My Halcyon Days

Status update, 4th year September 27, 2008

It has been more than three weeks into the first semester in the last year of my undergraduate studies.  I have just caught up with the pace of everything. This probably gonna be the busiest semester I will have, although I have made myself easier not to overload any extra courses.

Things just crowd into this semester. I have 5 courses: DSP, Error Control Codes, Algorithms and Data Structures, Anthropology and Design Project, among which, Error Control Codes is a graduate level course,  taught by my summer research and design project supervisor, Prof. Kschischang. The design project can be very involving and it is linked to my research topic on overlapped class network coding, with some simulation and coding computation on GPU.  On the other hand, this research topic, way too complicated to be finished in one summer, has to be carried forward into the term.  And we are looking forward to produce something before the deadline of NetCod 2009 on Nov. 1st.  Besides all these, of course,  I have to submit a set of graduate school applications.  I am yet to decide on the set of schools to apply to. But most probably I will be fighting for the slim chance at those very top schools in EECS or ECE, with my area of focus on communication, information theory and networking.  Lastly, I got to work on GRE, which will take place in late Oct.  I cannot afford to screw up on any of these.  So far, things still looks smooth. Maybe it because the nice and cool weather keeps me refreshed.

The past summer and the new term have also marked a number of changes.  I am starting to write something on wordpress, as suggested by a few people.  On the other hand I set up a homepage at U of T individuals, though it still at a quite rough stage. I also started managing my schedules extensively using google calendar on zengweifei@gmail.com. All my friends interested are welcomed to add my schedule under this email address.  My working environment now is completely under linux/ubuntu, windows OS on my machine is now solely for recreational purpose.  I am also switching from Subversion to Mercurial as my SCM software. I found the idea of Distributed Version Control very natural and comfortable.  Furthermore, it is still compatible with the traditional client-server model.

BTW,  there has been a raccoon sneaking into my house looking for food these days.  I managed to trap him in the staircase and my housemate took a load of pictures of him.  I fed him with some cooked meat and corns twice and he became less alert about me.