An Aeon Later

It’s been an aeon or two before this blog last saw an update. Some­where around the last bil­lion years, semes­ter two started. Then again, I usu­ally leave aeons between my blog posts.. so yeah. Okay seri­ously, its been two weeks when we had to put 3 lazy months of sum­mer hol­i­days behind us and start a whole new year of university.

Tone-mapped 3-exposure HDR of the campus
Tone-mapped 3-exposure HDR of the campus

This time around though, our bril­liant brains over at the Stu­dent Admin devised another tuto­r­ial enroll­ment method — first come, first serve tuto­r­ial reg­is­tra­tions dur­ing the first lec­tures through­out the first week. Stu­dent admin offi­cers would come in in a mid­dle of a lec­ture and wreak havoc turn­ing a class of a hun­dred sit­ted stu­dents into a stam­pede of hope­fuls rush­ing to secure their names on a list of their desired tuto­r­ial group.

More often than not, scenes like that turn ugly when the slower ones were left group-less or left with tuto­r­ial slots that wouldn’t fit the timetable. Then there are moments of utter con­fu­sion of the assigned time slots, the cut­ting of queues, exchang­ing of shouts between the stu­dent admin offi­cers and stu­dents — you get the idea.

Energy & Motion lectures on the Lecture Theater
Tuto­r­ial reg­is­tra­tion dur­ing Energy & Motion lec­tures in the Lec­ture Theater

All these exper­i­ment­ing of tuto­r­ial enroll­ment meth­ods semes­ter after semes­ter left me won­der­ing how does our par­ent Uni­ver­sity in Mel­bourne con­duct their tuto­r­ial enroll­ments. I’m sure there’s an effec­tive way our stu­dent admin can learn from and stick with rather than chang­ing how we reg­is­ter our tuto­r­ial slots every semes­ter, never fail­ing to cause chaos and con­fu­sion every time.

C Programming Labs
Eggy’s pen­cil case dur­ing C Pro­gram­ming Labs

Any­how, the dust has set­tled and tuto­ri­als, labs and lec­tures are now in full swing. This semes­ter brings about a few rather inter­est­ing sub­jects other than the four bor­ing exam-oriented ones I had last semes­ter. There’s this Robot­ics Project 1 sub­ject that includes a com­po­nent on C Pro­gram­ming — some­thing I’ve been look­ing for­ward to for awhile. We also have a com­po­nent on Com­puter Aided Design which we started off with man­ual draw­ing of plans before mov­ing on the mas­ter­ing the well-known and used Auto­CAD program.

Making a beeline for The Spring
Mak­ing a bee­line for The Spring mall

On a related note, now that the semes­ter has started, I’m find­ing it rather hard to keep up with Project 365. Not that I didn’t see this com­ing, but I thought I could per­se­vere. I just couldn’t see myself bring­ing my dSLR to cam­pus every­day look­ing for that shot. Then there’ll be waves of assign­ments to be dealt with, tests and exams. Blah.

I’ve been think­ing hard on my deci­sion to go on with Project 365 now that it’s been put on a tem­po­rary hia­tus. Sac­ri­fic­ing my dSLR for my par­ents’ trip to NZ was harder that I thought, no doubt. But I thought it was worth­while con­sid­er­ing it is a once-in-a-lifetime trip and thus, are mem­o­ries worth being recorded with the best gear possible.

Rest assured, Project 365 is a chal­lenge I’m will­ing to push myself to accom­plish — fueled both by my love for pho­tog­ra­phy and you, yes you, for your sup­port and read­er­ship — are really what that keeps me going on, be it also in praises, con­struc­tive crit­i­cisms or just plain Flickr pageviews.

Sports car at The Spring
See­ing chrome — taken out­side The Spring — 50mm f/1.8

Until then, see you in an aeon. =)

14 thoughts on “An Aeon Later”

    1. ember Post author

      It isn’t that hard, really. Once I got into the habit I start see­ing 365 oppor­tu­ni­ties every­where — only lim­ited to if the sit­u­a­tion per­mits me to whip out my cam­era or if I have the time.

