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Mijn project is blijkbaar toch nog niet af. Ik dacht dat ik klaar was, alle scriptjes nog een laatste maal getest, wat esthetische veranderingen aangebracht en de boel doorgestuurd. Ik werk nog wat aan het verslag en bedenk dat het wel handig zou zijn mocht ik die figuur ter beschikking hebben. Zodus, ik laat mijn matlab-script nog eens lopen, doch komt daar ineens een totaal andere figuur uit. Ja, debuggen dan maar...

Het probleem met die scriptjes is dat die heel lang duren om uit te voeren tussen twee veranderingen door. En wat doe je ondertussen? Juist ja, wat rondsurfen. Heb op die manier een tof blogje gevonden, Yet Another Blog. Ergens op LVB.net stond een comment of trackback met een link ernaar, beetje beginnen lezen en best wel fijn :-) Blijkbaar eigendom van een Leuvense jongedame die wonder-boven-wonder ook jabbergebruiker is en een van de weinige vrouwen was die je tegen het lijf kon lopen op FOSDEM. Een zeldzaamheid dus :-) Doch, mocht je dit lezen, neem dan zeker hier eens een kijkje voor wat meer open source feminisme ;-) Een van mijn favoriete sites trouwens, die laatste.

Best wel leuk om zo eens een blogje te lezen van iemand die denkt dat geen kat haar pennetrekjes leest. Altijd fijn om eens te volgen hoe het er in iemands leven aan toe gaat, zeker als het over de bedgeheimen gaat... Er zit een stukje voyeur in elk van ons ;-)

Anyway, mocht je dit lezen, blijven gaan met die gele banaan B-)

The exams are coming and I still have a lot of projectwork to do. Today, I should have had my last class this year, but the prof sent an e-mail announcing the lesson was cancelled. So, within one week, at the 30th of may, I'll have my first exam. Five to go, from may the 30th till july the first. Well spred in time, so it should be not that heavy, but it's a very long time where I'll see my girlfriend very less :-( I'll miss her :|

But a remaining problem is the amount of projectwork that still has to be done. Today, I finally finished my work for computer graphics. I still have to do some work for Information Theory (very boring statistics), Speech Processing (wich isn't that easy too) and Information Security (wich can be complete soon). So let's hope it doesn't take that much time. We'll see. I hope I can finish information theory and information security tomorrow.

I also have a kind of todo-list with things I want to do with my gentoo when I take a break, after one exam or just after the whole period:

• Choose a new Gnome-theme
• Check how I can make wpa_supplicant requesting a new IP when I move from one wlan to another one. Also following point should be taken into account.
• Write some script for my VPN-tunneling: it should always be started except when I'm registered at the VTK-hotspot, but when I'm not at the students home or at a university hotspot, I only want to get traffic for news.ugent.be and smtp.ugent.be and maybe some internal UGent-websites go through the tunnel. Just a routing script thus.
• I want to search for a system to detect when my VPN-connection is down. It should be easy if the tunneling device went down too, but that isn't. The only method I know for now, is sending pings to some server and inspect the packet loss. There has to be a better, quicker and less consuming method. I'm using vpnc, so if you know a sollution, you're very welcome to leave a message ;-)
• Find out why my x-server crashes when I'm using my two synaptics-things at the same time. I have a touchpad and some little thing between the g and h button to move my cursor. When I'm using the two together, sometimes my X crashes.
• I want to find out why my USB-mouse doesn't work when X is allready running while I attach the device. Now I always have to restart X. Must be some simple problem.
• Now I have the weather-applet in my panel, giving me the current weather situation, but I also want a forecast.
• I want to get the internal smart-card reader working. I have such a thing built into my computer (Dell D810) and want to experiment a little with the new Belgian electronic identity card aka eID. I also want to test some bank-functions like reloading my proton and so on. I just want to play with it :-)
• Make software suspend and hibernate working. Ubuntu Linux configures this automaticly, see this installation report. That last one is also an interesting one for D810 users who want to install linux on their machine ;-) It seems more people are buying a D810 or D800 so the counter of installation reports increases.
• Follow the Gentoo on Laptops Guide

I'm sure the above list is far from complete. Suggestions can always be made ;-)

A Belgian eID card

Oh, before I forget. Yesterday, I registered the domain peterdedecker.net to create a personal homepage where I can give some information about myself, put my CV online, maybe move this blog to, place some documents about student representation, learn some webdesign,... Again, suggestions are very welcome. If it's a page about me, I'ld like to have this blog there. Not that I dislike this place, au contraire, but on a personal website, the minimum requirement today is a weblog. I don't know wich engine to use: I like b2evolution and its good spam-protection a lot, but as Ikke allready told, development is like stalled. It seems WordPress and Nucleus are very nice ones. It's also a little bit easier because I don't have to worry about multiple blogs hosting, but I sure want to convert this blog to the new engine (if so). If you have some experiences in moving blogs or using other engines, feel free to comment.

