EOC at CMU

Spring is a time for finding a job because most of students are graduating after this semester. That's why CMU's holding a big job fair called Employment Opportunities Conference (EOC for short). I also joined the event because I need to find an internship for my summer. That's the requirement of my program. It was so crowded inside the gym. I talked with many companies with hope that one of them will accept me (-_-"). The companies I talked to include Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, VMWare, EA, Oracle, Amazon, Yahoo!, and much more (got a lof of gifts too! ha ha ha). Anyone wants me for the summer internship? ;-)

Timestamp: 7 February 2008

Machine Learning

Machine Learning, the innovative invention to teach machine to learn just like our human. It's a great course, of course. What makes it more special is I am studying with Tom Mitchell. However, it's also very difficult. I didn't have any statistics background before and all the materials are related to statistical method & data. I also had a lot of workload this semester because another course, Distributed Systems was also tough. I wish I could give more time & effort on this subject....

Timestamp: 25 January 2008

Back to School!

Pheewww... the winter break was over, and it's time to come back to study again. I arrived Pittsburgh just few days before the semester started. The weather was still (damn) cold here. There was snow everywhere... (-_-"). However, I know that spring was coming and everyone was waiting for it. I just understood now why American people love to lie on green grasses under strong sunlight. That's because they were so sick for the black & white shade of winter! Me too!

I was taking 4 courses this Spring. They included Machine Learning (wow~ tough one), Distributed Systems (wow~ another tough one for me), Web Application Development (I love this course a lot), and VLIS seminar. Hope I can survive this semester (-_-").

Timestamp: 14 January 2008.

Final Exam Period

Finally, the final exam has come. It's so scary for me because I have a lot of work to do. I have 3 projects due (Software Engineering, Privacy, and Applied Information Assurance). I rarely sleep during this time. That's so bad .... :-(((

The final exam takes place since from Dec 5 (SE) to Dec 14 (VLIS) and I also have the PPLT final project presentation on Dec 17. I hope to finish all my work soon because I will be on my trip to west coast. -_-"

Time-stamp: Dec 10, 2007

PPLT Poster Fair

On Tuesday Dec 4, 2007, I have a poster fair (showing my final project in class with the big poster board) for Privacy, Policy, Law, and Technology class. I am very nervous because I am afraid that my project is not good enough (-_-"). My project is an extension for Firefox called "FoxBeacon." Other people's projects are also interesting. However, this fair just lasts for 80 mins (class period).

JAYA team - my Software Engineering team

This is a picture from the first meeting of my Software Engineering group, "JAYA." My team includes Juan Pino, Yimeng Zhang, Ankush Gupta, and me. Juan and Yimeng are from Language Technologies Institute, Ankush is from MISM. They are all awesome! and I have a very good time working with them. Our task is creating new algorithms for Recommender of Interactive Active Learning module (what's that?!! -_-"). Hope I can get through this project safely.

Software Engineering Class

Software Engineering for Information Systems is my favorite class in this semester. I learn a lot about software creating process. Especially, the instructor is really good and funny. His name is Eric Nybergh. I really love his style of teaching. He always gives us an reading assignment before class which is about 20 pages each day. Prior the class starts, there will be a quiz to make sure that his students actually did their reading assignment. Even his voice is pretty low (make me sleepy :P), but his humor helps me to wake up. I really have fun in this class.

P.S. actually, two more staffs are in this class also. Carolyn, and Andy (TA).

e-Crime summit

I posted this blog late for 2 days! On Oct 5, 2007, I went to e-Crime summit for my Privacy class. The teacher (prof. Cranor) reserved us a seat already. I thought the suitable clothes for academic summit should be shirt, pants, and suit. So, I wore all of them (I never do like this before, except TOC - Technical Opportunity Conference, i.e. job fair). However, I had to ride my bike to the summit place (one hotel in Pittsburgh), which decreased my good look a little bit :p.

The e-Crime summit was really interesting. I attended a session of paper presentation. There were 3 papers about protecting Unicode spam mail, machine learning algorithms for spam filtering, and phishing study.

The most important part is I saw many people wearing polo shirts and jeans! Then, why did I have to wear this elegant stuffs!!!

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Do you have your childhood dream? I think everyone has. But the most important question is "Can you make all your childhood dreams come true?." I don't think everyone can.

This is "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" lecture of Prof. Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon University. He is dying from terminal cancer while he is only 47. He's a founder of Alice program, and co-founder of ETC department of Carnegie Mellon University.

For me, it's very sad to here that he has a wife and three children. The world is going to lose one of the valuable people in the world....

Transcript: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Tank - video

Today I recorded video of TANK!! Let see what he can do !! (sorry if the sound is not that good :( )

How big is everything in the U.S!

Oh! (O_o) I found that many things in the U.S. are in bigger size than they are in Thailand. Especially this one, "chalk" in Carnegie Mellon University is very huge! From the picture, compare to the size of quarter coin, it's 4-5 times bigger! I'm curious how the teachers write on the blackboard using this chalk size. Its size is very close to the size of a big "UHU" glue in Thailand.

Another time I'll also show you the huge blackboard eraser!

The relation between books & RedBulls

Who knows that one of the most favorite drinks in U.S. originally comes from Thailand! Red Bull is a drink just for labors at my home country. Very different from here that it's a big brand supporting many X-games events.

So, today, I try the "U.S version" Red Bull. It is carbonated (contains gas inside) like Pepsi, Coke, or other soft drinks here. However, the taste is still the same.

Because I have a lot of reading assignments now, let see that U.S. Red Bull can help me or not. Ei Ei Ei. :p

Happy Birthday Smiley !! :-D

Hey! 2 days ago is the birthday of SMILEY! :-D (sorry about my late response).