      But of course there are those dry days that goes by with­out a good shot.. then I’d con­sult my unwrit­ten list of quick last minute shots such as a sim­ple self-portrait or a snap of my sister’s plushies and be done with the day. =P

      Try it with your new Fuji­film! =D

    1. ember Post author

      I started Project 365 when I was in the mid­dle of a lengthy Sum­mer Break, although know­ing full well that I’ll be head­ing into busy waters once the semes­ter and exam­i­na­tions *gasp* starts. But since I used to bring my PnS almost every day to cam­pus and like to shoot around a lot I fig­ured set­ting aside a few min­utes a day for a photo every day wouldn’t be that hard. Doing so with a dSLR proved harder for it lacks the dis­creet and vir­tu­ally sound­less per­for­mance of a PnS.

      A 52 project is too slow if you’d ask me. =P I’d have much more pho­tos to post up than just once a week. Any­how I’m glad to know you’re gonna start one! I’ll look for­ward to see­ing more of your Flickr front-page wor­thy photos! =)

      Well yeah, that’s the thing. For some rea­son our stu­dent admin is shy­ing away from online enroll­ments. A lot of time could be saved indeed!

  4. teddY

    Finally, you’re blog­ging again *throws con­fetti that has been sit­ting there for aeons* I can’t help but won­der, what is the feel­ing of going back to school after a long semes­ter break in between? It must have sucked (at least a lit­tle?), just like every kid will feel when vaca­tion is over and they’ve to go to school, to tuitions and to lessons again.

    The first day of school sounded really chaotic, espe­cially the one dur­ing the first lec­ture. It’s really incon­sid­er­ate of them to just barge in and announce tuto­r­ial slots are up for grabs, lead­ing peo­ple on a mad rush for vacan­cies. My university’s online reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem saved us from the phys­i­cal squeez­ing, but we’ll have to keep press­ing F5 ten min­utes before the reg­is­tra­tion of courses open, since elec­tives and core sub­ject tuto­r­ial slots are offered on a first-come-first-serve basis. Ah, trou­ble trou­ble, toil and trou­ble! I kind of saw it com­ing when I real­ized five min­utes into reg­is­tra­tion that the server crash *laughs*

    Sorry to hear that your par­ents kid­napped your dSLR along with them — I know how bad it feels to live with­out your cam­era on 24-hour ready call by your side. I am rest­ing at my Malaysian home now, away from my dorm (where my cam­era is) and what is mak­ing me very itchy and rest­less now is that I am yet to use to 50mm f1.4 KM lenses I’ve bought a week ago — the day I bought it I started to have fever, lol.

    You will find renewed strength in con­tin­u­ing with your Project 365 when your cam­era is back. You don’t feel it now because the cam­era isn’t at your side 🙂 you’ll be fine!

    Good luck, and have a great week ahead!

    1. ember Post author

      Yay! *jumps around in shower of con­fetti* Actu­ally yeah, it did suck at first me being in hol­i­day mood and all, but its going back to the com­pany of awe­some friends that drowned those ini­tially moody days. =D

      Exactly! Glad you share my view on their incom­pe­tence. I would very much pre­fer if they had an online reg­is­tra­tion sys­tem like NTU but I don’t know what’s hold­ing them back. Although all that F5-ing could be nerve-wrecking espe­cially on noto­ri­ously slow and unpre­dictable M’sian broad­band. A crashed server is such a blow! I thought they should be pre­pared for the flood of eager stu­dents to grab their tutorials!

      Well only you could under­stand that, Teddy. Speak­ing of which, I haven’t seen your maiden pho­tos using your new 50mm f1.4 lens!

      You’re quite right about restart­ing Project 365. Joyce has been far­ing pretty well for the past few days for 365 shots, heh!

  7. Latrina

    I sec­ond Rilla. I have been check­ing back on your web­site since I stum­bled upon it a few weeks ago. I even intro­duced your pho­to­blog to my fiancé who views it often. As do I. 🙂 Even if you don’t con­tinue with the 365 Project, I hope you’ll still con­tinue to share pho­tos. They are absolutely gor­geous. Your pho­to­blog is one of the few that has inspired me to make my own. 🙂 So thank you!

Comments are closed.