Goodnight!

Today, I was in my bed when the (fixed) phone rang. After a few time, I took up, but the line was allready dropped. A few hours later, when I checked my mailbox, there was a paper from UPS telling me they tried to deliver a package from Dell, but I wasn't home. They'll come back monday. Damn! I'm sure, with my order, I asked to call me on my cellular before they should deliver. So I'll have to wait a few days more...

I also was a little bit bad guy for my girlfriend: I wasn't with her much time this week. Shame on me ;-) On monday I had some work at VTK. Tuesday there was the election of the vice-rector (vice-president) of our university. The speeches of them took most of the time, there was only 1 round and decision was made. The candidate of our faculty didn't make it. In the evening, I had to go to Brussels for a meeting with VVS, the Board of Flemish Students to discuss about the (stock taking of the) Bologna process.

Wednesday, in the morning I helped a little bit for the preparations of our triatlon at VTK. In the afternoon, I went to Brussels again for a visit of the Flemish Parliament. Very nice afternoon! The Parliament is a very modern and beautiful building, with lots of art in it. Also very nice people, but a very long, boring speech of Filip Dewinter (about BHV for people following the actual news) in the general meeting, always the same. The offices of Groen! (you can call them extremely left), N-VA and a part of Vlaams Belang (extremely right) are on the same floor, in the same gallery. Nice situation :-) I also heard a lot of funny inside information there. Yeah, it sure was a very nice afternoon. In the evening, there was the weekly badminton followed by fries :-)

Thursday I had lunchmeeting with GSR, the Board of Students at Ghent University about the meeting of that evening (in Brussels once more) with VVS. After a few drinks at a sponsor-event of a student organisation, we left for the long VVS-meeting.

So it was kind of a meeting week and also kind of a Brussels-week. And if thats not enough, I'm going to Brussels again tomorrow.

My lovely girlfriend in doing fine with her final year thesis. It should be finished very soon, so she can start studying for her exams. Wish her good luck please. Wednesday, we have a little party for her birthday, so it'll be a nice week again, and with the days of at thursday and friday, also a very calm one :-)

Oh, before I forget, I also missed two practica of Multimedia Networks this week. The shedule is in an excel-file online at our e-learning application Minerva, but because it's an external file, you cant see when it's changed. You have to re-download en review the file manually. Stupid system. The system for making a reservation for a time slot is also at Minerva, but you can't see when they created new reservation opportunities. Let's hope that two missed ones doesn't have much implications on the results for my exams...

Final Year Thesis and Internship

I've made my decision about my final year thesis. Next year, I hope to do something about wireless network access on trains. There'll be a WLAN on the train, with a base station on the train, and the train itself will communicate with antennas next to the railway. Because of the high speed of the train, there will be a handover to the next antenna every two seconds. In my thesis, I'll have to study and test those handovers. This is my first choice, I also had to give a second one. That one is about using the eID (elektronic identity card) for authentication in MHP (Multimedia Home Platform), the digitaly television platform that will be used soon in Flanders. You can find more information about both subjects on the INTEC website. The first one is at the research group IBCN (INTEC Broadband Communication Networks) while the second one is at WICA wich stands for Wireless and Cable. Both topics are part of the research in the newly constructed IBBT, Interdisciplinary institute for BroadBand Technology, founded by the Flemish Government.

I also had a meeting with a few people of the IBCN group for an internship related to that thesis. He'll try to arrange one at Siemens or at Televic. If he can't get an internship there, I'll accept the proposal of Barco to study the development of a L2/L3 multicast gigabit switch.

