Netbeans work (as learning IDEs would be good), not to mention the several Nokia applications that got bundled up with the SDKs (S40 and NFC SDKs) or just live with the workaround and just continue and finish up my FYP ASAP.

Anyway been having male PMS for the past few days I swear. IYWSDRYHTDIY: if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Club stuff. Sucks. Whatever. Anyway got my final modules that I will be doing in NUS, EE4217 Technology of Digital Entertainment, CS3221 Advanced Operating Systems, FNA1002 Financial Accounting and last but not at all the least, EE4001 B.Eng Dissertation, ie Final Year Project. I should go to sleep now. Going to the nightwatch service 2230-0030 later on today. In the afternoon cell will be converging to Joline‘s place just to hang out and basically rot, something I rather do a lot of right now but not much time to do so. Feel there’s a lot to do for my FYP as the phone application that I’m doing in J2ME is just 1 application, there still is another PocketPC application to be done, not to mention a desktop application + thesis writing + whatever else FYP throws at me. Anyway people time to sleep. Good night, belated Merry Christmas and advanced Happy New Year!