Deutschland, auf Wiedersehen!

This is my last full-day in Bonn, Germany, since I’ll be departing to Trento, Italy, tomorrow morning at 07:37 using the ICE train. According to the ticket’s trip info, I’ll transfer (change) train in München. This day has been very exhausting to me. I cleaned up everything (windows, shelves, wardrobe, floor, tables, chairs, etc) and the process took almost all day long.

So the end of the first chapter of the 4-chaptered EuMI programme has been reached, and I should carry on to the 2nd in Trento, Italy. So it’s time to say goodbye to this country (Germany) for now (I’ll be back on my final semester for the master thesis).

I got a farewell present from Mr. Jonatan Lassa, a PhD researcher in Universität Bonn. It’s his own writing which was published earlier today in one of Indonesian’s most famous newspapers – KOMPAS. The article can be read here. Thanks and congrats for the article Mr. Joe! It’s nice

Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland!

Tangible and Embedded Interaction 2008’s keynote speech: The future is not to be predicted, but to be invented!

This evening around 7 p.m. I attended the TEI 2008 conference’s keynote speech by Prof. Hiroshi Ishii of the MIT (Massachussets Institute of Technology)’s Tangible Media Group at the B-IT. It’s a 3-day conference (18-20th February) and Media Informatics students have the opportunity to come and see the keynote speech for free on the first day (today). I found the speech really exciting, so I really enjoyed the free-ride Attending the whole 3-day sessions? No way! Aber warum? It costs around €600!!!!! Maybe I’ll consider attending such a conference when I become a big-wealthy-guy haha….

So Prof. Ishii started the speech with the history of Tangible User Interfaces, then he pointed some key differences and advantages (of course) with the (mighty) Graphical User Interfaces, got into several examples and ongoing researches, and finally ended the talk with some future visions and encouragements.

Below is a picture of Prof. Ishii presenting the talk grabbed from my Indian friend’s picture gallery, Vinay. Is there any connection with the number 1 and MIT? No, at least not in the scene below. It’s just a slide showing that he started the reasearch at the MIT, hence number 1 is used

TEI 2008 – Prof. Hiroshi Ishii conducting his keynote speech

The last quote he used before ending his speech was very interesting to me. I forgot the exact words used, but it’s approximately like this:

“The future is not to be predicted, but to be invented”.

Seminar presentation on Valentine’s day: will the hardship be paid off?

Finally earlier today I conducted the final presentation for my seminar subject. My topic was about Performance Evaluation of TCP Congestion Control Mechanisms. I presented the topic with my colleague, Xiangyu (a Chinese guy), and it went quite smoothly. Dr. Dirk Thißen flipped a €2 coin and the result was that I got the second part presentation of my topic. So Xiangyu started the talk initially. The tension was a bit high back then (the audience were several PhD students and fellow master students), but it went just well.

I was asked several questions by Prof. Otto Spaniol surrounding the performance comparison of New Reno and Westwood+ TCP, but I did quite well in answering (not perfect of course).

In my opinion such seminar subject is very helpful for the students to get into a topic. Not only will it teach (force actually ) students how to write a seminar paper (correct formatting, citing, referring etc), but also how to present the topic well to the audience (in an academical perspective of course). In addition, since the seminar (in this case Convergent Networks) consisted of several topics, at the presentation day students will also learn much about other topics from others’ presentations.

My compliments to Mr. Alexander Zimmermann who – in his busy days of IEEE Computer Society Press and ACM publications work – still managed to spend times correcting my seminar paper. I’d also like to thank Xiangyu Zhang for being a good partner for accomplishing the tasks.

Finally I hope I’ll pass this seminar subject

A nostalgic trip to Prague….

After getting back from the combo-trip with Mu & Yanto on 23rd December 2007, I celebrated Christmas in Bonn. Actually Bonn & Köln. On 24th I attended a Christmas mass in Bonn with Vina & Eddy (and Mu also ), then on 25th I attended an Indonesian Christmas mass in Köln with Vina (Eddy had to work at that time).