The inventor of smiley is Scott Fahlman. He invented it on Sept. 19, 1982. Scott Fahlman is a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Its original came from trying to express humorous in the message. Just from the tiny beginning, it became the most used sign in the cyberspace nowadays.

By the way, Happy birth day!!

Read more about smiley from the following websites: 

Smiley's site 

Scott Fahlman
Original of Smiley
Just between you and me (New York Times)

What's on my NOTES?

This is my notes in Software Engineering for Information Systems class. At first, I was very concentrated in the topic the teacher (Carolyn) says. However, when the time goes by, I missed one of the main point and were left behind.

Then, I started to draw her images instead. ^o^ My teacher used a lot of gestures and she is very energetic woman (see her actions from the picture). Even I didn't understand much in her class today, I got 4 of the drawing instead. It's a good note, isn't it? Ei ei ei. :D

Technical Opportunity Conference (TOC)

Today is the day of Technical Opportunity Conference (TOC, for short). Many companies are here to look for competent students to be their prospective employees. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo!, and many many other big company show their booth here.

I just applied for only 10 companies today, and all of them are for internship. However, I have ever had a chance to apply for a job at Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo!, Amazon, IBM!!! Oh! my god.

Tank, the roboreceptionist

Chaiyong Ragkhitwetsagul and Carnegie Mellon University proudly present "Tank, the roboreceptionist!"

This is a true story. In Newell Simon Hall, another building of computer science, there is a roboreceptionist stands near the entrance. He always say "Hello there" to people walking by. Some students stop by and type message to Tank. Yes! everyone can talk with Tank by typing the message using the keyboard in front of him. He will answer with his voice. Although, he doesn't know everything, he makes me surprise that he can interact with the real human.

Moreover, he can move his face (actually, it's a LCD screen) to follow the movement of man in front of him because he has a camera above his head.

This is another one innovation from the Robotic Institute here at CMU. Wow!

P.S. I posted this blog late again for today. -_-"

Reading Reading and READING !!!

Nothing to specifically post today. Just want to say that I have a lot of reading assignments to do! (Which are all in English). Because it's a master degree and I'm not a native speaker. I have to be well-prepared before the class (even I couldn't be most of the time :p)

Moreover, I don't know why I feel sleepy very easy nowadays, I think I never be like this when I was undergrad student. -_-"

"Great Power Comes With Great Responsibility" - Spider man

Fast Facts about CMU

Do you know where are "emoticons" from? Have you ever watch "The beautiful mind?" Do you know where Prof. John Nash earn his mathematics degree? If you say "No", please check this.
These are fast facts about Carnegie Mellon University:
Established: 1900
Type: Private research university
President: Jared L. Cohon
Faculty: 1,459
Undergraduates: 5,580
Master's students: 2,832
Doctoral students: 1,619
Alumni:70,491
Main campus: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Campus: Urban (140 acres)
Athletics: 17 Division III athletic teams
Nickname: Tartans
Official Mascot: Scottie Dog
Motto: "My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie

*** School of Computer Science research professor Scott Fahlman has long been credited for introducing emoticons (also called smileys) while posting to an online bulletin board in 1981. An emoticon is a series of ordinary printable characters, such as :-) , ;o) or :-(, intended to represent a human facial expression and convey an emotion.

*** In 2002, Universal Pictures released "A Beautiful Mind," an Academy award-winning film directed by Ron Howard about Carnegie Mellon alumnus John Nash Jr. and his 30-year battle with schizophrenia. Nash earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics in 1948 and won the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1994.

Reference: http://www.cmu.edu/about/fastfacts.shtml

Academic Books

Study is a way to success, and my class has been started for 2 weeks. Then I think it's my time to begin reading books now (although I want to do it or not :D ). Today I will talk about my books in this semester.

First thing to know is I'm taking 4 courses this semester:
1. Very Large Information Systems (VLIS) - about database systems, and massive data collection.
2. Privacy, Policy, Law and Technology (PPLT) - mainly focus on privacy found on the Internet.
3. Software Engineering for Information Systems (SE for IS) - work in a team to create a piece of software using Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Use Cases (don't worry. They're terminologies in Computer Science field ;D)
4. Applied Information Assurance (AIA) - hands-on labs in building the harden computer network systems.

So, these are all of my books theis semester except one VLIS book that has not come yet (it's being delivered by Amazon). Two books on the most left are for AIA. They're lab sheet with the explanation. Two in the middle are for PPLT. The red one is about law (oh! very hard to read), and the other is about a protocol called P3P. Last, on the very right is the book for SE for IS class. It's the biggest book I have, but it's very great book after I read it for 3 chapters.

Hope I can read them all in this semester. God! Help me! :D

Language Barrier

When I was in UD, I never thought about the problem of my English skills. The teachers were very nice and they always made me fell comfortable and courageous to speak. Everything was very different in the real academic study. The topic you were talking about was not an ordinary topic or headlines anymore. Frankly, they were about Privacy, Databases, Software Engineering Models, Networks, etc. They're the real hard-core academic stuffs! Moreover, professors talked very fast, almost. My classmates included Americans, Indian (which speaks very well), Chinese (the same level as me, good!), etc. I became a shy boy again after I had never been since I came in the US and in UD (other people thought I was pretty much talkative).

I have to try to improve this! it's directly related to my student's life. It's OK if I just walked into a supermarket and bought somethings. Nevertheless, it's not such easy. Thus, I decided to take an English workshop at the Office of English for International Students. Let's try and see what will happen... I hope it should be better..soon.