Today's the first day of school. Mr EU say I should be very enthusiastic about this, since it's (hopefully) going to be my last "first day of school", but somehow I can't find any shreds of enthusiasm anywhere.

I've bought a new coffee machine for linuxNUS, from the new MegaCourts in Tampines Avenue 9. Extremely cheap too, only $39.90. The staff said it's on sale because the whole place is new, if that statement makes any sense. Anyway, I unenthusiastically went to school early to test out our home made gourmet cappuccino. Rather nice actually.

This semester's lessons are strange. My first lesson is on computer networks. The lecturer is a Nokia researcher based in Finland. Pet topic: wireless technology applications. Hence, instead of the expected basics of computer networking, the module is going to be a primer on wireless technology application. Seems interesting though, especially since his final exam has a weightage of only 50%.

Statistical physics this semester is wildly different. The professor comes in, reads out the module information copied from the NUS bulletin, then reads out the table of contents from the textbook, and ended the lecture. Total time for lecture? 20 minutes. Well, he did say he had not prepared for the module yet, but 20mins?!? I really pity those who came to school just for this lecture...

Spent some time searching for a good mailing list that can run off a user directory, and found this gem along the way.

Lurker digests emails from designated mailing lists and displays them nicely in a threaded forum-style html page. Like a forum, one can start a new thread, reply to posts, file attachments, and many more. Neat huh?

The only caveat seems to be the dependency on mimelib (kde 3 package), which the developers provided. libmime needs to be statically linked during compilation. Additionally, posting to the "forum" will fire up the computer's default mail client to send an email to the list. This might be a problem for computers on public access.

Installation instructions can be found at http://lurker.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/lurker/lurker/INSTALL. FAQ at http://lurker.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/lurker/lurker/FAQ. Download from Sourceforge.

If this works as promising as it looks, the linuxNUS forums and mailing lists will have a new look.

Just saw one of the funniest game videos on YouTube: College Saga! Directed, acted, choreographed, etc by Mark Leung...

Quote:
"Once upon a time, when Earth was still a beautiful place, an evil force came to turn all living things into Vegetarians. Three students from suburban Massachusetts would step up against this catastrophe... to end Vegetarian Supremacy. Mark, Jesús, Maria and their foes would make amazing personal discoveries as the two forces clash. And so began the ultimate saga about friendship, heritage, sex and explosions."

Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4

Mark Leung's Website, where you can download the clips and wallpapers.

Okay, enough laughing, time for me to sleep...

This is embarrassing. First, I keep thinking "Wireless@SG" is "Wireless@3G" (I wonder if it's because I'm dyslexic), then I can't connect to the network in Linux!!

I was in Velocity Mall (the renamed Novena Square) with MH, after a brief visit to IRAS. We went to the tcc outlet there to while the time away till dinner. I hauled out my laptop, determined to have a try at the Wireless@SG network. BTW, TCC allows you to use their power outlets free of charge.

(In case you are wondering, Wirless@SG is a new island-wide wireless network. And the best thing is: it's free!! There are some concerns about the utter lack of security, but I'll pass this for now...)

So, I inserted my wireless card, and went to tinker at the commandline:

$ iwlist eth1 scan
$ iwconfig eth1 essid "Wireless@SG" ap any commit
$ iwconfig eth1

And the card doesn't link to the Wireless@SG network at all. Can't set the ESSID. Tried to restart the card, specify the ap, escape the "@" with "\@", checked the man pages, but nothing works. Okay, connected to another network called "home1" instead.

MH suggested I try doing it in Windows. It worked. Sigh.

I feel so noob. Sigh.

Does anyone know how to get it to work?

One of my friends sent me a job advertisement yesterday, on Linux/Solaris high performance network cluster management, and application deployment. Suddenly, I'm caught in a fix: I have never played with Solaris, or done anything with network clustering, but the job looks very interesting. I seem to have the other pre-requisites though, except maybe the graduation problem. Should I try?? This came so out of the blue that I wasn't mentally prepared at all.

And yes, the job is at Science Park, so I'll be around the same place again... Same few vegetarian stalls...

Name: Koo Jun Hao
Email: junhao82 deleteThis (at) jmarki dot net

Objective

To constantly upgrade my skills so that I am able to administrate a network securely and effectively.

