The last day of 2007. And a Monday. Putting such negative thoughts aside, I went to work and improved the per shape timer. The problem with the timer (as mentioned on last Thurday, but recapped here for convenience) was that the timer slept for 20 counts before waking up and clearing the screen. However, if the user had already moved on to the next shape and the thread awoke, it will not know that the user had already successfully encircled a shape and carry on to loyally clear the screen.
Well, that has been solved by ensuring that the thread slept for a much reduced time of 2 seconds and when it awoke, it checked if the number of times it has slept already is more than 20 seconds and if the user had moved to the next shape. If the former is true, it will then dutifully clear the screen, as it has been proven that the user is still on the same shape and the count down for the screen to be cleared has been achieved. If the latter is true, it will restart the sleep counter and carry on sleeping again. This way, the timer will become more responsive and be able to adapt to the change in shapes and be more flexible when coding for other situations, such as pressing the 'c' button to manually clear the screen.
Since today is only till 1245hrs, didn't manage to do much as I had somewhere else to go as well.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Today is New Year Day! My goal for 2008? Same as 2007. Does it mean that 2007 has passed with all my efforts in vain?
Actually, I cannot seem to recall my 2007 goal. hmmz.
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Welcome to Situ Yi! Who is JL's long lost cousin. Or so we assume. Anyway, welcome to the team! The first task that we got to do as a Lightdraw team was to... take down the X'mas tree by the receptionist counter and clear the air conditioner of its overflowing water in its reserve. haha. Great way to bond together :)
Today we also welcome back Kevin, to Singapore, after his deserved break in Mauritius. hee. And our really cool supervisor bought us souvenirs too! Kudos to him!
Anyway, when things got serious, we got down to work. shared with the team on the progress of the Lightdraw game as well as took some constructive feedback on improvement to the game play code as well. Had also implemented an overall timer of game which keeps track of how long the user/player takes to complete each level.
Next stop, putting two shapes on the screen at one time and recording & saving the score via File I/O. Hopefully SAB presentation goes well for all too!
Thursday, 3 January 2008
Early morning went down to TP's newly opened visualization lab in ENG school. Saw the displays there - they are really cool and impressive, especially the human skeleton one and the infra-red one. Though many of the technologies there rely on total internal reflection from the glass panel.
But it did take visualization to a whole new level, redefining the way we interact with our computers and how it presents information to us. After seeing some of the displays, I suddenly had this urge to change my entire desktop to use wireless input devices to reduce the wire cluttering at the back. Hmmz..
Back at IHPC, worked on displaying two shapes for the Lightdraw game, instead of just one. Thanks to JL who walked me through the code and some quick adjustments and clarifications from Kevin, managed to complete the code with two shapes appearing on the screen now. Tomorrow its time to refine the code I guess.
Friday, 4 January 2008
Thus week 11 has come to an end. Just merely 4 more weeks and my attachment will be over. Start the day with refining code for the two shape appearing on the screen game. Yesterday had completed the code pretty late in the evening and did not really do much correct/efficient programming. Thus today is the day to think about ways on how to improve the source code.
Walked through the code logic again and re-pondered over the approach of the displaying. Removed lots of printf() statements, as well as some variables which were lying all over the place but not actually used at all. Intending to remove the additional windows displaying the different modes of the input frame (such as canny and original versions) but did not have the time as in the afternoon, many people had to use the Light system for their SAB presentation, which resulted in us not being able to VNC in for performance reasons.
Looks like Monday is the day to do the final clean up of the code.
Reflection of the Week:
This week's reflection is about opportunity. [Once again, its not related to work, but something related to SIP in general]
According to dictionary.com:
op·por·tu·ni·ty [op-er-too-ni-tee, -tyoo-]
–noun, plural -ties.
a good position, chance, or prospect, as for advancement or success.
So what does this mean? In life, there are many windows of opportunities which pass us by. Whether we want to take up this opportunity is one thing. Whether we want to see this opportunity through to greater heights is another. After all, the decision boils down to us, yes? At that moment, to instigate the decision making mechanism within our head to decide if it is a yes or a no for a particular fork in our lives. However, this simple decision mechanism can be easily influenced by many factors, both tangible, such as cash returns, and intangible, such as negative experiences. Now that is the beauty of evolution - our experiences change us, our decisions mould us. After all, if always following the same path of decision making and choosing the same option when faced with the same situation, what is the difference between us and the machine which you read my blog on?
Intelligence. We grow and evolve over time. Artifical Intelligence. How we attempt to make the computer as smart as, if not smarter, than us. But that is a whole new ball game which many people have written countless of books on.
Seeing the OSIP team (India) come back to Singapore made me wonder about the opportunities I am faced with and the corresponding decisions I have made. Every time a particular decision is made, we gain some, we lose some. For example, choosing not to go to India for OSIP means I have lost the opportunity to do some work attachment abroad and gain some valuable experience, as well as the luxury to end my work attachment this week and experience a different country's culture. However staying locally for my SIP allowed me to work with such wonderful people at IHPC and learn many interesting things such as OpenCV and C Programming. Not forgetting many work related skills from our colleagues and our really cool supervisor, who is very friendly and understanding.
How do we gauge which is better than the other? Even now, being close to the end of my work attachment, as well as seeing the India team return to Singapore, I am still unable to decide which yields better returns. Even more so during the initial fork at choosing between local or overseas internship.
The analogy is similar to a game I played often in the past. Choosing one mission over the other - where one mission rescues a family member caught in a war, and another to gain better tactical advantage in the final battle against the enemy. Of course, being a game, there's always that "load previous..." option or the luxury to try again when one option has failed. Unfortunately in reality, there is no try again option - and opportunities that have once been presented may not be presented again.
Of course, there's always the "if there are no opportunities, make your own" quote that some readers would be thinking now. True to a certain extent - we can recreate the opportunity - or rather, we can create a similar opportunity, but we can never have the same experience as compared to the first. To bring it back to the context of the India SIP team, it is possible to re-create the opportunity to go to India to do some work, be it attachment or normal work in the industry, but I will definitely not be able to work with the same people who just came back, or to perhaps work on the same project, stay in the same housing, etc. Same if we did it the other way around - I might not have been able to work on a really great project like Lightdraw, meet great people, etc.
Conclusion? I can't really tell you how my decision making mechanism in my mind works, probably based on all my experience and possible favorable outcome. But once I have made up my mind, I stick to it and do not regret my decision. Being optimistic and open to new experiences is the best way to learn new things and be positive, right?
Interesting occurrence on the way to work
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