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Thursday, my exam Multimedia Networks was OK, I think. With three exams done and three to go, I'm in the middle now. Next one is Information Security wich is really interesting. Seems not that difficult and I allready used lots of those things in practice, so normally it should go well.

Still 20 days to go and counting!

Bad examn today. The exercises were bloody. I completed one fully, one half and half, and left the third open because out of time. The third one looked difficult because it was one of the last chapter wich was a difficult one, but a few subquestions were easy. Damn, I shoold have taken that one before the others.

Let's hope it's enough for a 10...

I also had a meeting with the computer commission of our university in the afternoon. A few things were discussed, like the keeping of your e-mailadres and the VPN-protection. I'll give a more detailed report (in Dutch) when I'm back in Ghent, I left my papers there.

Na de verpletterende afkeuring van de EU-grondwet door Frankrijk en Nederland, is vandaag in het Vlaams Parlement beslist dat er in Vlaanderen geen referendum komt over de grondwet. De mening van alle stemgerechtigde Vlamingen zullen we dus nooit kennen. Misschien maar best ook, want het Franse verhaal is duidelijk een stem tegen de huidige regering, een anti-stem als het ware. Zelf ben ik gematigd voorstander. Enerzijds gaat de grondwet niet ver genoeg, kan men geen individuele commissaris afzetten zonder de gehele commissie af te zetten en is ze met haar 800 pagina's bezwaarlijk een grondwet te noemen. Anderzijds vormt de grondwet een goed fundament om van te vertrekken, om de EU een gezicht te geven en transparanter te maken en is het een goede poging om het gebrek aan democratie op Europees niveau te dichten. Zo zou het Europees Parlement bijvoorbeeld meer macht krijgen ten nadele van de Raad van Ministers. Een goede zaak vind ik persoonlijk.

Met de referenda in de verschillende landen, circuleren er ook allerlei "testjes" om te zien of je, volgens jouw opvattingen, voor of tegen de grondwet zou moeten stemmen zonder de 800 pagina's door te nemen. Een mooie is bijvoorbeeld deze website, gemaakt voor het NL-kiespubliek. Dit zijn mijn scores:

Uw opvattingen komen voor 90% overeen met de Grondwet.

Mate van overeenkomst met de grondwet per thema:
Europese instellingen: 81%
Sociaal beleid en economie: 100%
Milieu en landbouw: 100%
Justitie: 87%
Defensie en Buitenlands beleid: 87%

Hopelijk wordt de crisis snel bezworen en kan het Europese project verdergaan.

En ik heb morgen ook een crisis te bezweren: examen wachtlijntheorie :-/

This morning, I finally did my first exam. Finally. Finally I'm coming in the right rhythm for examinations. My first one was computer graphics, a very easy one. The syllabus was that small I can express my study time in hours instead of days :-D That way, it was very difficult to start studying instead of taking vacations. So I think it 'll be OK, I answered all questions, so let's hope they're right B-)

Now, right after an exam, I can't motivate myself to study the next one, so I did some other stuff, like reading the newspaper and so on. I also prepared a statement text that I'll use on the next meeting of the computercommission of our university. If you're interested and you understand Dutch, you can read it here. Now the rest of our board has to approve it and then I can defend it on the meeting next friday, right after my next exam. And that one isn't that easy. It's also one of the most boring courses in our course list: Queueing Theory. Let's hope it'll be allright.

So now I think my break was long enough, let's eat and then study!

I'm almost finished with my project work. Today I wrote the report of my project in information security. We had to develop a system to make online train ticket purchasement possible with the necessary fraud protection. The train speculator has to be able to verify the ticket in very less time without consulting a database containing the online transactions. We developed a system based on encrypted information printed on the ticket as barcode.

For the last project we just have to work a little bit on the report. It was about testing an algoritm for on the fly pitch extraction of recorded speech. This information is needed to compress digital speech as good as possible.

I also have some news about my internship. As I told you before, I've chosen a thesis where I have to work on development and testing of a fast handover system for wireless connections on trains. I also told you I had a meeting to arrange an internship with Siemens on the same subject. Now, the prof has sent me a e-mail with the good news he has contact with Siemens and they're interested in such kind of internship. If everything goes well, I can do some work on their Chantry technology. It should cover a few days/weeks working in Herentals and do some tests with the equipment in Ghent. Normally there'll be a meeting around the 17th of July or afther the examinations. Let's hope everything goes well :-D