What I got up to this afternoon:
This is a Pioneer Robot autonomously driving and navigating in my office. I programmed the A* search of the map of the environment and the waypoint generator which is then passed to an autonomoy controller (not programmed by me) which moves the robot.
Students’ Associations appear to be up in arms about New Zealand universities kicking out students who perform poorly.
From the Stuff.co.nz article:
Financially stressed universities have revealed they will significantly increase the number of students who are shown the door, saying they only want “motivated students”.
The university has introduced a policy in which any student whose grade point average is less than 1.5, or who has not passed half or more of their courses will have their progress automatically reviewed. Grade point averages are ranked up to nine.
Student associations were concerned that toughening up admission requirements went against New Zealanders’ sense of fairness and their sentiment that people should be given a “fair go”.
Students are already given a fair go. They are given a fair go through doing well in the exams before getting into university or in their first semester. If they do not take their fair go to do well in their exams through study then they should be shown the door. If they are not then the education system in New Zealand becomes nothing more than people paying for the piece of paper they get after three years and not earning it through hard work. This cheapens the quality, value and prestige of the institute so good on them for taking a tough stance.
There is a big problem with attitude amongst students at New Zealand universities many students have the attitude that C’s get degrees. At the moment that is true. But it shouldn’t be. Passing with a GPA of 1.5 is hardly passing – it is the equivalent of 4 C- and 4 C grades. A pass yes. Success no. At a minimum to get into post-graduate study you need a GPA of 6.0 (B+ average). To pass a degree you should have to maintain an average of 3.0 (C+) throughout your study. This would allow you to do bad on those papers you are naturally not good at, but at the same time provide enough of a challenge for you to work hard at those that you are good at.
Everyone should be given a chance to get into university and do their best. But university is not for everyone and once you have been given your fair go and have not succeeded you should give up your space for the next person – this is a fair system.
The last eight days have been simply amazing. For most of the past year my life has been like a giant jigsaw puzzle. A whole lot of pieces messed up, some missing, and some from the wrong puzzle set. But this week they have all slotted together perfectly and the result is simply awesome.
As I blogged a week ago I achieved first class honours for my honours degree. This was the centre piece to my future. I had applied for PhD programmes at Massey University, Monash University, and The University of New South Wales, however first class honours is the prerequisite into all three universities.
The next piece of the jigsaw was non conditional acceptance into the PhD programme I had applied for at The University of New South Wales – I got this on Tuesday. This left me with acceptance into the programme I wanted to do but no funding to actually do it.
For funding I had applied for the relevant PhD scholarships at all three universities. I was not expecting to hear back from any of them on the results of these scholarships until Monday next week. However, to my surprise around midday on Friday I got an email informing me that I had been awarded a scholarship for Monash. This was great news, although Monash has been my backup plan to UNSW, at least going into the weekend I would be calm that no matter what my future had been secured for the next three years.
Then even better news came at 6.45pm on Friday night. I got an email informing me I had been awarded the Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship and an Engineering Research Award scholarship at UNSW. This is exactly what I wanted and will allow me to complete PhD at UNSW, Sydney. The total combined value of these two scholarships over the next three years is in excess of $110,000 NZD. And is the best Christmas present anyone could get. It is as close to winning lotto as I will probably ever get – (especially as I don’t pay as the stats say it isn’t worth it!).
To make the week that much better I started a new job on Monday which runs until the end of January. I am working as a Web Monkey (yes that is the job title) for Mighty Ape – if you need Christmas gifts avoid the malls and shop online.
I am so stoked with the way that all of this has fallen into place. The last year has been incredibly tough on so many levels but to finally see the rewards at the end of it is such an awesome feeling. I have a new jigsaw to sort out now – planning and moving to Sydney in less than 7 weeks, but I am now sure that jigsaw will fall into place a lot more smoothly.
Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Psalm 103:1 NKJV
And if you read this expecting a blog about a real jigsaw puzzle check this out: Ravensburger Jigsaw Puzzle: Bombardment of Algier (9000 pc)
I have just uploaded my thesis and source code for my honours research project to the site. You can find them in the Research section.
Earlier today I received my final grades for my research project and three papers from Semester Two. I scored an A+ grade in all three papers and the project. I am absolutely delighted with the marks and my overall performance this year. In total, for both semesters, I scored 7 A+ grades and 1 A grade. This is by far my best ever set of marks and as a result I have been accepted into a PhD programme at The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia beginning early next year.
In time I will blog about some of the challenges I have faced this year (it has not been all plain sailing), as well as this I am working on uploading some of my past assignments to the site (some with and without source code – and minor modifications). I never imagined I would progress so far in academia and now I feel like the journey has only just begun.
I am tired as so no real comments to be made, but lots and lots and lots of photos.
In quick summary UNSW equals about 4 times the size of Auckland Uni, just massive.
I have safely arrived in Sydney for my visit to UNSW tomorrow.
Flight over was good, the plane before us was cancelled so we ended up with a 747 to take us over because of all the people.
Despite a few bumps leaving a very stormy Auckland everything went smoothly.
And even better I have free internet in my hotel room.
Another week, time for another video.
This one shows changes that have been made to the intersection controllers within the Traffic Simulator.
The give-way controller makes all the cars give way to all the other roads connected into the intersection with a minimum of 2.5 seconds between vehicles.
The traffic lights controller makes all the cars on the green road go at 2 second intervals and makes the others queue with a minimum wait time of 16 seconds.
The round-a-bout controller makes each car give way to the right and then go with a minimum of 3.9 seconds between each car on a road, but multiple cars from multiple roads can cross the intersection at the same time… hence the chaos on the video.
This one turned out much better than the first one, enjoy.
Yes I am still making DLAs just trying to make the maths that little bit nicer, and get that all impressive performance boost.
This is a 6,000 point balanced model, it took just under 1.5 hours to generate, compared to 4+ hours for a 5,000 point unbalanced DLA on Sunday
I had an interesting day today.
This morning I picked up some 101 assignments to mark. While I was there another marker showed up to pick up their collection of assignments to mark. She said hello by stating
“oh look my arch nemesis from 101 is here too.”
My immediate response was “what do you mean only 101; I was in your stats classes through second and third year too.” This then led onto a discussion regarding competition and ended up with the person I was picking up the assignments from to mention that their son was contemplating studying Computer Science next year and asked me how I stayed focus when there is so much in Computer Science that can distract you a.k.a. The Internet. My response was that it was competition that keeps you focussed. One thing I cannot stand is someone else outdoing me.
In the afternoon I had a lecture, and afterwards four of us were discussing and comparing our flag assignments. I got asked how I had worked out the maths for my flag. I explained that I had been up until 2 in the morning work it out; the person who asked me had spent 20 hours on the same problem but had not worked out a solution. I quickly explained the ideas behind how I had done my solution which seemed so easy explaining it in five minutes, but simple on the surface does not mean simple in reality.
Another person had a working flag assignment but no gravity acting on it, which results in the maths only needing to work in 2D. Initially the two of us who had been trying to get the maths to work with gravity (in 3D) gave him some ribbing for not having gravity. Initially his response was that it was a special flag.. but after a few more minutes he conceded that maybe he needed to relook at his maths.
Coming out of those discussions I felt pleased that I had managed to work out the maths and others hadn’t. The competitive spirit in me pleased that I was leading the battle at the moment…