VTK

It was kind of an active week for VTK. At wednesday, we had ParkingPoP, a rock contest for local groups, wich was a big success. At wednesday and thursday, there were elections for the new board of VTK. Our followers are Bram and Pierre and I'm sure they'll do a great job. We had a meeting where we explained what we did this year and our vision about the next year. It seems they want to do great things, let's hope they've enough time for it. Before that meeting, I also had a lunch-meeting in a nice restaurant with the head of The Computer Store, the shop with the most ugly site in Ghent where we had a deal to sell computers. He claims our deal with Dell also has some disadvantages where he can be better, building on the very good results of the previous years. I've discussed it at the meeting with our followers and it seems they see more disadvantages than andvantages with them as partner, next to Dell.

Ah, before I forget, Lennert (who had a blog here before) is elected for treasurer with 16 votes more (on a total of 564) than his opponents. Congratulations and lots of succes!

Student representation

I didn't sign in for the VTK elections, because I've some other things in mind. I decided to run for the election of vice-president of the Ghent Student Council. The election is in oktober, but it isn't possible to combine this with another year in the VTK praesidium. If I don't make it, no problem, I'll be busy enough with my other work for the student representation, my final year thesis and of course my girlfriend who feels a little bit neglected sometimes ;-)

Also in student representation it was quite busy this week. Monday there was the facultairy computer commission with a very interesting point on the shedule: division of some money for new infrastructure. We also talked about the use of our pc-rooms and the troubles with the shortage of capacity. About that last one, we'll prepare a text from the student representation with a call for more available computers. I'll start to prepare that one after this post is finished ;-)

At the meeting with the student representation of our faculty of engineering, we decided to use a new name for our organisation. Now, it was "didactische cel", a term where nobody exactly knows the meaning of, especialy new students don't know who we are. We've chosen the name "FRiS", which stands for "faculty council of engineering students" or "Facultaire Raad voor IngenieursStudenten" in Dutch. It's a new name, invented by our responsible Peter Huyghebaert, to be better known by new students. This week, we also had the monthly faculty council and the deliberation before with the head of our faculty, who was very interested in the situation of the new students of the first year.

Peter Huygebaert

Friday I also went to the general meeting of vzw StudentENmobiliteit (student mobility) for the first time. From now on, I represent the students of our university there, together with two other students. It was a very interesting meeting. I also asked for more posibilities to pump up the tires of our bicycles in Ghent, especially at the campus in Zwijnaarde. The responsibles of our university agreed, so soon it'll be OK there in Zwijnaarde.

Next week, we'll have the election of the vice-rector of our university. There are two candidates: Luc Moens, from the faculty of sciences, and Paul Kiekens, from our faculty. Again, it'll be a very interesting time :-)

Politics

This week, I recieved an invitation to visit the Flemish Parliament and the new headquarter of the Flemish political party N-VA. Seems also very interesting, so wednesday I'll do the trip to Brussels.

The Flemish Parliament

My lovely girlfriend...

is so curious now :-D Because her cellular is malfunctioning, I bought her a new one. At the 6th of May, it's her birthday. So now, I've put the box in a cabinet and she doesn't may look inside of it. It's so tempting, it's so close, but I trust her not to look in it :-D She doesn't know wich one allready.

Before I forget

Don't create a banana republic here please ;-)

I just created my first CV. I'm going to need it for some company visits this and next year. You can find the dutch version here and the english version here. B-)

Yesterday and a few days ago, I also created some proposals for the student representation. One of them is a about using Minerva/Dokeos for sending information to the students and asking for feedback of the people we represent on a more formal way. The other one is about readable slides. Some teachers are using PowerPoint slides with lots of animation: balloons popping up above eachother. When those slides are the only studymaterial that you have and when you need to print it for an open book exam, you can't read a damn thing of it anymore. So I prepared a document with some directions for good slides: no (dark) backgrounds, carefull with animations, printable,... Monday we're having a meeting with a discussion about this documents. Normally both of them will be accepted, let's hope so. If they're accepted, maybe I'll post the final versions here if you're interested. B-)

Davy and frocksii agreed on creating a website for the selling of Dell-computers at VTK. Let's hope they can fix this quickly so we can start the project. Tommorow, I'm going to help with a guided tour for prospective students to let them know more about our university, faculty and courses. Ikke will be there too :-D

Next thing for me: learning object oriented programming with PHP. Object oriented programming is no problem, I allready know a bit about php, so it can't be that difficult. After that, advanced CSS is next. Lot's of interesting stuff to do so ;-)