On 29th I travelled to Prague by bus. Since Czech Republic was already a member of the Schengen countries, I didn’t need a Czech visa After 7.5 years, I finally had the chance to step my feet again in Prague. I arrived on 30th and was fetched by my big bro. Yup, I stayed in my big bro’s apartment until 4th January. It was so nostalgic.

in front of the national museum @Vaclavske Namesti

my favourite Czech dish: knedlik & gulas

new year party with my big bro’s family & friends

the leaning building of Prague

Vltava river, Charles bridge, the palace

at the Charles bridge

cafe Louvre (the last time I was here was around 8 years back)

So, I’ve retransmitted all loss segments in a congestion window of 2007’s Christmas holiday, just like Reno TCP… or maybe even New Reno… hahaha….. goshhh… I’ll have my Convergent Networks seminar presentation on Thursday…..

Combo trip to Luxembourg, Brugge, Bruxelles (again)

One day after being present in 3 countries at once , on 21st December, I, Mu and Yanto took a combo trip to 3 cities: Luxembourg, Brugge, Bruxelles (again). We took a direct train from Köln to Luxembourg city, travel around, and stayed for a night in a youth hostel.

Luxembourg – the big map

Luxembourg city has so many bridges. We could hardly distinguish the bridges.

Luxembourg – peace….

Luxembourg – the many-bridges city of Luxembourg

Luxembourg – where’s the other guy?

And another cool thing about Luxembourg city is that it has many internet hot-spots surrounding the city.

Luxembourg – the internet hostpot’s access point

After getting tired wandering around the town, we had our dinner in a Chinese restaurant (what? why the hell should we eat Chinese food in Luxembourg?). Yeah, it’s because of the very high price of traditional restaurant. Just imagine, it’s about €25 for a dinner But no regret since we had had a traditional food for our lunch
Early in the morning, we headed straight to the central station, and took a train to Brugge (in Belgium). It was very cold, I saw a thermometer at the sidewalk: it’s -7 °C

Brugge is quite famous for its canal crossing the city. But the canals were all frozen

Brugge – the frozen canal of Brugge

Brugge – captain Dafferianto….

Brugge – the city square

Brugge – lost in Brugge?

Before going to a hostel for a night, we went to an ice museum (I forgot the name). So beautiful….

Brugge – hey ho…. I’m gonna slide down fasstttt…..

Brugge – howdy….

Brugge – don’t follow these 2 devils….

Brugge – instead, follow Dafferianto the sailor man….

Drielandenpunt => my presence in 3 countries at once :D

OK, like Reno TCP which employs the Fast Retransmission and Fast Recovery algorithm, I’d like also to try to retransmit the lost packets, i.e. the lost important activities But instead of writing long sentences, I’d just consider putting some pictures.

So, below are some pictures of my trips on 20th December 2007 to a spot called Drielandenpunt, which is a border of 3 countries: Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium. I went there with Caryto, Mu, Vina and Yanto.

The 3-border-point is located in a hill. So we went to Vaals (located in the Netherlands) from Aachen, and walked up to the spot. Actually the spot itself is the highest point throughout the entire Netherlands (no wonder since some parts of the Netherlands are below sea-level). On the way up, we went to a post-office. I was surprised that the post office in Dutch is called “postkantoor”. In Indonesia it’s called “kantor pos”

postkantoor

on the way up (Yanto, Vina, me, Caryto)

the Drielandenpunt (3 borders point. My feet are in the Germany’s territory )

the highest point of the Netherlands

Mu & Yanto enjoying life….

stupidos in action (me, Mu, Yanto)

On our way back, we went to a supermarket. I bought a pack of Strepsils and 2 packages of kroepoek.. haha….

the “kroepoek”

No more DIS assignments…. finally :)

Finally the DIS’ final project’s presentation is done!!!! My days have been very busy due to the deadlines…. Many important activities haven’t been logged to this blog…. Maybe I’ll consider putting pictures later on instead of tons of words. Anyway, my team’s DIS project’s website is at:

http://www-users.rwth-aachen.de/Yanto.Young/

Please feel free to visit the page as long as it’s still up and running (only heaven and Mr. Yanto know about this )

Surely smiles blossom as we cross the finishing line (Yanto, Vina, Alpesh, me)