Professional Community

Linux User Group Singapore (LUGS), Youth Chapter Liaison Secretary (May 2006 - Present)

linuxNUS, System Administrator (August 2005 - Present)

linuxNUS, Vice President (August 2005 - May 2006)

Education

Aug 2003 - Present: B.Sc. Computational Science (Physics), National University of Singapore
(Expected date of graduation in June 2007)

Technical Experience

1. Server administration
• Web servers set up and configuration with NUS Science IT Unit.
• System security and maintenance
• Staging/Test servers setup before major system updates/upgrades
• Apache, PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, sshd configuration
• Bash scripting of backups and loggings
2. Application deployment
• Testing and secure configuration of applications on web servers and desktop systems
• Web applications: Mediawiki, Drupal, YACS, Wordpress, dotProject, phpGroupWare, Calendar, Mailman
• System Applications: Octave
• Application migration between systems (e.g after upgrades, server migration)
3. Troubleshooting
• Active member of linuxNUS mailing list focusing on troubleshooting and general Linux discussions. Majority of issues concerning Linux and network problems in NUS.
• Authored HOWTOs on Opensource @ NUS (http://opensource.nus.edu.sg), FOSS wiki site for NUS, as "junhao82"
• Part of the technical team for a Linux troubleshooting workshop by linuxNUS in September 2006
4. Scientific computing
• Main interest in computational modelling, learning algorithms, high performance computing (MPI)
5. Virtualization
• VMWare Server used to set up test servers
• Some familiarity with Xen, experimenting using Xen in place of VMWare
6. Programming
• Computational science modules: C, and Matlab
• Shell scripting for system administration: Bash
• Web Programming: HTML, CSS, PHP
• Familiarity with Java, LaTeX, SQL, Javascript, XML
7. Operating systems
• Linux: Gentoo (as primary system), CentOS (server systems)
• Windows: XP, 98

Positions held

1. Youth Chapter Liaison Assistant Secretary, Linux User Group Singapore, (May 2006 - Present)
• Liaised between FOSS/Linux youth chapters (linuxNUS, NTU OSS, SMU OSS) and LUGS
• Assisted in LUGS events: Opensource Day 2006 (September 2006), monthly meetups
2. System Administrator, linuxNUS, (August 2005 – Present)
• Administrated web server hosting Opensource @ NUS (http://opensource.nus.edu.sg)
• Maintained applications on shared hosting servers for linuxNUS website (http://linuxNUS.org)
• Setup and maintenance of test servers
• Troubleshoot systems during events, and mailing lists
3. Vice President, linuxNUS, (August 2005 – May 2006)
• Founding member of linuxNUS
• Organised events to outreach and advocate Linux/FOSS to NUS students: Software Freedom Day 2005, Opensource Day 2006, monthly meetups, awareness talks.
4. President, Computational Science Society, (August 2005 – August 2006)
   Vice President, Computational Science Society, (August 2004 – August 2005)
• Organised regular member gatherings
• Organised welcome tea sessions for freshmen
• Participated in departmental Open Houses
• Acted as spokesperson for students to Computational Science Department and vice-versa
5. Vice President, Mathematics Society (Tampines Junior College), (1999 – 2000)
6. Stage Manager, Chinese Drama Society (Anglican High School), (1998)

Interest

Linux, System security, Virtualization, Networks, Wushu

References

Available on request

After 2 days of writing, rewriting, and reviewing, version 3 of my resume is finally done. Now I'm drained, mentally and emotionally.

Writing resumes is such a tough thing to do. It must be eye catching in both format and details, but not so eye catching so as to seem like a braggart. The most relevant or important stuff should be first, followed all the way down to the least relevant/important, but it should be simple enough for everything to go in at the first glance. And the worst part is, everyone has different ideas of how these is done. Sigh...

My previous resumes look so cluttered and irrelevant now. Will my present resume look like that years or even months down the road? I wonder...

Okay, time to do my homework...

Whoa! Saw this on digg, managed to dig out the website: http://nearingzero.net/.

Just woke up for 9am lessons. And I seem to have dreamt of myself writing, rewriting, reviewing, editing my resumes, the entire night... Oh man...

Resume writing is freakingly stressful... And someone told me a few days ago, "Well, the first is the easiest". Arrgh....

Oh man, what a timing. I was tapping out my cover letter when Harish Pillay sent this to the LUGS mailing list.

Disturbing...

Found these on the web... Check them out!!

Cool... Kev just introduced me to Kooldock, a fast clone of the Mac OSX dock.

Adding of applications is by either adding the application, or copying the application's .desktop file to the kooldock preferences directory. Automatically hidden till the mouse is at the bottom edge too! Very intuitive, responsive and well, kewl...